Bittersweet Hope (2 page)

The woman didn’t even blink. “I see. When’s the last time you did know where he was?”

Warning sounds blared in my head, thumping so hard it felt like my brain was moving. I tried to think of something to tell her, but rational thought failed me. Besides, if this no-nonsense woman was all of a sudden at our door asking these questions, my hunch was that she already knew the answers. I knew I could be a lot of things, but stupid wasn’t one of them.

“A while.” I told her, holding her gaze. My hands were shaking again, so I crossed my arms to hide them.

She looked past me to Sadie and Sierra, and her face softened a bit as she saw them dressed in jeans and T-shirts that looked every bit as old as they were. The woman sighed.

“My name is Mrs. Anderson, girls. I work for the Department of Child Services.” She paused for a second before motioning toward the police officers. “This is Officer Cane,” she said, pointing to the older man. Her finger flicked toward the younger officer. “And this is Officer Wilder.”

“Hello, girls.” Officer Cane cleared his throat. “We . . . do you have somewhere we could sit down and talk?”

I glanced toward the ratty sofa. “Not really. Why?” Cold sweat covered my face and hands. I hated feeling like this. I wanted to tell them to just let me know where my mother was. I’d picked her up from bars. I’d half carried, half dragged her up from the street when she was coked out of her gorge. Hell, I’d even bailed her out of jail before. I could handle whatever they were about to throw at me.

Officer Cane looked at his partner, but Wilder looked like he was about to hurl. He must be new on the job. Poor schmuck.

The older man met my eyes, his unwavering. “Are you sure we can’t sit down?”

I shook my head. “I really don’t want to, sir. You might as well go ahead and tell us what she’s done.”

Surprise, mixed with a sad understanding, flashed across his face, but he disguised it quickly and took his hat off, twirling it around on his fingers. So I’d found his nervous habit.

I waited, tightening the hold I had on my arms, which were still hugged around each other. I stole a glance back at my sisters, wishing Officer Cane would just get on with it already.

He finally spoke again, after clearing his throat about nineteen times. “Well, girls, I’m afraid we have some bad news. Your mother . . . I’m sorry to have to tell you that she’s dead.”

Chapter Two

My
mind completely blanked. If Sadie hadn’t rushed forward to catch me, my butt would have been flat on the floor, because my knees buckled, refusing to hold my weight. Using the closest wall as leverage, I shook my head, trying to make the words bouncing around in my mind disappear. Dead. Mama. Child services. My breaths came in ragged gasps and any second I was going to hurl.

I looked toward my sisters. Sadie held her hands clasped in front of her chest and Sierra had one of hers jammed in her pocket. She chewed the hell out of her nails on the other hand. The sight of them in pain terrified me and pissed me off at the same time. Sh
arp pangs clawed at my stomach, but I tore my eyes away from them and looked back at the police officer in front of me.

“I’m sorry.” I said, still feeling sort of dazed. “What did you just say?”

Officer Cane took a deep breath. “Your mother is dead. I wish there were some easier way to tell you girls that, but it’s usually better just to come out with it.” He shifted from one foot to the other. Officer Wilder still hadn’t looked at us. I nearly felt sorry for him.

Mrs. Anderson’s eyes moved between me and my sister
s, as if she were deciding what to say to us. She squared her shoulders and stepped forward on the graying carpet. It had been white at one time.

“I want to echo what Office Cane just said,” she told us. “But there really is no easier way to do this.” She looked around our empty apartment and drew herself up straighter. “Do you girls have any relatives nearby? Grandparents, an aunt or uncle?”

“We don’t have anybody.” Sadie said.

“She’s right.” I whispered. “It was always just us and Mama.” Mama. Thinking of her now . . . I closed my eyes as tight
ly as I could and inhaled through my nose.

“What happened to her?” I asked, even though it wasn’t something I particularly wanted to know. My gaze shot to Officer Can
e first, then his partner, before finally settling on Mrs. Anderson.

She tapped her toe on t
he floor and cleared her throat, but she still looked me straight in the eye. I appreciated that.

Pictures fumbled through my mind, of my mother with a needle hanging out of her arm, or run over by a car as she crossed the street high. She used to do that all the time. I’d told her so often that she had to watch before
walking across the road.

Mrs. Anderson glanced at the cops, and Officer Cane nodded. Her eyes settled on
Sierra and Sadie for a moment, then shifted away, towards me.

“She was killed.”

I frowned. “I know. I asked how.” There was no sense in them beating around the bush. With Mama’s history, nothing would really shock me, but maybe they didn’t realize that I’d pretty much been the mother for all three of us since I was in elementary school. Or then again, maybe they did and they were trying to act like real adults should.

Officer Cane took a deep breath, then exhaled. “She was killed by someone else.”

“Like, murdered?” I’d never heard Sierra’s voice so high pitched.

“Yes. Strangled.”

My blood turned to ice, tiny daggers of pain sticking into me from every angle. At least that’s what it felt like. Strangled. My mother. Likely at the hands of a man who had just paid her for sex. Or who didn’t want to pay her for sex, and didn’t care how he got out of it. That probably made more sense.

My knees seemed to turn to jello again, and I closed my eyes, just for a moment. Sadie and Sierra breathed slowly behind me. I knew I had to try and be strong, for them. I set my mouth in a firm line and straightened my shoulders.

“Where was she?” I asked.

Officer Can
e looked me in the eye when he answered. “In the alley, just behind your apartment.”

Sadie cried out. “Oh my God
! So, he could have been in here, he could know where we live! He could have even killed her in here and then taken her out there!”

“He?” Officer Cane’s eyes stretched wide. “You know who might have done this?”

“I—I—I . . .” Sadie stammered over the syllable.

I spoke up. “She means one of Mama’s customers. That’s the ‘he’.” Acid burned in my throat even as I said the words.

“Her customers.” Mrs. Anderson repeated.

I tried to think of an easy way to answer, but my sister beat me to the punch.

“Oh come on. Like you guys don’t know she was a prostitute.”

I gasped and whirled around. “Sierra!”

“What?”

“Okay, girls, that’s enough.” Mrs. Anderson broke in before I had the chance to smack my sister. “You’ll have to come with me now. Gather your belongings and we’ll get going.”

“What belongings?” Sierra asked under her breath.

I elbowed her, which only caused her to stick her own bony arm into my ribcage in return.

“Where are we going?” Sadie asked.

“You’ll be put in a group home for a day, maybe two or three.
Until we can find foster families for you.”

“We don’t need to stay in any home.” I practically spat out. “We can take care of ourselves.” Sweat pooled on my upper lip. My eyes searched Mrs. Anderson’s face. She wasn’t buying it. Her lips were pursed and her arms thrown over each other across her chest. Still, I tried again.

“I’ll be eighteen in like a month. Then I can be their guardian or something. Isn’t that how it works? They just have to have a guardian, and if I’m legal it can be me.” Okay, so my birthday was more than a month away. A little white lie never hurt anybody. Now if only my stupid eyebrow would quit twitching.

Both of my sisters grabbed my hands, their cold, moist palms slippery in mine. Surprisingly, Sierra held on just as tight
ly as Sadie. If I had any strength in me, I hoped that they could feel it. That it could jump straight out of my body and into theirs.

Mrs. Anderson’s lip curled up in disgust as she looked around the room she was standing in. The door to the kitchen dangled from the top hinge, and the walls were streaked brown from the leaks that came out of the ceiling sometimes. Mrs. Golden sure was a tip top landlady.

“I’m afraid it’s not so easy, Audrey. You can apply for guardianship of your younger sisters once you turn eighteen, but it will have to be approved by the courts. It’s quite a lengthy process.” She looked at her clipboard. “And your birthday is four months away, not one. When you do legally turn into an adult, you’ll be released.” She nodded to Sadie and Sierra. “They’ll have to stay.”

Air whooshed out of my lungs. This could not be happening. Why did all the shitty stuff always happen to us? We hadn’t done anything to deserve this. It wasn’t our fault we’d been born to a woman who couldn’t care less about being responsible, much less being an actual mother. She had ruined our lives when she was alive and now she was going to ruin them after she was dead.
The walls started to close in on me, and my heart nearly pounded straight through my chest.

“Please don’t do this.” I told Mrs. Anderson. “We’re all we have.” Begging was my last option. Even though it wasn’t going to work, either. It hadn’t worked with Mrs. Golden, so I knew it wouldn’t work with this woman. It made me feel sort of sick, too. I hated begging people, and I’d done
it more in the last hour than I had in my whole life.

I thought I saw Mrs. Anderson’s eyes watering, but she looked away from me.
I must have been seeing things, anyway. “I’m sorry,” she said, “there’s nothing I can do.”

“This is bullshit!”
Sadie yelled. We all looked in her direction. She walked over to the window and stared outside at the lush green trees surrounding the apartment complex. Those trees were the only pretty things we ever had to look at. I’d taken comfort in them plenty of times. After a minute, she kicked the wall and sank down to her knees, holding her head in her hands. Sierra went to her, rubbing a thin hand over Sierra’s back.

I stared at my sisters, the last few minutes replaying in my head. It was then that it dawned on me—what Mrs. Anderson had said in the beginning.

“Wait. Did you say we would be going to foster
homes
soon?” I stressed the word homes. “As in plural? As in, separated?”

Both Sadie and Sierra gasped. Like me, they must not have picked up on that little detail.

Mrs. Anderson looked at me. “Yes.”

The police officers behind her shuffled their feet as they stared at the ceiling.

I felt like a knife had gone straight through my chest. The pain seared hot and deep throughout my body. Foster care would be bad enough, but different houses?

“But . . . why?” My eyes burned for about the billionth time.

Mrs. Anderson shook her head. “There aren’t many foster families who are willing to take on three teenaged girls. Zero, actually. It is hard enough to find a home for a single child, let alone a set.”

“Family?” Sadie asked. Her voice sounded tiny. “We’re going to be outsiders in someone else’s family?” She swapped from twisting her right hand to her left.

“It won’t be like that. They’ll take you in and feed you and put a roof over your heads until you find someone to adopt you.” She looked at me. “Or in your case, Audrey, until your birthday.”

Until my birthday. When I’d be on my own. With no money and no hope. I cursed my mother again and immediately regretted it, wars of emotions waging inside me.

“Yeah, they’ll feed us with the check they get from the state. They’ll probably give us crap for food and keep the money for themselves.” Sierra spoke up from the corner, her face a twisted mask of resentment. Usually I would correct my sister and tell her not to be rude. Right now I didn’t care.

“You’re thinking of
things you’ve heard, which is simply not true.” Mrs. Anderson said through clenched teeth. “Now, get your things.”

“We don’t have things.” I stared.
I didn’t look at anything in particular. My whole body felt numb. Even my eyes. The room seemed to dissolve into a dozen tiny blurs, and I couldn’t seem to focus on any one particular thing or person.

She sighed. “You don’t have any other clothes?”

“This is pretty much it.”

“Toothbrushes?”

Sierra glanced back toward the bathroom, cringing. “Not anything we’d really be excited to keep.”

“Very well. Just leave them.” Mrs. Anderson turned toward the door.

“Audrey?” Sadie asked from behind me. I looked back at my sisters, their faces coming into focus a little bit at a time. Maybe we should just run, just take off out the door. I doubted we’d get very far, but we could try.

It wouldn’t be worth it, though. I might give them false hope, and we would just get dragged back to whatever place Mrs. Anderson was taking us.
I’d learned the hard way that there just wasn’t any good in trying to run from the truth. Life dealt you a blow, and you got on with it. Moved to the next thing you had to do and hoped like hell it would be better someday. A day that couldn’t come quickly enough. Or maybe even ever.

“Everything will be okay, you guys. I’ll fix this. We’ll have to do it for a little while, then I’ll get you out, I swear.” Looking at their faces, one streaked with angry tears, the other hardened against the whole world, I knew I would do anything necessary to be able to keep my promise. “I’ll get us back together if it’s the last thing I do.”

I gazed around the barren apartment one last time, trying to figure out if any of us would miss it. Being apart from my sisters would be torture, but being away from this place wouldn’t be bad at all. If the three of us could only go to one house together I might even welcome foster care with open arms. Maybe.

Mama’s face flashed before me when my eyes shot into the bedroom. I went in and got the photograph of me and my sisters. Then I went back and stood in front of them. “Let’s go, you guys.”

I fell into step behind Mrs. Anderson and the two policemen and led Sadie and Sierra out the door.