What Happened to Hannah (20 page)

“She pay you for the week?”

“Yes, sir,” she said, reaching into the front pocket of her shorts to retrieve the crisp bills that totaled the seventy-five dollars a week wage agreed upon by her daddy and the younger Mrs. Phillips, which didn’t—according to her and her dear old mother-in-law—have anything to do with the extra twenty-five dollars in her back pocket. She slid from her chair, careful not to scrape the chair on the floor as the sound had a tendency to scrape on his nerves as well, and walked the money behind her mother’s chair to hand it to him.

He took it without a word and counted it while she returned to her seat.

“Tight-fisted old bitch, but she pays on time and she beats the alternative.” That being having to sign an underage work waiver for Hannah to work almost anywhere else, leaving him open, once again, to the scrutiny of Social Services—a branch of the government that he despised even more than the IRS, for which he had nothing but loathing and contempt. “Also appears she can teach a mule-headed girl like you to cook a decent meal. Not a bad bargain, I’d say. Not bad at all.”

Looking back, Hannah couldn’t help but wonder: Had her father known how delighted she was to get away from the farm every day; if he were aware of how kind and sweet Old Mrs. Phillips and her daughter-in-law were to her; if he knew what a thrill it was to see a cherry red truck bumping down the road toward her most every morning, and eventually every afternoon, too . . . would he still have thought he’d made such a grand bargain that summer?

Of course not,
she thought, yanking the barn door open with a fury she hadn’t realized she was feeling.

Sam Long startled and turned to her still bent over the small disks of compacted cans he’d been retrieving from the old plank floor and stuffing into plastic bags. The weak light from a single bald lightbulb affixed to the wall behind him was enough to show his relief that the place wasn’t falling down around his ears after all.

“Sorry about that.” She smiled at him then started looking around. “Your mom’s here to pick you up. I’ll finish this. We don’t want to keep her waiting.” She glanced into the large cardboard box that had been brimming with aluminum cans two days earlier to see it was all but empty. “Ten more minutes and you would have had this job all wrapped up.”

Sam handed her the plastic bag. “Nah. I’m leavin’ those for Jeremy. He likes smashin’ cans.” Despite the sudden dull ache in her abdomen, she marveled again at Mrs. Long’s amazing child-rearing skills. Not perfect Stepford sort of boys, surely, but remarkably caring and giving. “Tomorrow while he’s smashin’ what’s left of ’em, I’ll go with Cal to the Recycling Center in Charlottesville. They have these big, awesome crushin’ machines there. They’re the best but they have cranes and backhoes and everythin’. It’s a really cool place.” He stood at the door nodding, and when she continued to gape at him, he grinned—big, bright, and easy. “Well, okay. See ya tomorrow after school, then. Bye.”

And he ran off.

And before she could recover from her disappointment that the Long boys were just your average, normal, goose-’em-every-chance-you-get brothers, the door slammed closed and left her standing in the dimly lit barn.

All but the corner she stood in went black with shadow; the sagging loft overhead creaked ominous and oppressive under the fading light of evening that could be seen through the holes in the roof. She began to scoop up smashed cans . . . one, two . . . and to count to keep her mind occupied. Three, four, five . . .

A cool breeze brushed across the back of her neck and she shivered. She thought she heard her father’s voice, calling her, and shook her head in denial.

“One, two,” she started again, out loud.

She groaned and covered her ears as the first shrill scream in her head threatened to blow out her eardrums. She flinched when it came again, her eyesight blurring from the pain. The palms of her hands were hot and damp and sticky.

There was a cracking sound like lightning and the screams. Over and over.

“Oh, God,” she whimpered as the pain buckled her knees and she sank to the floor, pressing her hands against her head to keep it from exploding. “Please, please stop. It’s not real.” Something wet on her face. She looked at her hands. Blood. Sticky, dripping from her fingers. “I can’t do it. I can’t. Please, please stop,” she whispered as she rocked her body to dislodge the panic rising up inside her, threatening to steal her sanity altogether. “Shhh. Shhh. Ruthie. Shhh. Please. Please stop.”

“Ms. Benson? Hannah?” A strange, young, frightened male voice came out of nowhere. Somewhere in her mind she knew she needed to pull herself together, reassure him, pretend that whatever
he
was seeing was somehow normal behavior while her muscles quivered in horror. “Are you sick? Are you hurt? Hannah? Should I call—” The expletive he uttered wasn’t unfamiliar just powerful and wrong for someone young to say, and then he started to shout. “Help! Someone help me! Hannah? Help! We’re in the barn.”

“No. No, please.” It took a conscious effort to unclench her fists and clamp them to his arm and the front of his shirt, hoping the blood wouldn’t terrify him. She gulped air and tried to ignore the queer galloping of her heart. “Please. Don’t.” She peeked to see who . . . Grady. No, Cal. Oh, God. He looked terrified . . . despite the lack of blood on his shirt. No blood anywhere. It was all in her mind. “Please. I’ll be fine. I’m sorry. I—”

“My dad’s here. Wait here. I’ll be right back.”

“No! Cal, please.” With no little effort she pushed the sights and sounds back into the mental coffer they’d escaped from—something she’d done thousands of times before with no less labor. Her hands shook as she removed them, put them on the floor, and tried to push herself to stand up. “Please. I’m sorry you had to see this. I—” She tried to sound calm when she felt anything but. “I know how this must look.” She attempted a laugh. “You must think I’m crazy. I—”

“No, ma’am. I don’t. Are you okay?”

“Of course, I—”

“Want me to call my dad?” Clearly,
he
wanted to call his dad.

“I wish you wouldn’t.” Her breathing started to slow down and she couldn’t feel her heart battering against her chest anymore. “In fact, I’m going to ask you not to mention this to him at all. Beg you, actually.”

She saw fear and concern in his face but also intelligence and understanding—another facial expression he’d inherited from his father. She found herself wanting to pour her whole heart out to him as she had his father in the past but . . . well, she wasn’t quite that far gone. Yet.

“I . . . I have panic attacks. I used to. They’re rare now. I’m not on medication or anything anymore and I’m not a danger to Anna, of course. I promise. I was . . . It’s strange for me to be back here, is all. I believed I’d left it all behind.”

Perception came quickly to him and softened to something like sympathy as he looked around the old barn. God knew what he was thinking, but when he looked back at her, his smile was gentle and dimpled and secretive. “When I was a kid I thought this was the creepiest barn in Turchen County. Old lady Ben— your mom, used to get me to haul stuff up here for her if I was with my dad when he came to pick up Lucy. Which was like all the time back then. Like those bundles of old newspapers back there. And for a long time she used to keep her emergency firewood up here.” He stood and stretched a hand out to Hannah. “She’d find a couple good-sized branches the wind knocked down, and she’d get me to ‘run ’em on up’ here . . . you know how she was.”

“I do,” she said, falling in love with this tall, quiet teenage boy as he prattled on for her comfort.

“Well, between you and me, I never came in here alone. If my dad didn’t come up here with his own bundle of junk, I stood at the door and threw it in. And you know what else?”

“No, what.”

“She never said anything about finding the bundles or the sticks or whatever other stuff she used to ask me to bring up here on the floor, just inside door. I think this place creeped her out, too.” She smiled at him and his brow furrowed. “You’re okay now?”

“I am. Thank you.” But she needed to be sure. “It’s wrong, I know, to ask you to keep things from your father but—”

He laughed out loud. “But he’s bossy and he overreacts to everything.” He finished her sentence on a note of intimate acquaintance and common capitulation.

“I don’t know about that but—”

“Trust me. The longer you keep him in the dark, the safer your secrets are.”

She nodded. She’d already figured that one out. He pulled on the string to turn out the light while she started to slide one of the big barn doors open with barely a glance at the drooping loft. And she left it open—whether to let the rancid memories out or the fresh air in was a toss up.

They started back to the house together.

“Do me another favor?”

“What’s that?”

“Do you think you could handle both of the Long boys at the recycling center tomorrow? I’ll call their mother tonight and make sure it’s okay, but I wanted to make sure it was okay with you first.”

He nodded, shrugged, and smiled—and looked at her as if
now
he thought she was talking a little crazy.

Grady brought pizza for the young cleaning crew and stayed to have a few pieces on his dinner break.

Did she look shaken to her core? Did she look afraid to let her thoughts wander further than the three large-sized pizza boxes Grady balanced on one hand when he strode into the kitchen? Would he be able to see in her eyes that she’d been to hell and back that afternoon without ever leaving the farm? Would he be able to tell by the tremors in her hands that every muscle in her body was programmed and set to run?

She hurried to take the boxes from him, to give herself something to do—something normal—to keep her hands and mind busy.

“Here, let me take those. I’m not sure Anna can eat pizza but I’m famished and the other kids, I’m sure, are starving, and I can fix Anna— Oh.” She opened the top pizza box and froze. Her stomach flipped and her emotions ping-ponged between anger and fear at his spying on her. “How did you find out that I like white pizza?”

He unzipped his jacket and started to take it off. He hadn’t missed the accusation in her voice and his eyes were watchful. “I didn’t. I didn’t know what kind you’d like, so I got one that’s half plain cheese, the other half with everything; a whole pepperoni because I know my kids like it, and the white one for Anna. You said nothing too spicy for a while.” He slipped his coat over the back of a chair without looking away. “I figured something would be close to what you preferred, but if it’s the white you like, so much the better. Is something wrong?”

“No.” She answered too fast and too sharp so she smiled. “Of course not. I’m tired and testy and I . . .”

“What?”

“I hate it here. I hate being here.” He wanted answers and explanations, why not give him a couple to keep him busy? More to the point, distract him, she decided impulsively. “I’m having a terrible time sleeping. I keep waking up. I bought sleeping pills over the counter, but if I stay here much longer I’ll need a prescription.”
For something industrial strength,
she thought. “I’m having a little trouble with my business. I can handle some of it by phone and the Internet—when I can find the time. But I need to be there for the rest. Joe’s helping all he can.” She reached up high to remove a stack of paper plates from the cupboard beside the refrigerator, fished napkins from the drawer below and set them next to the pizzas on the table. Overhead she heard heavy footsteps hurrying toward the stairs, like a small herd of starving caribou heading for the first patch of spring grass. Fine, so she wasn’t familiar with caribou, but it sure sounded like more than four sets of feet up there. “But Joe’s not
me
and my clients expect
me
. I’m tired and on edge and I have a lot on my mind. Okay?”

“Okay.” He acted satisfied for the moment—but he didn’t have a choice to be otherwise as the young people swarmed the food, laughing and chatting and pushing them further away from each other.

Hannah sighed with relief and covered it with a hum of pleasure as she took her first bite of pizza—Alfredo-flavored cardboard that stuck to the roof of her mouth.

Running away would be smart. Wise. If only for a few days—to refortify her defenses, to remind her that the past was in the past and it couldn’t hurt her anymore . . . unless she let it; unless she let the secret out.

She could talk with Joe, make an appointment with Dr. Fry . . . but there was still so much to be done before they could put the farm up for sale. And leaving Anna here to finish up alone was unthinkable, of course.
Not that she couldn’t handle it
, she debated, nodding and smiling when the girl wordlessly offered her a second piece of the white pizza. Anna was amazingly independent. She could—

Hannah pulled up short. What was she thinking? She put the slice she’d been about to take a bite of back on her paper plate and her shoulders drooped. She was a coward. She’d been braver twenty years ago, tougher. Anna was counting on her. And Grady, blast him, watched her like she might sprout horns. She couldn’t run now. Not yet.

No more memories. No matter how benign or ordinary, they were a danger to her here where everything reminded her of
something
. She couldn’t afford another breakdown or chance being caught in such a weakened state ever again.

Another one of those things that are easier said than done. Just turn the memories off. She would if she could.

She glanced at Cal, busy helping Biscuit tease his sister about the mouse that had chased her around one of the bedrooms upstairs. She felt reasonably confident that he’d already forgotten what he’d seen in the barn less than an hour ago.

But her muscles still quivered in the aftermath. Part of her mind strained to hear the screams again thinking she could hide herself before they reached full pitch and she did something stupid to frighten Anna—or attract Grady’s already suspicious concerns.

Still, more than anything she wanted to run, to go back to Baltimore where she belonged, where she was safe and nothing haunted the peace she’d created there. Her gaze gravitated toward Anna and her friends; and while she expected to feel some sort of shame in wanting to make a break for it, she didn’t.