Shannon's Hope Read online

  John lowered his finger but his eyes narrowed. “Why?” He didn’t believe me.

  I looked at the floor and wished it would swallow me—and Keisha too. “I paid off a dealer,” I said, so quiet it was barely a whisper.

  I think he heard me, but he said “What?” anyway.

  “She owed a dealer some money, and he was harassing her and . . . propositioning her. So I paid it.”

  He was quiet. Oh, so quiet. I continued to stare at the floor. After several miserable seconds, I looked up and tried to read the expression on his face—anger, definitely, but he also looked sad, and that was surprisingly harder to see.

  “Why didn’t you tell me any of this?” he asked, his voice at a normal level.

  I wished I had a reasonable answer to that question.

  My attempt to explain was paltry in the wake of his shock at what I had done, and I could see that he was overwhelmed by it. And yet, I hadn’t told him everything. Explaining the money part was horrible, and I knew it hurt him so much—how could I also tell him about the night Keisha didn’t come home, and the time she’d left work to go drinking? I should have told him, I knew I should have, but things were so intense. It killed me to see him so hurt.

  It was nearly midnight before he scrubbed his hand over his face and said he was going to bed. He didn’t ask if I was joining him, and I didn’t follow him down the hall because I was afraid he’d want to talk some more, and I didn’t know how to handle that. When the door to the bedroom shut behind him, I put my elbows onto the kitchen counter and dropped my head into my hands. I had never felt so small, and yet I still hadn’t told him everything. I felt terrible and asked myself why I was doing any of this. Why was I working so hard to protect Keisha?

  I expected Keisha home by twelve thirty, but she didn’t come. I texted her, but she didn’t text back. I waited up until I was sick to my stomach, I was so tired. The night had completely worn me out; I had nothing left. Where was she? Why wasn’t she returning my text messages? How would I deal with her tomorrow?

  At two thirty I couldn’t keep my eyes open and so I went to bed, undressing quietly as though I thought John was asleep. I slid carefully between the sheets with my back toward my husband.

  “Is she home?” he asked in the dark.

  I took a breath. “Not yet. She probably had to work later.”

  He didn’t answer me. He didn’t have to. I knew what he thought and clenched my eyes closed, praying he was wrong. He hadn’t said anything about the contract after I’d explained what happened with the money—there wasn’t anything in the contract against Keisha borrowing money—but he was keeping score all the same.

  Please come home, I begged the walls and the heavens and anything else that might listen and help Keisha get home. Please, please, please come home.

  Chapter 25

  At three thirty I heard something and got up to see what it was. I peeked in the hallway in time to see Keisha’s bedroom door shut. I let out a breath I feared I’d been holding for hours. She was home. She was safe. Everything else could be dealt with in the morning.

  She slept all morning, but I kept checking in on her to make sure she was there, and though John didn’t say anything, I knew he was watching too. Finally, around noon he asked me what time she came in. It was so tempting to lie to him, but I didn’t. “About three thirty.”

  I braced myself for his response, but he just nodded and went out to the garage.

  Landon was working on a school project at the kitchen table and had watched the exchange but didn’t say anything until John left. “Keisha came home at three o’clock in the morning?” he asked.

  “Yeah,” I said, opening the fridge to find something for lunch. This was my first day off this week, and I found myself wishing I was working. I hated this tension.

  “If I did that, you’d kill me,” Landon said.

  “You’re twelve years old,” I reminded him, pulling out the fixings for some turkey sandwiches.

  “Even if I were thirty, you’d kill me.”

  I clenched my jaw, annoyed with his comment.

  I thought John was cleaning the garage—I could understand the need to burn off his stress—until he came inside with a list he put on the table in front of me. I scanned it in confusion and looked up at him.

  “Have you seen any of these things?” he asked.

  I looked back at the list.

  Impact driver drill—Makita

  Hand sander—Dewalt

  Golf clubs with drivers

  When I didn’t say anything—I feared I knew where this was going—he asked again if I’d seen them.

  “Mom hates golf,” Landon said, glancing over the list before looking up at his dad.

  “I don’t think Mom took them,” John said, taking back the list. “I think Keisha did.”

  “John!” I couldn’t believe he would say that in front of Landon.

  “Keisha golfs?” Landon said, looking confused.

  John looked at me while he answered our son. “I think Keisha sold them to get money for drugs.”

  I pushed out from the table and stood quickly while glaring at John. “Stop it.”

  “It’s the truth.”

  “It’s not the truth. Where is this even coming from?” I stopped, suddenly mindful of our audience. “Can we talk about this in the bedroom, please?”

  “Sure,” he said, oozing confidence. I smiled weakly at Landon and then followed John down the hall, closing the door behind me.

  “Those things are missing,” he defended, keeping his voice low.

  “So maybe they’re at your dad’s house,” I said, staring him down. “You take stuff back and forth all the time.”

  “And maybe Keisha stole them and pawned them.”

  “My gosh, are you listening to yourself? This is why I didn’t tell you, John, because you overreact and look for the worst.”

  He shook the list at me. “Why would I take my clubs to my dad’s?”

  “Why would Keisha steal them?” I countered. “She has a job.”

  “And yet has only paid you back a couple hundred dollars of the money she owes you. Where’s the money going, Shannon? She’s using again—can’t you see that? That’s why she’s been acting different, why she’s gone so much. I bet she isn’t going to work all these nights she’s gone.”

  I blinked. I had wondered myself where her money was going, but I wasn’t going to accuse Keisha of using again. Not after how hard I had worked to create a successful environment for her. “You’re taking this too far,” I said. “You’re looking for reasons to accuse her of this, and you have no proof at all.”

  He shook his head; I had to look away from the disappointment on his face. “I’m taking Landon to my folks, but when I get back later tonight, the three of us—you, me, and Keisha—are going to sit down and talk.”

  My mind was spinning. “Can we wait until you’re not so upset?”

  He glared. “Why do you think I’m going to my parents?”

  Chapter 26

  Keisha didn’t get up until after four, and when she came out of her room, I looked at her differently, noting that her eyes looked bigger on her face due to the fact that her face was so thin, like the rest of her. I could tell she didn’t feel well, and as much as I scrambled for another excuse, John’s accusations were too fresh in my mind for me to ignore. Was she really using again? It broke my heart to consider it. What more could we do to help her?

  I decided to preempt John’s meeting by confronting her myself. She didn’t take it well.

  “Of course he thinks I’m using,” she said, pinching off a corner of the piece of toast she’d made for her breakfast-lunch-dinner. “He always assumes the worst.” She looked up at me. “And you hadn’t told him about paying for my school?”

  The accusation was not subtle—it was my fault he was surprised by the expenses, thus triggering his fears.

  “And I didn’t know you hadn’t talked to him about paying Tagg off.
I thought he knew.”

  A second stab, and I didn’t know how to defend myself against either one. I’d never told her I was keeping those things from my husband; of course she’d assume he was in the loop. And if I had told him those things, none of this would have happened. “I’m sorry,” I said, but hearing myself apologizing to her after everything I’d done for her was a bit of a shock, one that didn’t sit well with me. “I’ve done everything I’ve done to help you, Keisha.”

  “By getting me in trouble with my dad?”

  I stared at her for a few seconds. She went back to her toast.

  “Keisha,” I said. She didn’t look at me. “Keisha,” I said again.

  She finally looked up, but her expression was annoyed.

  “You are using again, aren’t you?”

  “You know what, I don’t have to put up with this,” she said, pushing her toast away and standing up. “I can go somewhere else, ya know. If you guys want to go ahead and think the worst of me, I can leave.”

  “I’m not asking you to leave—I’m asking if you’re using.”

  “So you can make me leave,” Keisha said, heading toward her bedroom. “I knew you guys didn’t want me here. I knew it.”

  “Keisha,” I said sharply, following her to her room. She tried to shut the door, but I put out my hand and stopped it, leaving a space where the two of us faced off with one another. “I am not trying to kick you out, but I need to know if you’re using. If you are, we need to deal with it. I just need you to be honest with me.”

  She stared at me for a few seconds, then let go of the door and raised a hand to her eyes. “I’m trying so hard,” she said in a soft, shaky voice. “I really am, Shannon, but it’s never good enough, is it? What’s wrong with me?”

  I pushed the door the rest of the way open and pulled her into a hug as she crumbled, crying into my shoulder. “He’s going to kick me out; you know he will.”

  “Maybe not,” I said, smoothing her hair and trying to calm her down. “But we have to be honest.” I did not miss the hypocrisy of my words. “We’ll sit down with him tonight, and we’ll tell him everything, okay? All the stuff we should have told him sooner.”

  “He’ll make me leave,” she said again into my shoulder.

  “It’s my house too,” I reminded her. “And he wants you to be well as much as I do. We just need to reassess things, that’s all. We’ll figure this out.”

  As the time for John’s return got closer, Keisha’s anxiety grew stronger. She said she was supposed to work tonight, but I demanded she call in—this was more important. She didn’t want to, we argued about it, she said she’d be fired, but I held my ground, knowing that this discussion with John would be a defining moment for all of us. He needed to see that we’d both made it a priority. In the end, she took her phone into her room and closed the door while I threw together a roasted tomato soup for dinner and set out some frozen rolls to thaw.

  John and Landon returned at seven o’clock. Landon must have already been given instructions, because he went straight to his room with barely a smile in my direction. I heard the door snap closed and turned to face John.

  “I made dinner.”

  “I want to get this over with.”

  I bit back my argument, well aware of the part my actions played in this situation, and went down the hall to Keisha’s room. I lifted my hand to knock and took a deep breath, centering myself and trying to remain calm. I knocked and waited for her to open the door, but several seconds passed. I knocked again and listened closely for movement. I heard nothing and was beginning to feel annoyed, thinking she’d fallen asleep, when the worst-case scenario entered my mind. She’d threatened suicide before. I turned the knob, but the door was locked. I ran for my room and grabbed a bobby pin that would help me trip the thumb lock.

  “What’s going on?” John asked, entering the hallway.

  I ran past him on my way back to her room.

  “She’s not opening the door,” I said, jamming the curved end of the bobby pin into the door while jiggling the handle. “It’s locked.” Right then, however, the knob turned in my hand and I threw the door open. John entered with me, both of us scanning the disaster area of her room, the bed, the closet, looking for her. It took several seconds for my heart to slow down and my brain to admit she wasn’t there.

  “She’s gone,” John said, standing by one of the two windows that faced the back of the house. The window was closed, but the blind had been pulled all the way up, and as I approached, I could see the screen lying against the outside of the house. I stared at it and then closed my eyes, pressing one hand over my stomach and bringing the other one up to cover my eyes. I felt dizzy. Sick. I felt John’s hand on my arm, but I pulled away and left the room.

  “I need a few minutes,” I said, going into our bedroom and shutting the door behind me. I sat on the bed and took deep breaths while trying to understand what had just happened. She’d left because she felt sure she’d be kicked out once John knew the truth. Where would she go? Would she come back?

  Please come home, I said in my mind over and over again. I’d said this prayer before. Please, please, please come home.

  Chapter 27

  John didn’t corner me, which was a good thing since I felt very, very frail. I called and texted Keisha half a dozen times, begging her to just make contact. She didn’t. At midnight, I had to take a sleeping pill to fall asleep, a silent John beside me. I knew he didn’t know what to do and I didn’t know what to ask him to do, so we simply circled one another, not wanting to make anything worse and certain that the other was in no position to make things better.

  I had to go to work the next morning, but I texted Keisha as soon as I pulled up to the Fountain Valley store. I waited for a response all day, the familiar fear building in my chest by the minute. Was she with Jessica again?

  I thought about calling her school, but what would I say? “Hi, I’m checking up on my twenty-one-year-old daughter—is she in class?” I didn’t want to embarrass her or damage her reputation with her instructors. I told myself that maybe she just needed a day to get a hold of herself. She’d come back; I was sure of it. Hadn’t I promised her we’d make something work?

  I got home from work a little after six. Keisha wasn’t home, and it didn’t look as though she’d been home all day. I didn’t know what to do, so I did nothing.

  John had a late job in Aliso Viejo, so Landon and I ran some errands and then he worked on a school project—a PowerPoint about the circulatory system. We both knew I would be no help on a techy project like that. Once he was occupied, I went to Keisha’s room, standing in the doorway for several minutes before walking into her space.

  Her room was a mess. Clothes I’d recently bought for her were piled everywhere, with very few hanging on hangers in the closet. The paperwork from school was stacked haphazardly on one end of the dresser; an assortment of makeup was scattered on the other end. There were dishes here and there, despite our rule about not having food in the bedrooms, and all types of miscellaneous papers were strewn about.

  I started with her clothes, picking them up and determining if they were clean or dirty. I hung the clean ones up and threw the dirty ones in the hamper, as though I believed a clean room would bring her home. I didn’t know why I was doing this—maybe to keep myself busy, maybe so that when Keisha came home she’d feel guilty for the extra things I did for her. Maybe I was doing it because it was the only thing I could do.

  When I finished with the clothing, I straightened the dresser top, and then I started picking up the garbage—a to-do list here, a receipt there. I glanced at each piece before throwing it away to make sure it wasn’t anything important. I didn’t throw out her pay stubs or her receipts for school supplies. And then I picked up a piece of paper that made my heart stop as key elements jumped out at me.

  JJ’s Pawnshop

  One laptop computer. $300 pawn. Sell immediately.

  $400 to reclaim within 30 days
if item doesn’t sell.

  I sat down slowly on the edge of her unmade bed and stared at the receipt. There was no point in playing dumb with myself anymore. I’d been pushing away the suspicion since the first time I’d talked to Aunt Ruby about the missing computer. By the time I remembered to blink, my eyes were burning.

  Keisha had pawned Aunt Ruby’s laptop.

  It was more than that though. Keisha had taken the code and the key from where I’d put them—trusting they were safe in my home—and had broken into Aunt Ruby’s house, searched until she found something quick to sell, tried to break into the safe, and then used Aunt Ruby’s financial information to steal more than a thousand dollars from Aunt Ruby’s accounts. Keisha had used me. She’d robbed Aunt Ruby. I looked at the date on the receipt—it was a couple of days after I’d given her the cash to pay off Tagg.

  My hands started to shake, and I dropped the receipt and the trash can I’d been carrying with me around the room, spilling everything I’d worked so hard to clean up all over the floor. I put my hands over my face as though I could hide from this. This wasn’t happening. It couldn’t be happening because I didn’t know what to do about it. I’d risked my marriage and my own sense of integrity to do what I felt I had to do to help her. And yet it had all been a game, a smokescreen.

  I don’t know how long I sat there, but I finally stood up, turned off the light, and closed the door behind me. I put Landon to bed and took another sleeping pill in hopes I’d be asleep before John got home—I couldn’t talk to him right now. It was all too much to process. My stomach knotted every time I thought about Aunt Ruby. How would I tell her what Keisha had done? She’d be devastated.

  I woke up late and had to hurry through my morning routine. John was rushing too and said he’d drop off Landon on his way to the shop. I wondered if John was avoiding me the same way I was avoiding him. What would I say when I had to talk to him? I was so embarrassed.

  The empty house beckoned me to stay in it, curl up under the covers, and spend the day sorting through my thoughts. My thoughts were not good company, however, so I went to work and let it absorb me.