Flickering Hope (13 page)

W
atching Mom collapse is like watching a house of cards fall. Sometimes you don’t even see what tiny breath of wind starts the destruction, when suddenly, with terrible fragility, the entire structure tumbles in on itself. People gasped, as they always do, and Jim Paulson, of all people, reached out for her before she hit the floor.

“Make some room,” he called, ever the hero.

Dad and I rushed to her, but she was already out, eyelids fluttering, on the other side where Dad and I couldn’t reach her. When Mom first started passing out like this, I used to tell myself that she had gone to a beautiful place of crystal and feathers, warm, and filled with golden sunlight, like the dreams you don’t want to wake up from. Only then could I understand why she didn’t come back to us, no matter how much we shook her or called her name.

Dad lifted Mom, like a broken bird, and carried her out to the Jeep. I opened the door, playing the role I’ve come to know so well, climbing in after Mom, to buckle her into the seat and sit next to her. I still held the shoebox Frankie had shoved into my arms.

Andrew, Helen, Ruth, and her dad had all followed us outside.

“Is there anything we can do?” Helen asked.

“Would you be willing to bring a change of clothes for us to the hospital?” Dad asked. “We’re likely to be there overnight.”

“And feed Higgins?” I called.

Helen nodded, and Dad backed out of the parking lot. I held Mom’s limp hand as we sped toward the hospital, sitting close so she wouldn’t fall over or hit her head. When we pulled up to the ER doors, orderlies rushed out with a gurney to collect Mom. Dad parked in the garage, and then we hurried inside, following directions down a hallway and up in an elevator, into a small exam room where nurses had hooked Mom up to an IV and a heart monitor.

I had carried the shoebox in with me, barely thinking. I hugged it close as the flurry of activity finished, and the familiar hospital scene settled around me. The rhythmic beep of the heart monitor, the antiseptic smell, and Dad talking quietly to the nurses mixed with the white noise of the heating system. And the heat. Like all hospital rooms, this one was too hot, the stuffy air too thick to breathe.

“I’m going outside.”

Dad turned from the nurse and frowned. “What?”

“Just for some air.” I was already halfway out the door.

“Stay here,” Dad said. “They might move Mom. You know the drill.”

But I couldn’t stay, and I couldn’t explain this to him either. I just had to get out of that building, out into the fresh air. I looked down at the box in my arms. “I’ll just put the ornaments in the Jeep. I’ll be right back.”

Dad sighed, but handed me the keys. “Right back, Sadie. I don’t want to have to worry about you, too.”

No. We wouldn’t want that.

As soon as the door clicked shut behind me, I started to jog, and once I found the stairwell, I started to run. I ran down flight after flight to the ground floor, and then crashed out through the lobby. Who cared what anyone thought of a seventh grader running through the hospital lobby? People must have run through before, grief-stricken, joyful, confused, like me.

The automatic doors opened, and I bolted through onto the snow-covered steps. Immediately I started slipping and sliding, but I kept on running. I needed to finally breathe. When I stepped on the bottom step, my boot slid on an icy patch, and the box flew out of my hand. It hit the ground with a disturbing crash. Our ornaments. The ornaments Frankie, Ruth, and I and the others had made. The ornaments even Andrew had helped with. All for the family in the shack, for Roxy. And she’d given Patch to the hunters. Suddenly I hated that box and everything it stood for. I kicked it across the sidewalk, and then ran through the snow to kick it and kick it again. When it lodged into the
snowbank at the edge of the street, I stomped and pounded on the box until the snow had soaked it through and the box was almost flattened, until my breath came in ragged sobs.

And then I stopped. The destroyed box swum before my tear-filled eyes, the red cardboard staining the snow pink. I scooped it up and stumbled toward the parking garage, avoiding the eyes of the few passersby in the night. I unlocked the Jeep and climbed into the backseat, still cradling the box. My sobs started fresh as I set the box down, and pulled away the disintegrating lid, saw the broken glass inside.

I break everything. No matter what I do, or how hard I try, everything, everyone around me breaks.

I took out three clear shards and tried to arrange them in my palm so that they matched one another. A sharp edge sliced my pinky, but I ignored this and kept trying to match the edges. One way and then another, the word
broken
repeating through my mind over and over.

I don’t know how long I sat there in the dark, piecing the glass back together, choosing new pieces, finding no fits. Suddenly the door opened behind me, and I heard Andrew say my name and then gasp.

Again, sobs burst out of me, and I covered my face to hold in the sounds choking out of me. Something sharp pressed into my cheek, and I didn’t understand why my face felt so warm and sticky and wet.

“Don’t touch your face, Sadie,” Andrew climbed up into the Jeep behind me and gently took my hands and looked down at them.

I looked down too, and saw that my hands were covered with blood. In the moonlight, I could see slivers of glass that had wedged into my fingers and palms.

“Stay there,” Andrew ordered. “Don’t touch anything.”

He jumped out and opened the front passenger door to look in the glove box. He found a napkin and brought it back. He dabbed at my cheek where it stung.

“You didn’t cut your cheek badly, but we should have the doctors look at your hands.”

“Patch will die.” My mind was hazy and tears kept spilling down my cheeks. “I can’t save her. I didn’t listen to you, and it’s all my fault.”

Andrew put his hands on my shoulders and looked me in the eyes. “Sadie, it’s not your fault. We all tried to help Patch.”

“But I didn’t listen to you about Frankie.”

“It’s not like I haven’t let you down lately. Everyone makes mistakes, Sadie.” He leaned forward and brushed away my tears. “I’m sorry, Sadie.”

I just couldn’t stop crying. “I’m sorry too,” I whispered.

“We have to let Patch go,” Andrew said.

Whatever remaining shreds of me that were still whole, shattered now as I felt the truth of Andrew’s words, as I pictured Patch’s limp body being pulled out of her den into the snow. One way or another, I had to let Patch go.

Andrew carefully helped me out of the Jeep. “Mom will be looking for us soon, I’m sure. Maybe we should go fix up your hands?”

I nodded and let him guide me into the bright lights of the ER waiting room.

A
fter a nurse washed and bandaged my hands, scolding me that I should be more careful, Andrew texted his mom to let her know I was all right, and we went back upstairs. The doctors wanted to keep Mom for an extra twelve hours, so Helen offered to take me home.

Even though the sunrise was beautiful, the dark clouds streaked with burnt orange and golden yellow, I mostly stared at my bandaged hands on the way home. I felt like a limp rag, wrung out, and useless. Worse than useless because on top of everything that had gone wrong—Patch, Mom, Frankie — I had thrown a fit and broken ornaments that weren’t mine to break. And now, a family whose life was even worse than mine would have a bare, depressing Christmas tree. Some send off as they were forced to move out of the shack.

But what bothered me most, even more than my mistakes, was the frightening broken edges of my insides, broken edges that didn’t feel like they could ever heal. I thought of Ruth’s story, of how she’d beat against the wind and known God was with her, and then of my own experience, how God reached out to comfort me as rain drummed on the Catholic church’s roof. So why not now? Why did I feel broken beyond repair? Had one of my mistakes, or the collection of all of them, been too much?

Finally, when I couldn’t stand the pressure of guilt burning inside me, I said, “Frankie’s dad is still kicking Roxy and her family out of the shack after Christmas. And now they won’t even have ornaments on their tree.”

I looked up at Andrew, expecting a grim look in return, but instead, he gave me his crooked smile. “I missed out the first time, so I’ll help you make new ones, if you want.”

We’d left some glass behind at Vivian’s house, since we hadn’t needed it all for the first set of ornaments. A tiny breath of possibility slipped around the edges of the heaviness that pressed down on my chest. Could something, anything, from this miserable week be fixed?

I used Helen’s cell phone to call Vivian, who said she’d fire the kiln so it would be hot and ready.

Helen promised to go check on Higgins after she dropped us at Vivian’s house. Vivian had baked a fresh batch of Santa cookies and set them out in the concrete room on the table next to the baggies of glass and kiln trays.

“I’ll leave you to your work,” she said. “Call me when you’re ready to fire the trays. I’ll be in the blue room.”

As she hurried away, Andrew picked up a triangular shape, and a long, thin spike of blue glass. “What am I supposed to make of this mess? Maybe this could be a spear?”

“No spears,” I said.

“A trident, then.” Andrew chose a few shorter pieces of glass and shaped a fork on top of the long spike.

Laughing, after all of that crying, was a relief. “No weapons.”

“Maybe it’s a fork. You have rules against utensils?”

I pushed together a collection of curvy shapes. “I’m making a reindeer.”

“Show off.” Andrew tossed the washcloth at me.

I tossed it back, making sure to hit him in the face.

He aimed at me, but I raised my bandaged hands. “You’re picking on an injured person?”

He grinned and tossed anyway. “Absolutely.”

We filled the trays with shapes of stars and bells and a few more complex arrangements such as my reindeer. In the end, we made about seventy ornaments in all. Vivian came in to help us load them into the kiln when the doorbell rang.

“Sadie, go see who that is, will you?” Vivian asked.

Frankie stood outside, Higgins wiggling in her arms. Helen’s station wagon waited in the driveway. After Frankie pushed Higgins into my arms, she shoved her hands into her pockets and stared at her feet. Higgins arched back and forth to try to lick my nose. I scratched his ears, and as it became clear Frankie didn’t intend to speak first, I finally said, “So …”

“You don’t have to help me,” Frankie began.

I sighed. If I’d learned anything over the past few months, I’d learned Frankie never did anything without an underlying reason of her own.

“It’s just that I …” She shivered as her voice trailed off.

I sighed again. It was cold, and this didn’t promise to be a short conversation. “Come in,” I said, my voice not very welcoming.

Frankie looked up at me then, a question on her face. After a moment of looking at me, she shrugged, as though she hadn’t found her answer but would press forward anyway. She came inside, took off her boots, coat, and hat, and went to sit in the living room where we’d sat just a few nights ago. Where I’d given away Patch’s secret. I sat stiffly on a chair across from Frankie. Higgins jumped up, putting his paws on my knees until I gave in and pulled him into my lap. His fur was soft against my fingertips, the only part of my hands not bandaged.

“A couple days before Thanksgiving, just after I had come home from Mom’s house, Dad and Mack loaded up a truck with a bunch of old furniture from our basement. Dad and I had fought the night before about the divorce papers from Mom. Maybe on another day, I would have just hung out at home. But I wanted to be with him. Maybe I thought I could prove I wanted to live with him.”

Already this sounded like a long story. I didn’t want Frankie and Andrew to have another run in, but soon, I knew, Andrew would wonder what happened to me.

I tried to hurry the story along. “That’s how you found out about the family in the shack. You dropped off the furniture with your dad.”

Frankie rubbed her forefinger and thumb together. “I thought he meant to really help them, and it was fun. I felt like I was doing something good. Roxy bounced all around the truck as we brought everything inside and set up the little kitchen.” Frankie took a folded piece of paper out of her pocket and passed it to me. “Roxy drew that for me as we finished unloading the truck.”

I looked at the crayon-drawn picture of a family cuddled together on a couch, under the words
Our New House
all in capital letters.

“Roxy gave me the picture and said, ‘For you, for giving us a house for keeps.’ “

Frankie stopped, her eyes watery, the way they’d been last night at the meeting. So strange. Frankie used sarcasm, threats, and insults to get her way, but never before these past two days had I ever seen her show any weakness. Now I’d seen her in tears half a dozen times.

Frankie rubbed her nose before continuing. “Roxy had this look in her eyes, a familiar look, one I probably used to wear back when I thought maybe Mom would come home someday, and we’d be a family again.”

“Sadie, you okay?” Andrew called, coming around the corner from the hall into the living room. He stopped when he saw Frankie. “What’s going on?”

“Your mom dropped off Frankie.” I looked at Frankie, not knowing what else to say.

Frankie shrugged. “I asked her if she knew where Sadie was, and she brought me over. She asked if you’d go chat with her for a second before she leaves, though.”

Andrew looked at us for another moment before nodding. “Okay. Just …” He looked more worried than angry, with creases rippling across his forehead. “Let me know if you need me, Sadie.”

My bandages felt thick against my hands, and suddenly, I saw the whole situation from Andrew’s point of view. No wonder he was treating me like a fragile vase. I seemed ready to fall to pieces at any minute. This realization, more than anything else, crystallized the pain in me into forward motion, kept me from tumbling down into myself. I didn’t want to be a girl who fell apart, a girl at whom people cast worried glances.

“I’m fine,” I said, pulling myself back together, wondering if the pieces that used to be me even had the possibility of fitting back together again.

Andrew shoved his feet into his boots and pulled on his coat before going outside. I turned back to Frankie.

The tears were gone, and now she wore a determined expression. “As we left, I heard Dad remind Quinn Thompson about their agreement. That’s when I knew the house wasn’t for keeps, at least not without strings attached.”

“But your dad didn’t own that land. You had to know …”

“He’d been planning to buy it for a while, ever since he heard — “ Frankie stopped abruptly. “Well, you know. That Patch might be out there.”

Patch’s name, coming from Frankie, cut through me,
and I wanted to jump off the couch and grab her by the shoulders and shake her. Just the tiniest bit of information, the one thing Frankie’s dad didn’t know for sure. He knew a bear was out there, that it was probably Patch, but then when I’d told Frankie without meaning to that we’d hiked out to see Patch, I’d given away the one answer Jim Paulson needed in order to attack Patch one way or the other.

“I shouldn’t have told him,” Frankie said, so quietly I almost didn’t hear her. “Do you know what he said on our drive home from the shack that day? He said, ‘People fight for what they want, Frankie. If that man really wants that house, he’ll fight for it. People who get handouts end up like your mom, leeching off other people. If you want to help that family so much, fight for it. Help them find the bear.’ “

“That’s why you pretended to be my friend,” I said, working hard to keep my voice even. “To prove to your dad you knew how to fight for something?”

“At first, yes,” Frankie admitted. “But then, things just changed.”

“You said you wanted help.” I couldn’t keep the sharp edges out of my voice. As long as she didn’t pretend we were friends, I could handle this conversation. But if she acted like she’d wanted to be my friend, she would only confuse me. I couldn’t stand any more confusion.

“Dad was outside when the escrow company called, so I took the message. He’s supposed to go sign papers at the library, but I didn’t tell him. I walked over to your house, to see if you’d go to the library with me to talk to the owner.”

“Why …?” The last place in the world I wanted to be was wherever those papers would be signed. It would be like watching someone sign an order to kill Patch. I couldn’t handle it.

“Maybe we can convince him not to sell Dad the land.” The words tumbled out of Frankie’s mouth now, and she leaned forward, her eyes flashing with intensity. “Then, Dad can’t do anything to Patch, and maybe Roxy’s family won’t have to leave the shack.”

I stared at her. “You think …”

“Maybe it won’t work, Sadie, but can’t we at least try?”

The landowner had been trying to sell that land for years, and of course, now that he had a buyer, he’d want to sell it no matter what.

But still, I found myself nodding, setting Higgins on the floor and standing up. “We had better hurry, if we want to do this.”

Frankie jumped up, ran over, and threw her arms around me in a giant hug. I stood, my arms stiff at my sides, not sure what to do. Frankie didn’t hug people.

She stepped back and burst into laughter. “Breathe, Sadie. You ready?”

We put on our winter gear and ran out to Helen’s car. “So you girls need a ride to the library?” Helen asked.

“Yes,” I said, avoiding Andrew’s eyes. I didn’t want to explain this all now. “Sorry that you’ve been a chauffeur all day.”

“Sadie, what about the ornaments?” Andrew asked.

I buckled up as I answered. “Do you mind watching them, until I get back? I think this will only take a few minutes.”

I looked up in time to see Andrew nod. “You’re sure you’re all right, Sadie?”

“Yes,” I said, finally looking him full in the face. “I promise.”