Comfort & Joy Read Free

me.

    She’s crying harder now. “I’m sorry, Joy. I know how much you want a baby.”

    I want to scream at her, to shriek my pain, maybe even smack her, but I can’t seem to breathe. Tears are blurring my vision; they’re not ordinary tears, either. They actually hurt. I can’t believe she’d do this to me. To us. How can two girls who used to be peas in a pod have come to this?

    “I never wanted to hurt you . . .”

    I can’t listen anymore. One more blow and I’m afraid I’ll go to my knees, right here in my driveway, and I’ve spent every day of the last year just trying to stand. I turn away from my sister and run to my car. A part of me can hear her yelling my name, calling out to me, but I don’t care. The words are elongated somehow, stretched into meaningless sounds and syllables. Nothing makes sense.

    I get into my car, start the engine and barrel backward, into the empty street.

    I have no idea where I’m going and I don’t care. All that matters is putting miles between me and that wedding invitation in my driveway and the baby growing in my sister’s womb.

    When I see the exit for the airport, it seems natural to turn off. Maybe even a destiny-at-work kind of thing. I park and go into the terminal.

    It’s small, but busy on this Friday. Lots of people obviously want to put miles between the heres and theres of their lives in the holiday season.

    I look up at the departures board.

    Hope .

    A shiver goes through me; the word looks so out of place on the list, tucked as it is between ordinary cities like Spokane and Portland. I blink and look again, just in case I’ve gone slightly mad and imagined it.

    Hope remains. It’s in British Columbia, apparently. Canada.

    There’s no line at the counter. I walk there slowly, still somehow waiting to wake up, but when I get there, a woman looks up at me.

    “May I help you?”

    “The flight to Hope . . . is there a seat?”

    She frowns. “It’s a charter. Just a second.” She looks down at her computer screen. Fingernails click on the keys. “There are seats, but they were purchased in bulk.” She glances around, catches sight of a heavy-set man dressed in camouflage fatigues. “Go talk to him.”

    Now, I’m not the kind of woman who strolls easily up to strange men, especially when they look like Burl Ives on a big game hunt, but this is no time for caution. I’m desperate. One more second in this town and I might start screaming. For all I know, Stacey is still in my driveway, waiting for me to return so we can “talk” more. I clutch my purse under my arm and go to him.

    “Excuse me,” I say, trying—without much success—to smile. “I need Hope.”

    He grins at this. “There isn’t a whole lot up there. For a city girl, I mean.”

    “Sometimes just getting away is enough.”

    “You don’t have to tell me that twice. Well, we’ve got an extra seat, if you want it. Say one hundred dollars? But I can’t promise you a way to get back. We’re a play-it-by-ear bunch.”

    “Me, too.” Normally, I’d laugh at that, it’s so far from the truth, but just now it feels right. Besides, I’m not even sure I need a way to get back. Who knows? This is a tear in the fabric of my ordinary life. All I have to do is step through. And I have my Christmas money with me. “Do I need a passport?”

    “Nope. Just your driver’s license.”

    I can leave here, make a quick stop and plane change in Seattle, show my identification, go through customs, and be in Hope by midnight. I make a decision to leave my own country in less time than it usually takes me to decide between packages of meat at my local Von’s.

    I whip out my wallet and find the cash. “I’m in.”

     

    A n hour later, I am at the gate, holding a ticket to Hope. All around me, men are talking, laughing. There is an inordinate amount of high-fiving going on. They are trophy hunters I discover, the kind of guys who decorate with hooves. This is