Hold on to Hope

I sucked all the turmoil down and tried to come off as chipper as could be as I strode in. “Lurkin’? What are you talking about? I’m right here. Just came to see you. I got off work a little bit early today, and I thought I’d stop by and see what’s goin’ on. Goodness, that smells delicious. You really are a food genius. Remind me why I moved again. I mean, that’s just downright crazy, right? Up and payin’ rent when I could live here with you and eat all your food? What kind of psychopath am I?”

Okay, so maybe I was known to be a bit chatty.

But there was no missing the tremor that rolled out with the ramble as I moved for the refrigerator, opened the door, and stuck my head inside.

Cold air blasted out.

I wanted to climb all the way in.

Maybe it would cool the heat that was burning me up, flames that were going to leave me nothing but ash.

Mama knew it too.

Could sense her shifting, her awareness, her keen eye turned on me. “Sweet Pea . . . look at me.”

Hesitating, I heaved out a breath before I forced myself to turn around and look at her. Guessed it was just then I felt the hot moisture covering my cheeks.

Great.

Now I was straight-up cryin’.

Mama reached out and gathered up a tear. “Oh, sweet girl, what’s wrong? What happened?”

I chewed at my bottom lip so hard I was sure I was drawing blood, and I angled my attention to the side and mumbled the name. Maybe if I quieted it, saying it wouldn’t hurt so bad.

“Evan.”

Nope.

It slayed.

A sharp, searing pain that cut right through the middle of me.

Intensity and worry blustered through her expression, and she was searching mine for a sign.

Blinking through the bleariness, I forced myself to meet her worry. “He’s here, Mama. He’s here. He walked right into A Drop of Hope like he’d never left, all except for the fact that everything has changed. God, Mama, he has a baby. This little boy who’s so adorable and sweet and looks just like him—”

And it’s never hurt to look at someone so much.

I had to stop myself from actually saying the last part aloud.

Questions toiled and raged.

Had he found someone? Had he fallen in love? Oh God, was he married?

My weakened knees faltered, and the walls spun, and I was pretty sure I was two seconds from passing out right there on my mama’s floor.

A hand was pressing to her mouth, her chocolate eyes that were just as warm and comfortin’ as her food going wide with her outright concern. “Is he well?”

I didn’t know if she was asking about Evan or the child, and I was blinking through the disorder, trying to make sense of what I’d seen. I swallowed around the grief lodged like a tumble of jagged rocks at the base of my throat. “I don’t know, Mama. I don’t know anything. I found him standing in the doorway and I just . . . hightailed it out of there. I couldn’t stay.”

“Oh, Frankie.”

A flash of a second later I was in her arms, and she was hugging me hard, and I was releasing my pain and my rage and my sorrow.

All the hopes that boy had left shattered inside of me.

The dreams that were scattered.

I sank to the floor like maybe I could gather them up.

She came with me, pulled me onto her lap, and held me, rocked me the way she’d done when I was a child.

Sobs heaved, and she kept whispering at the top of my head, “It will be alright, Sweet Pea. It’ll be alright. You’ll see.”

“How could it be?”

Tears kept streaming free, and I was clutching her like a lifeline, searching for air, for reason.

My lungs squeezed.

Painfully.

Agony stretching me thin.

Ripping me in two.

“How could it be?” I whimpered. “He left me, Mama. He left me.” And just because he was there didn’t change the fact that I could still feel that void echoing inside of me.

That little face pushed into my mind like a storm. Raging and rampant. Beautiful and terrifying. Old wounds rushed in with the darkened, churning clouds.

It doused my soul in anguish.

The deepest, ugliest kind of affliction.

I gasped and choked.

Mama brushed her fingers through my frizzy curls. “He might have walked away, but that boy left a huge piece of himself with you. He’s etched himself in places that helped to mold and shape who you are. And I know you did the same to him.”

She urged me up to sitting, forcing me to meet her eye, and she set her hand on my cheek. “You two were always something more, Frankie Leigh. Something so powerful that it scared me that you could share a connection that great so young. That’s not just going to go away.”