What Happened to Hannah (23 page)

“I know you’re willing to come with me and I can’t tell you how grateful I am that you’re not being a little, well . . . that you’re being such a good sport about it, but the more I think about it the less this all makes sense.”

She stopped abruptly when her left shoulder began to rise up toward her ear and the grip on her left upper arm became painful. Grady mumbled from behind her. “Can I talk to you for a minute?”

“No.” She looked pointedly at his hand on her arm. “And let go of me. I’ve made up my mind. I know you’re the authority on parenting here and I know I was the one who asked you for help, but pulling her out of school less than three months before the end of the school year would, I think, do her more harm than good. And then there’s the track meet with Ripley . . . they
need
to be brought to their knees. And, of course, the prom . . .”

Grady backed away as she peeked at Anna again. And there was the amazement and joy she’d hoped for; her lips bowing, eyes sparkling through her tears with hope. “Really?” she whispered, swiping at a final tear that got away.

“It makes sense, doesn’t it?” she asked adult to adult, and the girl nodded emphatically. “You finish up your work here, I finish up mine—and we make our big move in the summer when school’s over, when the farm’s ready for sale and I’ve had time to clean out my spare bedroom. I even thought you could stop in at Silverman’s Hardware Store and pick out new paint for the walls . . . if you promise not to let Lucy help,” she leaned in to whisper. “It can be all fresh and clean and newly painted for you when you get there.”

“You don’t need to go to all that trouble.”

She reached out and stroked the girl’s cheek. “I know I don’t, but I very much want to. I know what you’re giving up to come live with me in Baltimore and I want you to be as happy and as comfortable as possible under the circumstances.”

“You’re giving up a lot, too, though.”

She smiled. “Yes, but oddly enough it doesn’t feel like it. It feels like I’m getting a lot more than I’m giving up.” She hesitated but only for a moment. It
wasn’t
too early to declare where she stood. “And for the record: We are friends. Even better, we’re family. I do want you, Anna. I love you. And I’m not leaving . . . well, except to go to Baltimore, but I’ll be back as fast as I can.”

The girl nodded, sniffed in acknowledgment.

Finally, she could look at Grady. Anna liked the plan and now that she’d heard it out loud, it made more sense than before. “However, I still can’t figure out where to leave her while I’m gone.”

“We’ll take her.” Lucy was quick to volunteer.

“I don’t think that’s the greatest idea right now.”

“Because of Cal?” asked Lucy, and he jabbed her hard from behind. “
Ou!
Stop it.”

“I would imagine the last thing your grandmother needs right now is another teenager to worry about.”
And I don’t need any additional reasons to run into the sheriff.

“Oh my heavens, that wouldn’t be the problem. I’m worried more about where we’d put her. Weekend overnights are one thing, but when there’s school the next day these girls need their sleep, and I don’t think there’s enough room in Lucy’s room for another single bed unless we borrow Milly Albright’s. It has a little trundle bed that they could pull out every night and—”

“Mom. Mom. Hannah’s right. They spend nearly every waking moment together as it is. They need time for homework and . . . whatever else they do alone, if anything. And I can already think of at least a half dozen people from Ellen and Anna’s church, Altar Society ladies, with spare rooms who’d love to do this for Anna.”

While the Steadmans settled Anna’s future living arrangement among themselves, Hannah thumbed away the wetness on the girl’s cheeks and gave her one more hug for good measure. She stood, flipped a tissue from the box on the bedside table, and held it out to her niece with a smile coming from someplace deep inside.

It was a strange sensation but she identified it instantly—a sense of belonging to or with someone that she’d never, to her recollection, known before. Not even with Ruth. Naturally, she’d always longed to feel it but she’d spent most of her life refusing to. Yet with Anna it came as something so natural, no court in the land could deny it. They belonged to each other . . . at least that’s how she felt and hopefully, someday, Anna would feel it—and trust in it—too.

“Oh, that’s a wonderful idea,” Janice Steadman announced. “Frances Houser’s son, Simon, graduated from William and Mary last spring and he’s moved up into one of those towns outside of D.C. to be close to his—”

“Gramma, she can’t stay with the Housers,” Lucy interrupted. “Burt’ll eat everything she owns.”

“That’s right.” The old lady’s eyes grew wide. She shook her head and brought Hannah up to date. “Two years ago Simon volunteered to be assistant coach for one of the little league teams and one evening he came home with all the equipment in the trunk of his car. Well, he opened the trunk for some reason and went into the house to get something and when he came back out, the equipment was gone. He thought someone had driven by and stolen it so he called Grady. Pretty soon he had the whole neighborhood out looking for this big bag of bats and balls and mitts, and sure enough, a couple hours later, Simon walks out to Burt’s doghouse in the backyard and there’s the ripped up canvas bag, slivers of bats, and cotton tufts out of the mitts all snarled in the string from the balls.” She laughed heartily and it was hard not to do likewise. “Frances said it was because Burt was jealous of all the time Simon was spending with the little children in the park. But if you ask me I think he’s just a big dumb dog who likes to chew. Frances had to buy stone planters for her yard because he eats the plastic ones and she’s afraid the ceramic ones will cut up his innards.” She drew a breath. “No, you’re right. Anna can’t stay there.
But
. . .” she stepped further into the room, the kids following, “what about the Sullivans.”

“Too far out of town,” Lucy stated. “Someone close so we can walk back and forth.”

“The McManns?”

For some good reason the McManns weren’t right either, but Hannah missed it as she slipped out of the now-crowded little room with one final glance back at Anna sitting Indian style on the bed among her friends. On cue the girl looked up and they traded smiles—like two people who belonged. Hannah’s cockles were toasty warm.

She started down the stairs very aware that she wasn’t alone and that he watched her intently.

“What?” She heard the defensiveness in her voice and sighed. She was feeling particularly wonderful at the moment and didn’t want to fight with him. She didn’t want to defend her decision but she would if she had to. “It makes sense. And she’s happier than I’ve seen her since I got here.”

“Yes, she is.”

She looked back at him then. “So?”

“So you did good.” He shrugged. “You might have warned me ahead of time.”

“I wasn’t sure ahead of time.” She gave the front door a couple of good hard jerks before it opened and she pushed out through the screen door.

He nodded his understanding, following her, fighting a smile. “I thought I was going to have to duke it out with you right there in front of the kids.”

“And that would have been funny?”

“Not really. But I think I was looking forward to it.”

“And now you’re disappointed?”

He grinned at her and she looked away, not wanting to see the look in eyes that had crawled under her skin so often before. She started down the porch steps.

“You never fought fair.” It wasn’t an accusation as much as a recollection that came with a hundred little pings, like being hit over and over with soft cotton bullets. It compelled her to move away from him, but the sensation didn’t abate. The consequences of losing so many of their disagreements in the past were never disagreeable. All too often it had been a matter of her fears holding out against his cajoling, wheedling, enticing, and flat-out sweet-talking to get what he wanted, which invariably involved something that thrilled her, pleased her, or touched her in places she didn’t know existed.

Back then, fighting with Grady, and letting him win, was like watching the slow unfurling of a world she’d only dreamt of visiting—a small, enchanted place where two special people could simply be—then eventually it became something worth living and fighting and almost dying for.

“I always fought fair,” he said, ambling along behind her, keeping his distance but staying within her personal space to keep her on edge. “You were just a genuinely bad loser.”

That made her laugh and turn her head to look at him. He was teasing her. He knew as well as she did that every time she’d given in to him she’d won more than she lost.

She glanced at the cows in the four-acre field; noted that the front lawn remained brown with tufts of bright green grass shooting up here and there and that the forsythia bush some long-ago Benson had planted by the tool shed had begun to bloom. There didn’t seem to be anything around for them to talk about . . . aside from the elephant standing between them.

She took a deep breath. “Please. Let’s not do this.”

“Let’s not do what?”

“Let’s not pretend that what we had in the past has anything to do with today . . . with who we are today and . . . and what we want out of our lives. We’re different people now in different situations with different goals. Pretending we have things in common anymore is . . .”

He stepped up close and furnished the word. “Pretending.”

“Exactly.”

“But we didn’t have anything in common to begin with . . . except how we felt about each other.”

“We were kids. We were—”

“Pretending?”

“Yes.”

He gave a soft casual laugh and looked away; saw she was walking him to his vehicle, but he gave no sign he was about to take her hint to leave. “Trust me. Kids that age are all about their feelings and none of it is pretense. It’s getting them to use their heads and think things through that’s a challenge, and they don’t seem to be able to learn that until after they’ve been hurt or get in trouble a couple of times. That’s strictly adult stuff . . . all the caution and distrust, the building walls to protect ourselves—
pretending
we don’t feel anything.”

“But I
don’t
feel anything.”

“Who said I was talking about you?” She looked to her right, off toward the barn and the small stand of trees beyond it as he watched a pink flush creep up her neck. “Well, it was always about you, wasn’t it?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Doesn’t
mean
anything. It’s an observation. For instance, we couldn’t go to parties or movies because you weren’t allowed. We had to sneak around so your parents wouldn’t find out. I had to tell you ahead of time if I was going to touch you or you’d jump out of your skin and back away like a skittish colt.” The tone of his voice brought her eyes back to him. “You never told me how bad it was—then left me to feel like a naive fool for believing your stories of being the clumsiest girl in the county. You even got to decide how it would end. You just disappeared. No phone call. No letter. No explanation as to why you wanted me to think you were dead all those years.”

Though he sounded testy she could tell it was only a sound, and it was over—an emotional burp from the past, there and gone, said because it had once been something extremely hard to digest.

“I’m so sorry, Grady.”

He shook his head. “I’m sorry.” His half-smile was brief. “I’ve wanted to tell you that for a long, long time. I’m sorry. Sorry it happened to you. Sorry I missed it when all the signs were there.”

“You were young. You weren’t a cop then.”

“I was stupid then. I didn’t see it. I didn’t even think to tie it all together.” The guilt in his eyes was solid as steel, so it took a second or two to see the rust on the edges that still ate at him. “Worse, I couldn’t make you trust me enough to tell me the truth.”

“I never meant to hurt you. Ever. But I couldn’t. It was . . . humiliating, I was so ashamed. I didn’t want you to know. I didn’t want you to think of me like that. I wanted you to think of me as someone normal, from a normal family. I didn’t know what you’d think. I would have told you that night.”

He sighed, stuffed his hands in his pants pockets, and leaned back against the door of his cruiser. “I know. Mom told me.”

Her blood chilled and drained from her face, leaving behind a cold sweat and the dizzy, nauseous feeling of someone caught in deception. “Oh.”

“She tried to keep your secret, not an easy thing for her in the first place, but when you didn’t come back for me the next afternoon like you said you would, and she eventually heard you’d gone missing, she knew she needed to say something.”

Hannah had no idea what she looked like that Friday night. It wasn’t until early Monday morning, before dawn, that she’d found the opportunity to wash up with the frigid water from somebody’s garden hose, and it was several more days before she caught a reflection of herself in a car window. Mrs. Steadman must have been horrified.

“My first thought . . . everyone’s first thought was that you’d gone home that night after seeing my mother and he’d finished you off. I wanted to kill him—and I might have if my dad hadn’t gone with me to your house Saturday night. We met the cops there. Both your parents swore up and down that they hadn’t seen you since the night before. Your father denied that he’d beaten you so bad you couldn’t open one eye. My mother said you looked
ghastly
—bruised and bloody everywhere, your lips split and swollen. She’d start to cry every time she thought about it and how she hadn’t insisted on taking you to the hospital. She said you ran off into the dark so fast and she was afraid of getting you into more trouble with your parents. And they, naturally, said they thought you’d run off with me that night. No one believed a word they said. The cops were threatening to take Ruth into protective custody when she walked across the yard to tell me it was true. You’d run off the night before after you and your father argued about you seeing me. In a softer voice, so no one else could hear, she said she thought you were hurt pretty bad this time and that if you were going to ask for help you’d ask it of me—and if you did, and if I loved you like you told her, I shouldn’t let you come home again. Ever. Then the cops asked her if your father ever hit her. She said no and walked back into the house.”