Unburying Hope (38 page)

Celeste heard the ‘Mommy’ and centered her inner strength into her
face, praying that her momentary flinch was imperceptible.

She walked to her car and climbed into the driver’s seat.
 
Damn it, time to get into the pickup
line at school.

She couldn’t send Eddie to jail if he was involved as a dealer, which
her heart told her he could not possibly be.
 
And she would not, she was surprised to clarify to herself,
deprive Rosalinda of her father’s presence as she grew up.

No.

Here on Maui, they had a lovely home, he had his gardening, and
together they had moments of completeness that had eluded them separately for
all of their lives.

It was twenty minutes away from school pickup time and she hadn’t even
been able to stop back home to have lunch.
 
Maybe Eddie was asleep, maybe she’d find him when she and
Rosalinda walked in the door.
 
She’d tell Rosalinda to tiptoe and put her backpack into her own room,
then they’d go out again to get school supplies.
 
They’d let Eddie sleep, do their errand and get home in time
to make a quiet dinner of fried chicken and caesar salad.
 
She had just bought a small can of
sardines, a mortar and pestle and it would be soothing to grind the salty fish
into paste for the salad dressing.

Eddie could wake up and find a happy little girl, a warm dinner, her
offer to help him with the store.
 
And the maybe not-so-crazy advice to buy a gun.

Chapter
Forty

As she pulled into the school driveway
eighteen minutes late, she saw Rosalinda’s head lowered, tears stumbling out of
her closed eyes.
 
A slim, red
headed teacher held her in a tight side-to-side embrace, and jostled Rosalinda
when she spotted Celeste in the car.
 
“Don’t worry,” the teacher soothed, “Your momma’s here now, look, look.”

Celeste smiled wanly, lowering her front
passenger window all the way.

But she saw no comfort in Rosalinda’s face or
her stance.
 
Instead, the little
girl broke down in tears.
 
Celeste
turned the car engine off and jumped out her own car door, kneeling in front of
a now quietly sobbing Rosalinda.
 
“What?
 
I’m here!”
 
She looked at the teacher.
 
“Is she okay?
 
Is she sick?”

“No,” the teacher gently rubbed Rosalinda’s
shoulders.
 
“Some kids feel really
abandoned if their parents are late.
 
But Rosalinda, here, shouldn’t feel like that… She’s here with Momma
now.”

“I’m not that late, honey,” Celeste said
defensively.

“I’ve had students who get catatonic if their
parents are five minutes late,” the teacher whispered.
 
“It’s usually the ones who are adopted,
they get scared to their core if their ride doesn’t show up on time.
 
Some kids think their parent has
forgotten them.”

Celeste rubbed Rosalinda’s hands, cupped them
in her own and said, “Sweetie, open your eyes.”

Dark eyes rimmed with tears opened from under
heavy lids.

“See me?
 
I’m here.”
 
A part of her
heart recognized that inconsolable look in Rosalinda’s eyes.
 
“I’m here and you are here and we are
going home.
 
Okay?”

Rosalinda nodded, her eyes staying open.

“And we’ll make some dinner, maybe some coconut
crusted chicken strips like we saw at that diner the first night we got here to
Maui.”

Rosalinda’s eyes brightened.

“Mommas always know how to make things
better,” the teacher leaned forward herself, winking at Celeste, who cringed a
bit, then pretended it was pain as she pulled herself to standing.
 
She walked Rosalinda to the car, opened
the door and helped her sit and then snapped her seatbelt into place herself
instead of following the school rule of having the teacher do it.
 
She walked around the car and sat in
the drivers seat, turned the car engine on and drove slowly out of the school circle.
 
She felt a small pressure on her right
shoulder and she looked to see Rosalinda’s wavy haired head leaning against
her, seeking comfort in a quiet way.

Keeping Rosalinda from worrying about her
dad’s absence was easier than Celeste had expected.
 
Any apprehension evaporated when Celeste told her that her
father sometimes was gone for a couple of days, working.
 

It stung less to tell Rosalinda this lie than
it did to tell the cops.
 
Because
Rosalinda took her at her word.
 
Lying to a child wouldn’t ordinarily bother her because they’d always
seemed so wily and relentlessly true to their own inexplicable, immature
agenda.
 
But Rosalinda was
different.
 
She had a heart and
depth, she considered her impact before she asked for anything.
 

So Celeste said the words, ‘He’s working
straight through for a couple of days’, and Rosalinda shrugged her shoulders, a
momentary sadness swept away by a delighted rush in describing her school’s
new, ridiculously elaborate play structure, how she’d wall climbed six feet
high, toes digging against little plastic footholds nailed into the wall, then she’d
rappelled down the other side, climbed up a ladder, slid down a long curvy
slide that reminded her of a waterslide she’d once been on with her mother when
she could still fit in her mother’s lap.

They made a quiet dinner, coating the cut up
parts of two chicken breasts in buttermilk, dredging them in coconut shavings,
then frying them lightly, making sweet potato fries from sweet potatoes grown
in a barrel in the garden after washing the dirt off them in the kitchen sink.
 
Rosalinda unexpectedly loved the crispy
sweetness of the orange fries offset by the sea salt she’d sprinkled liberally
over the pan.
 
But she turned up
her nose at the three-inch long, spiny anchovies from the fish market that
Celeste ground into mush in the pestle, and shook her head when a forkful of
the resultant Caesar salad was offered to her.

 
Rosalinda ate heartily, talking the whole time.
 
New friends, new teachers and the
happiness of being able to stay in the bustling crowd of kids herded to the car
pickup area at the end of the school day.

Celeste really wanted a cocktail but decided
to go to bed when Rosalinda did instead, on the now more probable chance that
she’d be alone to drive Rosalinda to school the next day.
 

As she lay in bed, the house quiet, Rosalinda
happily sleeping down the hall, her little clothes laid out for her next school
day, Celeste thought of her own mother and how she wiped the worry or
loneliness off her face whenever Celeste got her attention in their small
bedroom on school nights.
 

She shook her head in confusion, then
amazement at the strangeness of life.
 
Here she was, 4,000 miles away from the room in the boarding house she’d
grown up in, wondering if worry and loneliness are as easy to wash away when
the child is not your own.
 

Sleep came when she let go of thoughts of
Eddie at the dive shop, instead imagining him in the ocean, coaching her to
stand up on a rented surfboard, telling her to place her feet parallel, hunker
down to a half stand, then laughing as she toppled into the salty ocean
waves.
 
The joy she felt in this
daydream relaxed her, letting her slip softly into real dreams of waves of
warmth that she held some hope would be part of their future.

Chapter
Forty-One

“Don’t tell me you’re coming home to me,
Missy, because I’ve sold the old homestead.”
 
Frank’s face showed surprise and anger.

“You’re still mad?” Celeste asked into her
laptop camera.

“You can’t just Skype whenever you
please.”
 
Frank moved off-screen
and Celeste could see piles of moving boxes.

“You’re really leaving Detroit?”

“Yup.
 
Quit the job.
 
The office is
closing anyway.
 
Announcement came
down.
 
Those pay-as-you-go phones
finally did us in.”

Shutting down the office meant both a massive
cultural change that awed her, and a personal change that panicked her.
 
It was bad enough when there was no bus
to get her to work.
 
But now there
was no job to return to.
 
Somehow,
losing this connection hurt more than leaving her apartment.

“I need your help,” Celeste said.

“Of course you do,” Frank spat.

“Hey, you don’t have to be rude.”

“Really?
 
I’m rude?
 
You ditched
me.”
 
He came back to the screen,
glowering.
 
“What’s wrong,
boyfriend leave you?
 
I can’t come
over there and be with you, you pulled yourself thousands of miles away.
 
You’re on your own,” his voice had
twinges of regret in the swell of anger.

“No, he didn’t leave.”

“Then what?
 
I’m moving tomorrow.”

“So fast.”

“I’m onward ho, Missy.”

“Well, Eddie’s got a daughter.”

“Say what?”
 
His face came close to the screen.
 
“You?
 
Please
tell me you’re not the wicked stepmother.”

“Her mom died.”

Frank’s
face fell but he didn’t speak.
“And her grandmother raised her.”

“Why didn’t Eddie?”

“He didn’t know about her.
 
The mom got addicted to Meth and
heroin.”

“Sounds like it runs in the family.”

“I don’t need to hear this bullshit again,”
Celeste said, shaking her head.

“Hey, you called me,” Frank said, pointing his
finger at her through the screen.

They sat, glaring at each other for a few
seconds, then Celeste continued.
 
“And the Grandma’s now dying.
 
She’s got cancer and she’s alone in Detroit.”

“You met his mother?”

“No.”

“No?”

“I saw her from the taxi before we left for
the airport.”

“So you want me to bring the daughter to
you?
 
I don’t transport children,
it’s not in my skill set,” he said facetiously.

“She’s here already.”

“You’ve got a kid hanging around?” Frank asked
with smirk.

“Yes.”

“Really?”

“Frank, stop it.
 
I need help.
 
Her Grandma has custody papers, she said.
 
She’s signed them and put them through the court.
 
She took custody when Eddie was in
Afghanistan.
 
We need to get the
forms that put Eddie in charge of her again.”

“So that’s why he re-upped so many times,”
Frank sneered.

“Don’t be a jerk.
 
I’m only asking you because,” Celeste stumbled on her words,
“because…”

“You have no other friends.”

His words hit her like a full force slap.
 
She gasped and went silent, looking
away from the screen.

“You left me.”

She looked back at him, her lips pursed with
sorrow.
 
“I know I did.”

“And you never called.”

“I know.”

“Why?”

“I love him.”

“I know that.
 
But he’s an addict.”

“I don’t know.
 
He’s fighting it so hard, if he is.”

“And now he’s dumped his
kid on you?”

There weren’t words for her
confusion because, no, Eddie had not dumped Rosalinda on her.
 
Or had he?
 
She was on Skype with Frank because Eddie was not around to
help stabilize the legal custody of his own daughter.

“So you want what?”

“I need the custody papers
from her Grandma.”

“Her Grandma?
 
Not my boyfriend’s mother?
 
What, have you gone soft on her?”

Celeste bit her lip.
 
“Yes,” she blurted out, “she’s an okay
kid.”

“You HATE kids,” he said
vehemently.

“I hate MOST kids.
 
But,” Celeste said thoughtfully, “this one
is not so bad.”

Frank leaned back,
threading his fingers together, hands behind his head.
 
“Well, this IS intriguing.”

Celeste waved him off.
 
“I just need you to go to
Hamtramck.
 
Today.”