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Authors: Emily Sue Harvey

BOOK: Space
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“She'll be okay,” I reassured him. “She's had enough crap happen that she won't let it happen again.”
And I tried to believe that experience is, sometimes, the best teacher.
With all my heart, I wanted to believe it.
Faith's times with Maddie were her most treasured slices of life.
So when she began to disappear when Maddie was at our house for entire weekends, I truly began to worry. Her absence was so unnerving that, perversely, Dan and I ceased talking about it.
It was as though the air grew thick and black with possibilities too horrific to speak of. So we grew more and more taciturn and tried to enjoy the time with our little third grader. We avoided mentioning Faith's rapid weight loss. She was beginning to look frail.
“Why isn't Mama here?” Maddie asked me one evening as we lay piled up on my bed watching her favorite Disney cartoons. Her blue eyes, so like Faith's, implored me to make it okay.
“She — has a sick friend she's helping.” I hobbled through the half-truth. Faith's host of “sick,” faceless, nameless friends had grown in past months.
The mystery surrounding Faith suffocated me.
“Does she love me?” Maddie asked, not meeting my eyes, plucking at her pajama button.
“Of course, she does,” I insisted, my finger tugging her face up until our gazes met. Hers was moist and inordinately sad.
“Yes,” I repeated fiercely, knowing it to be true. Then I hauled her into my arms, tightly to my heart, fighting back tears. “She loves you very much, precious. No matter what happens, always remember that.”
No matter what happens.
Now
what
, I wondered, made me say that?
Dan answered the phone as I peered, bleary-eyed at the bedside clock.
Three-fifty a.m.
“Yes, this is he.”
I sensed Dan's tensing as he listened to the male voice on the line.
“Was anyone hurt?” he asked in a flat voice.
The voice seemed to go on forever, with Dan replying monosyllabically. When he finally clicked off the connection, he looked at me over his shoulder. “Faith's car has been totaled.”
My heart lurched. “Is Faith — ”
“No, Faith wasn't in it,” he said quickly as he lay back on his pillow, arms thrown back, hands beneath his head. His eyes glimmered in the dim of night. “It was just as I feared would happen,” he said quietly.
Resigned.
“What?” I did not want to know.
“Faith let this guy drive her car. He was drinking. He and his buddy went for a joy drive and completely totaled the Mercedes.”
“Oh God.” I closed my eyes, instantly sick.
Why, Faith, why?
Then another fear hit me. “Was anybody hurt?”
“Nothing life-threatening.” Dan slid his arm around my shoulders and pulled me closer. “But only because they were drunk as skunks. Ahh, honey — this is what I dreaded. We could be sued over this. We could lose everything we have.”
His angst reached out and enveloped me.
“Why were they driving the car?”
“Apparently, Faith gave them the key.”
“When did it happen?”
“Two days ago. That was a state trooper, clarifying some things about the title.”
“So this is why she hasn't come home,” I said. “She's afraid.”
“She's got reason to be.” Dan's voice rang silkily, ominously in the darkness.
And I knew.
This was the beginning of more sorrows.
Will Tollison brought Faith home. She introduced us to the handsome, winsome guy. Tall, blond, tanned and fashionably buffed, he wore designer clothes and had a killer smile revealing perfect teeth that rivaled a celebrity's. Dan held his peace until Faith's new interest departed in his flashy car.
Dan met it head on. “What were those guys doing in your car, Faith?”
“I asked them to take it to Will's apartment and park it,” she calmly replied.
“They told the officer you gave them permission to drive it. Where were you at the time?”
“At a party. At the Sheraton. I only told them to drive it straight to Will's, a few blocks away, and park it,” Faith insisted.
“Why, Faith?” Dan shook his head disbelievingly. “You knew the rules. Nobody else was to drive the car.”
“Dad — I did not tell them they could take it for a drive.”
“When you handed them the keys, you gave them permission to drive it. That's all that's relevant if one of them decides to sue me.”
I wasn't sure of the legal ramifications, but Dan felt certain he was vulnerable and culpable should such a suit materialize. I didn't know if what he said was one hundred percent accurate or if some of it was a little paranoia. Whatever, it had him —
us —
over a barrel at that precise time.
“Faith, you promised me that you would be responsible with this car. As far as I'm concerned, it's over. My helping you get wheels. In the future, you're on your own.”
When he walked from the room, he never revisited his decision.
“Why am I not surprised?” Faith snapped as soon as he was out of earshot. “I had a mixed drink that night and it made me sick. You know I'm not a drinker, Mom. That's why I asked them to drive my car back to Will's. I couldn't tell Dad that. He'd have really busted a gasket.”
True.
“I wish I'd been in the car when it crashed,” she said flatly and tromped up the stairs. “I'd be better off dead.”
I closed my eyes.
Full cycle. Back to suicidal.
Wham
. Her door slammed so hard a wall picture crashed to the floor.
No, more than full cycle. This time, I felt something more menacing in the air.
When Faith learned Dan forbade her use of our other vehicles, she went into an emotional tailspin. I suspect partly it was because she realized all that she'd forfeited by breaking the rules. Too, “no” still did not sit well upon Faith. Dealing with accountability was excruciating to her.
She began to disappear in strange cars with strange people, staying gone for days before slipping back in during wee hours and staying in bed for days on end. Her weight continued to plummet.
When Dan or I protested, she declared, “I'm of age. I can go and do what I want to.”
“You're still living in our house, Faith,” Dan would remind her. “Where are you going? And with whom? We have a right to know.”
“I have a right to my own life, too,” Faith insisted, chin out, defiant. It was like she'd already lost everything. Dan and I had no leverage except to threaten to turn her out.
This became a pulsing, beckoning option in the worst of times.
By now, I'd discovered a hypodermic needle in Faith's room one day.
“They belong to my friend George,” she immediately explained. “He takes B12 shots with them.”
By now, Faith was a seasoned liar.
The explosion came a few weeks later.
Faith had been gone for over two weeks. We had no idea where to look.
Mystery shrouded our daughter. When she wanted to disappear, she simply vanished in strange vehicles. A dark underworld out there swallowed her, leaving not a trace.
“She's my daughter, but I don't know the first thing about her,” Dan said one day.
“Me, either.” And it truly alarmed me that Faith and I had wandered so far from each other.
Dan was like a silent pressure cooker just before the steam begins to hiss. Dark and brooding. “Where is she getting money to survive this long?” he asked.
“I have no idea.” She'd not even bothered to pretend to look for a job.
Dan's cell phone rang.
I stood at the sink, washing dishes and gazing out at the birds doing their springtime nesting in one of our hanging ferns out back. I sighed and thought how relaxed this time was.
Faith was gone for the time being.
“What?” I heard Dan's voice turn wispy, a sure sign of bad news.
“We'll be right there.” He clicked off his phone and looked at me, a stunned look on his face. “It's your mother.” His declaration held both shock and weariness.
“Oh, no,” I moaned. “What — ?”
“She's in the ER. Chest pains.”
At the hospital, we met Priss and Lexie. Mom was ashen but responsive. “Don't worry, honey,” she reached out to take my hand. The oxygen mask fogged with her laborious breathing.
“Don't talk, Mom,” I said gently, fighting back tears. “Just rest. Everything's going to be okay. We're all here.”
Mom's eyes closed as the sedative kicked in.
My sisters and I looked at one another, mirroring each other's fear. How would the Eagle clan fare without Mom, our sunshine? Hand in hand, we walked to the hospital chapel and prayed.

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