“Josh, I blame you for this. Before I pulled a Rip-Van-Winkle for thirteen years, Abby was a late sleeper.”
“I remember it differently. You were the late sleeper and I took care of Abby until you managed to drag yourself out of bed and have your first coffee of the day.”
“No. My memories of it are much more recent that yours. It’s been less than a week for me since Abby was four, so I’m right and this is all your fault.”
I’d woken mom and dad up early on Saturday morning. Since mom had missed my childhood, I decided to give her a little taste of it by running into their room at six-thirty this morning and jumping on their bed, yelling, “Time to get up. Time to get up. Lots to do today. Up and attem. Come on lazybones. Let’s get a move on.”
Apparently, while this passes for really cute behavior in a four-year-old, it somehow loses that cuteness when you’re seventeen. Maybe it’s the size difference. Regardless, mom was not amused. Dad was smiling though, and I enjoyed it immensely.
“I was always an early riser. You get to pack more into your day that way and we have reservations at eight this morning so you need to get up and have breakfast.”
“Reservations? Where? Why didn’t you mention this last night?”
“Because it’s a surprise.”
“Did you know anything about this?” Mom questioned dad accusingly.
“No. I would have counseled her to make it later, dear.” Dad got a glare for his patronizing tone. If mom had laser beam eyes, dad would have been scorched.
“I couldn’t make it any later. I’m working this morning from nine to noon. Then I have to go over to Uncle Magnum’s for a class. I’ve already missed a whole week of classes. I can feel my body sliding into decrepitude.”
“Uncle who?”
“Uncle Magnum. Your brother?”
“Should I even ask?”, mom asked while looking towards dad.
“Paul and Abby used to watch old shows together. He made the mistake of showing her Magnum P.I. some years ago. Abby thinks they have identical mustaches and now he is Uncle Magnum or Sifu Magnum. Abby appreciates the humor in this more that he does.”
“Hmmm. I think I’m ok with that. He used to tease me all the time when we were kids.”
I let out a loud sigh and hopped up and down a few times like an impatient child. “Enough lying around. We have to go. Oh, you’ll need your ‘old woman’ clothes and make-up.”
A pillow came flying towards me, but I punched it in midair and it didn’t get up again.
Mom took her time getting ready and we didn’t make it out of the house for another hour. Since I had my driver’s permit, I took the driver’s seat, leaving dad to be the passenger and mom to take up the back seat.
“You drive very well, Abby. Who have you been practicing with?”, dad asked.
“No one. I’ve been driving in L2 for almost a year now. It’s great because there are no other cars around. Nothing to bash into, no traffic, no traffic signs to follow.”
“I see. And what car have you been using?” Whoops.
“I borrowed it from someone who won’t be needing for the next few decades.”
Dad didn’t respond to this statement and I took that to mean that we’d have a longer discussion about it later.
We pulled up to the front gates of Hannah’s Home and I used my access card at the reader to open them up before driving to the main building. Shauna had managed to get all the security measures in place at the start of the new year.
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“What is this place?”, mom asked as we got out of the car.
“This is Hannah’s Home, headquarters for the Hannah Foundation. I started the foundation last summer as an organization dedicated to helping the victims of human trafficking and their families. We offer temporary housing, personal counseling, career counseling, legal aid, job retraining, schooling, health evaluations, and self defense courses to survivors and to their family members that stay with them. Our goal is to help survivors learn to deal with their past and prepare for their future. For many of them, returning to their old lives isn’t psychologically possible. We help them find new paths to follow.”
“You created this foundation? For me?”, mom was tearing up and dad put his arm around her.
“I wanted you to have a place that would have the resources to help you recover from your captivity and rebuild your life, if you ever made it out. I never imagined that you weren’t being held anywhere, so a lot of what it has to offer won’t be helpful to you. I brought you here today because I overheard you and dad talking the other night and thought that the foundation would be the perfect place for you to work. You’d be helping people in a meaningful way, just like at your old community center, and you could work here right up until the baby is born. There are three nurse practitioners that live on site. Even after the baby is born, we could set up a nursery next to your office.”
Mom took a few steps towards me and brought me in for a hug. “Thank you, Abby. I’m so proud of you and what you’ve created here. It sounds like a wonderful place.”
Mom’s are very mushy people. Also, this is yet another reason to not wear make-up. When I finished crying, I only had to wipe my eyes and wait a minute for the redness to go away. Mom had to use the car mirror to reapply makeup.
I took mom into the administration building to meet Shauna, Jenny and Gabriel. Normally they all wouldn’t be here on a Saturday, but we still had about half of the survivors from last weekend’s rescue operation staying with us. Combined with the nearly two dozen survivors that had been with us before that, we were really stretching the limits of our available resources when it came to personnel. Shauna was already holding interviews for new positions.
“Abby! I’m so glad you’re here. I know you’ve had some sort of a family emergency but I need your signature on several orders and I’d like to run a few of the candidates by you.” Shauna was talking to me and looking at some paperwork at the same time, so she hadn’t seen mom and dad walk in behind me.
“I might have some time before my shift at the clinic. Otherwise, I can stop by tomorrow morning after I see Sifu Zhang. Right now, though, I’d like to introduce you to my family emergency. Shauna, this is my mother, Hannah. Mom, this is Shauna Martinez. She’s the administrative head of the Hannah Foundation.”
Shauna kept her expression neutral, but I could see the dilation of her eyes as she took in my mother standing before her. She came over right away and greeted mom warmly.
“When did this happen? Did Roger have something to do with this?”
“A few hours after the big rescue, Roger found a connection to mom on Phil’s computer. He followed it up and the next thing I knew, he’d dropped mom off in my room. He used the same drug on her as he used on Samuel and she doesn’t remember anything about the rescue.”
“And you couldn’t tell me all this last week because….?” Shauna let her sentence drag on a bit, willing me to fill in the rest.
“Because I wanted to surprise you. I only told her about this place five minutes ago when we pulled in.”
“Hannah, I would offer to take Abby out behind that woodshed and teach her some common courtesy, but she’s my boss. She’d also beat me to a pulp.”
“That’s ok, Shauna. I understand. She might be my boss too, if I take her up on the job offer that she just made me a few minutes ago. I could ask my brother to make her life difficult in his classes, if you’d like.”
“Definitely not. Abby runs some of the classes for both Sifu Paul and Sifu Zhang. She’d just return the favor one day when I’m in class and I’ve noticed that Abby never gives back less that she gets.”
“It’s her overdeveloped sense of vengeance. I was a victim of that just yesterday.” Mom let out a long suffering sigh.
“Why do people keep talking about me as if I’m not here? How about we start the tour mom? My shift starts in less than an hour and we have a lot to see.”
I introduced mom to Jenny and Gabriel on the way out. They’re reactions weren’t so muted as Shauna’s had been. I got a bear-crushing hug from Jenny and a high-five from Gabriel. Both were very respectful towards mom.
Shauna joined us on our tour and after a few minutes of her interrupting my spiel with tons of extra details, I dragged her over next to mom and told Shauna to take over. Dad and I followed quietly behind the two of them and listened to Shauna answer all of mom’s endless questions.
“She’s going to fit in very well here, Abby. Thank you for offering her a place.”
“It’s not exactly how I’d envisioned it a few years ago, but she’s the reason this place exists. She’ll always have a place here. Although, between Shauna, mom and Diane, I may not have anything left to do.”
“I know you, Abby. If those three displace you here, then it’s what you intended to happen. You already have the next move planned. Perhaps the next two or three moves. Would you like to share those plans with me?”
“Sure. First, I’m going to graduate high school. Then, I have an independent study program that I’d like to undertake this summer. After that, I have a few ideas that I want to explore for expanding the foundation. It’s still not quite doing what I wanted it to do.”