I brought Hope because Denise told me not to leave her with anyone I didn’t trust, and trust had become a very short list.
My boss, Lena, took one look at the baby carrier behind the register and said, “You have exactly thirty seconds before you tell me what on earth happened.”
I told her enough.
She pressed a hand to her chest. “Jodi.”
I swallowed. “I know.”
The bell over the diner door rang around four.
I was pouring coffee for a trucker in booth six, with Hope asleep in the carrier beside the pie case, when I saw him.
Andy was young, maybe twenty-three or twenty-four, but grief made him look older, unfinished. He stood just inside the door, holding a baseball cap in both hands.
His eyes went to Hope first. Then to me.
“Hi, Jodi,” he said.
Every nerve in my body reacted before my mouth did.
“Who’s asking?”
“My name is Andy.”
He looked shattered. Not dangerous. Just shattered.
“I loved your daughter,” he said.
The diner went quiet around me in that strange way busy places do when your whole life tilts.
Lena took the pot from my hand without a word.
I pointed to the back booth. “Sit down.”
He sat like a man reporting for judgment.
I slid into the seat across from him. Hope stirred beside me. “Start talking.”
His eyes filled so fast he had to look down. “She wanted to come home so many times.”
I gripped the edge of the table. “Then why didn’t she?”
“Because of your husband.” He said it without heat, which somehow made it worse. “After she called that first time, she cried for hours. He told her if she came back with me, she’d be throwing her life away. He said if she loved you, she’d stay gone and let you move on.”
I shut my eyes.
Andy continued. “I told her maybe he was bluffing. She said he wasn’t.”
“What happened to my daughter, Andy?”
He broke then. Just one hand over his mouth, shoulders shaking once before he pulled himself back together.
“Hope was born three weeks ago,” he said. “Jennifer had a bleed after delivery. They said they stopped it. They said she was okay. She wasn’t.”
I couldn’t feel my feet.
“Before she…” He swallowed. “Before the end, she told me if anything ever happened, Hope was to come to you. She made me promise.”
Behind me, Hope made a soft, sleepy sound.
I turned and touched her blanket with one finger. When I looked back at Andy, he was watching me with a kind of exhausted gratitude that made my chest ache.
“What was she like?” I asked. “When she was with you?”
His face softened.
“She laughed with her whole face,” he said. “Like she couldn’t help it. She still talked about you, mostly when she was tired. Little things. ‘My mom hummed when she baked.’ ‘My mom could get any stain out.’ ‘My mom always knew when I was lying.’ She missed you all the time.”
