Jeff Shelby - Thread of Hope

“Got it,” I said, holding it up so she could see.

“Good work,” she murmured, her eyes closed once again. I watched her, focusing on the familiar rise and fall of her chest as she breathed, the way her hair fanned out on the pillow, a tangled mess of auburn strands.

I returned my attention to the phone. The blinking icon on the screen told me I had a message. I checked the missed calls log, but didn’t recognize the number. I dialed the voicemail number.

Lauren rolled out of bed, the sheet wrapped around her. “I’m going to make this easy on both of us. No breakfast, alright?”

The voicemail was telling me that I had one message. “We can have breakfast, Lauren. It’s fine.”

She pushed her hair away from her face and grabbed her clothes off the floor. “No. Not a good idea. Let’s not go crazy here.”

I didn’t know if she was saying that for her benefit or for mine. “Why is breakfast crazy?”

She walked past me toward the bathroom. “It’s not breakfast that’s crazy, Joe.”

I listened to the message, but grabbed her elbow as she passed. “Wait.”

She frowned at me, but she didn’t pull away. I finished listening to the message, wanting to make sure I heard it correctly. Then I shut the phone off and looked at her. “Okay, I can’t have breakfast with you.”

Her eyebrows narrowed and the frown morphed into confusion. “First you wanna have breakfast, now you don’t? Joe, I already said it was okay. I’m not looking to rush you back to the altar. That’s not what this was.”

“I know that,” I said, frustrated that I wasn’t getting things out the way I wanted to. “But what I’m saying is I can’t have breakfast with you. Today.”

Her forehead wrinkled and she shrugged, like I wasn’t making any sense.

I wasn’t.

I held up the phone. “The beeping. I had a message.”

Lauren slid her elbow out of my hand and tightened the sheet around her body. “Fine.”

“It’s Chuck. He’s awake.”

The nurse walked me down from the check-in station to Chuck’s room. She explained that he was awake, alert and generally seemed to be doing well. Given the trauma and the time he’d been unconscious, though, she asked me to keep the visit brief. I told her I would.

She left me and I stood outside his door for a moment, gathering my thoughts. I took a deep breath before I stepped into the room.

His head turned in my direction. He didn’t look much different from when I’d seen him before other than his eyes were open and a rough beard had sprouted on his face.

I stopped just inside the door and held up a hand. “Hey.”

He squinted at me, like he couldn’t see me clearly. “Joe?”

I grabbed a chair from against the wall and slid it over near the side of his bed before sitting down. “I look like a ghost?”

He tried to smile, but exhaustion prevented it from reaching full wattage. “Yeah.”

“I’m here,” I said.

“Jane found you,” he said.

“Through Lauren. Yeah.”

He stared at me, his chest rising up and down beneath the sheet. “Wasn’t sure you’d come.”

“Come on.”

“I didn’t know.”

There was no malice or sarcasm in his words, but they stung nonetheless. “Lauren called me, we hung up and I went straight to the airport. True story.”

“I didn’t wanna bother you,” he said. “But I wasn’t sure what else to do.”

“It’s okay.”

He rolled his head awkwardly to the other side and glanced out the window, then turned back to me. “Thanks for coming.”

I nodded but didn’t say anything. I was sure he had a lot of questions about where I’d been and what I’d been doing and if he’d asked, I would’ve told him. It would’ve been nice to talk about it all with him, to unload a bit. I was used to being alone and keeping everything to myself. But he didn’t have the energy to ask and I didn’t want to wear him out. And I had my own questions.

“Nurse doesn’t want me to stay long,” I said, nodding back at the door.

“I’ve been sleeping for a couple of days,” he said with a weak smile. “I’m fine.”

“I’m sure,” I said, returning the smile. “Any idea who beat the shit out of you?”

The smile faded. “No. I was on the beach, running. Somebody got me from behind and then knocked my lights out. Pretty sure there were two, though.” He winced, some invisible pain freezing him for a moment. It passed just as quickly as it had arrived and his face clouded over with something else. “Nobody around here is probably too upset about it, though. They're all ready to throw me in jail, anyway.”

“I’m working on that,” I said. “It’s not gonna happen, Chuck.”

“You sound pretty confident.”

“Jon Jordan and I made a deal.”

He stared at me for a long time. “A deal?”

“Meredith’s missing,” I said.

His features sagged, like the wind had been knocked out of him.

“Almost forty eight hours now,” I continued. “He hired me to find her.”

“You gotta be kiddin’ me,” he said, his voice hoarse.

I explained to him the deal that Jordan and I struck.

“He’s full of shit,” Chuck said.

“I agree. He may drop the charges, but he’ll figure out another way to come after you.”

“Fuck him,” Chuck said quietly. “Go ahead and try.”

“What was going on with you and Meredith?”

He looked away from me.

“And just so we’re straight,” I continued. “I know it’s not what everyone thinks it was.”

“How do you know that?”

“Because I know you.”

“You’ve been gone a long time,” he said. “Maybe I’ve changed.”

“Oh, you have,” I told him. “No doubt. You’re hanging out at our old high school, coaching basketball, doing a bunch of shit I never would’ve guessed. But sleeping with teenage girls and beating them up?” I shook my head. “Not a chance, Chuck. Not a chance.”

He shifted his head on the pillow, moving his eyes back to me. “Thanks.”

“Tell me what was going on.”

He stared at the wall across from the bed for a long time, his hands fidgeting beneath the sheet, the monitor next to the bed beeping in rhythm. “I made her a promise, Joe.”

“She was hooking, wasn’t she?”

He glanced at me, unable to hide the surprise on his face.

I ran down everything I’d learned from when I’d first arrived in Coronado, from the Jordan family to the teenage pimp to what Mike shared with me about Mrs. Jordan.

“So I understand you want to honor a promise to her, but given all that’s happened, it’s hard to think her disappearing is a coincidence, right? She isn’t off on some lark. Something’s happened to her and I doubt it’s good.” I tapped my temple with my index finger. “If you know something about what was going on in her life, you need to tell me. Right now.”

Chuck lay there, staring up at the ceiling, digesting everything I’d told him, blinking every so often. I stayed quiet, letting him get it straight in his head.

Finally, he turned to me and said, “She’s a good kid, Joe.”

“That’s what everyone has said. But for a good kid, she's causing a lot of trouble.”

“She’s a good kid,” he repeated. “But she got into something. She’s trying to get out of it, but it’s complicated.”

“Get out of what?” I asked, thinking maybe, finally, I’d get an answer as to what I was actually doing in the middle of all of this.

“I don’t know much,” he said. “She wouldn’t give me specifics. Probably because she knew I’d get involved.”

I nodded.

“Her father, he’s pretty strict,” he said, his words slow, methodic. “Keeps her on a tight leash.”