Hopeless

The two are back at the hotel. Sky is like a zombie—her clothes are stained with her father’s blood. It feels like a nightmare. Holder moves her to the shower and tells her to wash her hair carefully to get all of the blood and brain matter out. Holder is diligent in making sure Sky is cleaned off. She realizes that Holder is dealing with the news about his sister. She breaks down, hoping in her tears she might begin to forget her father: “There’s nothing like the guilt you feel when there’s room in your heart to love evil” (348).

The two try to console each other. They make tender love in the shower when Holder cleans off, his eyes still fresh with tears. Sky feels their intimacy: “I’m so completely here with him right now I can think of nothing else” (352). Sky watches Holder as they make love, certain she can see his pain “literally escaping him” (354). Sky sees that they have fallen in love, “heart and soul” (355).

Later, Sky sees the depth of her and Holder’s love; they can share “pain, heartache, sorrow, and grief” and stay together (356). She knows now she is ready to remember.

In a flashback, Sky asks Karen why she does not have a television. Karen explains only that Sky’s father cannot take care of her anymore and that she will live here with her, Karen is adopting her, and she can pick a new name. The girl chooses Sky, because she loves the freedom of the sky, and Linden, a heart-shaped healing herb. She must never think of her old name—she is now Linden Sky Davis.

Unable to sleep, Sky confides in Holder how guilty she feels for abandoning Hope and leaving so much of herself behind, hidden. “Now I am two completely separate people” (364). Holder quietly tells Sky to close her eyes and imagine little Hope back at her home, a protocol he learned in therapy after Les’s death. He instructs her to imagine herself telling herself how strong she is, and how much she loves herself. It works. Sky imagines herself young and scared and she tells her how brave she is: “Your heart is so beautiful…someday someone will love that brave heart like it deserves to be” (367). Caught up in the moment, Sky promises Hope she will never let her go again. Holder embraces her and tells Sky she is a courageous survivor. He calls her Linden Sky Hope.

Sky and Holder get a phone call the next morning—Karen has confessed everything to Jack and now wants to talk to them. Sky’s father’s death has been on the news. It was ruled a suicide. On the drive back from Austin, the two talk about how and why marriages fail. Holder assures Sky he has no commitment issues and that he intends to make love to Sky for many years. He suggests she get on birth control to avoid careening into a “pregnancy-induced marriage” (378). Sky feels magical; Holder’s presence “works wonders for a wounded soul” (379)

Sky faces Karen. Karen opens up about Sky’s father and how, when they were kids, he raped her when he was just out of college, trying to join the police force, and drinking heavily. She never reported it. Working at a grocery store six years later, she spied her brother shopping with a young girl, presumably his daughter. She was sick to her stomach knowing what her brother was capable of. Karen tells Sky she could tell just by the sad look in Sky’s eyes that her brother was doing to his daughter what he had done to Karen. Determined to spare the girl, Karen plotted to take her away, which she did a few days later. She told the girl she was adopting her, and the two lived for years without access to television or the Internet. Karen knew that her niece was safe. She gives Sky a small box of keepsakes from Sky’s childhood.

Sky, struggling to process the story, goes outside and looks up into the night sky.

Holder and Sky contemplate their options. Sky will not press charges against her aunt—after all, she saved Sky from a predatory father: “The decision she made was out of love” (393). Holder holds her tightly and assures her any decision she makes is okay with him if it helps her heart heal. Sky discovers in the box Karen gave her a silver locket in the shape of a star with her picture as a baby. Inscribed inside the locket next to the photo is, “My ray of Hope” (396).

Sky goes back inside. She hugs Karen and thanks her for saving her life, adding that she understands the pain Karen has lived with. That night as she contemplates the stars on her ceiling, Holder comes to the window. He only wants to tell her how proud he is of her. She thanks him for losing her so that the two of them could find each other. He assures her he does not believe in happily-ever-afters. Sky assures him she does not either—all she needs is him.

Hope sees Holder stargazing and asks his sister, at their house for a sleepover, what her brother is doing. She goes out to where Holder is stretched out in the grass. He makes her promise that anytime her father makes her cry to come out and sit under the stars and get lost in their wonder. The stars, he tells her, are always beautiful no matter how sad, dark, or scary life might seem. He threads his pinkie into her fingers, and Hope promises to do just that.