Leap of Faith (23 page)

The taxi comes to a stop, jerking me out of the daze I was in, with my head dropped back against the seat. Out of the window, my old house comes into focus. Even through the darkness, I can tell that in the months I’ve been gone, the house has fallen apart even more.

“You sure this is the right address?” the driver asks, peering back at me and Addy.

I nod. “Unfortunately, it is.” I hand him his money and tug on the door handle.

The driver goes around to the trunk and takes out our bags. “Do you need help with your bags?”

“I can manage. Thanks.” I sling the bags over my shoulder and carry Addy through the high grass to the front stoop. My hand finds the key under the mat, and I try to stick it in the lock.

But it won’t work.

I shove, attempting to force it in.

It’s not the key for this lock.

Mom changed the locks. Hope and I are gone, and she wants to make sure we stay that way.

“Everything okay?” the driver shouts.

I wave. “It’s cool.” The words stab my stomach.

Shit. I have to knock.

The taxi’s gone, so I hope she answers. I reluctantly pound on the door, loud enough to wake a drugged-up, drunk old woman. After a minute, I pound again.

Inside, footsteps thud into the family room.

The lock clicks.

The door is flung open.

I didn’t think it was possible, but Mom looks worse than she did when I left. There’s no way she’s showered in the past week, and her hazy eyes scream,
Binge!

“Hell do you want?” she slurs. Her feet stagger to the left, and she almost falls, but she catches herself on the doorjamb.

“I brought the baby back. I know it was wrong. I understand I’m screwed. Hugely.”

I won’t say I’m sorry. I’m not.

She laughs, bitterly. “Didn’t like playing momma? Sucks ass, doesn’t it?” She sways against the door but steadies herself again. Her face hardens. “Get the hell out of here! I never want to see you again!”

Her hand rises to strike. I curl in on myself to protect Addy. “I’m going! I’ll drop the baby off at Dave and Angel’s, okay?”

More cold laughter. “Angel left Dave, and he bailed. He’s been gone for months. Nobody wants that damn kid.”

I can only imagine the look on my face that prompts her wicked, wholly satisfied grin. “Looks like you’ve got yourself a baby and no place to live. Guess you should go back to wherever you came from.” She takes a few measured steps backward before slamming the door in my face and locking it.

• • •

No kidnapping charges.

No auto theft charges.

No teen jail.

No Angel and Dave.

No home.

No Hope.

No Chris.

The no’s could go on for days.

But there is Addy. She’s asleep in the center of a hotel bed, the same way we started this mess.

I get to keep her. She’s mine for real now. Nobody else wants her.

Go back to wherever you came from,
Mom said. Yeah. Like I can. I screwed that up too. I should’ve just called Mom from Florida when I called Hope. I could’ve stayed.

I’d be sleeping beside Chris right now.

Addy would be in her Pack ’n Play, curled up in a ball under her blanket.

I don’t know how this all went so wrong. Maybe it was my warped intentions in the beginning. Saving Addy was an afterthought. I set out to hurt Mom. I savored every moment of making her life hell while she was pregnant. I knew taking the baby and leaving Mom without that big payout would be a stake to her heart.

This is my big payout—homeless with a three-month-old baby and a couple hundred bucks to my name.

There are times when I look at Addy and I can see her at my age. Her hair will be long and dark, flowing down her back, her eyes will reveal experience beyond her years—how could they not, with a teen mom?

That’s what I am to her. I’m Mom. I was never a sister.

I hover over her on the bed. She rubs her eyes with her fists. Her mouth opens and closes like a fish.

When will I tell her the truth? When she’s ten? Twelve?

Never. I’ll never tell her that nobody wanted her but me.

I lie beside her. Her eyelids flutter open, and she reaches for my face. I let her smack my cheek and laugh. I laugh with her.

“We’ll be okay.” I hold her wrist. Her bones are bird thin. “We figured it out the first time it was just the two of us. We’ll figure it out again.”

Hotels won’t be as bad now that she sleeps through the night. I just need to get my hands on more money.

I need Hope.

After our phone call, I’m not sure what she’ll do when I show up. She doesn’t want me around her. The
other
Faith, sure.
This
Faith, the babynapping Faith, not so much.

She’ll have to get over it, though. I have Addy to take care of, and she’s more important than my pride or Hope’s shiny new life.

• • •

Our bus to Columbus leaves in twenty minutes. In a little over two hours, we’ll be spending our Saturday afternoon searching all over the Ohio State campus for Hope. Our odds of finding her are slim. The only thing that might save me is Hope being on the track team. Someone might know her, or where the team hangs out.

Calling her first won’t happen. I won’t repeat the last phone conversation we had. College has changed Hope. Like me, she’s been itching to get out from under the past eighteen years of her life. I just hadn’t realized that meant away from me, too. I don’t know if things would be different if I hadn’t taken Addy. Something tells me she would be just as over me anyway.

It’s 432 steps to the bus stop. I’m gasping for air when I get there. Even though it wasn’t that far, holding a baby and two heavy bags makes it a long walk.

I wait on the bench and think about Chris. My mind plays through all of his possible reactions to finding me and Addy gone and only my letter left behind in his bag on the sidewalk.

God, I can picture him pushing through the door of the IHOP into the dark night dotted by the parking lot lights. He’d stop and stare, confused by the empty spot where he’d left his truck parked.

What would he think? How long would it take him to realize I’d left him and wasn’t coming back? Did he call his dad and ask for a ride home? He must’ve been so humiliated, so hurt.

He’d cry into his Spiderman pillow, punching his mattress and raging against another loss—two losses—he didn’t deserve. He’d fight himself to not go upstairs and sleep in my bed where the two of us had spent every night for the past couple of months.

How could he stand to see the empty space where Addy had slept in her Pack ’n Play? Where she rolled over for the first time? How could he bear to remember the way she smiled and laughed when he held her beside the window, talking about the squirrels outside?

I pinch the skin on my forearm to relocate the pain from my chest. A physical pain I can handle, more than the endless urge to lie down and die. It’s times like these, when Addy’s quiet and content, that I need a way to get out of my own head and stop thinking about what I’ve done to Chris.

For the second time in his life, he’s lost two people in an instant. Just . . . gone. No warning.

Addy is sitting on my lap, leaning back against me, sucking on her fist. Every now and then she bounces and makes a sound like “uhn.”

If Hope can’t help us, or doesn’t want to help us, I have to decide if keeping Addy is the best thing to do. There have to be a lot of people looking for babies like her. She could have a perfect home somewhere with a mom and dad who love her, who will put her in a pink room with little white furniture and a dollhouse in the corner.

That’s what I’ve wanted for her even before she was born. A swing set, a baby pool, a sandbox, a doting mom and dad, and a safe neighborhood to play in.

I twist the hair on her head around my finger. I can’t give her those things. Not anymore.

• • •

I alternate between dozing and crying on the bus ride. There’s an old man in front of us. When we got on, he turned around and said, “I hope that baby doesn’t cry the whole way.” But I’m the one who cries, not Addy.

The bus stops at the terminal in Columbus, and the old man stands up to get off. He looks over the seat to where I’m sitting, holding Addy. “You have a content baby. You know what that means, don’t you?”

I roll my eyes. I don’t need this right now.

“It means you’re a good mom. Not many young mothers are. It’s a big responsibility.” He smiles and steps out into the aisle.

Whatever. I’m so great at this that I don’t even know where we’re sleeping tonight. But call me Mom of the Year.

Crazy old man.

I get us off the bus and onto another, one that will take us to campus. My nerves can’t be more shot than they already are, so I don’t feel anything when I think about seeing Hope. Even though her help is a long shot, she’s my only chance at keeping Addy.

chapter

twenty-five

When I finally find the track, I don’t need to be close to know which one she is. Hope’s long, golden ponytail flies out behind her as she sprints toward the next hurdle. Her long, tan legs whip out—one straight in front, one bent behind—as she leaps over it.

All of a sudden, I realize I have no business being here. I’m an intruder in Hope’s life now. After practices, she plants her fancy track shoes, paid for with student grant money, at the base of her bed, in her dorm room, where the air is fresh and clean, free of stale cigarette smoke and beer stench.

My feet freeze to the ground just inside the field. I can’t take one more step.

She really did get free.

I twist around, the treads of my sneakers yanking up dirt and grass. This was a mistake. My feet come off the ground and allow me to take a few strides.

“Faith?” Hope’s voice crashes into me from behind.

I turn to find her jogging toward me.

“What are you doing here?”

Her face is flushed, windburned.

I muster a stunted smile. “I’m not sure. Didn’t know what else to do.” Then the tears start. They stream down like a faucet has been turned on full blast inside my skull.

She’s a blur, but I feel her squeeze my arm. “Hang on. Stay right here.” Then she leaves me standing there looking like an idiot seventeen-year-old with a baby who’s been kicked in the ass by life. And that’s exactly what I am.

• • •

Hope’s dorm room is just how I pictured it, cold from the AC, neat and clean, and smelling of nothing at all.

I’m instantly jealous. She hands me a bottle of water and plops down on her bed next to me, eyeing Addy. “Why?”

I lean back against her wall and shrug. “At first, I just wanted to punish Mom. She wouldn’t get the money without the baby. Then I wanted to get Addy out of there so she didn’t end up like us.”

“Addy? That’s her name?”

I raise an eyebrow. “Something wrong with her name?”

“No. I guess I just didn’t think that you would name her.”

I laugh. I can’t help it. “You didn’t think I’d name a baby I’ve had for almost three months? Good thing you got a track scholarship, brainiac.”

She shoves my leg. “Shut up.”

We’re quiet for a minute. Then she says, “Mom doesn’t want her.” It’s not a question. It never has been. “Dave’s gone.”

“I know.”

“What are you going to do? Where have you been living all this time?”

“With friends.”

“Are you going back?”

I shake my head. “Can’t.”

She nods like she’s not surprised to hear I can’t go back, that I screwed it up.

“You can’t stay here.” She looks around the shoebox-size room she shares with a roommate.

“No shit.”

“What do you want, then?”

“Money.” The word feels like poison shooting off my tongue. When you’ve never had it, asking for money is like asking for a person’s soul.

She stands up and moves across the room.

Poison.

“I don’t have any.” She turns to her desk.

“You have to have something.” I can’t stand pressing her, but I know she got grant money, and if there’s even a little bit left, I could keep Addy for another day or two.

Hope spins back around. “I’m here on a scholarship and grants. Why would I have money?”

“Brian does.” The words are out before I have a chance to stop them. Desperation has taken over the filter between my brain and mouth.

She purses her lips and shakes her head, looking at the ceiling. “I’m supposed to drag him into your mess too, huh?”

Why can’t she see what even twenty bucks would do for me? “Just forget it.” I stand and start for the door. “We’ll just starve and sleep on the street. Have a nice life. Try not to feel too guilty tonight sleeping in your bed.”

Her hand slams down on the desk. “Fine! Just wait outside and let me call him. Give me two freakin’ minutes, Faith, okay?”

I nod and leave her room to wait out in the hallway. I shut the door behind me. It echoes in the empty hall. Nobody’s around. Addy’s heavy in my arm, so I lean against the wall and switch her to the other side.

Then my breath catches—someone’s strumming a guitar.

I know with every ounce of my being that I’ll never be able to hear a guitar again without my heart squeezing, threatening to stop.

Hope doesn’t come out of her room, but fifteen minutes later, Brian shows up and hands me an envelope.

“Thanks,” I whisper, unable to meet his eyes.

He pats Addy’s head. “She looks a little like Hope.”

“Yeah, she does.”

He knocks on the door. “Hey, it’s me.”

She opens it. Her face is red and puffy from crying. “I’m sorry I had to ask—”

“Don’t worry about it.” His hands cup her chin.

I can still feel Chris’s hands on my face.

“Did you tell him thank you, at least?” she asks me.

“She did,” he says.

“Hope, . . . .” I don’t know what to say to her. “Thanks. We’ll leave you alone.”

She lets Brian slide past her and inside the room. “Where are you going to go?”

I shake my head. “I don’t know.”

She bites the inside of her cheek. “Stay close. I want to know you’re okay.” Then she lunges for me and wraps her arms around me, squishing Addy between us.