Shannon's Hope

by Josi S. Kilpack

  “I’m so jealous,” John said.

  “Me too,” I said, laughing at how similar our thoughts were. Laughter was good medicine for my troubled soul right now.

  “We need to plan a trip,” John said. “Maybe just a Baja cruise or something cheap like that. Landon would love it.”

  “He would.” I sat on the edge of the bed and put lotion on my hands and feet. When John and I had taken a Caribbean cruise for our eight-year anniversary, Landon had stayed with my parents; they had still lived here at the time. We’d had such a great time and used to talk all the time about taking the kids with us on another one. But then the bottom fell out of the economy, and Keisha started having a tough time and, well, the cruise hadn’t happened. But we were in better financial shape now than we had been the last time we talked about it. “Maybe we could do something after school gets out.”

  “I’ll talk to Stan about it,” John said, referring to a friend of his whose wife was a travel agent. “I’ll see what he recommends.”

  “That would be awesome.”

  He disappeared into the bathroom, and I heard the buzz of his mechanical toothbrush. I pulled my hair up into a high bun and put my clothes and his socks in the hamper. John was so good about taking care of his own clothes, but for whatever reason his socks were always all over the place.

  “Oh, hey,” he said when he came out of the bathroom a minute later. “You didn’t tell me Landon found that gift card.”

  I froze for half a second, then tried to look natural as I passed him on my way to the bathroom. “Yeah,” I said simply, knowing I should say more but unable to as the guilt descended like a thunderstorm. I tried to summon the confidence I’d felt when Keisha had confided in me. I was the reason she was staying sober. Me. That was a big responsibility, and it was the only thing that made sense in regard to justifying why I was keeping things from my husband.

  “I guess it must have fallen out of his pocket or something,” John said. I could hear him turning down the covers while I stared at the reflection in the mirror. John’s wife stared back at me—a woman he trusted, a woman he thought trusted him enough to be honest.

  “I guess so,” I said simply, breaking eye contact with the other woman in the mirror. Justifications aside, I felt horrible. I’d never kept anything from John before.

  Suddenly he was right there, behind me. His arms reached around my stomach, and I closed my eyes when his lips kissed the back of my neck. “I’m really sorry for jumping to conclusions about Keish with all that,” he said, horribly humble. My heart ached. “It was totally unfair of me.”

  If there were a script for this, I would say something like “It’s okay” or “I understand.” I could even say, “I need to tell you something.” But I couldn’t say any of it. It wasn’t okay, and I did understand why he’d jumped to that conclusion—the right conclusion, it turned out. I couldn’t tell him the truth because I’d done what I’d done so that he’d trust his daughter and stop thinking the worst of her. What irony.

  I opened my eyes to see him staring at me in the mirror. I forced myself to smile.

  “Are you okay?” he asked, looking confused.

  “I’m good,” I said, though I wasn’t good at all.

  “Are you sure? You seem a little, I don’t know, tight.”

  I tried to smile wider, but I felt worse than ever. “I’m fine. It’s just been a long week, ya know?” I turned in his arms so that I could look up into his eyes. “I love you, John, so much.”

  “Whew,” he said with a teasing grin. “That helps this whole marriage and family thing make a lot more sense.” He reached over and flipped off the bathroom light, plunging us into darkness and giving me the relief of keeping any thoughts he might read in my eyes to myself.

  Chapter 15

  Landon was done with basketball, which meant lacrosse was now on the top of our priority list. And since John was the coach, if he wasn’t working, he was usually wherever Landon was. I loved watching Landon play, and a lot of my memories of him growing up were centered on his athletics. He would always look for me, even during practice, and give me a thumbs-up when he did well.

  But instead of watching my boy play these days, I sat with Keisha in Narcotic Anonymous meetings and listened to addicts talk about the things they’d done in order to get their fix. Theft, assault, prostitution—it was unreal what addiction could drive people to. Keisha never shared her story or spoke up, but she was assigned a sponsor, a woman named Debbie who was in her thirties and had been sober for eight years. Keisha was supposed to call Debbie anytime she needed to talk—and especially if she found herself tempted to use. Debbie was missing most of her teeth—Meth-mouth—and had hair so thin I could see her scalp, but I tried to have confidence in her sobriety. She was Keisha’s sponsor; she was part of the solution.

  A young man named David came up and talked to Keisha after our third meeting that week. He was shy and nerdy, nothing like I’d expect from a recovered addict, but seemed to really like Keisha. She was sweet to him and gave him her number, which made him grin from ear to ear. I knew supporting Keisha didn’t make everything I’d done okay, but as long as the results were moving her in a good direction, it helped me feel better.

  Aunt Ruby left on her cruise, and I agreed to check on her house and water her plants while she was gone. I secured the alarm code for her house on the fridge with an Oreo-shaped magnet and hung the key on the rack by the door. I was glad to help but still jealous of her trip. Wouldn’t now be a great time to take Keisha away?

  Keisha worked a lot, often the night shift—which I didn’t like—but I hoped that meant she was paying off her debts faster. She missed another therapy appointment, which I had to pay for because we didn’t cancel soon enough. She usually came home before I got up for the day and then slept while we were at work and school. While the schedule meant she could use my car since I didn’t need it at night, I missed seeing her, and my thoughts were never far away from her. Because I knew she couldn’t afford it, I paid the first installment of her tuition. John and I had already agreed to pay half, so I figured I was just paying our half up front. I worried about Keisha being able work enough to keep up with her payments to Tagg once school started on the twentieth-eighth—just over a week away.

  I asked her about her payments to Tagg on the way home from an NA meeting Saturday night. David had sat next to us this time. “I’m not sure what to do about all that,” she said, her shoulders slumping. “Maybe I should wait on school.”

  “No,” I said quickly, shaking my head. “You shouldn’t wait. You need to develop a skill so you can get a better job. Besides, I already made the first payment for your tuition.”

  “I’ve got to pay off Tagg though.”

  “How much do you have left to pay back?”

  She paused, then let out a breath. “Fifteen hundred.”

  I double-checked my math. “You haven’t made a payment yet this week?”

  “I did,” she said, “But they changed it. Said they weren’t charging me interest before because they thought I would be a repeat customer. Now that I’m not, I owe them more. I paid them three hundred dollars just a few days ago.”

  “They can’t just change the payment you agreed on,” I said, incensed.

  “They’re dealers. They can do whatever they want.”

  I clenched my teeth together. “How do you pay the money back? Do you meet them somewhere?”

  “They come to my work, and I take a break.”

  “Which means they know when you’re working. Do they call you and tell you they’re coming?”

  “We text.”

  I looked at the phone she was holding in her hands. I hated that she was still in contact with them. How did they get her new number? “Do they try to get you to use?”

  Keisha said nothing, and I looked at her quickly.

  “Do they?” I asked again.

  “Of course they do,” she said, exasperated, as though frustrated that I di
dn’t know all of this stuff automatically.

  We stopped talking about it, but I couldn’t stop thinking about how this guy knew where she worked, knew where he could find her. What if he followed her home from work one day? It was all I could think about the next day, and it made me feel so vulnerable. What if this guy came to the house? What if Landon was home when he did?

  A few nights later, Keisha came home and I could tell right away something was wrong. She walked past all three of us at the dinner table without a word. I exchanged a look with John and Landon, then pushed away from the table.

  “What’s wrong?” I said after following her to her bedroom and shutting the door so we wouldn’t be overheard.

  “I can’t do school,” she said, sounding angry. She sat down hard on the bed and pulled her work shirt out from where it was tucked into her pants. She wouldn’t look at me, and she pulled her knees up to her chest instead, bracing her back against the headboard. It made her look like a little girl.

  “We’ve talked about this,” I said. “You have to go to school.”

  “I can’t,” she yelled, causing me to step back. “I can’t, okay? I can’t do it. I couldn’t even finish high school. There’s no way I can do something like this.” She waved toward the door as though it were the program she’d enrolled in. I looked at her closer and felt my insides tightening up.

  “Why are you acting like this?”

  She wrapped her arms tightly around her knees and started rocking back and forth. I walked over to her, put my hands on her knees and stared her hard in the eye. Her pupils weren’t dilated. “Are you high?” If she said yes, I didn’t know what I’d do.

  “No, I’m not high,” she said, hitting my hands away and jumping to her feet. Tears filled her eyes. “This guy came to my work. He said Tagg sent him, that . . . that he could help me pay off the debt.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked, afraid of how much she was freaking out about this.

  She met my eyes, and the tears fell faster. “I could work it off.”

  “I don’t . . . ” But then I did understand, and I froze as I thought of the things the other members of the NA group had said they’d done for drugs. I was speechless by the impact of the realization.

  “Once school starts, I’m only going to be working fifteen hours a week. How will I get those guys paid off?” she said, her whole face crumpling. She grabbed two handfuls of hair in her fists before sitting back down on the bed and leaning her elbows on her knees. Then she started crying—no, sobbing.

  I knelt on the floor in front of the bed and wrapped my arms around her shoulders. She clung to me like she never had before, crying into my shirt, saying over and over again that she was so sorry.

  I didn’t know what she was sorry for until I smelled the alcohol on her breath, hard to detect under the gum or mints she’d used to try to cover it up. It distracted me for a moment, but I was afraid that wasn’t what she was apologizing for. “You didn’t . . . do anything, did you?”

  “He said he’d take two hundred dollars off my debt.”

  I almost threw up, and I grabbed her shoulders. “Please tell me you didn’t do this,” I said, absolutely sick to my stomach as tears filled my eyes. “Oh, Keisha, please.”

  “I didn’t,” she whimpered. I hugged her again and held on tighter than ever as she cried again. “But I freaked out,” she said into my shoulder. “I got one of the cooks to take me to the liquor store. I just couldn’t handle it—I can’t handle it. I don’t know what to do.”

  When her tears were spent and I’d regained my composure, I pulled back and brushed her hair from her tear-streaked face. “I want you to text Tagg,” I said calmly, “and tell him you will pay him off tomorrow.”

  She pulled her eyebrows together, confused.

  “I’m paying him, but he needs to understand that he has to leave you alone now. Your debt will be paid and that means he leaves for good, or I’ll call the cops on him.”

  “You can’t threaten him,” Keisha said quickly. “You can’t talk about cops. He’ll freak and he’ll come after me if he thinks I’m going to turn on him.”

  “Okay, then just tell him you’re ready to pay off the debt and that he’s not to come see you again—ever. We’ll get you a new phone number.”

  Keisha’s chin started to quiver, and she pulled me into a hug. “Thank you,” she said, starting to cry again.

  I closed my eyes and assured her that everything would be okay. I sat next to her while she texted him and read the messages. She told him she’d pay him off tomorrow. He asked her if she wanted a parting gift, and she glanced at me quickly before typing that she was done, for good. He agreed to meet her at Denny’s the next morning at eleven.

  I got her calmed down enough to join us for dinner but made her change her clothes first. I hoped John wouldn’t pick up on the smell of alcohol. She wasn’t drunk, thank goodness, but John needed to see that she was okay or he’d start asking questions.

  She came out and had a plate of spaghetti; John and Landon were finished by then. Landon was working on something for school, and John was cleaning the kitchen but mostly watching us. I finished my meal first but stayed at the table so Keisha wouldn’t be alone. I talked about random things from work that no one cared about just to keep conversation going, then I suggested she and I find a NA meeting. She looked up at me with do-we-have-to eyes, which I returned with a look she couldn’t misinterpret as anything other than absolutely. She agreed, then went to freshen up while I went to the computer and Googled the nearest meeting. We would have to drive into Irvine, but there was a group that started in ten minutes. We’d be late, but she needed to be there.

  “What happened?” John asked, coming up behind me.

  I took a breath and fought against the surge of anger that I was dealing with this all by myself. If he were more approachable, I could tell him all the things I’d been keeping to myself, and we could be a united front against the demon hunting his daughter, but he’d chosen an entirely different course, and so I was fighting this alone. Just like I’d paid the bills alone for months at a time over the last few years. It wasn’t fair to be so angry, and yet it was too far into the battle to start renegotiating. “She had a tough day,” I said, but I could hear the prickle in my voice and I knew he could too.

  “Why?”

  His ignorance about what was going on in his own daughter’s life infuriated me. “Because she’s an addict, John, and she’s mentally ill, and she’s trying to build a new life. Everything’s working against her, and she needs a little more love and a little more patience.” I stood up and glared at him. He looked completely confused.

  “What did I do?” he asked.

  “Expected the worst,” I said, blowing past him to change out of my loungewear and into something presentable. “Again.” I knew I was making no sense to him, and yet I was so angry I couldn’t even explain myself. He followed me into the bedroom and stood with his arms crossed while I changed.

  I continued to rant about being the one to take her to her meetings, talk to her about her day, and worry about what was going on with her. “All you ever seem to do is throw accusations around and think the worst possible scenarios about everything.” I pulled on a T-shirt, realized it was dirty, and had to pull it off before finding another one. Clean this time. When had I last done laundry? Why wasn’t John keeping up with it?

  “I asked why she was upset,” John said, his words measured. “I don’t get why you’re jumping all over me about it.”

  “Why didn’t you ask her, John?” I said, stepping into my shoes and facing off with him, my hands on my hips. “Why didn’t you talk to your daughter instead of asking me? Why am I the one in the middle all the time? Did you ever think that maybe she knows how you feel—that she knows you’re disappointed and embarrassed and wish she wasn’t here? Did you ever think about how that makes her feel?”

  He pulled the bedroom door closed and crossed the room before I finished spea
king. “What is going on with you?” he said in an angry whisper. “What if she heard you say that?”

  “She doesn’t need to hear me,” I spat. “She told it to me.”

  He pulled back as if he’d been slapped. He opened his mouth but didn’t speak.

  I thought about what Keisha had told me tonight, about the option she’d been given to pay back the money she owed, and my anger renewed tenfold. Right here, right now, I blamed John for all of it. We could have paid off her debt months ago and she wouldn’t even be in this situation right now. We could have bought her a car so she could have gotten a job sooner. We could have had her move in with us years ago when she was first struggling. We could have had her come stay after rehab and really created a second chance for her to succeed.

  But John and his pride had stood in the way, and now his daughter was being approached by pimps. How disgusting was that? And yet I couldn’t explain any of that to him, because he didn’t know she owed any money and because, like Keisha, I didn’t trust him enough to believe he would help her if he knew the truth.

  I walked past him and exited the bedroom. Keisha was in the kitchen cleaning up from dinner. She glanced at me and I looked away, hoping she hadn’t heard the argument. I’d tried to disagree with her when she’d said John didn’t want her here, and I didn’t want her to think that’s what I believed even though I did.

  “Ready?” I asked with a very false smile.

  She nodded, and I led the way to the garage. It wasn’t until we were halfway to the meeting that I remembered I hadn’t said good-bye to Landon. How was I supposed to be everything to everyone in my life when Keisha needed so much of me?

  Chapter 16

  I worked the next day—Wednesday—and took my time coming home, stopping at a bookstore to buy The War of Art since I hadn’t gotten around to ordering it, and then going to the mall for a new pair of work shoes. I didn’t really need them, but I was still reeling from last night and the fact that I’d taken an early lunch in order to withdraw fifteen hundred dollars out of our savings account, which I’d then taken home to Keisha. She’d hugged me and left for work, texting me later to tell me it was done.