Pieces of Hope

by Carter, Carolyn

  Pieces of Hope

  By

  Carolyn Carter

  Kindle Edition

  (c) 2012

  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 . . .”

  It 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 lo
ok 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.

  “The house should be just across the street.” Claire adopted a bossy tone, wagging her finger in my face. “Dad’s been through enough already. Try not to do anything stupid between here and there!”

  I wanted to slap her face. Did she really think I was going to off myself crossing a street? I would never do anything like that (not without a lot of thought, anyway) and no amount of torture would ever get me to admit that the idea had crossed my mind. Only to escape the pain of Mom’s death. Only for that. But the idea of permanently leaving my family had prevented me from doing anything drastic. That and Mom’s disappointment in me. From heaven, or wherever she might be.

  “I guess this means my diabolical plan to take a short drive off a tall cliff is a no go,” I mumbled in a flat voice. “Well, on to Plan B.”

  Claire didn’t respond. Her hands were shaking as she white-knuckled the steering wheel, probably wishing it were my neck. I slid out of the old van, soaking both feet as they touched the street, then slammed the door hard without ever looking back.

  With the rain pelting away, splashing against the bottom of my jeans, I waited at the corner for the light at the crosswalk to change. I crumpled the address in my hand over and over, holding onto the anger as long as I could before the chilling numb crept in again.

  At least I wasn’t the only idiot tramping around in the rain. Eugene was home to the University of Oregon, and most of the college kids around me seemed oblivious to the downpour. Wet was just the norm in November. The stick figure appeared now, signaling it was time to cross and, with a dull pause, I thought I recognized this street. It took a few seconds to place it. Had I—Had I seen it in a dream?

  I looked across the intersection to be sure. The rain was both pelting and misting, making it difficult to distinguish shapes and judge distances, especially with the glare off the car and streetlights. But sure enough, this was it.

  My anger waning, that familiar sense of exhaustion took its place. The crowd was already fifteen feet ahead of me. It was difficult to see clearly, what with the rain and the hood obscuring my vision, but when I stepped off the curb, I glanced around and noticed no cars were waiting at the light. This part was definitely different. In the dream, a car skidded through the intersection, annihilating an old woman as she crossed the street.

  The dream was quite graphic, repeating itself for seven nights, and it always left me with the sensation that it was more than it seemed. I was afraid to fall asleep, afraid to see her flying through the air, afraid to hear the sound of a body colliding with metal. To ease my worries, I’d blabbed about it to anyone who would listen. Though no one could unravel its mystery, after Mom died, I hadn’t dreamed it since. Now it had crossed over to my real life, and it was kind of freaking me out.

  I stooped as I slogged along, every bone in my body aching. I would bet this was how old people felt—beaten down, broken. Halfway across the street, I froze. Though an annoying buzzing filled my ears, much like a horde of gnats inside my head, it seemed I heard my mother’s voice beneath it all, urgent and chilling, whispering to me.

  Save yourself . . .

  Suddenly, car tires screeched across the slick pavement and chills of another kind shot through me. I peered from beneath my hood in time to see a black sedan shoving an old green beater sideways toward me. I stood paralyzed, unable to think beyond a single haunting question, a question that had formed an answer long before I’d asked it.

  The woman from my dreams . . . Why had I thought she was old?

  I pictured her again. A heavy coat and hood disguised her features, but she walked slowly, almost painfully, across the street, shoulders bent forward—hunched over like an old—like an old—Oh, God! I pushed the hood off my head and threw my shoulders back for the first time in weeks. As the green beater slid prominently into view, I realized what I should have seen weeks ago. Ho
w could I have missed it?

  Save yourself . . .

  My face contorted as I realized the truth. The dream that had taunted me for seven nights, the message I couldn’t unravel, the person whose torment I’d witnessed again and again—that person was me! That warning was mine! I closed my eyes and braced myself for the crash, allowing my limbs to go limp just before the impact. I imagined my mother and a sense of peace came over me. I no longer feared death. If this were the end, maybe I would meet her in heaven.

  A long minute later, I opened one eye and found myself a good fifty feet from the intersection. Was it possible I’d imagined the whole thing? I knew that people sometimes hallucinated under duress. That would explain it. I felt along my ribcage, then the top of my head, and glanced down at my feet. All seemed well except that I was missing my left sneaker. Weird! Still, I wasn’t about to go second-guessing anything—not when I felt so, well, fabulous really. I was suddenly in the mood for climbing and I couldn’t wait to tell my best friend, Brody. He’d be thrilled! No more mopey Hope. No more not-so-hushed whispers behind my back. For the first time in weeks my head was silent—like bare feet on freshly fallen snow. And oh, how I loved the stillness!

  A group of people had gathered on the sidewalk and the rain had stopped. When had that happened? Maybe I’d blacked-out for a while too. Feeling lighter than a cloud, I practically floated in their direction. Two police officers were standing at each side of the street, holding back the bystanders, so I peeked around a really tall guy with a big-haired girlfriend and saw two people lying in the middle of the street. I couldn’t tell if they were male or female because the paramedics were blocking my view, but I bobbed around the gawkers to catch bits and pieces. My senses had flipped into hyper-mode and I could see, smell, and hear details that amazed me. A rainbow of colors in a single droplet of rain, the scents of the students around me mingling in delightful chaos (perfumes and hair gels, soap and sweat); even the sounds of their breathing as they exhaled and inhaled (some deep and slow, others fast and shallow). It must have been the adrenaline racing through me. Brody was going to flip when he heard about this!