The Comfort of Black (29 page)

With his eyes closed, Dallin said, “Please, Hannah. I need…I need Connor. I need to be his father.”

“Hannah,” Black said. “Don't do this.”

Visions attacked her, fragmented and momentary flashes of the past two years, memories of days with her sister, days of drinking, the birth of Connor, of nights alone, when Dallin was working, the second cell phone, the denials, the loneliness, his hands on her throat. There were simply too many thoughts in her head, horrid, impossible thoughts, none of which offered a way out, a proper explanation, anything to salve the wounds. Everything in her head was a deception, a mistake, a lie. So many thoughts, and suddenly Hannah felt she could not process any of them.

“When you shoved me,” she whispered. “When you put your hands on my throat. I saw you. I
saw
you. That wasn't an act. That was real.”

“It wasn't real,” he said. “They were going to kill you if I didn't stick to the script. I tried to warn you.”

More images. Dallin telling her
I'm so sorry
. And at the Four Seasons, the scribble on the paper:
They're making me do this
.

“Maybe you didn't want me dead,” she said. “But you didn't want me around anymore. You could have gone to the police. You could have given him the money and he would have gone away. But instead, you went to these…insane lengths to get me to disappear. You did it because you want to be with her, and this was a way out.”

“They were going to kill you,” he said.

“Billy is nothing!” Hannah shouted. “A fucking
nobody
. And you…with all your resources. All our money. You could have stepped on him like a bug. Both him and Justine. But you let yourself believe you were trapped, because you
wanted me gone
.”

Dallin remained silent. Eyes closed. A prisoner awaiting execution.

“Dallin,” she said. “Do you want to be with her? Is that what you want?”

Very slowly, Dallin shook his head. “I want to be with my son. That's all I want.”

Hannah kept the gun to his head a few more seconds, and then she finally lowered her arm and exhaled.

“Black's right,” she said. “I probably
would
feel guilty if I shot you, and you're not worth occupying that much space in my mind.”

She heard Black's voice behind her. “Once he realizes the eight million is gone, Dallin will have him to deal with.”

“I'm sure he can get more,” Hannah said, nodding at her husband. “I'm sure his mind is spinning with ideas now.” She spoke directly to Dallin, “If you're lucky, maybe he'll go away, I'll go away, and you and Justine can live happily ever after. Is that it, Dallin? Is that your best-case scenario right now?”

Dallin continued his longing gaze at the decades-worn motel carpet, as if in it he could read the words that would somehow make sense. Then he repeated, “I just want my son.”

A sudden urge came over Hannah, the familiar longing for a drink. Maybe a shot. Tequila. A couple. Something to dull her a little. Make her think more clearly, and push away the webs of confusion and hate. The rage kept creeping over her, consuming her from her toes upward, like a nest of spiders crawling up her body. She wanted to act out, to yell, to hurt, to pull the fucking trigger and watch her husband bleed, and her need for alcohol punctuated every negative feeling surging through her body. In this moment she never felt so much like her father. As much as she hated Billy, she understood him, and never in her life as much as now had she so desperately wanted to be nothing like him.

It was time to change. She would control the rage. And there would be no more alcohol, ever. She would focus on the future, whatever that held for her. But there was one gleaming light in the distance, and that would be her focus from now on. One thing that would define her from now on.

She said aloud the two words that would mark the beginning of her change.

“I'm pregnant.”

Hannah stood outside the motel room, arms crossed tightly across her waist, holding herself as if letting go would cause her insides to spill onto the ground. A moist breeze licked her neck, chilling her, causing her to squeeze even more tightly. Black stood a few feet away, and a full minute passed before either of them said anything.

“Are you sure?” Black asked.

She nodded. “I think so. Maybe the stress is making me late, but I don't think that's it. I've never been pregnant before, but I
feel
it.”

Another pause, an unnecessary one since she knew the next question.

“Is it—”

“I don't know,” she said. “Could be.” Her stomach suddenly flipped, and she didn't know if this was due to nerves or the first signs of morning sickness. She steadied herself against it and willed it away, and the feeling gradually faded.

The only possibility the pregnancy was from Dallin came from the last time Hannah had sex with her husband, the night he spoke in his sleep.
Or pretended to speak in his sleep
, she thought.
The beginning of everything
. The idea she was pregnant from that night horrified her, as if she would deliver to the world some kind of demon spawn. Which was ridiculous, she knew. It would still be
her
baby.

The other possibility was Black was the father. Hannah couldn't even get her mind around that at all. A month ago, all she wanted was a baby with Dallin. More than anything else she ever wanted. And now the idea she could be pregnant from someone else came to her as…well, almost a
relief
.

She looked over at Black, who seemed a bit unsteady himself. “I don't know what to say,” he said.

“Neither do I.”

She stared at him, looking into his eyes, searching to see if the next question forming in his mind would be
Are you going to keep it?
But that question didn't come. Instead, he reached out and held each of her shoulders, leaning his face toward hers. “We need to go,” he said. “We have the money, it's time to go.”

“No,” she said. She nodded back to the motel room door, behind which Dallin remained bound to the chair, his mind likely reeling from Hannah's declaration. “I'm not done with this.”

She hadn't even given Dallin time to react to what she'd said. She'd said the words and then walked outside, trailed by Black. The first truth was, she didn't think it was her husband's. Not based on the timing of her cycle and the amount of times she and Black had had sex in the past month compared to the one time she and Dallin had. The second truth was she didn't care what his reaction was. The child was
hers
, despite who the father was. The third truth was she
wanted
the baby to be Black's.

“Hannah, eight million is a lot of money. I know it's not all you deserve, probably not even close, but it's enough to disappear for good. More than enough.”

“No,” she said. “I didn't do anything wrong. I can't just disappear and let the world think I stole all that money. And then, what, Dallin and Justine live their lives out together?” The image of Connor—Dallin's child—flashed in her mind and it was too much. Hannah doubled over and vomited onto the cracked cement of the sidewalk.

“Are you okay?” she heard him ask.

She wiped her mouth and waited for the next surge to hit her, but it didn't come. She slowly stood. “Fantastic,” she said.

A faded gray El Camino with deeply tinted windows rolled into the parking lot and pulled in near the motel registration area.

“Hannah, do you even know what you want?” Black said.

Her first instinct was to say
I want things to be back to how they were
, but she wasn't convinced that was true. Because how things used to be was a lie, a dream pillowed into comfort by alcohol and money.

“I don't want them to win,” she said.

“They haven't won.”

“They destroyed me. My sister. My husband. Billy. They all plotted to get rid of me. They don't get to win.” A man in dark sunglasses and slicked black hair got out of the El Camino and walked inside the motel. The hue of his leather jacket was a perfect match for his car. Hannah continued. “They had an affair for two years—
and a child
—and I didn't see any of it. I was too numbed by my drinking. Too complacent living in wealth, pretending I had become someone special. That I had moved on from who I really am.”

“And who are you?”

The man in the leather jacket returned from the motel registration with a room key and opened the back door of his car. He leaned in and, after a moment, stood back up, holding a baby in his arms. He reached back in with one hand and grabbed a duffel bag, and then the man walked to a room a few doors down and disappeared inside to his own life, the baby quiet the entire time.

“I'm Billy's daughter,” Hannah said.

“That's how you define yourself?”

“It's how I've been defined.”

Black moved his hands up to her face. For a brief moment Hannah was conscious of just having been sick, how she must look, how she must smell, but the insecurities disappeared in the heat of his palms, as if absorbed from her through his skin.

“Who
are
you?” he repeated. It wasn't a question. It was a challenge. Once again, his voice low, he asked, “
Who are you?
”

The one question she could least answer was the one just asked of her.
Who are you, Hannah? What are the words to describe you?
Are you a wife, a sister, a daughter? Are you a victim? A lover? Who are your friends, and are those friendships real? Are you a loner, an intellectual, philanthropist? An alcoholic? Are you rage, wrapped in skin, tight like leather dried in the desert sun?

Are you a mother?

Who are you, Hannah?

She closed her eyes and felt his fingers spread on her face.

“I can't let it go,” she said. She wasn't even sure what she was referring to, but whatever “it” was, it clung to her, squeezed her, dared her to do something about it. “You can leave,” she continued, her eyes remaining closed. “Set up an account for me, transfer half the money there. Take your half and disappear.”

“You don't just get to make these decisions on your own,” Black said. “If it's my child, I get some say. It's not just about you.”

She hadn't expected that, hadn't even considered someone else could have claim about the baby inside her. But he was right. If it was Black's—and she was certain it was, in that undefinable way she even knew she was pregnant—she had to admit he had a right to be involved with her choices.

She couldn't argue. She could only repeat her wants.

“Black, I need to do this.”

She heard him sigh. “If it's truly what you want, then I'm going with you,” he said.

Hannah felt the tears come down her cheeks, and there was nothing she could do to stop them. “You don't need to protect me anymore.”

She felt one of his hands lift from her face, and seconds later it was on her stomach.

“I said I'm going with you.”

“Don't stay for the wrong reasons,” she said. “I told you I don't even know if it's yours.”

His was the voice of reason, she thought. Of absolute certainty. And of peace. “I know who
I
am, Hannah. And I know how I define myself. With that kind of clarity, there is never a wrong reason. Or a bad choice. There's only direction, and my direction will be yours. For now, maybe for a long time.”

A few rooms down Hannah heard the cries of a baby, the little girl—
it was a girl, wasn't it?
—she'd just seen in the arms of her father. The cries lasted just a few seconds before fading, and Hannah envisioned the little girl being gently bounced into peacefulness by her father.

Hannah opened her eyes.

“Both of them. My sister and father. I want to see them before we leave.”

“Just like you had to see Dallin,” Black said.

“Yes.”

“And what did you accomplish with him? Aside from the money, what did you get from seeing your husband today? Did you get closure? Did you get the answers you wanted?”

The words
your husband
seemed foreign to Hannah. “I don't know,” she said. “I got answers. I'm not sure about closure.”

“And now you risk everything by meeting with Billy and Justine. You know why they did what they did—Dallin told you everything. What are you going to do? What could you possibly accomplish?”

“Black, I'm not telling you it's a good idea. I'm telling you I have to do it.”

“
Why?
”

“Because the same reason you would,” she said. “If you hadn't killed that drunk driver, wouldn't you have gone to his trial? Wouldn't you have wanted to say something to him during his sentencing?”

Black stepped back, his face stunned. Hannah almost felt sorry for bringing it up, but not sorry enough to keep from driving her point deeper.

“That man destroyed your life, Black. Look at where you are—first prison, now constantly on the run. Everything you once knew as your life is gone, all because of that one person. If you had the chance, wouldn't you at least want to confront him? I'm not saying it would change anything. In fact, it probably wouldn't. But I'm not asking you to be logical about it. I'm asking you,
wouldn't you want that?
”

His face seemed to harden as he thought, his jaw tight, the lines in his forehead a bit deeper than before.

“Yes,” he finally said. “Yes, I would want that. But understand something. There's no such thing as closure. I've chased it for years and have only found open wounds. When I stopped chasing, the pain lessened. But it doesn't ever go away. Nothing's ever closed, Hannah. You should know that.”