Carrying Hope (3 page)

By the time I was eighteen, I’d made enough money to start my first company. In a year, I sold that company for a hundred million dollars and I never looked back.

Now I was on the wrong side of thirty, with enough money to buy anything in the world. Anything except the one thing I desperately wanted: answers. My father needed to answer for his crimes against my mother and me. I planned to make him answer me one way or the other, but first I needed to find out who he was.

So, for the past year, Tanner and I scoured hospital records. Tanner did most of the footwork of interviewing people my mother used to associate with. Those people were difficult enough to track down and once we found them, they normally didn’t have much information for us.

A thirst for vengeance kept me going when it seemed like we were never going to get anywhere. I didn’t know what kept Tanner going; loyalty to me, I’d guess.

I swirled the ice around my glass, contemplating another drink. It was the only way I was able to sleep most nights, if I bothered trying to sleep at all. Nightmares of my mother’s illness haunted me. I always blamed myself for her death; if she didn’t have me she would still be here.

I unscrewed the lid to the bottle, but my pour was interrupted by my cell phone ringing. Tanner. It was late; I hoped that meant he had something for me.

“Yeah?”

“I met a guy,” he sounded out of breath; excited.

“Oh yeah? Are you two going to adopt a Chihuahua and move to South Beach?” I grinned at my own little joke, hoping he didn’t notice the slight slur in my speech.

“Fuck you. No, he says he has information for you.”

“Oh yeah? How much does he want?”

“
Gratis
. He just wants to tell you something.”

I frowned. Nothing in life was free. I learned that the hard way. There had to be a catch.

“What does he want to tell me?”

“If I fucking knew that then I wouldn’t be fucking telling you about the man I’d be fucking telling you the fucking info.” His Bostonian accent made every utterance of ‘fucking’ sound more like ‘facking’.

“Okay, okay, calm down. When does he want to meet?”

“He said he’ll stay put for half an hour. That was ten minutes ago now, smartass.”

“Why didn’t you lead with that?” I sprang out of my chair and raced to the garage. I was probably a little over the limit to drive, but there was no way I could pass up on this opportunity. Whatever this guy had to tell me, Tanner thought that it was legitimate, so I had to investigate.

“I’m texting you the address. Just be careful, it’s a pretty shady neighborhood.”

“Seriously? Do you know who you’re talking to?”

“Who are you again?” He laughed.

“Fuck you,” I replied with a grin, peeling out of my driveway and down the long dirt road that ran through the vineyard.

“Let’s see if you’re still saying that after you talk to him.”

I agreed before hanging up the call and setting the address he’d sent me into my GPS. Eighteen minutes to get there and the bar was twenty-five minutes away. It was a good thing I could afford expensive cars.

I drove like a madman, zooming in and out of traffic, racing through city streets, and burning rubber through turns. It certainly wasn’t my normal behavior, but I was on a deadline. Nothing in the world was more important to me.

After I parked, I entered the dive bar with moments to spare. I scanned the patrons, unsure of whom I was looking for. A grizzled old man at the end of the bar raised his bearded chin, beckoning me. I hesitated for a moment, eying the stranger carefully.

He had a long white beard that extended well past his navel and a mane of shaggy gray hair that fell to the middle of his back. Clad head-to-toe in denim, he looked more like an escaped mental patient than a valuable informant. Beggars can’t be choosers, though.

With more than a little bit of trepidation, I approached the old man and extended my hand to him.

I had a couple of hours to myself before Kevin was due to be home, so I tried to use the time to prepare myself. I was terrified that he was going to be angry at me or blame me for losing my job. Maybe it was partly my fault, but I was capable and hard-working; surely I could find another job quickly.

Thinking of ways to soften the blow, I decided that cleaning the house would be a good start. He couldn’t be angry at me if everything was clean, right? I knew that wasn’t realistic, but cleaning helped me burn off some of the nervous energy that was bubbling inside of me.

Our apartment wasn’t anything special, just a small one bedroom with barely enough space for two people. I set to work scrubbing the kitchen, cleaning the stove, mopping the floors, and emptying out the fridge.

I was just beginning to do the laundry when I heard the jingle of keys in the front door. Kevin came in, kicked off his work boots and dropped his lunchbox at the front door.

“Hi sweetheart,” I called from the laundry closet.

“Oh, hey,” he answered distractedly.

Our relationship had never been particularly affectionate. We met when I was still running with a bad crowd. Kevin was, at the time, driving a delivery truck for one of the more well-known mob bosses. I never asked what kind of things he delivered and he never offered up any information. The first time I laid eyes on him, I was completely smitten. His sandy blond hair, blue eyes and boyish dimples made my heart melt. What I didn’t realize until years later was that looks could be deceiving. He was the picture of cherubic innocence, but inside he was as dirty as they came.

I was willing to overlook a lot of things for the sake of stability and the relationship that I never thought I’d be able to have. No other man had given me a second look; well, at least not in a meaningful way. Plenty of men on the streets wanted one thing from me, but I wasn’t willing to part with that so easily.

Kevin was different. He talked to me like I was a normal person. He didn’t talk down to me because I was young or a girl. He didn’t care that I was involved in shady things, because he was too. I flirted shamelessly with him, but it took months for him to finally get the hint.

Finally, we started dating and I was convinced that our relationship was going nowhere. He wasn’t the romantic type: we never went on real “dates”, he never bought me flowers or took me out to dinners, and we only ever “hung out”. He didn’t want to label our relationship and after a year or so of feeling like I was being strung along, I tried to end it.

It was then that he confessed that he had trouble letting people in, but he really liked me and asked me to move in with him. I was the happiest girl in the world in that moment. I never thought that anyone would care about me that much. I thought that we would be together forever.

For the first few months, things were great. We had sex every day, we laughed until we cried, and he went out of his way to make sure my needs were taken care of. But eventually, complacency kicked in. Now, he treated me more like a roommate than anything else, but I was still clinging to the hope that one day our relationship would be strong again. He just needed time. If we didn’t have to stress about money all of the time, maybe he would be happier and more affectionate.

There were times when he suggested that I take up cards again to pay the bills, but he knew I couldn’t. We’d had plenty of fights over the years about it, but I held my ground. I wanted to make him happy. I would do anything for him, except break that promise to my Nana.

I started loading the clothes into the washing machine, separating the loads as I went.

Kevin walked through the kitchen and grabbed a beer from the fridge without a word.

For a moment, I pouted that he didn’t notice all of my hard work.

“Well, what do you think?”

“About what?” he asked, turning the TV on and kicking his feet up on the coffee table.

“The kitchen! Didn’t you notice how clean it is?”

His gaze never moved from the television.

“Oh yeah. It looks nice, thanks.”

I rolled my eyes, wondering why I even bothered to try.

As I was tossing the last few things into the washer, something lacy caught my eye. I snatched it up, examining it closely. It didn’t look familiar to me: a bright blue lace thong, probably six sizes too small for me. My heart fell through the floor.

“Kevin, what’s this?” I asked, holding it up for him. I was disgusted and hurt. My stomach churned at the betrayal.

Not only did he bring another woman into our house, but she was obviously a vastly different body type than me.

“Hmm?” He drank from his beer again, not bothering to look at me.

Fury boiled in my veins. I’d just found evidence that he was cheating on me and he couldn’t even look away from Sports Center long enough to be embarrassed.

“What the fuck is this?” I screamed, hysteria slipping into my voice. Tears clouded my vision, but I refused to let them fall. I wasn’t going to let him have that victory, too.

He finally granted me the courtesy of his attention, turning slightly on the couch to look at me.

“Oh, that,” he said sheepishly with a shrug.

“Yes,
that
.” I said, tossing the lacy undergarment at him. He hadn’t touched me in weeks, but he was bringing some skank into our
home
?

“Well, you know… Just because you’re not putting out doesn’t mean I stop needing it.”

I scowled at him. Never in my life had I been so close to physically harming someone as I was in that moment. I wanted to hurt him so much more than he hurt me.

“Are you kidding me? You weren’t exactly making any moves. But you found the energy to make moves on some tramp.” My voice shook with rage. I couldn’t hold back my tears any more. I couldn’t believe that he cheated on me. I didn’t want to believe it.

“She was hot. You’re well…” he gestured to me dismissively, “you’re you. Sorry, but I’ve never been much of a chubby chaser.”

I felt like he punched me in the stomach. All of my biggest fears and insecurities were just laid out in front of me and made a reality. I wanted to escape. I wanted to get far far away from him. I thought again of my forty dollars and wondered if I’d be able to make it into enough for a hotel room for a few nights.

“You didn’t seem to have a problem with
me
when I was cooking for you and cleaning up after you and doing everything but wiping your ass for you.”

“Look, Marce, we have fun together, why are you making it so serious? Neither one of us wants to be tied down, right?”

“Wrong. I thought we were in this together.”

He gave me a pitying look like I was a wounded animal he had to put out of its misery.

“Well, I’m sorry if you didn’t really understand how this was.”

“For THREE YEARS, Kevin?” I screeched, looking for something else to hurl at his stupid face.

He shrugged and turned back to the TV, leaving me to stew on my own. How could he be so flippant? How could he be so callous? How could I be so blind?

I tried to think of an escape route. I didn’t really have any money. I didn’t have anywhere else to go. I didn’t have a job and now I didn’t have a boyfriend. Or I guess I never really had one to begin with. All I could do was sink down to the floor and cry.

A few minutes of crying later, Kevin had something to say.

“Hey, could you keep it down?”

“Screw you,” I shouted through tears.

“Jesus, Marcie, get over it.”

I hugged my knees to my chest. How could I be so heartbroken over something that never really was?

“Oh, by the way, I need your half of the rent tomorrow.”

I guess I should have known that we weren’t really a couple when we still split all of the bills straight down the middle. There were plenty of times when Kevin was short and I had to cover his portion; I only hoped that he’d do the same for me.

I swallowed the lump in my throat, my mouth suddenly drier than the Sahara.

“Um… about that. I’m not going to have it.”

He glared at me.

“Why not?”

I stifled another sniffle and wiped away the tears that streaked my face.