The Weight of Shadows

by Alison Strobel

  “No problem.”

  He went through the same routine, his frustration plain on his face. He sighed. “I’m sorry. It’s only my second day on the job and I swear this machine has it in for me.”

  Debbie eyed her lunch. “Looks like you’ve got the food part down pat. The sandwich looks delicious.”

  He flashed a quick smile. “Thanks. I’ve got a preschooler, so my true expertise lies more in the peanut butter and jelly realm, but the basic skills have transferred.” His face brightened as the register finally displayed her total. “Ah! Here we go.” He swiped her card and handed it back. “At my last job I just moved money around on paper. It’s a whole different world actually dealing with it.”

  Debbie’s ears perked. “Moved money around on paper? What did you do?”

  He looked almost embarrassed. “Oh—I was an accountant.”

  She took the receipt and pen he offered her. “Are you serious? What made you quit?”

  “I lost my job, actually. Downsizing.”

  “Oh wow, I’m sorry.”

  “Thanks.” He pushed the tray towards her and smiled. “Here you go. Go eat that sandwich before you start to hallucinate.”

  She laughed, but her mind was churning. “Thanks. Hey, look—are you still interested in working as an accountant? Or have you found your true calling behind that counter?”

  His eyes widened. “No—I’d definitely go back into accounting if I could find a job.”

  She stepped a little closer, lowering her voice. “We’re a Christian non-profit—”

  He held up a hand. “So was my last employer.”

  She straightened and smiled. Beaming, she pulled a business card from her wallet and handed it to him. “Send me your resume.”

  “Consider it done.”

  “Excellent.” She smiled and pulled the tray from the counter. “Thank you so much, um—”

  “Joshua. Joshua Miller.”

  “Right then. Thank you, Joshua. I’ll keep an eye out.”

  “Thank you—”

  “Debbie Truman.”

  “Thank you, Debbie. Enjoy that sandwich.”

  She carried her tray to a table, hope igniting in her spirit. An accountant! At the deli! Sometimes you crack me up, God. She stole another look as she bit into her sandwich. I wouldn’t mind crying on that shoulder.

  KIM’S CONVERSATION WITH HER CLUB GIRLS proved more delicate than she’d expected.

  She’d always made it a point to be open and honest with the young women she met with. They’d heard enough lies in their short lifetimes, from fathers who promised to always be there but then left, from teachers who said they could be anything and then steered them away from the college track, from a culture that said sex equaled love and you had to give one to get the other. Even if she wasn’t perfect and made a lot of mistakes, they deserved to know there was someone they could go to who would shoot straight with them.

  But now she was about to do something she’d never expected to do: move in with a man without being married. She wasn’t exactly morally opposed to the practice. She just hadn’t ever thought she’d do it, mostly because she hadn’t thought she’d ever have the opportunity. But a few of her girls were being raised by single moms, and she knew those girls struggled without the love of a father. She always counseled them against “playing house” with a guy until there was a wedding, so how was she going to tell them she was doing it without looking like a hypocrite?

  “So how’s Riiiick?” Egypt asked once they were all there. She drew out his name in a purr, eliciting laughter from the other girls and a mock glare from Kim.

  “He’s fine, thank you.”

  “How long you guys been together now?” Kea asked. “Two, three months?”

  “Three.”

  “You love him?” This from La-Neesa.

  Kim’s eyebrows shot up. “Um, wow.”

  “That’s personal, La-Neesa, don’t ask her that!” Mercedes thwapped La-Neesa on her skinny arm.

  “She don’t got to tell if she don’t want to,” La-Neesa said. “She knows she can tell me to shut up.”

  “It’s alright Sadie,” Kim said. She thought for a moment, then shrugged. “Well, honestly, I’ve been wondering that myself lately. I’ve never been in love, so I don’t know. Everyone always tells you you’ll know, but I’m not sure if I believe them. I do know that I’ve never met anyone else like him, and that he makes me tremendously happy, and that I think about him all the time. If I don’t love him yet, I think I will eventually. Like, right now it might just be infatuation, but I think that can grow into love if it’s given the chance and if the person is right for you.”

  Egypt sighed. “That’s so romantic.”

  Joelle rocked back in her chair. “If he asked you to marry him, would you?”

  “No. Not yet.” She’d thought about that, too, since she’d thought he was proposing the night of their anniversary when he’d asked her to move in with him. Later she’d pondered what she would have said if he had indeed asked her to marry him. She had a feeling she would have said yes, and then later regretted moving so fast. “I think, down the road, we could get married. But right now there’s still too much we don’t know about each other. I mean, it’s only been three months.”

  “Yeah, but then you’d have a family,” said Joelle. Kim had been open with them about her foster system childhood so they knew she could relate in some ways to their broken home existences. “Don’t you want to get married soon so you can finally have a family? You’ve told us before how much you want that.”

  Kim shrugged. “You’re right, Joelle. I do want that. But at the same time, I don’t want it to fall apart, either. I want that family to always be there, so I need to make sure I’m giving it the best possible chance to succeed. Marrying before I really know him isn’t setting myself up for success; it’s just taking a risk.”

  “You could move in with him,” Egypt said. “Like, give it a trial run, see what it’s like. That way you can still bail if it don’t work.”

  “But you know how she feels about cohabitation,” Mercedes said. “Remember when La-Neesa’s sister moved in with that guy, and he broke her heart? And she got pregnant and ended up having an abortion? Kim said that was exactly why she wouldn’t want to live with someone before getting married.”

  Curse Mercedes and her steel-trap memory.

  “How is your sister, La-Neesa?” Kim said, grateful for the tangent.

  La-Neesa sighed. “She’s alright most days. But she’s still real depressed sometimes.”

  Kim wrapped an arm around La-Neesa’s shoulder. “I’m sorry to hear that.”

  Egypt leaned in. “Hey, that reminds me—did you hear what happened to Shawnelle?”

  Kim frowned. “Who’s Shawnelle?”

  “A girl we know at school,” said La-Neesa.

  “Wait a minute, wait a minute,” Kim said. “We’re not going to start gossiping about someone who isn’t here to defend herself. Besides, I wanted to get back to what we were talking about Monday when Kea brought up the subject of dieting. We didn’t get to finish that discussion.”

  The girls were eager to jump back into the conversation that had been cut short by the end of their last meeting, and Kim breathed an inward sigh of relief. But guilt niggled at the back of her mind for the rest of the meeting and into the evening when she arrived home. She might not have voiced a lie herself, but she had allowed them to think she still disapproved of living with a man before marriage, and that was just as bad. What was she going to do when they found out?

  She sat on her bed after dinner, staring at the moving boxes Suzie had given her and trying to summon the will to do some packing. She’d been excited about moving all week, but now she felt deflated and a little bit depressed. The joy was gone from the move, and she felt lousy for lying to her girls. How was she going to dig herself out of that one? The thought of breaking their trust in her made her ill. She had to own up sooner rather than later—the lo
nger she waited the worse it would be.

  The familiar chaos in her stomach made her chest tighten. Her anger at her cowardliness, her guilt from her lie, being reminded what an awful person she was at her core—it all rose up before her like a tsunami. Hot tears blurred her vision and rolled down her cheeks. Her throat squeezed. The voices that screamed her shortcomings grew louder and louder until she cried out loud, “I’m sorry! I’m sorry,” hoping they would abate. But when they didn’t, her panic grew even more.

  The chaos in her veins pounded to get out.

  She scrambled from the bed and yanked open her dresser drawer. She reached beneath the plastic organizer box filled with socks and pulled out the paring knife she’d come to prefer. Once on the bed again, curled atop her pillows in the corner, she balled her hand into a fist and drew the knife across her forearm again, then again. Three parallel lines of red stood out against her pale skin. Her breathing slowed and the chaos calmed as she watched the blood welling.

  The world was dark outside her window by the time she unfurled herself and set about bandaging her cuts. She didn’t know where the time had gone. Her mind felt empty, her body lethargic. She looked at the boxes standing ready for her belongings, and the sight just made her sad. How pathetic that her whole life could be packed up in six boxes. One quickly learned the futility of clinging to material goods when living in the foster care system, and even after being out six years she still lived a spartan existence. She’d felt like a drifter, like she had no roots. Rick’s apartment, on the other hand, was a cluttered mess of mismatched objects—couch and armchair from two different sets, garage sale bookshelves, and a lamp more suited to a grandmother’s living room. What would it be like to live in rooms that were fully furnished, with overflowing end tables and bookshelves and enough clutter to get in the way? She wondered if he’d let her redecorate. She’d never tried to decorate a room before.

  By ten o’clock she’d managed to pack up her winter clothes. Hangers swung empty on the rod in the closet and the dresser drawer made a hollow thud when she closed it. She taped the box shut and labeled it in marker on the side, then crawled into bed, her clothes still on and teeth unbrushed. Her head had begun to pound. It was one of those nights when she felt a hundred years old.

  EIGHT

  Kim was up before daybreak on Sunday morning. She pattered about the apartment with light steps so as not to wake Corrie, checking the front closet for forgotten jackets and umbrellas and winter gear. She carted her findings back to her room and dumped them onto the stripped bed to fold before cramming them into a box. Rick wasn’t picking her up until ten, but by eight she was standing in the center of an undone room.

  She sighed and sank onto the bed, kicking her feet and looking at the sealed boxes. She felt energized today, though it had taken a day to shake off the funk she’d been in a couple nights before. The bandage on her arm was no longer necessary, but she wore a shirt with three-quarters sleeves to hide the cuts that looked like the work of an angry cat. She’d picked up a few more shirts like it yesterday. They drew fewer comments than long sleeves in the warm spring weather.

  The phone rang. She jumped, then scrambled to grab it from the base on the floor before it woke Corrie. “Hello?”

  “Kim, hey, it’s Patricia. I got your message last night—sorry I missed your call.”

  Usually a call from her old caseworker brought a smile to her face, but today it brought butterflies instead. “Oh, that’s alright.”

  “So you’re moving! What prompted this? I thought you liked living where you are.”

  Kim took a deep breath. “Actually, I am happy here, but…I met someone. Back in February, actually. And we’ve been dating ever since. And he asked me last week if I’d move in with him, so…here I go!”

  The beat of silence before Patricia replied made Kim’s heart sink. “Wow,” she finally said. “Well—congratulations. How did you guys meet?”

  Kim kept her tone light. She didn’t want Patricia to catch even a hint of hesitancy on her part. The closest thing Kim had ever had to a mother was Patricia’s presence in her life, and it wouldn’t take much persuasion from her to sway her feelings. But losing Rick was more important now than Patricia’s opinions. Patricia was a remnant of Kim’s past. Rick was her future. “He came to the party my roommate had on my birthday. He’s a graphic artist, and he was in foster care for a little while, too, so we really understand each other in that respect. But anyway, he’s a great guy, and he treats me like a queen, and we have so much fun together, and moving in together just feels right. I’m excited.” Please be excited for me.

  “I’m glad to know you’re so happy, Kim.”

  “Thanks.”

  An uncomfortable break followed, only a couple seconds but feeling like whole minutes. Kim cast about in her head for a new topic. “So, um, you got my new number, right?”

  “Yes, yes I did.”

  “Okay. Good.”

  “And how are things at the salon?”

  “Still good, thanks. I was thinking about training to be an aes-thetician, too, and starting a mobile salon service.” It seemed like a good thing to tell Patricia, despite the fact that she’d given up on the idea. But maybe Patricia wouldn’t think badly of her for moving so fast with Rick if she knew Kim wasn’t throwing her life away on some guy. So what if she wasn’t pursuing the mobile salon—it didn’t mean she wouldn’t pursue something new. Eventually.

  “Hey, that’s a great idea! Good for you. What does Rick think about it?”

  Kim scrambled. “He’s, um, he’s a little concerned it’ll take up so much time that we won’t get to see each other much. Which is another reason I’m moving in with him.” Though it hadn’t been until she said it. But regardless of what new path she considered, it made sense, now that she thought about it. “Between the salon and Club and training, I would be pretty busy. But it would be worth it.”

  “That’s true. That would be a great job during the prom and wedding season.”

  They spent the rest of their conversation brainstorming more ideas for the business, and by the time they rang off Kim was fired up about the idea once more. I’ll put more thought into it, do some more research, before bringing it up with Rick again. He just needs a little convincing. She tore into one of her boxes to get a notebook so she could write down the ideas they’d come up with, then sprawled on the floor and flipped through it, looking for a blank page.

  She’d had this notebook since just after graduating from the foster system. Leafing through it was a trip back in time: notes about cosmetology school, the personal budget she’d drawn up after starting her first salon job, lyrics to a song she’d heard on the radio and loved.

  As she turned the pages slowly, reading each one, she let her mind wander through her history. Then she saw the letter. She’d forgotten all about it, hadn’t thought of it in years—five years, actually, given the date in the corner. As she read it, the day she’d composed it came back to her in vivid detail—the thunderstorm that had been raging outside, the way she’d jumped at every clap of thunder, the piercing pain in her heart she’d tried to alleviate through her words.

  Dear Saundra,

  I’ve been wanting to write this letter a long time, but wasn’t sure how I would ever find you to send it. But then I saw the article on Bradley in the paper and I figured out I could just send it to his office in Denver. I hope it gets to you okay.

  The letter went on to update Saundra of her graduation from foster care, her entrance into cosmetology school, and her temporary job at a grocery store. She asked a few questions about Saundra’s family, and then moved on to her real reason for writing.

  I really just wanted to thank you for taking me in. I don’t think I ever said thank you when I was living with you, and I know I didn’t say it when I went back into foster care because I was too mad at the time. I know no one ever wants the older kids. They always want the babies that don’t come with all the emotional baggage. But the older
kids are the ones that really need a family, even if it’s just for a few years. So thank you for taking a chance on a teenager and for letting me see what a real family is like.

  There’s actually another reason I’m writing. There’s something I need to get off my chest, because it’s been eating at me for a long time now. Remember when I took the car out that one night and got the front end banged up, and I said I hit a deer? Well, that’s not exactly what happened…

  Kim remembered sitting on her bed, desperate to spill the entire story but unable to put pen to paper. She wanted so badly to tell someone, and Saundra O’Riley—being so far away, so far removed now from everything—seemed like the best person to tell. Besides, it had been her car that Kim had been driving. But she never finished the letter.

  The O’Rileys were a sweet couple to Kim and their two adopted children. They’d chosen Kim when she was fourteen, two weeks before she started high school. By then, Kim had been in three other foster homes. The first family treated their four foster children as slave labor, and the next one had been great, but the farm they had lived on had not been—that was when they discovered Kim’s severe allergy to hay. The last set of foster parents before the O’Rileys had wanted to adopt her, but she had refused based on their penchant for turning their adopted children into religious zealots.

  Before all of that, Kim had actually had a mom.

  When Patricia had arrived with the O’Rileys to meet Kim, she’d been wary about trying another family. Part of her kept hoping she’d get lucky, but mostly she was tired of the back-and-forth between group homes and families. A new family meant new rules and new environment, another awkward period of feeling like she was on loan from some human library—here, try this one out, see what you think. Only the knowledge that this family was looking to eventually adopt made her at all interested in leaving the familiarity of the group home. Plus, they had one adopted daughter already, who was three years older than Kim, and that made Kim feel a little better—they’d pulled the trigger with someone else; maybe they would with her too.