He wrote back immediately:
Of course. I can start tonight
She might not have realized that he had already followed her home plenty of times. He knew the route well. But now that she had authorized it he could be a little more public about it. He thought he would honk as she turned into her parking ramp at the Three Diamonds, or be sure she saw him at every public event.
And that’s when their relationship really took off. She trusted him. He followed her home, honking each time so she knew she was safe. She emailed the list of events and he went to every one. She told him she couldn’t talk to him at these but that justbeing there made her feel safe and protected, so he clung to that. And they fell even more deeply, madly in love, culminating with the pregnancy. She told him that the very first person she shared the good news with was her sister, Hope. Steve had read a magazine article about Faith when she first moved back to Detroit and he knew that she had two sisters: Charity, the one who died very young, and Hope, the one she was close to now.
PART TWOHOPE
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Hope
There were three of us. Hope, Faith, and Charity, born in that order. Yes, we knew the well-known phrase went a different way—“Faith, Hope, and Charity”—but Mom always said she didn’t realize she’d have three girls. If she had, she claimed, she would have put them in the proper sequence.
Dad wanted boys, and said so in front of us.
“If I had that little guy I’d take him hunting with me this weekend,” I recall him grunting at dinner. Faith and I looked down at our plates. Neither one of us wanted to be the tomboy who offered to go.
Dad worked as a manager at a bank and wore a suit during the day but on weekends he would change into camouflage gear and go to the shooting range or pheasant hunting while always eagerly awaiting deer-hunting season. We had three mounted deer heads in our house, and Faith and I secretly gave them names and made up stories about their lives, always with cheerful endings where they got away from the hunters and lived happily ever after, munching on berries and sleeping in the forest.
Mom volunteered at church and dragged us girls there with her every Sunday. Somehow Dad was exempt from this duty, which caused confusion for us as kids, and resentment as we got older. I remember Mom making up excuses for other parishioners: “Pete is out of town” or “Pete is not feeling well.” Eventually people stopped asking.
I don’t recall a time when Dad wasn’t domineering toward the rest of us in some way, but it got way worse after the tragedy. He never hit us but it was always a threat, simmering just below the things he did do. I can picture his balled-up fists and red face, sweat popping on his lower lip when he was angry. Lots of things set him off. Dad was a neat freak. All the socks in his drawer were rolled carefully and laid out in rows, every tie hung in its own slot on the rack in his closet. He didn’t leave a toothbrush or a shaver out on the counter in the bathroom; each had its own spot hidden from view. He liked the shower to be wiped down and spotless after anyone used it. The kitchen had to be perfectly clean almost immediately after cooking. Mom’s anxieties became our anxieties and we all knew the punishments: him screaming or throwing dirty dishes on the floor and making us clean them up, or what turned into Dad’s favorite form of retribution for me and Faith, forcing us to go to the “disobey box” to pick out some clothes.
Dad knew that Faith and I both liked clothing and makeup. He also thought everything we wanted, from dresses and tights as small girls to crop tops and leggings as teenagers, was expensive and not needed. So he cooked up the “disobey box” and filled a cardboard container with items he purchased at Goodwill. I don’t think he even looked at the sizes. Or maybe he did and chose them to be deliberately wrong. Regardless, they were all way too small or much too large, some were men’s shirts andsweatshirts, and the items that were women’s were hopelessly outdated colors and patterns for stylish girls. Depending on the length of our punishment, we would have to wear things from the disobey box to school for anywhere from a day to weeks. It was torture. Truly, I sometimes wondered if I would rather just be hit. You can’t imagine the feeling of walking the halls of your middle or high school in clothes that looked like they belonged to your grandma or even grandpa. The shoes were too big and Faith and I would have to put on multiple pairs of socks to make it even possible to walk. Thinking back on the girls pointing and snickering and the boys staring still brings hot shame to my face. Even teachers would do a double take.
“Wear these or wear nothing at all,” Dad would say. Mom’s eyes would get teary as she watched us drag ourselves to the disobey box but she never stopped it from happening.
As we got older Faith and I became craftier about clothing. We found a spot at a nearby park where we hid clothes from our own drawers in a plastic bag behind several bushes. The park was on the way to school. If we had to take things from the disobey box, we would leave early for school, claiming a club meeting or that we wanted to go to the library to study for a test, then we’d run to the park and be on the lookout for each other as we changed clothes behind the bushes. After school we’d do the reverse and make our way home. The whole time we’d whisper to each other, “Just get through it. Someday we’ll be rich on our own and buy anything we want.”
In high school we both found jobs at the mall—Faith at Orange Julius and me at a hip thrift store called Ragworks. Because I had a small discount, we spent hours combing the racks at Ragworks, and we would buy clothes that we loved for once. In the backs of our minds was the thought that Dad might takethese away, so we kept most of them hidden in boxes we labeled “Yearbooks” or “Art Projects” in our closets. Dad never knew. Mom did, though. My senior year and Faith’s sophomore year, Mom pulled us both into our shared bedroom and sat us on Faith’s bed, giving us a stern look.
“Girls, I was cleaning the closet and found some boxes I didn’t know you had in there. I wanted to see your old art projects and yearbooks so I opened them. Where did all of those clothes come from?”
I think she thought we had stolen them, so when we told her about how we were afraid of Dad finding out but had purchased them at Ragworks, relief flooded her face. She was quiet for a while but then said, “Keep them hidden. You can take them to college.”
I do have to give Dad credit for one thing, though: I don’t think Faith would have become the meteorologist that she was without him. Dad had a fascination for weather, and I think Faith saw it as the one way to connect with him. I still remember her coming home from fifth grade with a rain gauge they made in science, and Dad was excited to set it up in the backyard with her. The two of them were outside for a long time finding the perfect spot. A thunderstorm was expected that night, and at dinner they both talked about how they couldn’t wait to see how much rain filled the tube.
I thought it was kind of stupid. I didn’t care what quantity of rain our little suburb got, and I had zero interest in the weather, but I could see Faith beaming as Dad promised they would both get up early to check the gauge.
From that point forward Faith and Dad were the weather geeks. They watched Channel 9, Dad’s favorite, where Dad liked Jack, the meteorologist who had been on the station forever.Faith and Dad got thermometers and wind gauges, and Faith started checking books out of the library describing thunderstorms, hurricanes, and tornadoes. If a storm was coming in, Dad and Faith would set up camping chairs in the backyard and watch it. Was I envious that Faith was growing closer to Dad? Not really. Being around him for any length of time made me uneasy, so I wasn’t looking for ways to get tighter with him. But Faith was clearly happy about this burgeoning part of their relationship.
In the back of my mind I also couldn’t help but wonder if it was her way of making up for what happened to Charity.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Kelly
June 3
Kelly declined the free umbrella and the chance to talk with a reporter about Faith after the vigil, and she walked slowly to her car, sitting in the parking lot for a long time, staring out the window as she tried to make sense of her feelings. A squirrel kept running up and down a tree, and she watched it as though in a hypnotic state.
She hadn’t been planning to attend the vigil at first. Her anger was still so searing toward Faith. But then she thought,Faith isdead.Show a little respect.Plus, Kelly couldn’t be sure Faith had actually orchestrated the robbery of the jewels. It was the only thing that made sense logically, but still, she couldn’t be 100 percent certain.
Joel refused to accompany her, saying she was nuts for even thinking of attending. Things between them had not been great since the night she discovered that the jewelry was stolen and accused him of doing it. They were coexisting as partners but it was a little stilted. Their hellos and goodbyes to each other had become a peck on the cheek, and he stopped putting his hand onher buttocks the way he used to. He was taking long walks and bike rides on his own.
The firm footing of their relationship seemed like it was eroding, and she bounced between sad, lonely, and angry. Her mother’s and grandmother’s jewelry wasgone,a heartbreak in her life, and yet Joel seemed fixated on the fact that she had accused him of doing it, saying again that he was shocked by her lack of trust in him. He was also irate at Faith and said more than once that he would like to show Detroit’s favorite meteorologist a little something-something for what she did to them. Kelly didn’t know what exactly that meant.
