What Happened to Hannah (32 page)

There was a single electrical outlet installed at the same time as the solitary light fixture, and it was located directly below it.

Hannah plugged the vacuum in—then yelped and jumped back as sparks flew out at her.

Lots of sparks. For a second it fascinated her to stand and watch them catch on puffs and wisps of dust, burst into flame and then disappear. But suddenly it wasn’t merely sparks. Flames curled like fingers around the electrical socket, upward on the dry wood beam behind it.

She reached for the vacuum cord and yanked the plug from the socket but it was too late. Fire scurried up the post to lick at the desiccated floorboards above.

Frantic, Hannah grabbed the damp towel she’d been wiping shelves with and used it to whip at the flames, which only sent them billowing. She doused the rag in the filthy water and tried it again. It served only to annoy the flames and make them burn faster, hotter . . . the basement filled with thick dark smoke as she tossed the last of her scrub water at it.

Popping her earbuds out as she ran—Alan Jackson’s “Remember When” is not a firefighting tune—she leaped the steps two at a time, digging in her pocket for her phone as she went.

Halfway to safety through the back door, she recalled that she’d left her purse hanging on the newel post in the hall. She calculated that if the house went up like paper, she’d still have time to fetch her purse and escape via the front door. So she turned and went back into the kitchen, where thin gray smoke was chased by thicker dark smoke up the basement stairs. It billowed then crawled along the ceiling looking for an exit.

The caustic, mixed odor of wire, wood, and rubber burning attacked her nose and throat and she coughed as her eyes stung and watered. Her heart raced as she ran through the kitchen, past the basement door to the hallway beyond, her thoughts focused on snatching her purse and getting out the front door. Which is why she didn’t immediately recognize the object hanging on the newel
over
her own purse. Bright red. Heavy-looking. Rectangular. Straps.

“Oh, God! Anna!”
she screamed when the backpack finally registered. Panic like none she’d known for years and years reached out and squeezed her chest. Glancing at the smoke barreling down the hall toward her, she flew up the steps.
“Anna! Where are you? Anna!
Fire!”

On the second floor she flung open every door, looked in every room, all the while calling Anna’s name. She checked the attic, astounded to see a thin haze of a smoke already forming in the rafters.

The acrid stench clawed at her throat and nose. She pulled her T-shirt up to cover them with little relief. There was none at all for her eyes, now streaming with tears—from smoke or fear was a toss-up—and she was too crazed at the moment to care. She screamed for Anna until she thought she might cough blood.

She stopped outside Anna’s empty bedroom on the second floor and turned in a circle. What had she missed? Where could she be? Had she already succumbed to the smoke and lay unconscious somewhere?

“Oh please, God,” she prayed, deciding to check each room on the second floor one more time before doing the same downstairs. “If You need to take someone today, take me. Please. Let her be okay.” Then she prayed that God wouldn’t mind that she never called on Him except in times of great need—as a last resort. Though technically, if He really existed, that freed Him up for other people’s requests, didn’t it? Joe never saw it that way. And being raised Catholic she knew that God was supposed to be everywhere everyday; in her life in everyway but . . . in her house growing up? “If You are out there, please . . . please, keep her safe. Anna!”

She started down the stairs to meet a thick black screen creeping up and realized the whole first floor was filled with it.

“Aunt Hannah?” Her knees went weak with the sound of Anna’s voice and she grabbed at the wall and the banister to keep from falling. She took a deep breath and headed down toward her.

“Anna. Where are you? I’m coming down the stairs.”

“Aunt Hannah? I’m here. I’m here.”

From the first landing Hannah spied a dark figure through smoke so thick and black it might have been something tangible. Anna felt her way along the hall wall, chased by the sinister cloud to the base of the stairs. “Go! Outside. Go now, Anna. I’m coming. I’ll be right behind you. Go!”

“What happened? What’s burning?”

“Outside!
Now!
”

The door she’d closed against Grady two days ago swung open and late afternoon light cut briefly through the smoke before the top half filled with a new tributary of escaping black smoke. She grabbed both her purse and the backpack on her way out the door, certain that nothing else of value remained inside.

“Are you alone? Is Lucy here, too? Anyone else?” she asked, meeting Anna on the front porch, turning her and all but pushing her down the steps and away from the house. “Why are you here?”

“Teacher workday, early release. I told you Monday at dinner.”

“Today’s Friday! I don’t have enough to think about? You couldn’t remind me this morning?” She stuffed the phone she’d been holding in her hand all along back in her pocket for the moment.

“I did remind you. I told you I’d get Cal to drop me off here so I could finish cleaning out my room, and you said ‘great.’ ”

“I did?” She stopped cold. Anna was safe. They were both safe. No doubt it was the clean fresh air washing up her nostrils and filling her lungs that made her feel suddenly euphoric. “You’re a great kid, you know that? Reminding me of early release days and helping out and . . .” she glanced up at the black smoke-engulfing house— “Here, take my keys and drive my car down the lane a good safe distance while I get this stupid truck moving.”

Anna had taken driver’s ed. in school and had a learner’s permit but hadn’t had much behind-the-wheel practice yet—plus she wasn’t allowed to drive alone for three more months. Still, in the face of fire . . .

They met on the gravel road beside the U-Haul some five hundred feet or more downhill from the fire, sooty-faced and excited. Hannah had her BlackBerry in hand again—punched in 911 before she hesitated, and looked at Anna with joyful mischief in her heart.

“You know,” she said, dragging out her words, “I haven’t seen any real flames yet, have you?”

Confused at first, Anna was wonderfully quick to catch on. “No, I haven’t.”

“How do you know a house is really on fire if you don’t see any flames?”

Anna looked at the black swell of smoke over the house. “Beats me.”

“Maybe we should wait and make good and sure it’s on fire before we call the fire department. We don’t want them running out here for just a little smoke.”

Anna grinned. “I think that’s the way Gran would do it.”

Hannah nodded. Anna knew Ellen Benson better than anyone; she’d take her word for it. “Okay, then let’s sit back here and enjoy the show, shall we?”

Releasing the roll-up door on the U-Haul, they climbed inside and sat, swinging their legs; each lost in their own thoughts for the short time it took for something at the back of the house to explode.

“Whoa!” They both gave a nervous laugh.

“Houston, we have flame.”

“Roger that.” They watched flames like so many snake tongues striking out of the windows and door to savor the flavor of its meal. They could feel the heat of the fire on the wind. “Guess we better call now before someone else does.”

They looked at each other and grimaced without concern when the sirens sounded in the distance—even before Hannah finished dialing.

“Hello? This is Hannah Benson. My mother’s house is on fire . . . No, no. There’s no one in the house. Everyone’s safe . . . No, no injuries. It’s just the house . . . Thank you.”

Not three minutes later the trucks—sirens blaring, lights flashing—pulled into the driveway.

First on the scene, the sheriff, who must have seen her from the corner of his eye as he sped by because he skidded to a halt, pulled to her side of the road, and backed up until he almost hit her as two fire engines flew by them toward the house.

Grady was the sort of pale that clashed with his county-khaki uniform—it made him look green and sickly. He marched around to the end of his cruiser and took Hannah by the upper arms, inspected her for wounds and burns, then barked, “Are you okay?”

“Yes. I’m fine. You—”

“Anna?”

“Yes, sir. I’m fine, too.”

“What happened?”

“We decided to have a house fire. You didn’t happen to bring any marshmallows did you?”

He literally staggered back as if someone had struck him. “What?”

“I said . . .”

“Don’t say it again,” he said, from behind clenched teeth. The blood sitting heavy in his chest since the moment he’d heard the dispatch, shot to his head; threatened to blow the top straight off. “Did you start this fire on purpose?”

“Of course, I didn’t.”

“What happened?” he asked again, determined to get a better answer.

“I plugged the vacuum into the socket in the basement and the place went up in smoke.”

She slipped a sidelong glance at Anna and muttered, “We had to wait for flames.”

Anna made a noise, covered her mouth with her whole hand, and coughed a couple of times while Hannah bowed her head to hide her grin from him.

“Are you on drugs?” He was at a total loss. What else could provoke this sort of behavior? He looked to Anna and back. “Have you been drinking? Do you know what you just did? There are men up there risking their lives to put out this fire you’re enjoying so much.”

“They don’t have to.” Looking up the road at the firefighters, the house a black skeleton in flames, he watched her sober. “We don’t want it put out. Call them off or . . . or tell them to stand back and let it burn.”

“Let it . . . So you did set it on purpose. You said you wanted to burn it down the first day you got here.”

“Yes, I did. And so did Anna. And so did my mother. I bet there hasn’t been a Benson woman who ever lived in that house who didn’t want to burn it down. But I didn’t do it on purpose.”

She looked at him defiantly. Adding to that the nasty sarcasm and evasion she’d fed him at lunch the other day, he was ready to take her over his knee . . . or shake her or . . .

“You know I can arrest you, right? At the very least you need a demolition permit to burn a house down.” While Hannah sputtered at this, he spoke into the microphone on his shoulder.

“Mike?”

“Yeah?” the fire chief came back promptly.

“Containment only. Let it burn.”

“Will do. Not much choice.”

By the time he turned back to Hannah, she was ready for him.

“
Not if it started as an accident, Sheriff.”

They caught him off guard, those gas-blue eyes, so hot and intense and . . . beautiful. He stared, desperate to hold on to his anger as he felt himself slipping into them, struggling not to get scorched. Not here, not now anyway.

Hundreds of feet from the house and he could feel the heat on his face, the breath of the fire blowing across his cheeks, the smoke stinging his eyes as Hannah’s stare-down continued—the unstoppable force and the immovable object personified. With more control than he ever dreamed he could muster he took her arm, firm but gentle, and turned her away from him to break her spell. She shook out of his hold but let him lead her around the end of the truck to the front, away from Anna.

He inhaled sharp and angry when she turned to face him again, ready to do battle; taking that scrapper’s stance that defined her so well.

They both kept their words low but fierce.

“Do not threaten me with jail, Grady. I’ll bury you in lawyers and countersuits so fast it’ll make your gold star spin.”

“Well, that’s terrifying, all right, but if I find out you’ve lied to me again, that this fire was no accident, I will be throwing your lovely ass in jail.”

She gasped, incensed. “Leave my ass out of this. And who do you think you are, calling me a liar?”

“I am your worst nightmare, sweetheart. A man with a cage and a key.” That worked. He had her attention now. He watched caution and fear creep in around the edges of her bravado. “A real cage downtown and a
sur-
real one right here in my hand.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means you don’t have the upper hand anymore with your mysteries and your secrets. It means I’m sick of giving you time to remember that you can trust me. It means I’m tired of waiting for you to tell me the truth— and without it, it means that Anna isn’t going anywhere with you.”

Instantly, he regretted his words and wanted to take them back. The look of pain and fear and betrayal on her face was devastating. His frustration had taken him too far. But he’d dealt the cards and now they had to play the game—the pot was enormous. Anna’s future. His, too, he realized. He could lose Hannah forever this time.

“But . . . you can’t do that. She’s my niece.”

“I’m her legal guardian. It’s in your mother’s will.”

“I’ll contest it.”

“Go ahead. I’ll use every dime of Anna’s share of this farm fighting back. You want that?”

“That’s not fair.”

He shrugged. “Of course, it is. You give me what I want; I give you what you want. I told you,” he said, turning to go, smacking the hood of the truck with one hand—mostly to keep it from touching her stunned and tormented face. “I always fight fair.”

Chapter Eighteen

T
hat man could give lessons on being a stubborn, pigheaded, meddling, pompous, inflexible, pigheaded, chauvinistic, infuriating, power-inflated bully,” she told Joe Sunday evening, seconds after the hostess left her at Joe’s favorite table, in his favorite restaurant, and she’d plopped down in the chair across from him. “I did everything I could think of to get him to give in on this weekend. The girls are furious with him. I didn’t tell them all of it, of course, but I did tell them that I’d been planning an extreme day of prom shopping and he’d nixed it—then I turned Lucy loose on him. Apparently, he didn’t bat an eye. My sweet Anna tried, so you know how coldhearted he is if he can refuse her. I finally decided it was time to play
really
dirty. I called his mother. I asked her to have a talk with him.”