Light at the end of a tunnel

Chapter Twenty seven- The Letter

Sorry this update will be short. I have a ton of stuff to do tonight. On the bright side, I will be making the next chapter much longer! Thanks for reading! Please comment and vote!<3

I sat on Jack's couch, attempting to call Hope, but she wouldn't answer the phone, which had me worried sick. It was only eight A.M., so she was probably still fast asleep in bed, but I still worried about her.

"Hope still not answering?", Jack asked.

I was surprised to see Jack and hear his voice. It was the first time since I picked up from the hospital that he actually talked. This was also his first time coming out of his bedroom since being home.

"No, maybe she's still sleeping. I don't know.."

"Why don't you go check on her?"

 I wanted to. The first time I called and she didn't answer, that was my very first thought. Go straight home and check on her. But what about Jack? It killed me to see my best friend like this.

"She's probably just sleeping.", I said.

"Go see her, man. You've been wanting to see her since you left her yesterdaym"

That I could not argue with. I was missing Hope like super crazy. I felt like an addict going through the worst detox possible. It was awful. Like a part of myself was gone. Disappeared into thin air.

"Go check on her, seriously. I am fine."

I nodded, suddenly feeling like I had to go home right away.

"I'll be back later.", I told Jack, as I picked up my car keys from the kitchen table and left. The ride home was only twenty minutes long, but traffic was a real pain in the ass this morning. It had already been twenty minutes and I was still ten minutes away from home. I sighed, hating traffic more and more by the second.

Thirty minutes later, I was walking up to the steps to my house when I heard a noise. A awful and loud noise, that sounded like babies sobbing. My first thought was that it was simply kids crying across the road, but as I approached my house the noise grew louder and louder. When I entered my house, the crying was deafening.

"Hope?", I yelled.

No answer.

"Hope?"

No answer.

"Hope?", I repeated louder as I went upstairs.

Oh my God. Was I dreaming? There in her crib was Copeland and JR was in his.

I picked JR up, his cries instantly fading away, "Yeah. You're okay, little guy. Daddy's here."

Next I picked Copeland up. God, my kids were perfect in every way possible.

"Hey baby girl. Yeah, you're okay, shhh", I soothed Copeland, her cries too grew much quieter.

"Where's Mommy at, huh?"

 I expected Hope to come around the corner and enter the room, smiling and telling me how they found Lynn and Austin and that they were going to rot in prison. Then she would go on to tell me how Charles brought JR and Copeland home and that they were perfectly fine. She would be so happy that her eyes would shine. She would keep her perfect smile on her face. She would go on and on about JR and Copeland, because she could. Because she was truly happy again.

Instead the opposite happened. Hope wasn't home. After calling out for her a few more times, I knew something was wrong. If Hope was here, why wasn't she answering me? Why wasn't she tending to our babies? And if she was gone, where did she go? Why did she leave JR and Copeland here alone? Why didn't she call me?

JR and Copeland began to cry harder, they were hungry. I could tell. I was walking out of Copeland's clean bedroom, when something out of the corner of my eye caught my attention.

A white envelope taped to the end of her wooden crib. Grabbing it, I headed downstairs and prepared a bottle for JR and Copeland. After I was done, I sat them both on the couch and let them eat hungrily. Next, I opened the letter and quickly noticed Hope's handwriting. I read the letter. Over and over. Trying to make sense of it, because my life seemed to stop for a moment.

I angrily crumbled it up and threw it across the living room. Then I picked it up and read it over and over again and again. I saw tear drops on the paper. Hope was crying while writing this.

Then I realized something.

Hope wasn't the one crying, I was.