Keeping Faith

by Janice Macdonald

  He smiled, kept his eye out for red and yellow garments.

  “Tiffany has red curly hair,” Hannah added. “Bright red. If you see her, Faith will be right behind.”

  “What does Beth look like?” he asked.

  “Beth looks a little like Hannah, actually. “Light brown hair that she usually has in a ponytail.”

  “Is that Tiffany?” He pointed to a girl with a mass of long curls the approximate color of tomato soup.

  “Yep.” Hannah peered into the crowd. “I don’t see Faith, though. And there’s Beth. I wonder what’s keeping Faith?”

  “Come on.” He caught Hannah’s hand, impatient to see his daughter. “Let’s go and get her.”

  Hannah followed him, then called out to Tiffany, who was twisting her shoulders out of a dark green backpack. “Do you know where Faith is?”

  Tiffany dangled the backpack from her fingers. “Her grandma picked her up.”

  Liam glanced at Hannah. “I don’t understand,” he said. “She knew we were coming to get her, didn’t she?”

  “Of course she did. I’m going to check in the office.”

  The secretary in the office had blue curls and wire-rimmed glasses. The name tag on the collar of her pale blue blouse read, Mrs. Smith. She addressed Hannah. “Your mother came by at about ten and said she and Faith were taking a little trip.”

  Liam stared at her. “Did Faith know this?”

  Mrs. Smith, who’d ignored Liam until now, gave him an uncertain look, then raised her eyebrows at Hannah as though asking for permission to answer his question.

  “This is Liam Tully,” Hannah said. “Faith’s father.”

  “Oh…” The woman’s eyes widened slightly behind her glasses. “I didn’t realize… No, that’s the funny thing. Faith’s such a little chatterbox. I heard all about her visit to the zoo, so I thought it was a bit funny when Mrs. Riley mentioned the trip and Faith hadn’t said a word.”

  “How is it your mother’s allowed to pick her up?” Liam asked Hannah.

  “I gave her written permission. She picks her up most days because I’m at work.” She looked at the secretary. “You said they left about ten?”

  “About that. I remember because I was taking a break. I’d just put a bran muffin in the microwave to heat when she came in.”

  “A trip.” Hannah shook her head. “What kind of trip? Did she mention where? How long they’d be gone?”

  “Sorry. I didn’t even think to ask.” Light from the windows glinted on her glasses. “You didn’t know about this?” she asked Hannah.

  “No,” Hannah said. “We didn’t know about it.”

  THEY RAN BACK to the house, neither of them speaking. Liam followed her into the kitchen, and stood in the doorway as she confronted Debra, who was sitting at the table.

  “For God’s sake, Hannah, calm down, will you?” Debra lifted a glass to her mouth. “Faith’s with Mom. It’s not like she was kidnapped by a stranger or something. Maybe they went shopping.”

  “Mom knew we were picking her up.” Hannah stood in the middle of the kitchen. “Why would she take her out of school at ten without calling me first? God, why am I even asking that?”

  She ran upstairs to Faith’s room. The red suitcase she’d pulled down last night was gone. Someone, Margaret obviously, had gone through the boxes she’d started to pack. The box with the underwear had been emptied out. Hannah went into her mother’s room. Margaret’s overnight bag was gone. She came down to the kitchen again.

  “You’ve no idea at all where they are?” Liam was asking Debra. “Your mother said nothing to you?”

  “Nope. I’m sure she’ll call in a while. You know how she likes to surprise Faith.”

  “Where are Rose and Helen?” Hannah asked her sister. “I thought you guys were all going sailing.”

  “That was Wednesday. Anyway, it kind of fell apart when you said you weren’t going. I don’t think Allan was too jazzed about schlepping the family along if you weren’t part of the group.”

  Hannah closed the drawer she’d been searching. “Where’s Rose?” she asked again.

  “Over at Max’s house and Helen’s gone to some crafts thing,” Debra said. “She’s big on crafts things,” she told Liam. “If you stand still for too long, she’ll decoupage your head.”

  Hannah caught her face in her hands. “God, I can’t deal with this. What the hell was Mom thinking? A little trip.” She peered at Liam through her fingers. “I’m sorry. This is obviously her way of keeping you from seeing Faith.”

  “You don’t know that,” Deb said. “Why don’t you wait till she calls before you jump to conclusions?”

  “Wait?” Hannah stared at her sister. “How long? An hour? A day? Two days? This is my daughter she’s just taken off with, for God’s sake.” Her hands back around her face again, she paced the kitchen—over to the window, back to the fridge. She looked at Liam, who stood with his back to the sink, arms folded across his chest. “I’m calling the police,” she said.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  “DON’T BE CRAZY,” Debra said. “You can’t call the police on your own mother.”

  “I’ll tell them Mom has a drinking problem. I’ll tell them I’m worried about Faith’s safety.”

  “Is that true?” Liam asked. “Are you?”

  Hannah hesitated. The honest answer was no. Margaret was scrupulous about not driving even after just one glass of wine. Hannah’s suggestion that Margaret cut down on her drinking had been motivated by her concern for her mother’s health. Never for a moment had she believed that Margaret would ever do anything to endanger her granddaughter.

  “What is wrong with you, Hannah?” Debra glared at her sister, then addressed Liam. “Mom’s been picking up Faith from school from the day she first started and Hannah’s never once said a word about a drinking problem. Now suddenly it’s a big deal because Mom has a glass of wine in the evening.”

  “No, Deb, maybe it’s a big deal now because Mom overstepped her bounds,” Hannah said. “Maybe it’s a big deal now because Mom seems to have forgotten that Faith has a mother and a father. Maybe it’s a big deal now because Mom has my daughter, and I have no idea where she’s taken her. Maybe—”

  “Hannah.” Liam caught her arm.

  “No.” She pulled away. “This is our daughter she’s…kidnapped. You want to just let her get away with it?”

  “I need some fresh air.” He turned to leave the room. “Let’s go outside.”

  She nodded and followed him out of the kitchen.

  “Hannah,” Deb called, “can I talk to you for a minute.” She inclined her head to the hallway, where Liam was still visible. “In private.”

  “If this is about Faith, Liam needs to hear it, too,” Hannah said.

  He shook his head. “I’ll wait for you outside.”

  “I hope you know you’ve driven her to this,” Deb hissed a moment later. “She’s so damn worried about Faith, she can’t see straight. You stand there asking what Mom’s thinking and you see nothing wrong with letting Faith sleep on the floor of an empty apartment or hanging around with some guy who was too busy brawling in a bar to see his daughter. God, you’ve lost it, Hannah, you really have. While you were making out with Liam, your daughter nearly drowned, for God’s sake. And you ask what Mom’s thinking. What the hell are you thinking?”

  Speechless for a moment, Hannah just stared at her sister. “Do you know where Mom is?”

  “No, I don’t, but if I did, I wouldn’t tell you. You’re so damned obsessed with Liam, you’ll put him before your own daughter. Mom said she tried to talk some sense into you when you guys went for coffee, but you wouldn’t listen. Someone has to put Faith’s interests first, Hannah.”

  Hannah slowly exhaled. If she didn’t get out of the kitchen, she was going to blow up. She walked away, found Liam sitting on the front step and sat down next to him. By now it was nearly five and the sun was low in the sky, filling the yard with long shadows.

 
; “We need to find an attorney,” she said. “I don’t know where we stand legally, but that’s the first thing we need to find out.”

  Liam said nothing and they sat in silence for a few minutes, her hand on his knee. She waited for him to say something; to put his arm around her, to indicate somehow that they were in this together, but he seemed suddenly inaccessible. What are you thinking? she wanted to ask him. Talk to me.

  From where they sat, she could see halfway down the street. Margaret sometimes walked Faith from the house to the beach, two blocks away. Last summer she’d taken her to swimming lessons at the Belmont Pool. She watched the street now, willing her mother and Faith to appear. A new surge of anger at Margaret made her heart pound.

  “Look, the main thing is we know Faith’s in no physical danger. I mean, as awful as this is, we at least know she’s with her grandmother. It’s probably too late to find anyone still in their office,” she said. Allan’s name came to mind; he was the only attorney she actually knew. Not a good choice, she decided. Maybe Allan was in on this. “I’ll call someone in the morning,” she said.

  Unable to sit still, she started pacing the lawn. “It’s my fault.” She stopped at the grouping of rosebushes at the far end of the lawn. Then she walked back down to where Liam sat. “The thing is, Mom does so much for Faith she thinks she has equal rights over her. It’s my fault—I take responsibility for allowing it to happen.” Back to the roses again. Her head throbbing, brain racing. “I truly don’t think she recognizes that you have a claim to her.”

  Again she sat down on the steps. Liam sat on the top step, his feet on the concrete of the third step. His back was slightly bent, his head bowed as though he were reading something written on the ground at his feet.

  “Liam.”

  He raised his head.

  “Talk to me. Listen, I just thought of something. Jen should be home. Let me give her a call. Her sister went through this custody thing with her ex-husband last year. I could get the name of her attorney.”

  He scratched the back of his neck but said nothing.

  “Hey, come on.” She put her arm around him, and pulled him close for a moment. “Don’t freeze up on me, Liam,” she said softly. “I know this has got to be a nightmare for you. But we’ll get through it.”

  “No…” He shook his head. “I don’t think so.”

  “Sure we will. Her arm still around him, she tried to ignore the rigidity in his shoulders. “You were right with what you said last night about talking to my mom, trying to reassure her. I can see now, I didn’t pay enough attention to how upset she’s been. She’s blown things out of proportion.” She relayed Debra’s comments about letting Faith sleep in the empty apartment, about falling into the water. “I don’t know whether she really believes we’ve put Faith at risk somehow, or she’s just using it as an excuse—”

  “Either way, it doesn’t matter,” Liam said.

  “Exactly. We just need to make her understand—”

  He cut her off with a wave of his hand. “No, I mean it doesn’t matter. I don’t want to go through with this.”

  She sat very still for a moment. The hollowness in her stomach told her what her head refused to understand. “Don’t want to go through with what, Liam?”

  “This. The battle with your mother. Your family’s disapproval as though I’m this monster out to harm you and Faith. I don’t need it.”

  Hannah had taken her arm from around his shoulder. She sat with her hands folded in her lap. Words whirled around in her head like a blizzard of snow—settling, melting, forming patterns then immediately dissolving. “But that’s what I’m talking about, Liam—they don’t really know you. If they did—”

  “Neither do you, Hannah. And I don’t know you. I got carried away with…” He shrugged. “Sex, chemistry.”

  “Okay,” she said slowly, willing reason into her voice. “Let’s put us aside. What about Faith? What about wanting to be part of her life? You said—”

  “I know what I said, Hannah.”

  “But this is a very small setback. How can you just let—”

  “Tells you something about my level of commitment, doesn’t it?”

  “So you never meant any of the things you said?” She didn’t believe that. Still, she needed to hear him deny it. “Talk to me, Liam.” She put her hand on his arm. “Please.”

  She felt his arm relax slightly under her palm. He’d just had a temporary case of cold feet, she told herself. They’d work everything out. Maybe she’d overreacted. Her gaze drifted out to the street again. What exactly had the school secretary said?

  Maybe Margaret had just forgotten that this wasn’t one of her days to get Faith from school. Even as Hannah tried to grasp this thread, she knew there had been no mistake. Margaret had taken Faith in a deliberate attempt to keep her from Liam.

  “It’s a relief, actually.” Liam’s voice broke into her thoughts. “You said all along that we could never make it work and you were right. The whole thing’s been tearing me apart anyway, not knowing the best thing to do. It’s a load off my mind to come to a decision.”

  “I don’t believe you, Liam.” She twisted around on the step to look at him. Their eyes met for a brief moment and then he looked away. “I don’t believe you’ve suddenly changed your mind like this.”

  “I think it’s best for Faith,” he said. “She was doing well enough before I arrived on the scene, she’ll do well when I’m gone. The pirate’s dad would probably be a better father to her anyway.”

  “And what about you? What about what you want?”

  “I’ll still have my music,” he said. “That’s enough.” After a moment, he stood, looking at her as though not sure how to bring the conversation to a close. “Well then…”

  Hannah stood, too. Anger pulsed in her temple, her chest. Fists clenched at her side, it was all she could do not to strike him. “Well then, what, Liam? Well then, I’ll never see you again? Well then, I only thought I wanted to be a father? Well then, I never meant any of the things I said anyway? Well then, it was a whim after all?”

  “All of the above,” he said. And took off down the garden path.

  She sat down again, immobilized by rage. Her face felt hot as if he’d slapped it. By her left foot was a terracotta pot Margaret had brought up to the house to plant petunias in. Her hand shaking, she curled her fingers around the rim and hurled it at the gate just in front of Liam.

  “Just a goddamned whim, Liam,” she shouted.

  BY TEN THAT NIGHT, she’d moved everything she and Faith owned out of her mother’s house and into the new place. Clothes, books, a few pieces of furniture, some boxes that had been stored in Margaret’s garage. Rocky and Jen had helped her load all of it into his pickup truck.

  Activity helped. Dry-eyed and resolute, she moved about the apartment, unpacking boxes, hanging clothes in closets, folding bed linens. In the kitchen, she drank from a can of flat, lukewarm Diet Coke. The utilities would be turned on tomorrow. For now, she was working by the glow of the candles they’d used the other night; carrying her cell phone from room to room in case it rang.

  She carried a box of toys into Faith’s room. Earlier, she’d frozen in the doorway, gawking at the brand-new furniture that filled the small space. A bright red bed, a blue wooden chest with yellow drawers. Only one person would be unaware that Faith didn’t really need a new bedroom suite. The one time Liam had seen his daughter’s bedroom, it had been late and he probably hadn’t noticed the furnishings.

  Wondering how he’d got the furniture in, she remembered that she’d given him an extra key. Now that simple act of trust, the togetherness and shared responsibilities it implied, seemed a mockery. She took a deep breath and all the emotions, pent up since walking into the school office that afternoon, broke loose and she sat on the floor with her back to the wall and wept. When she’d cried herself out, she started to call the police on her cell phone, then decided she didn’t want to be on the phone in case Margaret cal
led. Fifteen minutes later, she was shivering in the air-conditioned chill of the Long Beach Police Department.

  “I’m not sure if this is technically a police matter,” she told the desk sergeant, “but my mother picked up my six-year-old daughter from school today, and I haven’t seen or heard from either of them since.”

  “This is the child’s grandmother.” He was an older guy, maybe a grandfather himself, with a craggy, lined face and a bored expression. “She has your permission to pick up the child?”

  “Well, yes. She picks her up most days, but this wasn’t her day and she knew I was supposed to…and we had this big disagreement last night.”

  Her face burning, she thanked him and left the station. Five minutes later, her cell phone rang.

  “Faith’s okay,” Margaret said. “I’m okay. We’re in an emergency room in Ventura… No, no, let me explain. Someone rear-ended the car, Faith got a bump on the chin, and the CHP insisted we get her checked out. She’s fine, really. Hannah, I’m so sorry. Everything just kept building, I could see Liam getting more and more involved with you and Faith and I’m sure I was putting my own spin on things, but when she fell in the water, I just couldn’t…I had to do something.”

  HANNAH DROVE UP to Ventura early the following morning. Faith had a Band-Aid on her chin and slept all the way home. Margaret continued to apologize.

  “Maybe the accident jolted my brain, too,” she told Hannah. “Remember how angry I got when you told me about that Cuddlers program at Western? I think it was because I knew, deep down, that you were right.” She smiled ruefully. “What did I have in my life without you and Faith?”

  In Long Beach, Hannah pulled up in front of the house on Termino to let Margaret out.

  “We’re not coming in,” she told her mother. “Everything’s in the new place.”

  “Hannah, don’t punish me.”

  “I’m not.” The engine was still idling. She couldn’t look at her mother. “We need to get home.”

  “Look, what I did was wrong, I know that. But I’ve learned my lesson. I have all kinds of plans, sweetheart. I’m going to sign up for classes at Cal State, check out the Cuddlers program. I’ll stop expecting you and Deb and Faith to fill all my needs.”