The Lullaby Sky (18 page)

“You girls come on in and play in your room a little while,” Hannah said.

Travis had a puzzled expression. “What are you worried about? I give Sophie rides all the time.”

“You know the rules. Laurel can’t be outside,” she said.

“I got permission from Gina. She said if the girls were wearing costumes and masks it would be all right, but not to keep them out more than a few minutes. She said that it might be best if Sophie was outside some each day so things wouldn’t look suspicious,” Travis said. “I would never do anything to jeopardize Sophie or any of the folks that come here, Hannah. Trust me.”

“I was so scared.” She shivered in spite of the summer heat.

Travis laid a hand on her shoulder. “I can imagine. Gina called to ask me to come to the shelter today and talk to a teenage boy who stepped in when he caught his father beating on his mother. The man turned on the boy, who got whipped pretty badly. She thinks that I can help. While I was talking to her, I asked about the ride. I never thought of you waking up and being afraid. I’m sorry.”

Two words Hannah had never heard from Marty. Not once. It was always her fault that she got hit. Sometimes he kissed her afterward and said that it would never happen again if she’d learn her job as his wife, but he’d never given her an apology. Her pulse settled down enough that she could breathe.

“Are we okay?” he asked.

“Yes, we are okay. I need a cup of coffee.” She turned around and went back inside the house.

“Muffins are under the tea towel and the third pot of coffee is going. I slept in late, too,” Aunt Birdie said from the kitchen table.

“How late?”

“All the way to seven o’clock. Thought my alarm clock was broke. Darcy and Liz were still asleep, so I left a note on the table for one of them to call me when they get up. I think they need a little time to talk without me hovering around.” She folded the paper neatly and slammed it down on the table. “Not one damn word about Wyatt in today’s paper. Has he got connections with the mob or something? They should be sharpening up the guillotine to chop his sorry head off this morning. Not even a mention in the police blotter.”

Hannah carried the plate of muffins and a cup of coffee to the table. “Wyatt knows everyone in Cooke County. Remember, he was a policeman for a while before he and Liz got married and he started driving trucks.”

Miss Rosie came into the house by the front door in a huff. “Did you see the morning paper? I can’t believe this.”

“He’ll get his just due. He’ll buck up against the wrong woman and that will be the end of it.” Hannah buttered a blueberry muffin and bit into it. A month ago if someone had told her that her friends would come and go in her house like this, she’d have thought they should be committed to an asylum.

“Well, bring on the woman,” Miss Rosie said.

Aunt Birdie’s phone rang, and she pulled it out of the bibbed pocket of her overalls. “Just push the button on the coffeepot, sweetheart. It’s all ready to go, and there’s muffins on the counter. Bacon and sausage is in the refrigerator if you want to cook. I’ll be home in a little bit.”

Hannah pushed the plate of muffins toward Aunt Birdie. “Blueberry is my favorite and then cranberry with a touch of orange juice in the dough.”

“Mine, too. Where’s Jodie? I want to hold that baby. Birdie gets more time with the baby than I do,” Miss Rosie said.

“I’m not sure where she is.”

“In Sophie’s room,” Travis supplied.

Aunt Birdie shook her finger at Rosie. “I do not hog that baby. You’re the one who always whines when your time is up with her.” Aunt Birdie poured a cup of coffee and sat down at the table. “Are you all right, Hannah? I been thinkin’ maybe this thing about having abused women in your house ain’t such a good idea. It brings back all the pain and fear that you had when Marty was around. I saw how you was with Liz.”

Before she could answer, Sophie and Laurel blew into the kitchen like a small Texas tornado, giggling and twirling and asking for a cookie. She handed them each one and they took off back to the bedroom.

“Well?” Aunt Birdie asked.

Hannah gave her a blank look and then remembered the conversation they’d been having before the kids romped inside. “Oh, that. I think it’s helping, actually. Even though it breaks my heart to see Liz like that and to see Jodie with a broken leg, it’s bringing closure—maybe only a half an inch at a time, but it helps.”

Wiping sweat from his forehead with a red bandanna, Cal came into the house, bypassed the coffeepot, and headed straight for the refrigerator. “Sweet tea?”

“In the pitcher. Help yourself,” Hannah said.

“I’ll stick to designing clothes. It’s hot out there on that mower,” Cal said. “You can have it back, Travis.”

Aunt Birdie reached for another muffin. “I’m going home. Oh, and one more thing. Liz says that she’s not leaving the house until her face is back to normal and that Sophie is not to see her until then. You can come and go, but leave Sophie at home. She doesn’t want her to get scared. This week won’t be a problem. She’s got a new kitten and a new friend, but next week you might have your hands full with her.”

“Send her to me if she wants to get out. We’ll tell her that Birdie has the mumps.” Miss Rosie smiled.

“Don’t you dare.” Aunt Birdie gasped. “I ain’t never had them or the chicken pox neither, and you saying that might jinx me. Lord, I don’t need them crazy things when I’m eighty years old.”

“I’ll plan some things to keep her busy.” Travis poured a glass of tea and downed it all without coming up for air.

“Looks like it.” Aunt Birdie waved over her shoulder as she left.

Travis leaned against the cabinet. Sweat plastered his dark hair to his neck and forehead. His glasses were smeared, but his blue eyes searched hers as if asking permission to open the doors into her heart. “With that in mind, we should plan to take Sophie into town on Saturday after Jodie’s brother takes her away from here. We could go to the zoo and maybe to that new kids’ movie and then for pizza.”

“You should keep working on Cal’s new apartment and work space,” Hannah said. “We can’t give her special things every time someone leaves.”

“But this is her first live-in little friend, and she’ll be very sad. Next time we won’t do something big. Please, Hannah.” He grinned.

“If we work two extra hours each day, it would make up for the eight hours we’ll lose on Saturday and give our construction crew a whole weekend to waste their paycheck,” Cal said. “I bet we could get more work out of them if they know they’ve got two days off and money in their hot little hands.”

Her dark brows knit together, and she tried to think of one good reason not to let either of them tell her what to do. But this was Sophie and they were right—she would be lonely when Laurel left. And they hadn’t had a fun day away from Crossing since the divorce, so it would be a good thing.

“I’m not bossing you,” Travis said softly. “I’m not Marty.”

“No, you are not,” Hannah said after a moment. “And yes, she will miss Laurel. Let’s not tell her until they are gone that morning, because I don’t want Laurel to feel left out.”

“Have I told you lately that you are an amazing woman?” Travis said. “You have the heart and soul of an angel.”

Hannah blushed crimson. “You need your glasses cleaned. Hand them over and I’ll do the job myself so that all that rose color is washed away. You can’t see me real good through those things.”

He jerked them off and laid them on the cabinet. “Nope, I still see the same thing, and now you are even more beautiful without all the smears and bits of grass.”

She picked them up and squirted a drop of dish soap on each lens and then rinsed them under warm water. After drying them with a paper towel, she handed them back to him, her eyes coming to rest on his lips. She thought about that kiss, and heat crawled up her neck to her cheeks. She tried shutting her eyes for a second, but when she opened them again, he was smiling and the fire in her face got even hotter.

He put them back on and blinked a few times. “You must’ve left a lot of that rose color in them. You are even prettier now, and I didn’t even think that was possible.”

She tried to remember the last time that Marty said a kind word about her. It had to be the day they were married, when he’d told her that he hoped she made as pretty a wife as she did a bride.

“Travis, you are good for my ego and my heart,” she said.

“Then I’m happy.”

C
HAPTER
E
IGHTEEN

H
annah shook her head slowly when Liz and Darcy arrived that Tuesday evening. “I’m so sorry. I thought the bruises would be healed better by now.”

“Me, too, but they’re changing colors so they’ll disappear before long. Lord, it’s good to get out of the house and come down here. I was getting cabin fever. You must be Jodie. I’m Liz,” she said. “If either of those little girls needs to come out of their room to go to the bathroom, I’ll step outside.”

“I told you that we could take care of it. You’ll only be here half an hour and Aunt Birdie is reading stories to the girls,” Hannah assured her.

“Pleased to meet you, Liz,” Jodie said. “Holy shit, woman. What’d he use on you? I thought I got it bad, but that bastard nearly killed you, didn’t he? You make me thankful that I left without talking to him about it.”

“Our own little support group right here. Shall I call it to order?” Liz asked.

“I think you just did. How does a group work, anyway?”

“We tell our stories and hope that by getting them out in the open that it helps heal us and other people, kind of like Alcoholics Anonymous,” Liz answered.

“Okay, then we’ll hold hands.” Jodie held hers out.

Liz took one and Hannah the other, then Liz and Hannah clasped hands.

“I’ll pray rather than us saying that thing they say in AA, since we’re a little different. We got tangled up with sorry men, not alcohol.”

Hannah nodded and closed her eyes.

“Lord, us three women need some help,” Jodie said.

Her Kentucky accent seemed even stronger when Hannah had her eyes shut.

“We’re askin’ you to heal our bodies, but even more so our minds. We want you to put boils on the men who hurt us. You can even pick the spot. Or you can put a woman in their lives who will deal them even more misery than they have dealt us. We’ll leave that decision up to you. As for us, we want to be able to trust again, not real soon, but someday. We’d like to cast our love upon the waters and have it come back to us at least sevenfold and without any form of ugly abuse. That’s all we’ll ask today. Amen.”

“A-blessed-men,” Liz said with a crooked smile.

“You sure know how to pray,” Hannah said.

“I was raised to believe that if we pray, it will be answered. I kinda gave up on it after I married, but I’m rememberin’ my roots now. Can we sit down and have a real visit now that we got the prayin’ done?” Jodie asked. “So, you are a principal at the Crossing school, Liz, and you’re a teacher’s aide, Hannah?” She eased down into the rocking chair and laid her crutch beside it.

“That’s right. I have to go back to work after July Fourth, so I’m hoping that I’m healed enough by then not to scare off anyone who comes into my office,” Liz said.

“That’s still two weeks away, so you will be fine. See this little scar right here”—Jodie pointed to her upper lip—“that’s what happens when you get hit with a beer bottle. Five stitches. I told the emergency room people that I dropped a glass and then fell on it when I was trying to clean up the mess. It happened on Thanksgiving last year and I was pretty healed up by Christmas.”

“Why did we get tangled up with men like that? It has to be a flaw in us,” Hannah said.

“You have a good, strong, male role model in your house?” Jodie asked.

“My dad died when I was pretty young, and Mama raised me right here in Crossing. She moved back to Virginia to take care of her mother when I was in college,” Hannah answered. “Liz, she says that Wyatt should be fed to the coyotes. Dead or alive—either one.”

Liz nodded. “You tell Miz Patsy that I won’t argue with that dead or alive. If I ever did love him, it died a long time ago.”

“I will do it,” Hannah said.

“My parents died within six weeks of each other, when I was in college.” Liz propped her leg on the coffee table. “Mama with a brain tumor and Daddy from a work accident. But Daddy was never around much. He was a long-haul trucker and came home on weekends, kind of like Wyatt does—did. It takes a while to get the past and the present figured out, doesn’t it? Anyway, when Daddy could, he came home a week at Christmas, but not every year,” Liz said.

“I think that figures into it. We don’t know how to pick a man and we are too damn trusting. We believe their lies,” Jodie said. “Men who hurt women know how to make us feel all special. Then when they have us in their net like a floppin’ catfish, they gut us.”

“How’d you get to be so smart when you are so young?” Liz asked.

“Being through what we all have will knock the youth right out of you,” Jodie answered. “My granny lives next door to the place where I’ll be livin’ again. I’m glad she’ll be takin’ care of my girls while I work at the café. I won’t have to be afraid that one of my kids is going to”—she paused and swallowed hard—“that my kids are going to see me die or that I will see one of them killed by his hand.”

She wiped tears away with the back of her hand. “Dammit! I don’t take charity and I don’t cry. Hill women are bred to be tough, and here I sit cryin’ like a baby.”

“We are all tough, Jodie. If we weren’t, we wouldn’t be here in this room right now,” Hannah said.

Jodie stiffened her spine. “Damn straight, Hannah! Damn straight! And ain’t no man ever going to take our strength away from us again.”

“Okay, meeting adjourned.” Hannah glanced at Darcy. “Now I want to hear all about your date with Calvin.”

“Which one? The Monday-afternoon burger date or the Monday-night date for pizza at the hangar?”

“All of the above,” Liz said. “Give us something juicy.”

Darcy’s eyes glittered. “I don’t kiss and tell, but I can tell you that my toenails curled and my bikini underbritches tried to crawl down to my ankles, my heart went into a-fib—or maybe it was d-fib, one of those fib things—and my knees turned to jelly.”

“And that was a kiss. God almighty, girl, what will the sex be like?” Jodie giggled.

“I may not survive, but what a way to die.” Darcy laughed.

The sounds of saws and hammers off in the distance Wednesday morning meant that Travis and Cal had gotten serious about the remodeling business. Travis had hired five local high school boys to help him with the job, and every so often she could hear their laughter traveling toward the house on the slight summer breeze.

The two girls had asked for a tent that day, so she’d draped two sheets over the dining room table and set the chairs on the top to keep it from sliding off, and they were now playing with a couple of baby dolls.

The baby thankfully was content to crawl around on the living room floor and chase Lullaby, who managed to stay a foot away from her most of the time. Jodie had picked up a romance book and was propped up on the sofa.

Everything was fine, so Hannah wondered why she felt like she was sitting on a whole keg of dynamite. The last time she’d had this much pressure in her chest was the day of the divorce.

Travis was what was twisting her up in knots—this newfound chemistry between them. Every time he walked into a room, she got a little extra kick in her heartbeat, and when he touched her, the sparks flew. But then, why wouldn’t she react to him like that? He was Marty’s exact opposite. Travis was encouraging, loving, kind, and happy. Any woman would respond to that kind of man in her life.

She tried reading, but after five pages she couldn’t even remember the character names, so she put the book aside. She thought about making cookies, but she’d burn them for sure the way her mind was jumping from one past incident to the other.

Someone knocked on the door at exactly 11:11 a.m. She would always remember it, because when all the ones lined up, it was supposed to be a moment to make a wish and it would come true. Before she slung open the door, she shut her eyes and wished that the feeling inside her heart would go away.

Her wish was not granted.

“Hello, Hannah. I’ve come to take my airplane home where it belongs,” Marty said on the other side of the old-fashioned screen door.

“That is between you and Calvin Winters. I sold the hangar, the land it sits on, and even the landing strip to him, complete with all the contents. He’s down at the hangar, and you are not welcome here.” Her insides were churning and her head spun, but by damn she intended to bluff her way through this. Marty Ellis would not intimidate her ever again.

“I have brought my lawyer and a signed check. I can see just by looking through the door that you’ve gone back to your white-trash ways. Toys everywhere and nothing in place. I couldn’t bear to come inside,” he said.

“I did not intend to invite you. My daughter doesn’t need to ever see you again and I damn sure don’t want to have a cup of coffee with you,” she said.

Marty’s eyes were absolutely full of evil. “I tried. God knows I tried to make a lady out of you.”

“Good-bye, Marty.” She slammed the door so hard that the chairs on the dining room table wobbled, bringing both girls out to see what happened.

“Mama!” Sophie yelled. “Did I hear Father out there? I thought I heard him talking to you.”

“You did,” Hannah said, unwilling to be dishonest. Screw him. “Did you want to see him or talk to him?”

“Nope,” Sophie said. “I like things the way they are better.”

“Then that’s the way they will stay,” Hannah said.

Sophie went back to her room.

“You okay?” Jodie poked her head out of the kitchen.

“I need a meeting,” Hannah said with clenched teeth and knotted fists.

“Then call Aunt Birdie and the girls.” Jodie knocked on the top of the table where the tent had been arranged. “Sophie and Laurel, would y’all like Aunt Birdie to come have a picnic in your room with you?”

Two heads, one blonde and one black haired, popped out from behind the split in the sheets and nodded. “Peanut butter cookies?” Sophie asked.

“And sandwiches and soup.” Hannah tried to keep her voice normal, but even she could hear the icicles hanging on her words. Through the window she could see one of Marty’s family’s black Caddys driving slowly down the road as they left the house and crossed the yard and road.

Three minutes after Hannah made the call, Aunt Birdie came through the front door. “Was that Marty? I was just reading in the Good Book this morning about how God told Moses to wipe out all them enemies in the promised land. I think this here might be my sign to wipe him out in Crossing.”

“He’s come to make a deal with Cal about that airplane. I need to talk and . . .”

“Y’all go on into the bedroom that Jodie is using for your meeting. I’ll make sandwiches and tomato soup and I’ll read to them afterward in Sophie’s room to get them ready for a nap,” Aunt Birdie said and lowered her voice to a whisper that only Hannah could hear. “And don’t you worry. That scoundrel don’t get out of town real fast, me and my shotgun will have a come-to-Jesus talk with him. I don’t think God wants him, so we’ll just bypass the pearly gates and send him on to hell.”

“Sandwiches? Like tuna fish?” Sophie tuned back in.

“Your choice. Peanut butter, tuna fish, or egg salad. I have all of it ready,” Hannah said.

“We’ll just have to heat up the tomato soup and shake some parmesan cheese over the top,” Aunt Birdie said. “And Travis and Cal will be here right at noon, so they might even read you a story, too.”

“Can me and Laurel each pick out two books?” Sophie asked.

“Of course you can. Just go right on in there and y’all get your nap-time books,” Aunt Birdie answered and then motioned for Hannah and Jodie to be on their way by flapping her hands like she was shooing away a couple of birds. “This is my time with the girls. Darcy went on back to work this morning, since Liz is healing up. Have you called her for this meeting?”

“Yes, and she’s on the way,” Hannah said.

“And Darcy?”

“No need for her to leave work,” Hannah answered.

“Okay, little girls. It’s time for us to let these womenfolks do that big-people talk,” Aunt Birdie said.

“She reminds me of my granny. I bet she and Aunt Birdie would be good friends,” Jodie said.

The front door opened, and Miss Rosie came inside ahead of Liz. “Was that Marty driving into town? Lord, he’s not wanting to come back, is he?”