Losing Hope by Leslie J. Sherrod Page B

seat, closed my eyes, and laid my head back.
    But I was far from relaxed.
    I reminded myself that I was on a new mission. To find hope. To find Hope, I told myself.
    And to find closure.
    I wasn’t going to find what I needed from that woman or that man, so I was going to have to come up with another plan.
    I grabbed my cell phone again and went online. After I had Googled and searched through several Web sites, a smile gradually eased onto my face. A new class in Portuguese had just started at one of the local community colleges. Only one session had been held so far. Within the next five minutes, I had registered for session number two, scheduled for Friday night.
    Tomorrow.
    I was not so interested in learning how to speak Portuguese. I wanted only to talk with someone who already could.
    I left Lake Montebello with a smug sense of satisfaction. I had the makings of a plan in place. It might not work. It could backfire or make me fall flat on my face. It did not matter. It gave me a little hope.
    For the moment, that was enough.

Chapter 20
    I breezed through two client visits and walked into my office just before noon. Sheena spun around in her chair and looked at me.
    â€œGirl, where have you been? Seems like I haven’t seen you half this week.” The twentysomething-year-old looked like she had just stepped out of a hair and nail salon. Everything about her—even the way her costume jewelry matched the exact shades of blue of her blouse and high heels—looked like a lesson in detail.
    I smiled, then started to answer her, but there was no point. She’d already turned back to her workstation and her Facebook page, which was up on her screen.
    â€œSeriously, Sheena, do you ever get any work done?” I shook my head at her, and she rolled her eyes at me.
    â€œFor your information, Ms. St. James,” Sheena stated with mock attitude, “I’m all caught up. I doubt that you can say the same since you always seem to be trying to dig up more work than what’s already in front of you.”
    I had to smile again, knowing there was some truth to what she’d said. Sometimes I made things harder than they needed to be. With that in mind, I sat down at my desk, trying to decide what would be the easiest way to determine if a girl named Hope Diamond really existed. I began to brainstorm ideas and started a “to-do” list. The obvious was to explore the matter in greater depth with Dayonna, but who was to say when she’d be in a state to talk about it coherently? I pulled out the list of her DSS workers. Perhaps one of them could shed some light. I had circled and starred Deirdre Evans’s name. I really wanted to talk to her to get an explanation for Dayonna’s five-month absence in her chart.
    Then there was the brother. Dayonna’s chart indicated that she had a brother who aged out of the system several years back, and Ava had mentioned this to me. I flipped through the thick pages and found his name. Dayquon Hardison, DOB November 13th, 1987. That would make him about two months shy of twenty-four. All things being equal, he would have aged out of the foster care system when he was twenty-one, nearly three years ago, unless he’d aged out as a teenager.
    â€œSheena, you used to work for a program that transitions older foster children to adulthood, right?”
    â€œAn independent living program. Yes.” She did not look my way as she played around with her smartphone.
    â€œIf I wanted to find out what happened to someone after they aged out of an independent living program, how would I go about it?”
    â€œDoes this have anything to do with your current workload?” She gave me a sideways glance. When I responded only with a half grin and a twitch of my eyebrows, she shook her head. “Just get in touch with the last program the person was in, and see if anyone kept in touch with him or her.”
    â€œWhat if I don’t know what