Before I Let You Go(28)
When I finally make it to Annie’s room, I’m carrying several bags from the babywear store, and she raises an eyebrow at me, then says stiffly, “You do realize a judge is coming here in a few hours to tell me I’m not allowed to keep my baby?”
“No, he’s coming here in a few hours to probably tell you that there are some hurdles you need to leap before you can keep your baby,” I correct her. “And you and I both need to believe you can clear those hurdles, so we need to start planning for when you do.”
Annie hesitates, then offers me a strange little smile.
“Even so, you didn’t have to rob the Babies ’R’ Us. You’ve gone a bit overboard there.”
“We can sort through it later and anything you don’t need, I can return,” I say firmly as I place the bags on a table in the corner of the room where I know she’ll be able to see them during the court session.
Then I place the other bag onto the end of her bed, and I withdraw the maternity dress. It’s corporate wear—a modest, long-sleeved dress, charcoal gray with a pink trim, designed to draw attention away from a pregnant belly in the workplace. Annie would never wear this dress ordinarily—not just because she hasn’t held a professional job for seven years, but because she always had such a striking sense of style, and this dress is just about as dull as they come. I wasn’t sure at all what Annie should wear for this hearing, but I figured she should probably dress up, to show her respect for the proceedings.
“Thank you,” she says as she surveys the dress, but she seems unconvinced.
“It’s just for the hearing, Annie. You can burn it after if you want.” I pass her another bag, and she peers inside. “Toiletries. Some nice shampoo and some makeup. Take a shower and I’ll blow-dry your hair.”
Later, she sits in the visitor’s chair by the window and I run the brush through her long blond hair. It feels soft now after a wash, but it’s thin and patchy in places. I let it fall through my fingers as I work the hair dryer, and I can’t help but think back to all of the other times I’ve done my sister’s hair. In the community, we had to wear our hair long—it was considered a terrible sin for a woman to cut her hair. The fashion in the sect was to wear our hair down beneath the inevitable head scarf—but the style wasn’t actually enforced, and so Annie and I had one small, shared and tolerable act of rebellion—instead of wearing our hair down, we liked to braid it. It set us apart without forcing us out.
I used to braid Annie’s hair before school most days—it was thicker then, and so shiny and soft. I’d twist the hair around itself until the braid was tight and perfect, and then sometimes, just to prolong the peaceful moments when it was just Annie and me before we faced the day, I’d pretend I made a mistake and start all over again.
Before I know it now, I’ve braided her hair—out of some lingering habit that has resurfaced while I was daydreaming. Annie reaches up to touch her hair, and then we share a sad smile. There are echoes of those days in her eyes, and I know she can see the same in mine.
“I didn’t even mean to braid it,” I admit. “Muscle memory in my fingers I think.”
“Do you think about Winterton, Lexie?” she asks me quietly, and I straighten and shake my head firmly.
“Nope. I don’t.”
The truth is, I can’t think about that period of my life. I have put a wall around it in my mind—sometimes I even imagine it like that. If I think back over my life, I remember the great years of Dad’s life, and then I hit the wall. It’s twenty feet tall and there’s barbed wire at the top and there is no gate to get inside it. The wall keeps the detail in. I remember the basics—Mom’s depression, we moved into the sect, I left and I left Annie behind—but the wall keeps the rest contained, except in moments of weakness like the one that just passed.
It’s a self-preservation thing. Sometimes, when I look at Annie’s life and I look at mine and I wonder just how they could have worked out so damned differently, I wonder if that wall is the only thing that’s saved me.
“I think about it,” she whispers, and her hand falls from her hair to her lap. “And I think about Dad.”
“You need to keep your spirits up for this hearing,” I say, and I open the makeup I bought her at the drugstore. There’s nothing I can do to hide the sores around her mouth, but I can at least add some color to her cheeks with the blush and frame her eyes with some mascara.
When I’m finished, I survey my handiwork, and then I smile.
“You look beautiful.”
“I look haggard.”
Annie climbs back into bed and I reattach the monitoring leads to her belly and chest, and we sit and wait for Bernie. It’s not long before she breezes through the door, and after an introduction and pleasantries, she gives Annie a five-minute boot camp on surviving the hearing.
“The important thing at this hearing is that you show remorse, and that you show them that you’re determined to turn things around,” Bernie tells her. “No excuses, and no matter what happens—you keep your cool. You need to convince that judge that you know you have a problem but that you’re determined to turn it around and you’re willing to do whatever it takes. Got it?”
“Okay,” Annie says, but she’s visibly nervous now, and when I take her hand her gaze locks with mine. We both know that this is exactly where it all goes wrong. She has every intention of staying put here in this hospital for the time being—but once a judge tells her she has to? That will change everything for Annie. Assuming the outcome of that hearing is a court order that dictates what Annie can do with her life in the next few weeks, it will be like waving a red flag in front of a bull.