I wanted more. I wanted to slide over on the couch, take the tea from her hands and pull her into my arms. She looked too alone sitting over there, clutching her teacup and studying the steam. I didn’t move. Hope was lost in memory, and I had the odd sensation that if I touched her she’d disappear in a puff of smoke.
“I don’t really drink,” she went on. “I usually avoid being around people who are drinking. I can’t—I know it was a long time ago, but I can’t handle it.”
“When was the last time you saw your mother?”
“I was eight. They’d left me. Again. Five days, that time. Uncle Edgar stopped by. He was in town on business. I wouldn’t have opened the door—I knew better—but I remembered he was Momma’s brother. And I was hungry. The can opener broke, and I couldn’t make any soup.”
I was reeling. So much in so few words. She’d been left alone as a child. She’d been hungry. I cleared my throat. “They left you alone?”
Hope’s haunted eyes lifted to mine. “I knew how to make soup and peanut butter and jelly. I taught myself how to make grilled cheese, but once I left the dishtowel too close to the stove. They were home that time. I got a whoopin’ and locked in my room, but at least I didn’t burn the place down.”
I didn’t want to ask what a whoopin’ entailed to parents who didn’t mind leaving their eight-year-old alone for almost a week. I remembered what Hope had said.
“Edgar saved you.”
Chapter Thirty
Griffen
He’d visited before. Once or twice. They always knew he was coming and cleaned the place up. Stayed sober.” She considered. “More sober. I don’t think I remember ever seeing either of them completely sober. He gave them money. I think it was for me. For food and clothes.”
“But they spent it on alcohol?”
“Liquor, drugs. Mostly drugs. Rarely food.”
“And they left you? Where did they go?” Stupid questions, but I didn’t know what to say. This was so far outside my realm of experience, and the idea of Hope abandoned, neglected, burned deep inside.
I remembered what she looked like the first time Edgar had brought her to Heartstone Manor. So thin and frail a strong wind could have blown her down. I hadn’t paid that much attention. I’d been a fourteen-year-old boy. I’d asked my father if she’d been sick and he told me it wasn’t my business, that she’d be fine. And she had been.
In answer to my question, Hope shrugged a shoulder and took another sip of her tea. “I have no idea where they went. Somewhere. They came home wasted with a supply of drugs, so I don’t know. I never knew what they did to earn the money they used to buy the stuff. I think—there was a man—he came to the apartment sometimes. He—he touched my mother—even that young, I knew a stranger shouldn’t touch her like that, but she didn’t say no and my father was always—” Another shrug.
“Your father was…?”
“Useless,” she finished. “My father was useless. My mother was always some degree of wasted on whatever she could get her hands on, but still, she was the one who made the decisions. When the man came over, she was the one who talked. He liked me. She always told him, ‘Not yet.’”
Everything in me recoiled from Hope’s words. Her mother. How could a mother—? My own mother had run off with her lover and abandoned Ford and me, but that was nothing like this. She may not have loved us, but she knew we’d be safe and taken care of.
Hope’s mother had half-starved her own child, neglected her, and planned to pimp her out to get money for drugs. Fucking hell.
I didn’t know how a human being could do that to any child, but when I tried to place Hope in that scene, my brain wouldn’t do it. She’d been so sweet. Kind and gentle. Curious and funny. There was a reason we’d been friends despite the difference in our ages.
Looking back, I could see that she’d been so much older than her years. Knowing her past, so much made sense. Her loyalty to Edgar. Her obedience. The virginity she’d only given up the day before. Oh, God. Had they—
“That man—did he ever—?” I couldn’t bring myself to say the words. Couldn’t force her to hear them.
A flash of a glance at me, her eyes shamed. Tortured. Hope shook her head. “He, uh, touched me, but not like that. I swear, Griffen, not like that. Just his hand on my face. My knee once. It felt like things crawling on me. He was so creepy and gross. He didn’t smell like smoke and vomit like my mother and father, but that just made him scarier. At least with them, I knew they’d pass out eventually. I knew when he came for me, he wouldn’t pass out. I didn’t fully understand what he wanted, but I knew he’d get it. It was just a matter of time.”