Losing Hope (31 page)

“So that's the whole story, huh?”

Ava Diggs was sitting next to me in my mother's living room. It was seven o'clock Tuesday morning, a full week after my quest to find Hope began.

“That's everything.” I let out a sigh. It felt like the longest exhalation of my life.

“I missed a lot with this one.” Ava shook her head.

“Well, it's easy to miss what's been purposely hidden.”

“True. But even still, honey, I'm getting too old for all this foolishness. I'm really thinking it's near my time to retire and pass the baton on to someone who is willing to keep it going.”

“I'm sure Sheena would take that baton and twirl it like a drum major at a homecoming halftime show.”

“Sheena is not who I had in mind.” She winked.

Before I could wrap my head around what she was saying, the mention of Sheena's name reminded me of a question that had not yet been answered.

“Ava, last night, when I came to your house, Sheena told me that you had been on the phone in deep conversation with someone. If you don't mind my asking, to whom were you talking?”

“Oh, that.” Ava looked down and swallowed hard. “I had called one of my oldest and dearest friends to apologize. In my desperate attempt at getting answers, I tried to visit Dayonna at Rolling Meadows the other day. When I identified myself as a social worker, the staff there automatically assumed I was from DSS and signed me in with the last caseworker's name they had in Dayonna's extensive chart history there.”

“Deirdre Evans.” I recalled seeing her name on the sign-in sheet.

Ava nodded. “We worked together when we both first came out of school many, many years ago. I saw the receptionist put her name down, and I should have corrected her, but I didn't, because they were letting me back to see Dayonna. In the end, it did not matter. Dayonna was having an episode, and I was asked to leave before I even made it to the unit.”

“I guess someone else must have seen Deirdre's name on the sign-in sheet and started harassing her again.”

“I think that's exactly what happened, because she called me in a terrible fit last night. I apologized for not fixing the error immediately, as it somehow opened the door to her being harassed again.”

“The Monroes. They must have seen her name and went back into action.” I considered Mr. Monroe's determination to keep his grandchildren out of the system, by any means necessary, it seemed.

My mother yelled out from the kitchen, cutting our conversation short.

“Breakfast is ready! Roman and Sylvester! Stop playing around down there, and come get your pancakes!” The boys were down in the basement, sneaking in a video game before they both got dropped off at school. I had no idea what Leon had said or done with the two of them last night, but the two were acting like brothers again, for better or for worse. I smiled.

Leon, for his part, was in the kitchen, helping my mom with the impromptu breakfast.

“My grandmother Alberta Sanderson would make stuffed pancakes on Tuesday mornings,” I overheard Leon say. “Every week was a different surprise filling . . . blueberries and pecans, cherries, or lemon crème. We never knew what would be waiting on our breakfast plates.”

“Mmm-mmm, that's sounds good and yummy. I think I'll have to pull some pages from your grandmother's recipe book,” my mother responded.

I knew even then, like it or not, Leon Sanderson was part of my family now. He fit comfortably in my mother's kitchen, in my son's social network, even in my father's basement club room, where he had his discussions and debates over sports memorabilia.

But it stopped after that.

There was no other space carved out in my life in which he fit perfectly.

He knew it.

And I did too.

As if on cue, Leon joined Ava and me on the sofa, piping hot plates extended in both of his hands.

“Ladies, a new day calls for a big breakfast. Your mom made the pancakes, and I fixed the omelets.”

Both Ava and I smiled at the stacks of pancakes topped with strawberries, powdered sugar, and whipped cream and the perfectly made omelets stuffed with fresh spinach, chopped bacon, tomatoes, and mounds of gooey mozzarella cheese.

“Perfect.” I grinned.

“Just like you were in handling this whole situation.” He smiled back.

“Thanks again for helping last night. I'm surprised you didn't say anything the entire time,” I told him.

“There was no need for me to say anything. You were standing on your own. You did it, Sienna. You did not need me or anyone else to validate you, what you were doing, or why you were doing it. I was support. You were the star. And you shined. You really shined. And an entire family is better off because of you.” He winked.

I had already filled Ava in on what had happened after we discovered the betrayals, breakdowns, and lies that had been keeping the Monroe family bound for years. After we realized that Mrs. Monroe's bitterness at Mr. Monroe's unceasing commitment to his daughter, despite her drug use, was at the root and center of the confusion, we had a starting point for healing and direction. Through a tear-filled midnight conference call, we agreed to meet in the coming days to sort out the secrets and put the pain out on the table, in plain view, so that it could be digested—and eliminated.

Mrs. Monroe was sick of the moving, the fixing-upping, the fact that the best home renovation had been reserved for Crystal, despite her continued addiction. Hiding Hope had been Mrs. Monroe's last card in a hand to keep Crystal away. She'd used Mr. Monroe's complicated scheme to hold on to his grandchildren against him, even finding a way to have Deirdre Evans unwittingly involved in hiding Hope under everyone's noses.

Mrs. Monroe had cared for Dayonna in the days after she gave birth, hiding her in one of Horace Monroe's renovated, but unrented properties while her mind faded in and out of consciousness. The elder lady had seen the pregnant Dayonna and her mother at the abandoned residence one day when she drove past the property, and she began her planning.

Elsie Monroe had been the one who'd left baby Hope in front of the hospital, knowing that pretending Hope was Dayvita's drug-addicted newborn would not be difficult to pull off, especially since the newborn was truly drug addicted. When Dayonna mysteriously showed back up at the emergency shelter from which she'd been AWOL for five months, her subsequent mumblings and bizarre claims had been chalked up to an unstable mental state and she'd been sent to the residential treatment center in Florida. Mrs. Monroe had not counted on Mr. Monroe demanding that Dayonna become their new foster child upon her return—and what could she have said to Mr. Monroe about Hope?

Neither one of them had expected Dayonna's broken memories to find glue within their home.

The threats, the phone calls, the texts, the e-mails, even the photo, were all Elsie's doing, a last resort to keep the deal that kept Crystal away from their lives.

“I've spent my entire marriage under Bertha's shadow,” Mrs. Monroe had wept into the phone. “Her artwork filled my home, when all I've gotten are horrified stares at my dolls. Her grandchildren consumed my husband when I could not even give him a child of my own. And Crystal—she seemed like she was in the middle of it all, strung out, dirty, and disrespectful. Hiding Hope to keep her away from us was the only control I had of anything, outside of being chairwoman of the pastor's aid committee. I am so sorry for all the hurt I have caused my family and my church home.”

The Monroes were meeting with Bishop LaRue at that moment to disclose the complicated web of lies and secrets that had tangled not only them, but also the church and the surrounding community.

We would meet later in the week to plan for the family's future, to piece it all together. What was decided outright, however, was that Dayonna would remain with the Monroes under an official kinship arrangement, with additional support to address her problematic behaviors and shattered emotional and mental state; that the circumstances surrounding her tragic pregnancy would be investigated; that Crystal would try detox again; and that Daymonica Hope Diamond would remain with the only family she knew: Nellie Richmond. There were still questions to be asked, answers to be found, but finding Hope had been the first step in finding healing for this family.

And in finding healing for me.

Leon was right.

I had accomplished something by following my own instincts, my own values.

My own faith.

“Mom.”

“Where did you come from that fast?” I stared up at my fourteen-year-old son, who was suddenly standing in front of me, munching down three slices of bacon.

“I've got something for you.” He managed to get the words out between bites. In his hand was a brown lunch bag with toilet paper sticking out of it.

“Toilet paper?”

“Imagine that it is sparkling tissue paper in a pretty pink gift bag. All I had on short notice.” He grinned as he held out the grease-stained, wrinkled lunch bag.

“Pathetic.” I shook my head but took the bag, anyway. As I ran my hand through the mounds of cottony soft toilet paper, Roman could not contain his laughter.

“I don't get the joke.” I shook my head again, until my fingers touched something hard and cold and heavy.

“Roman?” I nearly choked on my own tongue as I let my fingers bring up the single item.

The lion's head ring.

A new deluge of memories overtook me as Skee-Gee came up behind Roman.

“I got it back for y'all, Aunt See.” He nodded his head.

“How—”

“You don't want to know.” Skee-Gee's lips curled into a smile as he shook his head so hard, the baseball cap that covered his braids nearly fell off.

“Um, no, we don't.” Leon was smiling, but there was a serious note to his tone. He looked over at me, questions, concern unspoken but all felt in his gaze.

There was a blurry line between right and wrong, justice and just cause when it came to anything RiChard.

That was his legacy, it seemed, and I'd have to find a way to live with that fact.

“You can keep it, Ma. I don't need it.” Roman pressed the ring deep into my palm.

I didn't like what flashed in his eyes, but he turned away and slung his book bag over his shoulder before I could tell him that the ring was not what he needed to let go of.

I swallowed hard.

“We need to get everyone off to school.” Leon's voice sounded far away. “Us adults got to get to work, and Sienna has to get—”

“Some sleep!” my mother and Ava said in unison.

I was still quiet, frozen, really, as one by one the people I loved—and who I knew loved me—began piling out the door. Commotion, ruckus, taunts, the usual upheaval of a weekday morning rush pushed its way out of the living room, all to the beat of my sister Yvette's impatient car honks.

Within seconds, the living room was as quiet as it had been noisy. I closed my eyes and fingered the large ring that still weighed down my palm. I was about to sink back into my mother's overstuffed leather sofa and pull the knitted throw she kept on it up to my shoulders when the front door swung back open.

Leon.

“Forgot my keys,” he mumbled, grabbing a simple key chain from off a side table my mother kept near the bay window in the living room. A breeze sent the white curtains that covered the window into a slow billow. As he turned to exit again, I saw him look at the ring in my hand. He paused. “Sienna, get the answers you need for you, for Roman, first.” He bit his lip, then stared me straight in the eyes. “I'm not going anywhere.”

The door closed quietly behind him. I could hear his footsteps pound down the walkway. I listened as his car roared to life, drove off into the distance.

Answers.

I'd sent an e-mail to Tomeeka Antoinette Ryans, the Portuguese teacher, I suddenly remembered. The letter from Portugal I had scanned and attached to the e-mail. I jumped up from the sofa, but my feet became lead as I got closer to the ancient, dusty large black box of a computer my father kept in the basement, right between a boxing robe from some great boxing legend and an autographed basketball.

“Does this old machine even have an Internet connection?” My fingers shook as I booted it up and waited for the screen to turn from black to blue.

It did.

I could feel the rest of my body joining the trembles of my fingers as I pulled up my e-mail account.

One new message.

From Tremont Scott, the music director at Second Zion.

I exhaled, imagining his perfect voice breaking out into the chorus of that classic gospel melody, the congregation only strengthened by his testimony, encouraged by his sincerity.

Yes, we are, I typed back. I wiped away a tear and reached for the mouse to click off my e-mail account.

Check your junk folder
.

I'd been listening to my gut—the still, small voice in me that had been directing my steps all week. Why should I stop now?

My fingers shook even more as I clicked on my junk folder. Even through the tears that blurred my vision, I saw it in the midst of spam e-mails.

Tomeeka had written me back.

I took a deep breath and opened the e-mail. Tomeeka had skipped all formalities. The entire body of the e-mail was the letter transcribed.