Losing Hope

car.”
    She can feel how much this hurts me to talk about. She pulls one of her hands out of the sleeve of her shirt and places it in mine.
    “I was taken to the station and questioned for hours. They wanted to know if I knew the license plate number, what kind of car took you, what the person looked like, what they said to you. Sky, I didn’t know anything . I couldn’t even remember the color of the car. All I could tell them was exactly what you were wearing, because you were the only thing I could picture in my head. Your dad was furious with me. I could hear him yelling in the hallway of the station that if I had just told someone right when it happened, they would have been able to find you. He blamed me. When a police officer blames you for losing his daughter, you tend to believe he knows what he’s talking about. Les heard him yelling, too, so she thought it was all my fault. For days, she wouldn’t even talk to me. Both of us were trying to understand what had happened. For almost six years we lived in this perfect world where adults are always right and bad things don’t happen to good people. Then, in the span of a minute, you were taken and everything we thought we knew turned out to be this false image of life that our parents had built for us. We realized that day that even adults do horrible things. Children disappear. Best friends get taken from you and you have no idea if they’re even alive anymore.
    “We watched the news constantly, waiting for reports. For weeks they would show your picture on TV, asking for leads. The most recent picture they had of you was from right before your mother died, when you were only three. I remember that pissing me off, wondering how almost two years could have gone by without someone having taken a more recent picture. They would show pictures of your house and would sometimes show our house, too. Every now and then, they would mention the boy next door who saw it happen, but couldn’t remember any details. I remember one night . . . the last night my mother allowed us to watch the coverage on TV . . . one of the reporters showed a panned-out image of both our houses. They mentioned the only witness, but referred to me as ‘ The boy who lost Hope. ’ It infuriated my mother so bad; she ran outside and began screaming at the reporters, yelling at them to leave us alone. To leave me alone. My dad had to drag her back inside the house.
    “My parents did their best to try to make our life as normal as possible. After a couple of months, the reporters stopped showing up. The endless trips to the police station for more questioning finally stopped. Things began to slowly return to normal for everyone in the neighborhood. Everyone but Les and me. It was like all of our hope was taken right along with our Hope.”
    She sighs when I’ve finished and she’s quiet for a while. “I’ve spent so many years hating my father for giving up on me,” she says. “I can’t believe she just took me from him. How could she do that? How could anyone do that?”
    “I don’t know, babe.”
    She sits up in the chair and looks me in the eyes. “I need to see the house,” she says. “I want more memories, but I don’t have any and right now it’s hard. I can barely remember anything, much less him. I just want to drive by. I need to see it.”
    “Right now?”
    “Yes. I want to go before it gets dark.”

Chapter Forty-two
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    I should never have let her come here. As soon as we pulled up in front of the house, I could tell just looking at it wouldn’t be enough for her. Sure enough, she got out of the car and demanded to see the inside of it. I tried to talk her out of it, but I can only do so much.
    I’m standing outside her window, waiting. I don’t want her to be in there right now, but I could clearly see that she’s not having it any other way. I lean against the house and hope she hurries the hell up. It doesn’t look like any of the neighbors are home, but that doesn’t mean her father isn’t going to drive up any second now.
    I look down at the ground beneath my feet, then glance behind me at the house. This is the exact spot she was standing in when I walked away from her thirteen years ago. I close my eyes and rest my head against the house. I never expected I’d ever be back here with her again.
    My eyes flash open and I stand up straight the second I hear the crash come from inside her bedroom, followed by screaming. I don’t give