This is Hope. She’s Jennifer’s daughter. She’s mine too.
Jen always said that if anything ever happened to her, Hope should be with you. She kept this jacket all these years. She said it was the last piece of home she never gave up.
I’m sorry.
There are things you don’t know. Things Paul kept from you.
I’ll come back and explain everything.
Please take care of Hope.
— Andy”
My hands began to tremble.
“No,” I whispered. “No, Jen. No.”
After five years, I had let go of the hope that my daughter would ever return. Now Hope blinked up at me.
I pressed the note to my lips, then forced myself to move. I called the pediatric clinic and said I was bringing in a baby left in my care.
Then I called Paul.
He answered with, “What now, Jodi?”
“Get over here.”
“Jodi, I have work. I have a life.”
“And I have your granddaughter on my kitchen table.”
“What?” he asked.
“Come now, Paul.”
He arrived twenty minutes later. Amber stayed in the car.
Paul stepped into my kitchen, annoyed and complaining. Then he saw the jacket, and all the color drained from his face.
He stopped short. “Where did you get that?”
I picked up Hope before answering. “That was my question.”
His eyes landed on the note in my hand and slid away.
“You knew more than you let on, Paul.”
“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.
By two, I was back at the diner because mortgage payments don’t care about tragedy.
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.
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