Chapter 35 #2
She slides off her stool, retrieves the envelope, then takes her seat again before holding it up for them to see.
“I’m supposed to be sending this to our son.” She points to the address. “He’s also Robert. Junior. It’s papers to give him
power of attorney over our affairs, to take the control away from his dad. He’s insisting we sell our house here. He wants
to move us to a memory care facility near where he lives in Virginia, which is where we’re from.” She stops, swallows.
“He and his family came to visit this past weekend for some family time. Or I thought that’s what they were coming for.
But it was a ruse. He was really here to give me these papers to sign.
” She shakes her head. “He made me promise that I’d sign them and mail them back so he could”—she holds up her hands and makes air quotes—“get things moving.”
Sylvie looks down and runs her hands along the envelope, and as she does, Hope sees a single tear hit the manila surface,
then sink into the paper, leaving behind a dark circle. Soon more tears join it. No one says a word as Sylvie weeps silently.
After a while she speaks, but she doesn’t look up. “We waited our whole lives for this. To be here, in this place, full-time
and not just for a vacation. To have time for just the two of us, without work or family or anything to get in our way. And
now . . . our son wants to take it away. And maybe it’s the right thing to do—I know it might be—but that doesn’t mean it
feels right. Or good.”
“Why is he making you sell your house?” Morrow, who has been very quiet ever since she shared about her daughter, speaks up.
“He’s afraid I can’t handle Robert by myself. He says I need help, and I don’t really have any here. No family, and the friends
we’ve made are nice, but they’re more like acquaintances.” Sylvie presses her mouth in a thin line and lowers her eyebrows.
“Keep in mind he’s not volunteering to help. He’s saying there will be people who can help at the place where he’d put us.”
That’s exactly what it feels like, Sylvie thinks. Like he’s shelving us, like a child who has outgrown his toys, so he puts them away. But she does not say that to these women. What she’s said just now is already more than she’s said to anyone. Yet it feels
natural to unburden herself, a relief of sorts. After all they’ve been through together, why not admit to why she was here
in the first place?
“Anyway,” she says, “I’m glad today is one of his good days.”
Hope makes a face. “Other than one brief moment, I never would have suspected there was any sort of problem. He’s been a big help to me, actually.”
“That’s why he came here today,” Sylvie says. “To be a help.”
Hope shakes her head. “I thought that was why when he first showed up. But as I think back, I’m betting once he figured out
you were here, he inserted himself any way he could.”
Sylvie smiles at that. She wonders how exactly he’d put it together. He’d been watching—what else?—golf when she left the
house. She’d only admitted to going to the grocery store. But maybe she’d thrown out that she needed to go by the post office
as she walked out the door? She’d been flustered, her mind focused on her errand, on that infernal envelope. She can’t recall
just what she revealed.
She’d been more concerned about what she’d say to him after she returned than about what to say when she left. How would she
tell him what she’d gone and done, and without asking him first? This isn’t how their marriage was built. This isn’t who they’ve
been in all the years they’ve spent together. But things were changing, she’d told herself. She had to do what’s best. And
whether Robert agreed or not, their son was pretty convincing. So she hadn’t consulted her best friend, her “life partner,”
as the young people say.
Then it came to her: the police scanner. He kept it running all the time. It sat on top of the TV cabinet turned to a volume
so low she assumed he didn’t really hear it. He just liked that it was on. She’d joked with him so many times that old habits
die hard.
“So do old cops,” he’d always joke back.
“What do you think you’re going to hear on there?” she would tease. “Nothing ever happens here.”
He’d shrug. “Keeps me company,” he’d say. And she’d leave him to it.
But now it made sense. He heard the callout on the police scanner.
He searched her location on his phone or he recalled where she’d said she was going.
She doesn’t know exactly, but somehow he figured out his wife was in the post office they were talking about on the scanner.
And he tried to come to her rescue. Just like he always had.
No matter what their son thinks, her husband is still there. He is still the man she married. After her conversation with
the younger Robert, she’d almost lost sight of that. She’d focused on the present, discounting the history that preceded it.
They are each other’s own, and while their son came out of their union, he does not know their marriage the way he thinks
he does. He does not know what they are capable of as long as they are together.
Sylvie realizes everyone is still looking at her and hurries to speak. “Thank you for saying that,” she says. “I needed that
reminder. Are you married?” Sylvie asks Hope, ready to shift the conversation away from her.
Hope looks down at her empty ring finger. She never wears jewelry to work. She is still standing in the middle of the circle,
and with all eyes on her, she feels her face go hot, as if a spotlight has been trained directly on her. She’d thought only
of the safety risk when she offered to come in here. Emotional risk never crossed her mind. She hadn’t thought about what
women do when they’re with other women for any period of time. They tell their stories.
“I am, actually,” she tells them. “He’s back in Pennsylvania,” she says, aiming to keep things succinct. She is not here to
make new friends or bare her soul. “Where I’m from.”
“Oh,” says Sylvie. “So you don’t live here?”
“I’m living here for a bit while I . . .
” Hope does not know how to finish the sentence.
While she does what? Sylvie was honest with her.
She feels obliged to be honest too. She clears her throat, knowing that out in the command center, they’re hearing her too.
Ah well, she thinks, I will probably never see any of these people again, not these women, not the officers outside looking in, not the team from
county, not even Bo, who is really Robert.
“I sort of ran away from . . . everything,” she says. “I came here, to my family’s place, to . . . figure some things out.”
Sylvie gives her a conciliatory smile. “And how long ago was that?”
Hope’s return smile is a concession of sorts. “Eight months ago.”
“And your husband? He’s okay with this?” Sylvie asks.
Hope shrugs. “He’s just trying to be there for me, give me however much time I need. I went through a pretty hard time. I
lost—” She feels the familiar knot that always fills her throat whenever she tries to talk about what happened. And here she
is, talking about it for the second time today. She tries again, comes at it from a positive viewpoint. “I saved a woman and
her children’s lives,” she says. “In a negotiation.”
Sylvie’s eyes grow wide, and she draws her hands together in a movement that is somewhere between a clap and a prayer. “Well,
that’s wonderful,” she says.
Though no one in the room is aware of it, Hope feels Sylvie’s validation hit her invisible shield and fall to the ground.
She thinks about the award that Alex called about, the one they want to give her back home, recognition for what she did.
But the people who selected her for the award don’t know the whole truth about that day, how she succeeded at one thing but
failed at another. Should she tell these strangers the whole truth? Hope opens her mouth to speak but closes it when a noise
turns their attention to the corner of the room.