“Don’t do this.”
“Did you know that she was alive? That she left to live her life? That she left to be with someone she loved?”
“Jodi…”
“Did you know, Paul?”
Hope stirred. I bounced her against my shoulder.
Paul rubbed his jaw. “She called me once.”
For a second, I couldn’t speak.
“She what?!”
He looked angry now, which meant he was cornered. “A few months after she left. She said she was with Andy. She said she was fine.”
“And you let me believe she was dead. You told me to mourn my child because she wasn’t coming back.”
“She made a choice, Jodi. Don’t punish me for her decision.”
Hope let out a thin cry, and somehow that made everything worse. I swayed with her automatically, rubbing slow circles over her back.
“You told me for five years that we had no answers.”
“I told her if she came home, she came home alone,” he snapped. “She was sixteen, almost seventeen. She didn’t know what she was doing. She wanted to throw her life away for a college dropout with no future. What was I supposed to do? Encourage it?”
“No,” I said. “You’d rather be right than have her home, even if it cost us our daughter.”
Amber appeared in the doorway. “Paul…”
I didn’t even look at her. “You don’t get a word in here.”
Paul stared at Hope like she might somehow save him.
Instead, I grabbed the diaper bag and my keys.
“I’m taking Hope to the clinic,” I said. “And when I come back, you need to be gone. I called you here to see if you had any shame.”
“Jodi…”
“I mean it. If you’re still here, I’ll tell the police you withheld contact from a missing child’s mother.”
That got him and Amber moving.
At the clinic, Dr. Evans checked Hope over and said she looked healthy, just a little underweight. She asked careful questions. I gave careful answers. I showed her the note, the supplies, and the jacket.
She asked if I had any family support.
I almost laughed.
“I have coffee and my work colleagues,” I said.
She smiled sadly. “Sometimes that’s how it starts.”
By noon, I had temporary emergency paperwork from a social worker named Denise and three missed calls from Paul that I deleted without listening.
