Losing Hope (20 page)

Finally.

Home.

I collapsed onto the love seat in my living room just before 5:00
P.M.
I turned off my cell phone, house phone, and computer.

I did not want to talk to or hear from anyone.

Roman was in the kitchen, gorging on a chicken box I'd bought him on the way home. With crispy chicken wings and western fries doused in hot sauce sitting in front of him, I knew I'd bought a few minutes of quiet, though uncomfortable, appeasement.

The minutes were short-lived.

“Mom.” Roman stood in the doorway to the kitchen. “Can I ask you a question?”

No!
I wanted to scream.

“Sure, son. Sit down.” I moved the stack of magazines and other piles of junk that had been accumulating on my furniture to make room for him to sit next to me. He promptly did so.

“Mom.” He bit his bottom lip before continuing. “How come Dad has never lived with us?”

It occurred to me just then that my son's voice, which had been squeaking and cracking like crazy over the past year, had a smoother quality to it—more bass, fewer breaks.

Roman was growing up.

I looked him straight in the face and decided to answer him as honestly as I could.

“Roman, your father was a complicated man. He knew how to be a diplomat, a civil rights leader, a mediator, and . . . and a fighter. He did not know how to be a husband and a father.”

Roman nodded his head, slowly absorbing my words.

“So . . . you said he
was.
Not
is.
He's not alive, is he?”

“I don't know, Roman. I got a call last week from someone saying they were shipping his ashes to us, but they did not give any other information, and now they will not answer any of my calls. And you saw for yourself, your father's ashes were not in the package. I really do not know what that means.”

Roman sat quiet for a long time. Then he said, “I never got a chance to know my father. And I've missed that.”

“I miss him too, Roman. And yes, it makes me mad sometimes.”

Roman took my hand and held it, a gesture that brought tears to my eyes.

“So what are we going to do about it?” he asked.

“Huh?”

He let go of my hand. “How are we going to find Dad, to know if he is okay, and then to find out when he is going to come home?”

I thought about my calls to Portugal; I thought about my calls, letters, even flights to various places over the years, to countries most people had never heard of, to villages that I wasn't even sure still existed. All the places in which I had tried to find RiChard, all the cracks and crevices he had used to keep himself hidden from the world.

From me.

From his son.

I was tired.

I had tried searching for Hope, and it had led nowhere; and much like that quest, my search for RiChard and what I meant to him had fizzled and died in so many ways, so many times. True, there was the occasional letter, gift, or trinket that came from him, enough to string along both me and Roman.

But at some point, I had to let it go.

Let him go.

“Mom?” Roman was still waiting for an answer, I realized. “How are we going to find Dad?”

“I don't know that we will, Roman. If Dad wants us to find him, he will let us know, and if all is not okay with him, we might just have to accept that we might never find out for sure.”

Roman collapsed back onto the love seat, and we both sat quietly for a few moments.

“I can't accept that.” His voice was still gentle, still quiet, but there was no mistaking the resolve in it. I turned to face him, ready to tell him that it was no use. My moment of bravery, however, was short lived. A knock pounded on my door.

She was a short, stout woman, with one thick spot of stubble to the left of her chin and large black moles that covered her face and neck like freckles. She held tightly to a metal cane and stared up at me from under bushy gray eyebrows. Terror filled her light gray eyes.

“Sienna St. James?” the brown-skinned woman whispered.

“Yes?”

She gave a quick look behind her before continuing.

“My name is Deirdre Evans. Can I come in?”

“You are Deirdre? From the DSS?”

“You know who I am?” Her eyes widened.

“I've been trying to contact you since yesterday.”

The woman looked behind her again. “Who told you about me?”

“Nobody did. I just happened to see your name in a chart of one of my clients, and I had a question about her.”

“Clients? What kind of work do you do?”

“I am a social worker for a therapeutic foster care agency.”

“Really? Which one?”

“Holding Hands.”

“You work for Holding Hands?” She eyed me suspiciously.

“Deirdre, please come in. Let's talk.”

She gave one last look over her shoulder and then entered my living room.

“It's not usually this messy,” I lied.
Lord, forgive me.

“Oh, child, I'm not worried about your house. Actually, I'm admiring your collections. Looks like you've been all over the world.” She nodded at the odds and ends that fought for attention in the midst of the books, papers, and magazines that filled my cramped living room and dining room. Handspun crafts made from cloth and carved from the elements peeked out everywhere, dropping reminders of Latin America, Africa, the Caribbean, Europe, and Asia to me and Roman on a daily basis. Some of the trinkets I had purchased myself in those first months I traveled with RiChard; most had been shipped by him as random packages over the years. They usually delighted Roman and depressed me.

“I guess I have been a lot of places.” My eyes caught sight of the empty brown package from Portugal that had come to my door earlier that week. “And where I haven't been, my husband has, and he keeps finding ways to send a bit of his travels home to us. Do you travel much?” I was eager to change the subject and get to why this woman had entered my life.

I guess I was back to finding Hope. I groaned inside, wanting to be done with it and her.

“Oh, child, I'm not one to travel much.” Deirdre Evans had no idea how terrible I was feeling as she continued. “Every now and then I go up to Atlantic City with a group from my senior building, but that's about it.” Her words and her voice were casual, but nothing about her eyes or the way she was looking at me looked calm.

She still looked terrified.

“Ms. Evans,” I asked quietly, “can you tell me why you are here?”

She narrowed her eyes at me. “I'm waiting for you to tell me. Didn't you say that you've been trying to contact me since yesterday?”

“Yes, but how did you get my address?”

“The man on the phone told me to come here right away.”

“The man on the phone? What man are you talking about?”

Her eyes narrowed even more. “You know who I'm talking about.”

“I really don't.”

“Then why do you have them harassing me again?”

I crossed my arms, tired of the games and the confusion. “I really do not know what you are talking about. And what do you mean by ‘again'?”

“I retired nearly two years ago, when it first started up, and I thought it was over. Until this morning.” She looked at me sideways.

“When what started?” I could feel my nose and forehead wrinkling up in confusion. “Wait a minute. You're retired? But I left a message on your extension yesterday.”

“My extension? That doesn't make sense.” She cocked her head to the side. “Then again, when I was working, I had my extension forwarded to a pay-as-you-go cell phone because I was always out in the field. I lost that phone a long time ago. I guess it really could have just been stolen, and somebody held on to it all this time, although that really does not make sense.”

“No, it doesn't. And neither does the fact that you visited my client—one of your old clients, in fact—at the hospital earlier this week.”

“Visited a client at the hospital? I haven't been anywhere near a hospital since I had my knee replacement surgery five months ago.”

“But I distinctly saw your name written down on the visitors' log when I went to see my client this week.”

“Ms. St. James, now
I
have no idea what you are talking about.” She started gazing over at my door with a look of unease.

It made me feel uneasy too.

“Dayonna Diamond.” I let the name glide off my tongue, not even knowing it was going to come out when it did. Deirdre Evan's eyes grew wider.

“Her? So this is about her?” She pulled her purse close to her bosom and charged toward the door, her metal cane tapping along beside her. “I got to get out of here.”

“Wait.” I followed her, amazed that a woman with a recently replaced knee could move so fast. “Please, I need to get some answers.”

“I knew I shouldn't have come,” she was muttering to herself. “They probably followed me here. I retired to get out of this foolishness. Took my state pension and went back to minding my own business. Nobody believed me then, and I don't expect anyone to believe me now.”

“Wait, please,” I called after her as she marched down my steps. “I'll believe whatever you have to say. Please, tell me what happened. Why did you retire?”

She paused, her back still facing me. Slowly she turned around.

“I was a social worker for the state for over forty years. I've seen it all, heard it all. Nothing surprised me. Ever. Until I met that girl Dayonna. The things she said. The things she did. The things she said happened to her. Disturbing. She ran away from the last placement I put her in, and when she resurfaced five months later, her stories were even crazier and more bizarre. She started talking about a baby sister chopped into cabbage stew. I made the mistake of trying to make sense out of her senselessness, and that's when the phone calls and threats began.”

Deirdre turned away, scoping the quiet street behind her.

“I'm going to tell you like they told me.” She stared me dead in the eye. “Leave it alone. It's not worth the danger.”

“But if a little girl is involved—”

Deirdre raised a hand to stop me. “I'm not even sure that Hope exists.”

A chill passed through me. I realized in that moment that something inside of me
needed
Hope to exist.

“Do yourself a favor and stop your search now.” Deirdre looked up at me from underneath her bushy gray eyebrows. “If you don't, believe me, they'll start calling you too, warning you to stop while you're ahead.”

“They? Who
is
this ‘they'?”

Deirdre looked around again. “When nobody at my job believed that I felt like I was in danger for trying to investigate Dayonna's twisted claims, I turned to my church for help.”

Whatever had chilled in me before turned to solid ice.

“Let me guess. You attend Second Zion.”

Her mouth dropped, and her eyes widened farther in fear. “How . . . how did you know?”

“Just a hunch.” I thought about the e-mail that had been sent to Tremont Scott. Somebody in that congregation of six thousand knew something, I was convinced. “Who did you talk to?”

“I'm on the pastor's aid committee, and one of the members had me talk to her husband. I only did so because I knew that particular couple was well acquainted with the foster care system. Well, I talked to her husband, and he said he would help, but three days later he called me, afraid himself, and told me to leave it alone.”

“What did he say?” I did not even have to ask who she was talking about. Elsie Monroe was chairwoman of the pastor's aid committee. What other couple could it be?

“I don't know who her husband talked to or exactly what he found out,” Deirdre continued, “but he said that he wasn't going to press the issue any further and neither should I.”

“Ms. Evans, who told you to come here today?”

“I told you. The man on the phone. The same man who kept harassing me and the same one I think started harassing that helpful couple at my church.”

The man on the phone
. I remembered she'd said that when she first showed up at my door.

“Who is he, this man who keeps harassing everyone?” I tried to imagine what type of person would frighten a dedicated social worker into retirement and a selfless elderly couple into silence.

“I never met him, but he calls himself ‘Jewels.'”

I watched as Deirdre Evans drove away in a battered blue station wagon. A white pickup truck suddenly zipped out of a parking space and followed close behind her. My heart began pounding and my eyes stayed glued to her car until I saw the pickup truck make a left at the next intersection.

“I am just as paranoid as her.” I chuckled at myself as my heart began to settle down. Even still, I studied the street for a few moments more before going back into my home and shutting the door behind me.

Jewels
. The name rang a bell to me.
Turquoise, Topaz, Sapphire, and Diamond
. The last names of Dayonna and her sisters, as told to me by their brother, Dayquon, echoed in my head.

There had to be a connection.

“Who was that, Mom?” Roman emerged from his bedroom, where he'd retreated during the whole of Deirdre's visit.

“It's a long story.”

“Does it have anything to do with Dad?”

I could see a quick glimmer of hope in his eyes.

“No. Nothing at all related to your father.”

The glimmer fizzled away like a waning firework.

“Mom, I need to go online to study for a test I have Monday. Can I please use my computer?”

I didn't believe a word he said, but I was too exhausted to care.

“Go ahead. I have to run an errand. Do not leave this house. Don't even leave your room.” I stared him down.

“I won't,” he mumbled and disappeared back into his sloppy oasis, shutting the door behind him. The lock on his door clicked.

“Whatever,” I sighed, grabbing my car keys. I did not have the energy to sort through Roman's mind. And I believed that by allowing him a temporary respite to use his computer, he would indeed stay put.

I was banking on that belief for the evening.

Today, right now, I was going to get some answers from the Monroes.

 

 

I pulled up to the Monroes' home just as dusk was settling over the city. The waning days of September in Baltimore meant daylight was beginning to slip away earlier, casting shadows and dim light on the Monroes' street. The first thing I noticed as I cut the engine was that all the windows looked securely shut and the shades were drawn. The next thing I noticed was the neighbor across the street blowing cut grass in his small front yard and staring at me. When I got out of my car, he cut off his blower and shouted over at me.

“They gone, ma'am.”

“Excuse me?”

“I said they gone, ma'am. You lookin' for the Monroes, right?”

I waited for a car to pass by and then crossed over to him, hugging my arms. With the setting sun, a slight chill had filled the air, and I wished I'd had enough sense to wear a heavier jacket.

“Yeah, it's getting cold out here.” The man looked to be in his late fifties, maybe early sixties, and had a well-fed stomach and maple brown skin. His head was almost square shaped, and a long mustache that was graying at the ends seemed to balance out his face.

“The name's Everett.” He extended a hand. “Everett Worthy.”

“I'm Sienna. Sienna St. James.” I nodded as he shook my hand with a moist palm.

“Yeah, you one of them workers that be coming in and out of the Monroes' home, right? I seen you here seem like every day this week, huh? Them Monroes always got some agency checking in on them and those foster kids.”

“Yes, the Monroes certainly are a generous and caring couple, opening up their home to children who need shelter.”

“You got that right.” Everett Worthy switched his quieted blower to his other hand. “My wife and I raised five children right under this roof.” He pointed to the neatly trimmed row home that sat atop the small hill of his front yard. “Two boys and three girls. I barely had patience for them, so I know I couldn't take on another's young'un. 'Specially the kind like that girl they got living over there now. All that hollering and screaming and throwing. You shoulda heard her today. I was about to call the police, the way that chile was going off.”

“Wait a minute. Today? You saw their foster child with them today?”

“Yeah. She'd been in that special hospital, but they brought her back home today. The way she was carrying on, I can't help but wonder if it was too soon to bring her home.”

“But none of them are home right now, huh?” I tried to look only half interested. I could tell this neighborhood watchman was itching for more details to share with the next person who came along. I didn't want him to get a whiff of the full story I was trying to piece together.

“Naw. They left a long while ago. The girl was with them, and they had a bunch of suitcases and bags with them.”

I looked back at their house, trying to make sense out of what he was saying.

“Isn't that their car right there?” I pointed to the green LeSabre parked across the street.

“Yup. That is their car. They didn't go in that. That young man, the one they used to foster years ago who caused all them problems way back in the day, from what I understand—the one that was just here yesterday, when you came—he took them all off somewhere.” Everett shook his head and pointed down the street toward Belair Road. “Had a nice car too. Black BMW. And he a church worker, from what I understand. That's why I don't trust them big churches. Taking all the money from the ones that need it and giving it to the ones that don't.”

While Everett continued his rant against churches, I tried to absorb all that had been packed into his observations of the Monroes' apparent hasty departure. Their escort had to have been Tremont Scott, the music director at Second Zion. What kinds of problems had he caused them when they fostered him? I wondered. I started to ask Everett what he knew about him, but another question seemed more obvious.

“Do you know where they were going?” I asked, interrupting the older man's rant.

“Don't know for sure, but when I yelled out to them, Horace said something about spending some time out on the Eastern Shore. Bertha's people live out there.” He turned his blower back on, ready to finish his yard work before the day was completely done.

“I'm sorry.” I waved for him to stop. “Bertha? Who?”

“Horace's first wife.” He looked at me like I should have known what he was talking about. “Horace still stayed close to her family when she left him a widower in his thirties, and Elsie, his new wife, had been Bertha's best friend. That's what I've heard, anyway.” He shrugged.

This time he cut the blower back on, and I knew he had no more intentions of cutting it back off until he was finished with the yard.

It was all the same to me.

I felt like he'd just given me a glimpse of a gold mine of information. Now I just had to find the hidden trapdoor to access it all.

I could not put my finger on it, but in my heart I believed there might be Hope yet.

As I got back into my car, I knew exactly where I was going before the thought—or a plan—fully formed in my mind.