Pieces of Hope

Acknowledgements

 

I'd like to acknowledge my guru,

Chad Lane
, for his
assistance in getting this story published. Add to that one giant thank you to
my cover designer, Chris Buchanan, for creating a beautiful and intriguing
cover. To Brad
Killough
, for his climbing expertise
and technical guidance. To Mindy Warren, for her stunning photos. To my model,
Amanda Lovelace for channeling Hope for a day. Also, tremendous gratitude to my
early readers, Heather King, Kristin Spencer, and Allyson Moeller.

           
But most of all, thank you, Mom. I
know how much you believe in me. It gives me great courage, makes me feel
taller than five foot nine. I’m practically seven feet tall now! And on that
note, I’d like to dedicate this book to all the mothers in the world. After
all, where would we be without you?

Not in the clamor of the
crowded street,

nor in the shouts and
plaudits of the throng,

but in ourselves are triumph
and tragedy.
 

-Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

 
 

Two
Weeks Earlier

 

Dear Mom, Dad is watching me from the
car as I write this. He thinks this will make me feel better. Sharing my
feelings. If only it were that easy. If only spewing helped. But at this point,
I’ll try just about anything . . .

See, I’ve been wanting to tell you about
one of the worst days of my life. Come to think of it, it was probably one of
yours as well.

That
day, you were dressed in the color of sunshine. Combined with the bright yellow
satin that surrounded you, you looked like a star about to burst. In my pocket,
I fumbled with the note I’d written a thousand times, the one I’d folded so
small that no one would notice it. I don’t know why I felt compelled to give it
to you. It wasn’t like you were going to wake up and read it someday.

I tucked
the note beneath your hands. They felt mannequin-like and icy-cold, not at all
like your hands. Somehow that made it easier. Made it seem less like you. Made
it seem less real. I’m sorry I didn’t stay. Before anyone got there, I climbed
the nearest crag and cried until the sun came up, thinking of the words you
held, and all the ones I wished I’d said.

Even if
no one else knows what happened that day, how can I ever forgive myself? I miss
you. I love you. I wish you could tell me you were okay.
 

1
Signs

 

The old
me would have said something. Or maybe the old me would have jumped cursing
from the passenger seat of our old rusty van, calling Claire every terrible
name I could think of. Bullying me into running to Eugene on a dismal November
evening was one thing. But when my sister ran a red light, plowed through a
four-way stop, and nearly rolled over a kid on a bicycle—all without
flinching—she was begging me (in her own inimitable way) to come out of my
self-induced coma and scream at her. But, of course, the new me just stared off
motionless out the windshield as if I were detached from myself. If Claire
wanted to kill a few innocents in our small town of McMinnville,
Oregon, so be
it. Impossible-to-miss signs alerting people of their impending doom were
impossible to come by these days. Warnings of any kind, I painfully recalled,
simply weren’t the way of the wicked, wicked world.
 

The
engine of our battered van whined in agony and I became vaguely aware of how
fast we were travelling. Claire blew past the Filbert orchards and sleeping
vineyards as if she hoped to outrun the Apocalypse, but in some distant part of
my brain I noticed that my pulse hadn’t sped up. Not the tiniest bit. It seemed
even my heart no longer cared enough to be afraid. And it got me to thinking .
. .

What
would it matter if, one day soon—without the slightest hint of a warning—my
heart just stopped? Was there anything I still longed for in this lifetime?
Anything undone that would leave me with regret?

That’s
when the squeezing started up again in my chest, and I knew. And for the
umpteenth time since Mom’s accident, I wished for it . . . Harder than I’d ever
wished before. Harder than I’d ever wished for anything. I begged for it,
pleaded for it, prayed for it. Just this one thing. Just this one time.
Please, please,
pleeeaaase
let me know you’re okay.
 

           
I don’t know how many times I
repeated that impossible request. Eventually, the old van stopped weaving, the
whirring of the tires on I-5 lulled me into oblivion, and my mind went
gratefully blank. No thoughts of Mom falling down the stairs. No faceless
strangers leering at her from the landing. No fear of any kind. In my deathlike
slumber, someone called my name. A familiar voice whispered to me from out of
the darkness.

“Katydid . . .”

I
t was a nickname from childhood, a name only my
family called me. It lasted until I turned ten. That’s when I declared my
independence and ordered everyone to call me Hope. No longer were any variations
of Catherine acceptable—even if it was my first name.

“Katydid,”
the sweet voice called again.

Memories
stirred. Mom used to wake me like this back in grade school. She would sit at
my feet and rub my shins through the blankets until I woke.

“Rise
and shine, sleepyhead.”

           
I blinked open my eyes and saw that I was back in my
room. There, at the end of the bed, sat my mother wearing her favorite yellow
dress. A happy smile lit up her face. She looked more youthful than in recent
memory. The cancer had taken its toll, the long reaching effects of the chemo
even more so. But today, no trace of sickness left its mark upon her. Today,
she beamed like a freshly watered sunflower.

           
“Mom?” I asked in happy surprise, still blissfully
unknowing.

           
“Katydid, I have a secret to tell you.” Mystery slid
across her face.

           
Feeling terribly awake now, I rubbed the sleep from my
eyes as scary thoughts crept into my consciousness. Mom smiled lovingly at me
once again, happiness filling her every feature, her dark hair falling in
thick, soft waves across her shoulders. My skin prickled. I held my breath,
looked into her warm brown eyes, and waited.

“I’m not
really dead,” she said.

I suddenly
couldn’t catch my breath. It was like a boulder had smacked me in the chest, forcing
the air from my lungs in one explosive exhale. I slid my legs away from her,
hugging my knees to my chest as tears rolled down my face.

           
“What is it, Katydid? What’s wrong?” She wore that
expression that used to bring me such comfort, the one that made me believe
that nothing bad could ever happen. But when she reached her arms for me, I
recoiled from her as if they were poisonous tentacles.

           
“You can’t do this to me!” I spat. “I can’t deal with you
dying all over again! I couldn’t take it the first time!”

My head
hit something hard and I yanked it away, pulling myself awake. Shocked to see
that I was still in the van, and that it was now pouring down rain outside, I
rubbed my temple where it had smacked the passenger window and, turning away so
that Claire couldn’t see, wiped my wet cheeks on my sleeve.

Though I
knew it was a dream, a fabrication by a girl who desperately wanted her mother
back, it took some convincing on my part to be certain. After all, it hadn’t
felt like one. I could still feel my mother’s hands where she had touched me,
and I’d have sworn I smelled her perfume lingering in the air. If I was about
to go crazy at seventeen, it wasn’t as difficult as I would have thought.
Without my mind, I would surely lose my memories. Without my memories, there
could be no pain.

Crazy
was looking better by the millisecond.

“We’re
almost there,” Claire announced suddenly, lifting one long-fingered hand to run
it through her boyishly short hair. “Look for Sixth and Olive.”

Her
platinum hair shimmered in the random streetlights, and her pale complexion
looked almost corpselike in the harsh light. Looking at her as though I hadn’t
seen her in a long time, I noticed how much thinner she had gotten. It was a
good look for Claire, but then again, what wasn’t? Tall and willowy with delicate
features. On her worst day, my sister could have passed for a supermodel.

And then
there was me—slightly shorter athletic build; long, dark hair
 
that Ramen-
noodled
at the first hint of rain, and zero fashion sense. In my skinnier form, I was
lucky to pull off homeless meth addict with a decent complexion. Or so Claire
liked to tell me. Repeatedly.
  

“Ugh! I
just drove past it! Why didn’t you say something?” Claire’s accusing tone
jerked me swiftly from my stupor. Blanking out. I did that a lot these days.

She
maneuvered the van into a tight space, which seemed impossible to parallel park
without hitting something, especially for Claire, then she dug through her
purse and held a small piece of paper in view of the streetlight. She spoke
without looking at me, focusing straight out the windshield at the depressing
rain.

“Despite
what you may think . . . or, in your case,
not,
life goes on.” Claire looked sideways at me, rolling her eyes, and I knew she
was right. Lately, I tried not to think. To do so made me hurt, made me think
of things I preferred to forget. “Dad needs our help at the clinic, and seeing
how this was all your idea in the first place, do I have to remind you that
there are animals in need of rescuing?”

Claire
was referring to our no-kill shelter back in Mac, but for the past two weeks,
there wasn’t much that I seemed to care about. It was pathetic to think how
little life or death mattered to me. Sensing it wasn’t the right moment to
express such things, I kept my face blank and said nothing. This only provoked
her.
 

“Well,
what are you waiting for?” Claire said heatedly, though I had no idea what she
meant. I only knew the volume hurt my ears, and I grimaced. This enticed her
further, a wolf smelling blood. “Don’t think for one second that I’m going to
run across the street to get that stupid dog and leave you in this van alone.
The way you’ve been acting, you’d probably just drive it off the top of a very
tall cliff!”

My voice
came out in an evil, sarcastic whisper. “How about a really short one? Would
that make you happy?”

I
watched as she balled her hands into tight fists, her face now as red as her
shirt. Above the insane pounding of the rain on the roof, she screamed, “I
don’t know who you are anymore!” Visibly shaking, a single vein popped on her
forehead, but her voice fell to a normal level as she said, “You’re the girl
who had it all—all the brains, all the plans of becoming a vet—remember? Just
like Dad, you used to say. But since Mom died, it’s like you’ve turned into an
old woman overnight. You don’t eat. You hardly sleep. And you’ve got everyone
so worried you might kill yourself that none of us can think straight!”

She
paused, waiting for some kind of response, an indication that I was alive. I
gave her nothing. I had nothing to give.
   

The vein
on her forehead popped again and that thinly veiled calm disappeared as she
shouted, “I’ve got news for you! This isn’t about you, Hope.
We
lost Mom. All of us! I suggest you
pull yourself together before you kill the rest of us, too!”

There
wasn’t much fight in me before she started. But the moment she stopped—my jaw
grinding, my pulse quickening—I felt something catch fire inside me.

“Shut
up, Claire! You’re one to talk about how great I used to be! You never even
tried to be mediocre!” Her eyes narrowed into evil slits. I thought she was
going to punch me. Instead, heaving several unsteady breaths, we glared at each
other. “You don’t know who I am?” I mocked, my voice rising to a roar. “Well,
here’s a news flash! I DON’T CARE WHO YOU ARE!” I flung open the heavy door and
water soaked my right leg. Claire threw a raincoat in my direction. It smacked
me in the chest.

“At
least put the coat on!” she ordered. “The last thing I’d need is for you to
catch pneumonia and die! Then again, you’d probably just blame
me
for it!”

I
slipped my arms into the slick black jacket without bothering to zip it up.
Claire flipped up the hood. One red sneaker landed in several inches of water
flooding the street, but Claire held my arm in a death grip. Pointing across
two lanes of one-way traffic, she shoved the address into my hand and dropped a
leash into my pocket.