Shannon's Hope Read online

  I snuggled into John, and he rolled onto his back to accommodate me, wrapping his arms around my shoulders. “I think we can help her, John,” I said, thinking of Keisha asleep down the hall. “I can find her a therapist and a good doctor, get her on her meds, supervise her behaviors, and she can create a new social group, find a job, and go to school.” I’d said all of this six months ago when I’d wanted her to come stay with us, but both John and Dani, Keisha’s mom, had chosen rehab. Now we had another chance, and who better to help lead Keisha to wellness than two of the people who loved her the most?

  “I don’t want her here with Landon,” he whispered as though the words were hard to say. They were certainly hard to hear. “It kills me to say that, but he has to be our priority.”

  I agreed with him, and yet . . . “Where else can she go, John?” I said. “Dani’s not a good fit—we both know that—but the only other resources Keisha has are those same druggy friends you just got her away from.”

  “When she’s here, the whole atmosphere of our home changes. She becomes the focus, and I just don’t know how many more times we can bail her out.”

  “She’s had a hard road,” I reminded him. It was difficult to say because I knew he felt guilty for the life his little girl had been exposed to after the divorce. Dani had dragged Keisha through a lot of her own dysfunctional problems: substance abuse issues, lousy boyfriends, and bouts of unemployment. Dani and Keisha had been out of state until Keisha was almost ten, far enough away that John didn’t know the full extent of what was happening until years later when Keisha started telling us of the experiences she’d had when she was young. In hindsight, he wished he’d fought harder for custody. But he hadn’t, and so Keisha had gone through a lot of garbage—too much. I wished his guilt would prompt him to want to go the extra mile now, but instead he seemed insecure about his ability to help her at all. He often kept her at a distance—emotionally as well as physically.

  “She can get well, John, but she needs support, and we are the best people to give it.”

  “At what cost?” he asked, his voice still low. “Are we okay with having Landon exposed to her lifestyle?”

  “She knows our standards, and she wouldn’t have called unless she was ready to change.” I knew that was the reason she hadn’t stayed with us long-term in the past—because she couldn’t use here. “She called us for help.”

  “Or, like you said before, maybe she called because she had nowhere else to go.”

  I couldn’t help feeling disappointed in him for not opening himself up to what I was saying. “She’s sick, John. She needs you; she needs us. We’re her family, and we can give her a foundation to build on.”

  He said nothing, and after a few seconds had passed, he rolled onto his side, his back to me. I did the same, and we both lay there in the dark, defending our positions to ourselves. I closed my eyes and tried to sleep, but the heaviness of the discussion wouldn’t allow it. I stewed and stressed and wondered what do to. How could I make this work? How could I convince John that having Keisha here was the right choice? The only choice. Could he really say no when she was so vulnerable?

  Neither sleep nor answers came, but when the alarm went off, I was at least able to rise from bed more committed than I’d been when I’d lain down. When I looked into Keisha’s future, I saw how it could play out. She could get well, go to college, get a good job, and look back on this time in her life with the knowledge that her dad and her stepmom loved her enough to give her another chance. She could be a success story—an inspiration to other people dealing with the same struggles she’d faced. I just had to convince John of that while assuring him that I wasn’t putting our son at risk in the process.

  Chapter 3

  John stayed in bed after I got up; I was certain he hadn’t slept any better than I had. He owned his own custom cabinetry business that had taken some hard knocks when the economy collapsed, which was why I worked sixty hours a week when I could. We usually did our morning routine together, but this morning was not like every other morning, and I wanted to let him sleep. I liked to go running before I woke Landon up, but with the night we’d had, that was out of the question.

  I put on my bathrobe and peeked in on a sleeping Keisha before letting myself into Landon’s room across the hall. It was a mess, and I had to pick my way through basketball gear, dirty clothes, and who knew what else to get to his bed. I knew I should take an afternoon and help him clean it, but honestly, I just didn’t care that much. There were more important things than clean bedrooms.

  “Hey, buddy,” I said, grabbing his foot and giving it a shake. He grunted and shifted beneath the comforter.

  “What do you want for breakfast?”

  “Pancakes,” he said from the head of the bed as he blinked his chocolate-brown eyes—the same color as John’s and Keisha’s eyes—at me. As a baby, he’d had the most beautiful, bright blond curls. I let them grow long until people kept mistaking him for a girl, despite his tractor T-shirts and camouflage pants. Now I wanted his hair short and he wanted it long, which I thought looked horrible. Funny how times changed.

  “Okay, get in the shower and I’ll make pancakes.” I picked my way to the door, then turned back to give a second wake-up call before I left the room. “Landon.”

  “I know,” he said, finally sitting up.

  I flipped on his light to keep him from falling back into bed, then headed to the kitchen, where I took a minute to call into work. I felt horrible about missing work—I couldn’t remember the last time I’d given the office such short notice about my schedule—but I had to keep an eye on Keisha today. The woman in the staffing office was professional about my call and said she’d find someone to fill in. Then I grabbed the pancake mix and turned on the griddle.

  Over breakfast I told Landon about Keisha. He ate without looking up from his plate, making it impossible to read his reaction.

  “So, what do you think?” I finally asked.

  He glanced up and finished the bite he was chewing. “I don’t know,” he said with a shrug.

  “Are you okay with this?”

  “I guess.”

  I let out a breath and took a drink of milk before going back to my own pancakes. Keisha had doted on Landon when he was little, but in recent years, he’d become sensitive to the drama Keisha always brought with her. He also struggled with having to share the attention, but I thought that was good for him. My biggest fear about having only one child was that he’d be spoiled and expect to be in the spotlight all the time.

  I considered what John had said about how Keisha’s staying here would be bad for Landon. But they were both our children. They both needed us. Could we really be expected to choose one over the other?

  John went to work at ten, and he called twice to see how Keisha was doing. She slept the whole day—literally. I woke her up every two hours and made her drink a glass of water, knowing dehydration would make the detox process worse, but then she’d lay back down and fall asleep again each time. I knew there were medications that could help with the detox process, but when I offered anything, she said she was okay.

  At almost ten o’clock that night, just after putting Landon to bed, John and I woke her up enough for her to eat some red beans and rice I’d cooked for dinner. As soon as she finished, though, she went right back to bed, which I assured John was okay. I’d spent the day trolling the Internet and making sure I knew what to look for and what was considered normal for someone coming off a binge. If I knew what she’d been taking, I could have done more specific research, but she hadn’t been awake enough for me to ask, and so I assumed she’d been doing what she’d done in the past—oxycodone, mostly, which she snorted for a quicker high than she’d get from taking it orally.

  The information I found about oxycodone withdrawal said the worst symptoms could include panic attacks, depression, and nausea. While Keisha had experienced some of those in the past, she didn’t seem to be experiencing them now. But it was t
he last item on the list—insomnia—that made me think that she had probably stopped using the really hard drugs. I glanced down the hall to the guest room where Keisha—clearly not suffering from insomnia—was sleeping off what must just be exhaustion and tension from the stress of the last two weeks.

  I couldn’t miss work two days in a row, so on Friday I worked my usual ten-hour shift, calling the house every two hours. I’d put the phone by Keisha’s bed so she’d be sure to answer it. She answered each time I called, and she got up after I came home. She was back in bed by ten, but she looked better and said she felt better too. The next morning, she got up around nine o’clock, showered, and asked me to make stuffed french toast for breakfast. I couldn’t make it fast enough, and the four of us had a nice Saturday morning brunch together.

  Landon had a basketball game at noon so we loaded up and headed toward the rec center. I’d planned to go in and watch the game—John and I were big believers in parental presence—but Keisha and I stayed in the car and talked for over an hour instead. She told me about how great rehab had been, but that when she’d returned to her mother’s house, it was just too hard. Dani had had episodes of drinking problems throughout her life, and I knew her current live-in boyfriend sometimes smoked pot in the garage. Keisha told me she’d tried to stay strong, but after a few weeks the tension of trying to establish a new life got the best of her. She started drinking here and there—though no one noticed—then she found an old stash of crushed narcotics in her room. It was all downhill from there.

  “They said over and over in rehab that negative energy was the enemy of wellness. Do you know how bad the energy is in that apartment? Stifling. Mom’s as big a mess as she’s ever been. She’s so done with parenthood.”

  “Didn’t you have follow-up care after getting out of rehab?” I asked, knowing full well that she’d been set up with outpatient therapy.

  She looked at her tiny hands in her lap. “It was all the way in Irvine, and I only made it to one appointment.”

  “And your antidepressants?”

  “I was taking them for a while, but . . . they just didn’t seem to help as much as the other stuff.”

  The two weeks she’d spent on her own were a blur, and I didn’t push for details that I felt sure would hurt my heart to hear. She apologized profusely for having used again, and when I took her into my arms, assuring her she was loved and safe with us, she cried on my shoulder.

  “I’m done for good now,” she said when she pulled back, her eyes red and puffy. “I swear, Shannon, I’ll never use again.”

  I wrapped myself up in that promise and believed it completely.

  After Landon’s game, John, Keisha, and I sat down and wrote up a contract. It was John’s idea, and I wasn’t completely comfortable with it—it seemed too formal for a family situation—but he was insistent that we spell out the expectations of this arrangement. Keisha agreed to get a job and enroll in some kind of school or certification program. She would communicate to us where she was going at all times. She’d make dinner Monday and Thursday nights. She’d go to therapy, take her meds, and attend Narcotics Anonymous twice a week. John would get her a cell phone on our account, but she would pay the bill as soon as she got a job. She would not drink—John had locked up our liquor cabinet years ago—and she would not use, and if she did, she would tell us immediately. If we found out she’d used and not told us, she was out.

  “We can tolerate relapse if we know you’re being honest with us,” John said.

  Keisha looked like a bobblehead doll as she nodded in agreement to every item on John’s list. He kept looking at her as though he expected her to argue, but she didn’t. I couldn’t have been more proud of her. I knew it would be hard for her to make so many drastic changes—very hard—but I could feel her determination and knew she was serious about the change. I was also proud of my husband for finding a way to support a plan that, to me, was obvious. The contract wasn’t my first choice, but it showed that he was reaching out for a compromise, and I appreciated that very much.

  After that, the whole family went out for ice cream. Keisha talked to Landon at length, getting caught up on her stepbrother’s life—which consisted mostly of video games and sports. He was hesitant to open up at first, but Keisha was both energetic and invested, and by the end of the meal there was a definite decrease in the tension between all of us. I reached under the table and gave John’s knee a squeeze. When he looked at me, I smiled. He smiled back, though it didn’t reach his eyes. He was trying, but he still wasn’t sold on this idea.

  Once we were alone in our room that night I gave him a big hug. “See, it’s working out,” I said, lifting my shoulders to my ears, excited about all the positive things we’d seen so far. “She seems excited about the plans we made, doesn’t she?”

  He put his arms around me and nodded. “She does seem excited.”

  “And she agreed to every point of the contract.”

  He nodded again, and I smiled even wider and went on my tiptoes to give him a quick kiss. “We’re doing the right thing.”

  “I hope so,” he said, then reached up and unwrapped my arms from around his neck before heading into the bathroom.

  There would be no convincing him of anything with my words and, in truth, what could I convince him of? For all my optimism, I still didn’t know what was going to happen. He didn’t see the same potential I saw, and with only Keisha’s past as a comparative study, it was hard to argue with John about his fearful expectations. Time would have to tell.

  “She’s going to prove you wrong,” I said with a teasing tone to my voice. “Just you wait and see.”

  Chapter 4

  By the following Saturday, nine days into Keisha’s stay, I was more confident than ever that we had made the right choice. Keisha seemed to have made it through some of the worst withdrawal symptoms and, for the last few days, had seemed back to her old self.

  She’d picked up her things from her mom’s house—though they weren’t really speaking—and had started doing her hair and makeup again. She was looking for a job within walking distance of our house since John had refused to even discuss buying her a car, and she had decided to go to cosmetology school—something she’d talked about doing before. The school was just one bus ride away, and she said she was fine taking public transportation, though I said I’d drive her when I could. I thought Keisha would make a great cosmetologist; she had always had an eye for style and detail.

  I’d asked around at work for a good therapist and found one just a few miles south of us who had an evening appointment open on Tuesdays. Keisha had only met with the woman one time, but she seemed to like her and had appointments set up for the next four weeks. John was loosening up, and Landon seemed to have accepted his sister being at home as though she’d always been there. Things were good, and I could not have been more pleased.

  Aunt Ruby had called to remind me of the book group, and though I told her I’d be there, I was looking for an excuse to duck out until I mentioned it to Keisha and she asked if she could come with me. She hadn’t seen Aunt Ruby in years and said she thought book group sounded “fun.” And so, after a short three-hour shift in Irvine, I came home long enough to heat up a Hot Pocket before Keisha and I got back in the car and headed toward Newport.

  “Did you read the book?” Keisha asked.

  “I did,” I said, unable to hide the pride in my voice. I’d read part of The Poisonwood Bible last fall, and started on Silas Marner after December’s meeting, but I didn’t finish them. The Help, though, I’d finished and was quite impressed with how well Hollywood had adapted the book for the movie. “Did you ever see the movie?” I asked Keisha.

  “I think so,” she said.

  “I’m glad you’re coming. I don’t know the other women very well, so it’ll be nice to have you with me.”

  The closer I got to Aunt Ruby’s house in Newport, however, the more nervous I became. I dealt with people all the time at work, but tho
se associations were short and centered on the service I was providing. Something about being behind a counter made everything easier for me when it came to conversation. Socially, I wasn’t nearly as confident as I pretended to be, and I couldn’t say that any of the women at book group would call me their friend. Well, other than Aunt Ruby, who was always attempting to include me in aspects of her life.

  Aunt Ruby had kept me up-to-date about the lives of the other members of the group, and I was glad she’d developed friendships with these women, but I wondered how many of those friendships went below the surface—not just with the book group ladies, but with everyone Ruby had relationships with. I didn’t like thinking negatively about Aunt Ruby; she was one of the kindest women I’d ever known, but there was a veneer about her, a desire for something she didn’t have. Security? Safety? Belonging? I didn’t know.

  For all her reaching out, I wondered if many people reached in. I tried, but she didn’t let me get very far, and I wasn’t the most outgoing person to start with. I wondered if her caution had to do with Uncle Phillip—he’d have been a difficult partner to have in your life, I thought. As hard as his death was two years ago, I’d hoped it would be a new beginning as well and that this book group was part of that for Aunt Ruby—assuming she could let go of her fix-everything personality and let these women see the real her.

  I had to analyze myself with the same measure though. Did I let people get past the surface? Did I let people see the real me?

  I didn’t like thinking about that, so I let my thoughts go from Aunt Ruby to Keisha, who was always easy to think and worry about. I hoped tonight would be fun for her. I knew she was struggling not having friends around here, and while none of these women were her age, it was a start.

  There were a few cars at Aunt Ruby’s when I pulled up, and I took a minute to redo my ponytail, smoothing my long brown hair and putting the ponytail higher on my head. I hadn’t changed out of my Walgreens scrubs, but I wore them so often that they were as comfortable as pajamas. I deemed myself presentable, and we both got out of the car.