Fanfiction: Origin - Part Three
As Jesse tugged Joey into the kitchen, Faith wondered what she had done to warrant this amazing stroke of good luck. What had happened to Chris? It had been a long, long time since Jesse had brought anyone else into the apartment, and Faith couldn’t help imagining wonderful scenarios that would explain this turn of events, scenarios like Chris getting hit by a bus, Chris piloting his helicopter straight into a mountain, Chris looking up just as the Space Shuttle landed on him…maybe this was where things turned around? If Chris was really out of the picture, then Joey might replace him, and Joey seemed really nice.
Faith wasn’t accustomed to trusting strangers, but no one could be worse than Chris, so she was inclined to think of Joey as her savior.
Things changed dramatically in the next few weeks. Faith returned to school and began seeing Kelly more frequently. It was a little harder without Lindsay Matthews around, but with the new addition of Joey to her life, Faith felt like she had turned a corner. Jesse was happier, Faith was happier, Joey was always happy, and apartment 314 ceased to be such a downtrodden hellhole. A few times, Faith almost mustered enough courage to ask Jesse the reason why Chris was suddenly out of the picture, but she always changed her mind at the last second, feeling that perhaps it was wiser to leave his name completely out of the picture. The only thing that mattered was the fact that things were looking up, and Faith wasn’t willing to jeopardize her newfound luck by bringing up past mistakes.
They say time flies when you’re having fun, and in Faith’s case, the saying was definitely true. Days and weeks blurred together, and eventually, without realizing it, summer was almost upon her again. She would enter fifth grade next fall, but that was still many months away, and she preferred to dwell upon her summertime activities instead. With Joey around, Faith had finally experienced something akin to a normal family relationship; there were no beatings, no name-calling, no sleepless nights. Sure, Joey and Jesse did get drunk every once in a while, but unlike the influence alcohol had on Chris, it seemed to make Joey even livelier, even more friendly, so Faith didn’t mind. His influence on Jesse was striking, too; the premature age she had seemed to carry around for ages was finally lifted from her shoulders, and she was suddenly young again, the mom that Faith used to hold so dear. Things were definitely better.
One night, a few days before school let out for summer, Faith was sitting in her room, doodling with some colored pencils on a white pad of paper, when Joey politely knocked on the open door and stepped inside. Faith tore her attention away from her drawing for a moment.
“Hi, Joey,” she said, holding up her paper. “Like my drawing?”
As usual, Joey was smiling the same goofy grin that he always wore, and he gave the paper a thorough examination as he sat down on the bed next to Faith. She had drawn herself, Kelly, Joey, and Jesse all standing together underneath a large, yellow sun. Some clouds were floating by overhead, accompanied by some lines that Joey figured were probably birds. He handed the drawing back.
“An obvious masterpiece,” he told the ten-year-old, pleased that Faith had taken such a liking to him in the past months. From little things that Jesse had accidentally said during their time together, he knew enough about Faith to feel a bit sorry for her. No child should ever have to deal with neglect and abuse on the scale that Faith had experienced, so he always did his best to make her life better in any way possible. “If you want to, I was thinking that maybe you and your friend Kelly might want to come with me to the old quarry outside of town to go swimming this weekend?”
“What’s a quarry?” Still eager to increase her vocabulary, Faith was forever asking about new words.
“It’s a place where big stones are taken out of the ground,” Joey explained, taking Faith’s paper and sketching a little diagram with the brown colored pencil. Then he took the blue pencil and drew some water. “This one isn’t in operation anymore, and it’s filled with water, so you can swim in it. Wanna go?”
Faith had been swimming all of two times in her entire life, and the chance to do it again sounded fantastic. She loved the freedom of being in the underwater world, away from the turmoil of normal life, and even though she wasn’t the most experienced swimmer, she was a natural at most athletic events due to her inexhaustible energy supply and willingness to practice something until it was perfected. Joey’s proposal sounded absolutely great, and a gleeful smile crept over her face, an expression she had been showing more and more often in the months since Joey’s arrival.
“Sure!” she enthusiastically agreed, struggling to keep herself from quivering out of sheer excitement. “I’ll talk to Kelly at school tomorrow.”
“Great,” Joey replied, reflecting Faith’s smile right back at her. He got up, intending to go into the living room, but Faith stopped him before he could get past the door.
“Joey?”
Stopping with one hand on the door frame, Joey looked over his shoulder with one eyebrow slightly raised. “What is it, Faith?”
Smile still glued to her face, Faith hopped off her bed and ran to Joey, giving him the biggest hug her small ten-year-old frame could produce. “Thank you,” she said, holding on tight.
The next day at school, yearbooks were handed out to all the students. Since yearbooks were usually expensive, and therefore a luxury that Jesse could never afford, Faith had never actually received one before. But ever since Joey had made his first appearance back in January, everything had improved so steadily that now there was actually a small surplus of money, and so Faith finally got her first yearbook in her fourth grade year. She didn’t have the wealth of friends that some other kids had, and thus lacked a critical mass of signatures, but she had Kelly and a few other acquaintances, and that was enough for her.
“Look at this picture!” Kelly exclaimed, nudging Faith and pointing to her yearbook as the two ate lunch together under Boston’s blistering summer sun. “So ugly!”
Faith, dressed in uncharacteristically light colors in a futile attempt to diminish the midday heat, stopped chewing her sandwich long enough to glance at the random picture her best friend was pointing to. “Eww, you’re right,” she agreed, brushing back a stray hair from her eyes as a pitiful summer breeze started up and abruptly died. “Have you seen the one of Mr. Clemens yet? It almost gave me a heart attack!”
Kelly quickly flipped to the appropriate section and nearly fell off the bench as she burst out laughing. The yearbook from South Boston Elementary wasn’t as nicely done as those from other schools, but it provided plenty of entertainment to the generally underprivileged children who were unlucky enough to attend SBE. Since Kelly had arrived, over two years ago, the school hadn’t improved one bit. It got dirtier and more rundown nearly everyday, but it was such a gradual deterioration that most kids didn’t even notice. The school’s pathetic status was just accepted as fact, and no one really bothered to question it or wonder why.
“Hey, you wanna go swimming with me and Joey this weekend?” Faith asked, flipping through her own yearbook as she continued chewing. “We’re going to a place with big rocks and water. It sounds pretty cool.”
Kelly looked as if she was about to make an additional comment about a picture she discovered in the yearbook, but she only said, “Sure, I love swimming. Maybe we can even jump off some of the rocks. That would be awesome.”
“Yeah,” Faith agreed, finally finishing her sandwich and taking a sip from her juice box.
With the necessity of eating out of the way, Faith and Kelly spent the rest of the lunch period turning pages in their respective yearbooks, pointing out pictures here and there and gladly writing polite messages for the small number of kids who desired memories of the pair. Though she was an unarguably attractive little girl, Faith still managed to find flaws in her appearance. Her straightforward class picture bothered her with its plainness; an action shot of her and Kelly passing a basketball back and forth was irritating because she didn’t like the outfit she wore on that particular day; a close-up taken at her desk showed the light dusting of freckles she exhibited every spring and summer, a feature she had little love for. She was moderately jealous of Kelly’s striking blonde hair and easily-attainable tan, for even at her young age, constant exposure to television programs had convinced her that blondes were more desirable, somehow better than brunettes.
Despite the imaginary imperfections she created, Faith did not consider herself unattractive. On most days she was content with who she was and how she appeared to others, and besides, she was quite sure that most of the other kids at SBE wouldn’t even notice her amongst all the other classmates’ pictures.
When the bell finally rang, Kelly and Faith parted ways, each going back to her respective class. Hopefully next year they would be in the same fifth grade class together; chances were good, especially since there were only two fifth grade teachers, but Faith had learned over the years that despite all probability, things had a way of turning sour whenever she had her hopes set highest.
The final days of school passed in a blur. Gone were the long days of waiting and wondering that Faith had been so accustomed to in the past. With things almost perfect at home, and with Kelly’s constant companionship at school, time flew by in a muddled collection of happy images and memories. Faith was old enough to understand cliches, and again thought that the old phrase about how “time flies when you’re having fun” certainly held more than a smidgen of truth. Apparently, just because something was cliched didn’t mean that it wasn’t true.
Before she knew it, the day arrived when Joey’s highly anticipated quarry visit was to occur. Faith was waiting outside when Kelly’s parents dropped her off at ten in the morning. After quick greetings, they drove off again. Kelly was toting a small bag full of things one would need at the beach, since she figured anyplace with water would naturally necessitate beach-related materials.
“You smell like sunscreen,” Faith mentioned as they climbed the stairs together.
Kelly gave a small sigh, and without looking back, Faith could tell that she had just rolled her eyes. “My parents were like, ‘We don’t want you getting burned, pumpkin!’ I told them I could do it myself, then they just attacked me with it before I could get away.”
Faith puffed out her chest a bit, laughing, and said, “Stand still, we must bathe you in sunscreen. Stop wiggling around. We know you like it. You love it. You need it!”
“It was almost exactly like that, I swear.”
“You could probably slide back down the stairs if you just sat down.”
After getting inside the apartment, they found Joey watching cartoons on TV and smoking a cigarette. Faith had become accustomed to Joey’s abnormal habits, such as watching cartoons instead of adult shows. She guessed that he was just a little kid at heart, despite his grownup appearance. He already had his swimsuit on, bright red shorts that had a slightly shiny look to them.
Exhaling a small puff of smoke, he got up to flip off the TV. “You two ready for some fun?”
After the girls both nodded, Kelly asked Faith why Jesse was nowhere to be found, figuring that the quarry expedition was supposed to be a family affair.
“She’s at work today, right, Joey?” For the first time that Faith could remember, Jesse actually had a real job that didn’t involve something shady or underhanded. She waited tables at a reasonably nice restaurant in the more upscale part of town, and while it wasn’t akin to winning the lottery, it brought in money and tended to keep Jesse focused. When Joey responded affirmatively to Faith’s question, she glanced at Kelly and said, “My mom got a job in a restaurant.”
“That’s good,” Kelly replied, glad to see that Faith’s tumultuous home life seemed to be normalizing itself slowly but steadily.
“Go get your stuff, Faith,” said Joey, catching a few last seconds of his cartoons before turning the TV off. His hair appeared even shaggier and more unkempt than usual today, if that was at all possible. As Faith rummaged through her things, gathering the ones she would need for swimming, Joey directed his attention over at Kelly, who gave a smile in return. “You smell like sunscreen, you know that?”
Kelly uttered a sigh of exasperation.
The way Joey wrestled his beat-up, dark green Chevy Nova along the road, it didn’t take long to reach the quarry. With the windows down and stereo turned up, he swerved in and out of traffic like the world was about to end, singing at the top of his lungs and barely managing to maintain a fragile hold on his dwindling cigarette. The girls were both crammed next to him on the front seat, hair whipping to and fro, somehow enjoying the near-death experience that was driving with Joey in a car that was little more than an engine with seats.
“Welcome to the jungle, we got fun and games!” Joey sang, passing a car that was only traveling at a pathetic 60 miles per hour. “We got everything you want, but we know the names!”
Faith, in the middle of her friend and her newfound father figure, tapped Joey on the shoulder.
“Yeah?” Flicking his nearly-done cigarette out the window, where it no doubt flew backward and collided with a slower-moving vehicle, Joey turned his attention to Faith.
“What band is this?” Faith yelled, struggling to be heard over the music and wind. She already had a decent appreciation for music, but did not personally own any albums. With the increased prosperity in the apartment, Jesse had purchased the Extended Cable TV package, which came with dozens of new channels for Faith to peruse. In particular, she stole tiny peeks at MTV whenever Jesse wasn’t around. Music, she had found, was a release that actually helped her get through life. The silence had slowly killed her in the past, but nowadays, if she could get away with listening to boisterous music like Joey’s current choice, she would.
“It’s Guns ‘N Roses!” Joey yelled back, wisely turning his eyes back to the road and away from Faith. “Hardcore! Welcome to the jungle, it gets worse here everyday! Learn to live like an animal in the jungle where we play!”
The music was wild. Very wild. Throughout her short life, Faith hadn’t heard much music, mostly just 80’s pop tunes that were on the radio, and this new band was insane by comparison. It made her want to…to…jump up and throw a rock through a window, really. The intensity appealed to her, and so did the name; it was catchy. Bobbing her head in rhythm with the drums, she turned to look at poor Kelly, who was almost cringing and holding her hands against her ears. Faith just grinned and sang along with the chorus, playfully giving Kelly a little shove.
Twenty minutes later, well outside the main part of Boston, the Nova skidded to a halt in front of a rusted chain-link fence, sending a cloud of dust upward as it did so. At least ten other cars were parked in a loose configuration; Faith figured that Joey wasn’t the only one to appreciate the quarry’s secluded swimming areas. Turning the blaring stereo off, Joey opened the driver’s side door and stepped out, the cue for the girls to do the same. Grabbing the assorted supplies from the trunk, Joey gave some to Kelly and the rest to Faith, taking the heavier chairs for himself.
“All right, time for some fun,” he said, stripping off his t-shirt and tossing it into the trunk before giving it a hearty slam. He noticed Kelly’s slightly shocked face. “You okay there, kiddo?”
“Uh…uh-huh,” Kelly replied, unable to completely shake the dazed stare away.
“She probably didn’t like your music too much.” Faith moved a bit closer to her friend. “But all that wind was good for one thing, at least.”
“What?” Kelly managed, attempting to wrestle her bag into a higher position.
Faith leaned over and made an exaggerated sniffing action. “You don’t smell like sunscreen so much anymore,” she said with a completely straight face.
Blonde hair framing her face, Kelly tried to put on a grimace. “I hate you guys,” she jokingly said, allowing a smile at the very end of her statement.
With a forward wave of his arm, Joey imitated a military officer and said, “Forward, troops!”
The girls marched obediently forward through a moderate-sized hole in the fence. There were sporadic signs that read “No Trespassing” and “Violators Will Be Prosecuted”, but Joey dismissed these with an additional wave of his hand.
“No one ever comes out here to cause any harm, just to swim, so it’s not like any authorities actually care.” He paused. “Besides, trespassing is fun!”
As the trio made their way forward, the trail they were following gradually sloped downward, actually seeming to bury itself in the surrounding rock. At its highest point, the walls on either side appeared at least ten feet tall. Continuing down, they eventually came to an extremely large open area. Blue water sparkled and shifted at the bottom, and Faith saw a teenager leap off an outcropping of rocks straight down into the water. It looked like fun.
“This is why you have to take the trail,” Joey told the girls, finding some flat ground overlooking the quarry and setting the chairs down. He pointed upward. “Even though you can see the water from ground level, falling from that height wouldn’t be pretty.”
Faith and Kelly set down their things and gazed up at where Joey was pointing. They had apparently been winding steadily downward ever since entering the trail, and now the walls were towering high above them. Glancing across the quarry towards the other wall, Faith thought she saw a few other trails going up, but there certainly weren’t many ways to get down to the water. Currently, she stood about ten feet above where the water was, and its shifting form was highly appealing on such a smoldering day.
“How do we get down into the water?” Kelly asked, peering over the edge of their small area of land.
“Only one way to get down there,” Joey said, stretching his arms over his head. Then without any further warning, he gave a yell and leapt off the edge, doing a clumsy front flip before colliding with the water ten feet below.
Cringing at the massive splash Joey’s awkward landing had caused, Kelly turned to Faith. “That looked like it hurt.”
Faith nodded, watching Joey swim around. After a few more seconds, he lifted himself out of the water and began climbing back up the rocky wall. The face of it wasn’t smooth at all, and he had no trouble finding many blunt areas where he could easily go upward without much effort. It only took a minute or so for him to complete this activity, and then he was standing in front of the girls, dripping wet.
“See? Fun.” He noticed that Kelly appeared a tad apprehensive about the whole ordeal, while Faith had a mischievous look in her eyes, the one that usually signaled trouble of some kind. “Just one thing before you guys jump in and kill yourselves, all right? You can see the rocks down below, close to the wall. You don’t want to hit those, so make sure you jump out and not just up. Get a running start or something. The water down there is really deep, so you won’t hit bottom.”
Sounds drifted out across the quarry, splashes and yells. The few people Faith noticed were sporadically dispersed throughout the rocky areas, each group seeming to have claimed a small jumping spot for themselves. Comparing her ledge to the others, she was disappointed to note that almost all of them were taller than her own, but it would be foolish to search for a bigger ledge before trying to jump off the small one.
“I’m ready,” Faith announced, taking out a small, black hair-band. She quickly tied her long hair back into a ponytail and took off her shirts and t-shirt, revealing a baby blue single-piece swimsuit. With a last glance at Joey, just to make sure she had permission to jump, she prepared herself and then gave a flying leap off the edge. A childish scream of joy escaped her lips as she fell through the air, landing feet-first in the water and surfacing moments later. “It’s so awesome, Kelly!” she yelled to her friend, treading water. The sunlight danced on the water around her, sending abstract reflections this way and that across the rock walls. “Come on!”
“Yeah, okay,” Kelly shouted back, getting rid of her t-shirt in favor of her swimsuit. “Get ready for this!”
Joey watched up top, playing the part of the wary guardian, as Kelly threw herself out over the water, then did a perfect dive straight into the depths. Faith couldn’t believe her eyes; just moments before, Kelly had almost seemed ready to decline the opportunity to jump. But she had done a perfect dive, and from so high up!
Splashing some water in Faith’s direction as she resurfaced, Kelly gave the best aquatic shrug she could muster when she caught Faith’s astonished stare. “Swim lessons since I could walk,” she offered by means of explanation. Treading water, she turned her attention to the ledge she’d just left. “That was really fun.”
Joey joined them in the water seconds later, easily jumping past their position and creating another huge splash, this time with a cannonball maneuver.
It didn’t take long for Faith to become bored with the small ledge, and she set about searching for a more suitable launching pad. There were plenty of places scattered all throughout the quarry, which was fairly massive, probably at least the length of a football field and equally as wide. She noticed kids and adults jumping from decently perilous heights, but her sense of pride forced her to find a ledge so high that no one would be able to compete. There. High above the waterline, Faith saw a suitable location: a ledge of stone she guessed was at least thirty feet tall, projecting far out over the rippling water. Having a clear objective in sight, she swam over to Joey.
“I want to jump off that.” Pointing and treading water simultaneously, she watched as Joey searched for the spot, found it, and promptly turned slightly pale.
“You can’t jump off that!” Joey exclaimed, scrutinizing Faith’s innocent face. “It’s probably forty feet high! You’ll kill yourself!”
“Don’t be such a sissy,” Faith argued back, eager to prove that she had courage beyond that of anyone else in the quarry. She decided to prod Joey’s ego. “You can hold my hand if you’re scared.”
“Psh, me scared?” Joey retorted, eyeing the ledge again. “I’m not scared, kiddo. I just don’t think jumping off something that high is a real good idea. If you landed wrong, you could really hurt yourself.”
“I’m going,” the ten-year-old declared.
Joey shook his head. “You’re not. Your mom would kill me.”
“I’m going.”
“Look, I’ll buy you something at the mall if you stay away from the ledge.”
“I’m going.”
Joey sighed, sank below the water’s surface, and reemerged. “You are without a doubt the most stubborn little girl in the entire world.” He was silent for a moment as he continually glanced at the ledge and back at Faith, as if trying to determine if the gravitational forces of such a feat would crush her small body on impact. With another sigh, Joey said, “Fine, go ahead. But if you die, it’s all your fault.”
“Thanks, Joey!” Faith gave him a watery hug and began swimming towards the rock wall, intent on climbing to her new destination.
“I’ll stay down here to remove your corpse from the water!” Joey called, still trying to deter Faith’s unstoppable pride. At that moment, Kelly swam over and asked Joey what all the fuss was about, blonde hair dripping water over her face. “Oh, Faith just decided this afternoon would be a good time to kill herself.” He pointed up at the ledge Faith had picked out.
“Holy shit,” Kelly disbelievingly said. Joey was so caught up in Faith’s progress that he barely even registered Kelly’s language. Not that he would’ve cared. “She’s crazy.”
“Yep. I’ve never seen anyone, let alone a small girl, with as little fear as your friend there. I hate to think what she’ll be capable of in another few years if she’s trying stunts like this at ten.” There was a measure of admiration in Joey’s voice, for although he thought the jump was a truly bad idea, he had to respect the absolute insanity it represented.
Above the water, Faith was gradually making her way closer to the ledge, getting higher as she hopped from rock to rock. The heat coming down from the sun was intense today, so hot that even the rocks she stepped on were extremely uncomfortable. After a few minutes she felt like she’d been climbing forever, but when she looked up, her goal was in sight. Scrambling across the last few rocks and lifting herself onto the ledge, she almost had a heart attack when she saw exactly how far down she was about to fall.
Maybe this isn’t such a great idea after all…
Everything seemed so tiny from four stories up. She could easily spot Kelly and Joey, but both of them were so small that their facial expressions were unclear. Joey yelled something about how Faith was going to wind up in the hospital, still trying to deter her. Turning slightly and looking out over the quarry, she could see that most, if not all, of the people were now frozen in place, having been alerted by Joey’s playful screaming. The majority probably thought she was stuck with no way to get down; after all, what sort of ten-year-old child purposely put herself in that kind of situation?
Faith, naturally.
Amidst much pointing and loud conversation down below, Joey and Kelly glanced at each other, both slightly worried at what was about to happen, and prepared for the worst.
High above the water, high above the people, high above almost everything, Faith crept to the edge, feeling her toes wiggle in the open air. With the sun staring unflinchingly downward, Faith took a deep breath, jumped off the ledge, and followed the sunbeams down to the water.
Later, Joey and Kelly would relate just how miraculous it was that Faith didn’t kill herself. She remembered nothing of the fall, aside from the truly horrifying sound of wind in her ears and the impossibly fast onrush of water as she plummeted straight towards its blue surface. By simple mathematics, she had been traveling at what Joey kept referring to as “Ludicrous Speed”, but she neither understood the word “ludicrous” or the apparent joke it contained. All she knew was that it had been fast.
Really fast.
Upon entering the water feet-first, she had plunged a good distance under the water, and thus took some time to resurface. Joey, fearing that he had inadvertently allowed a small child to commit suicide, had immediately gone under, too, in an attempt to bring Faith back to the surface. But she did it all under her own power, still a bit lightheaded from the fall as she swam upward. After coming up and clearing her eyes, she focused on reality enough to hear scattered applause and a few whistles from the other people in the quarry. Kelly, shaking her head and smiling in true bewilderment, expressed some sentiment about how Faith was going to die young, and Joey echoed the feeling.
But no one could take away the incredible rush that she had felt. She had done something that no one else wanted to try, and that knowledge burned within her, a glowing ember of success over incredible odds.
After a couple more hours of swimming and assorted cliff-jumping -Faith had had enough of falling and did not attempt to repeat her performance -the trio climbed out of the water, gathered their things, and got back into Joey’s car. The late afternoon drive home was somewhat more subdued than the Guns ‘N Roses-fueled journey earlier in the day; the girls were both tired and crammed into the back seat, and Joey was content to listen to some old 70’s classics. The Nova thundered down the road, engine roaring, and before long, Joey pulled up in front of the apartment complex.
Letting the girls out, Joey asked, “So, did we have fun today?”
Faith and Kelly both nodded their agreement and thanked Joey for taking them to the quarry. Everyone was satisfied that the trip had been a success, and Faith had thankfully not killed herself, so all was well with the world. The trio climbed the stairs slowly, but Faith was the first to the top, as usual. They found Jesse sitting at the kitchen table when they entered the apartment, and she looked up from her magazine with a smile. Since the disappearance of Chris, Jesse appeared more beautiful than she had in years. Without heavy drinking and physical torment, she had become less hard, allowing her natural beauty to shine through. She was still dressed in her waitress outfit, so either she had just returned from work, or she had neglected to change into something more casual.
“Hey,” she said, shutting the magazine and standing up with a stretch. “How’d it go?”
“Awesome!” Faith answered, first to get any words in. “It was really fun.”
Kelly nodded adamantly, and that left Joey to talk more in-depth about the events of the day. “We all had a good time, Jess. I really wish you could’ve gone with us.” Jesse gave a small shrug. “Anyways, I had to watch your daughter pretty closely…you’ve been raising a little maniac.” He chuckled.
Jesse raised an eyebrow and directed it towards Faith. “What’ve you been up to, Firecracker?”
Faith, sensing an opportunity to convey her own achievement before it was toned down by Joey, launched right into an explanation. “It was so great! I climbed this huge rock wall and got way higher than any of the other kids wanted to go, and Joey said it was forty feet in the air, and I jumped off, and the —”
“Take a breath, kiddo. I see you’ve been a handful for poor Joey, huh?” Jesse spied Joey making a fainting motion as Faith continued with her story.
“And after, everyone clapped. It was so great,” she repeated, obviously pleased with herself.
“She’s crazy, Ms. Lehane,” Kelly added, tilting her head in her friend’s direction.
“Oh, I’ve known that for years,” Jesse responded affectionately, as Faith ran over for a hug. “One of these days it’ll be the death of me, I swear.”
The rest of the day was absolutely perfect in Faith’s opinion. Jesse and Joey took the girls out to eat for dinner, and they all watched a TV movie later. Jesse said it was okay for Kelly to spend the night, and Faith was convinced that this new life was her reward for suffering through so many years of anguish. With Joey around, they could almost be a real family, and there was nothing Faith longed after more than a sense of love and care that she’d been so desperately in search of during the past years. As she went to sleep that night, with Kelly on the floor beside her, Faith’s last conscious thought was that her life was finally perfect.
But it was not to last.