What Happened to Hannah (34 page)

“See? A perfectly reasonable man.” She grinned at Anna. “You don’t find that too often.”

“Oh no, indeed. My Calvin was an exceptionally patient man and Grady takes after him in that respect. I think it should be mandatory for his profession . . . especially when you hear about police brutality so often in the news now because it truly is a trying profession. I couldn’t do it myself. The constant worry and stress . . . it’s no wonder they snap, but truly that’s not a good enough excuse. It just isn’t. I know every time I see . . .”

Hannah was watching Anna as Anna paid polite attention to Janice. From the beginning, she’d been a fool to think she could gather up her niece, all legal and nice, and sneak out of town before anyone noticed anything wrong.

The first time she heard Grady’s voice on the phone, she should have hung up. He was the only person in Clearfield who knew her well enough to know she was keeping secrets. And if she hadn’t let him tell her about Anna, she never would have known or cared about what she was missing.

But she knew now . . . and he knew . . . and what would Anna think when she knew?

Her heart winced at the thought of disappointing her—and there were so many ways of doing just that that she closed her eyes to disconnect from the confusion in her head and to once again avoid having to make the decision between telling or remaining silent; truth or myth; the possibility of losing Anna or losing her for sure.

She was aware of the comforter from the bed being draped across her shoulders.

“Good night, Aunt Hannah,” Anna said softly. “Good night, Mrs. Steadman. Thanks for a great day.” Anna’s whisper seemed to come from far away.

“Good night, dear.” A pause, another whisper. “Anna?”

“Yes, ma’am?”

“Do you know why the sheriff’s so angry with your aunt?”

“Not really. They had a big fight the day of the fire . . . sort of about the fire, but not. I mean, I don’t think that’s what they were actually fighting about. They were only using it as an excuse to fight . . . but it was about something else . . . if that makes any sense.”

“It makes a lot of sense when two stubborn people come together.”

TWO stubborn people?
Hannah tried to open her eyes but they wouldn’t budge.

“Do you think they’re in love?”

No!

“Dear, I think they’ve always been in love. Haven’t you noticed the way they look at each other?”

Janice, get your eyes checked!

“I have but I thought . . . well, I thought it was because of, you know, before, when they were young. Like they’re best friends.”

“They are, dear. The very best and truest of friends—that’s what love is.”

Oh, right!

Hannah strained to hear Anna’s response to this but heard nothing.

She thought about jumping out of bed and scolding Janice for feeding that kind of trash to Anna but . . . well, she was tired and she didn’t want to say anything she might regret later. She’d sleep on it and think of the right things to say to Janice in the morning. She’d be careful of the way she looked at Grady from now on, too—she suspected she’d have no problem glaring at him a great deal of the time—and she’d put Anna’s silly notions to rest as well.

Besides, if she and Grady were the best and truest of friends, if he truly cared, why was he threatening to deny her custody of Anna? Why was he insisting that she dredge up the past and tell him a secret that involved no one still alive except her?

No, the only thing Janice had right was that
Grady
was stubborn—as a rock.

It drizzled on prom night. Not a lot. Just enough to make the pavement wet and to send the young people dashing for their cars—the girls holding their pretty party dresses up off the ground and their young men chasing with open umbrellas. Giggling and laughing, happy to be free of their pesky adults—ignoring their cameras and the repeated last-minute instructions to be careful, to drive defensively, to call if they get into any sort of trouble or if they were going to be later than expected or if they decide to go for breakfast or . . .

Hannah wrapped herself in a shawl and curled up on the swing on the James’s front porch, one bare foot up snug beneath her thigh, the other on the railing to rock her gently. The light of the television flickered from the window on the other side of the steps. Don and May kept the sound on low so all Hannah heard were the noises of the night—crickets and frogs, an owl from somewhere, a car now and then.

She was having what she’d come to identify as a
mother moment.
Actually, they came in various lengths of time in which her heart swelled full to the point of bursting with emotions like amazement and satisfaction and overwhelming luck that somewhere in her past she’d done one thing right . . . or that the stars had aligned in some special way on the day of her birth . . . or that whatever magic had been performed on her had allowed her to have Anna in her life.

And if she was subject to these things like a sweet stinging soreness what must real mothers, birth mothers, feel about their children? And her own mother?

Hannah sighed and pulled the shawl closer. It was obvious that Ellen had loved Anna. Anna wouldn’t be Anna if she hadn’t grown up feeling the affection she needed to be able to identify it as love, and to pass it on to her friends . . . pass it
back
to her grandmother.

She must have loved Ruth, as well, turning her life around to raise her alone, taking in her daughter, nursing her until she died.

Hannah sat in the shadows of the James’s front porch twisting her mind through the past for one precious memory of her mother saying
I love you
or
I’m proud of you
.

In fact, she didn’t realize she had company until a car door slammed.

“I see I missed it.” Grady stood halfway up the walk with his hands in the pockets of his windbreaker, his shoulders drooping in defeat. “As Sheriff, I get paid the big bucks and have most evenings off. Unless, of course, I especially want that evening off, then something invariably happens that I have to get involved in because I’m the one who gets paid the bucks, you see.”

“That sounds about right to me. Lucky for you, though, you have a mother who took more pictures of the kids than I did. You’ll have a digital blow-by-blow account of our little pre-prom party when you get home.”

“Is that your way of telling me to leave?”

Was it?
“No, of course not.” He’d already started walking toward her. “Come up and I’ll tell you all about it. Want a beer? I mean, can you have one . . . if you want one? Are you off duty yet?”

He chuckled and settled himself beside her on the swing. His shoulders took up considerable space and his feet on the floor threw her swing rhythm off. She pulled her other leg onto the cushion and sat sideways, facing him, the dim light from the James’s TV at his back—he extended his right arm along the back of the swing, angled his big body at her, and started a gentle back-and-forth motion.

It was . . . cozy. Or it might have been under different circumstances.

“I am done for the night but no beer for me, thanks. I just want to unwind for a minute and then I’ll head home. I’m beat.” She couldn’t see his face in the shadows, but she could hear the fatigue in his voice.

“Bad night?”

“No.” He sounded surprised. “A good night. Just a long day.”

“Anything you want to talk about?”

He shrugged and tipped his head. “A couple of my deputies got called out on a domestic dispute . . . a neighbor heard screaming and called it in. My guys went in to arrest whoever
wasn’t
screaming and walked into a sweet little meth lab . . . methamphetamines.”

She nodded. “I watch TV.”

“Then you know there’s nothing new about them renting rural farmhouses like your mom’s, where no one can see them, or even houses inside small communities like Clearfield for a few months. People might be watching, but they buy their supplies and sell their product out of town so no one gets too suspicious. They make as much as they can for as long as they can before they start getting antsy and move on.

“Turns out the couple’s not married, of course, and I don’t think they were the only ones involved in the operation.” He traced the curve of her neck with the side of his index finger—she pulled away but not before her body shivered with warm tingles. “Whoever they were working with is, in all probability, long gone now; but when we ran these two through the system, we found they both had warrants out in Maryland, Ohio, and northern Virginia so, since I don’t have the budget for a proper bomb squad, we took a vote and decided to dump the whole thing on the Feds.”

“They were making bombs, too?”

“No. They did have quite an arsenal of guns that I was . . . am grateful we didn’t walk in on, but no bombs.”

“Bomb squad?”

“Oh, right. Sorry.” His hand on the swing back moved again; she braced herself but he didn’t touch her. She hated being so tuned in to his every movement—it made her jumpy. “Meth labs. They’re extremely combustible. Sneeze in one and it can blow up in your face. You need to be really greedy, really desperate for money or really, really stupid to work in one.”

“I thought local cops hated the FBI.”

“Depends on the cops and the FBI guys. They’re good to have around when you need them and they’re a pain in the butt when you don’t. Aside from being able to handle the meth lab better, they also have more resources for dealing with our perps. Since they’re wanted in three states, that automatically makes it a federal case and they’ll end up going to a federal prison. Or, and this is more likely to happen, they’ll try to turn these two for the names of bigger fish. Remember these are the stupid ones sitting in the combustible meth lab. Someone much higher up on the food chain thinks these two are disposable, and let’s face it—there’s no point in filling the jails with disposable people.”

“Disposable people.” Like her. People mothers throw away. People who wander the streets, wash up in gas station restrooms, and beg for food or money. People other people stare at. Lost people. Angry, sad, and sick people. Like her . . . no, like she once was, could still be but for the compassionate hand of Joe Levitz.

Sensing her thoughts, he lowered his voice. “You know as well as anyone that people cling to the hands that are offered to them, whether those hands are good for them or not. You were lucky. But you also made choices, Hannah. Your old man’s hands were bad and you ran from them. Joe’s hands were good and you stayed. So do you have exceptional survival skills or is there something burning inside you that refuses to allow
anyone
to make you a . . . ah, lesser person, be it a punching bag or a meth-lab chemist?” He took a breath. “The two we locked up tonight are not disposable people. Not to me anyway . . . that’s not what my job is about. But they did make their choices.”

“Would you like to see the pictures I took of the kids?” She didn’t care if he thought the subject change was too abrupt or if it made him suspicious. He clearly thought making choices was a black-or-white thing; that people couldn’t ever be pushed or forced into doing something they wouldn’t ordinarily do. If he was right, then she was a monster . . . and he’d never let a monster have Anna. More, a monster didn’t deserve Anna. He had to be wrong. She chose to believe he was wrong.

“I would.” He leaned back and watched while she removed her BlackBerry from her pocket. “Did the Walkers make it over?”

She nodded. “I’ve met Principal Walker a couple of times at the high school, but Biscuit’s mother is charming. I love the way she calls him
, Darlin’ Bobby
, with that thick Georgia accent. I could sit and listen to her talk all night. Here. Push with your finger for the next shot, like this.”

“She’s beautiful.”

Hannah nodded her agreement, craning her neck to look over Grady’s arm at a picture of Anna in long, flowing lamé chiffon with deep Caribbean charmeuse trim and spaghetti straps—a tall, cool, lovely drink of water. And in the next shots a thirsty-looking Cal gave her flowers for her wrist, gazed down into her adoring eyes with a smile on his lips, and stood dutifully beside her for his grandmother’s camera.

Grady released a soft, resigned puff of air through his nose and Hannah pressed her lips together—neither of them feeling the need to comment. They both saw it . . . the young, intense affection blooming between Anna and Cal. They saw it and they both knew the futility of trying to stop it . . . and the inevitable heartache that would follow. He passed his finger across the screen and sucked in air this time.

“Isn’t she darling?” She tried to see his expression in the dark as he stared down at a shot of Lucy in a short black halter dress of platinum sequin jersey that sparkled like the billion stars in a night sky every time she moved. Her hose were dark, and on her feet she wore a pair of life-threatening bright red patent leather platform pumps that elevated the top of her head to Biscuit’s chin. “We were so surprised when she picked that dress. It didn’t look a thing like her the day we tried it on at the store. Your mother kept saying ‘It’s too ordinary, we’ll end up bringing it back,’ but Lucy insisted. She had a vision.” She chuckled. “Those god-awful shoes and her hair change the whole picture. She’s a genius with her hair.”

She’d pitched her hair back to one side of the crown and tied it with a shiny red bow that peeked out here and there below pale blond hair tipped in black and platinum . . . well, fairy dust for all anyone knew. She shimmered head to toe like something magical . . . even the light in her eyes was enchanting, if the expression on Biscuit’s face was any indication.

Grady said nothing.

“Don’t you like it?”

“What, that she’s all grown up and going to proms? Hell, no. I hate it.” He scanned a couple more pictures and finally gave in. “She looks excited. Happy.”

“She was.”

“Looks like I need to have a little talk with our friend, Darlin’ Bobby, here. What? What’s that smile for?”

“I don’t know much about parenting, but I do know a little about girls—and Biscuit isn’t the one you need to have the talk with. He knows she’s young and he calls her jailbait to her face. Plus he’s a thinker. He isn’t going to do anything to ruin his friendship with Cal or make you angry. Anything more than kissing would be her idea and she’d have to push him pretty hard before he gave in—even then he’d more likely run in the other direction for a while. He isn’t stupid. He definitely might kiss her, though, but . . .”