What Happened to Hannah (7 page)

“Hi, Lucy, it’s nice to meet you.”

“Hello.” Her smile polite, but cautious.

“My son, Calvin.” Grady motioned with the suitcase to the boy on the porch.

“Named after my husband, you know,” his mother injected. “He passed, too, while you’ve been away.”

“I’m sorry to hear it, Mrs. Steadman.” She waited a moment, then called, “Hi, Calvin.”

He gave her a short nod as his sister said, “Cal, unless you’re mad at him.” She slid a disapproving glance at her father, which he ignored.

So it was Grady’s fault the boy stayed on the porch—the relief amazed her.

“And this stunner is your niece.” He put his free hand on the girl’s shoulder and gave it a reassuring squeeze. “Anna, this is your Aunt Hannah.”

Their tentative, hello-stranger smiles were all but identical. Never much of a hugger, Hannah made a supreme effort and stepped forward with both arms out for a hug—at the same time the girl stepped up with her hand held out for a friendly shake. Hannah lowered her left arm for the shake as Anna brought hers up for the hug. They laughed, as awkward as the moment.

Hannah held out her right hand again. “How about we start with this and work our way up.”

Anna took her hand and smiled, relief in her eyes. Hannah could look straight into them. They were the same height. Grady said she was small and blond like Ruth, didn’t he? But she wasn’t as small as she was thin. Eating-disorder-thin came first to mind, but the smooth lean muscles of her thighs under the denim and in her arms, and a respectable bustline, dispelled the idea. She was simply tall and young and mostly muscle.

“That’s one thing I never made you kids do . . . hug strange relatives.” Mrs. Steadman motioned everyone back toward the house with her arms. “When your Aunt Kathy, my own sister, came to visit I didn’t force you to hug her, because she came so rarely I knew she was like a stranger to you, though she’d been here years before and we talked about her all the time. You were always more comfortable meeting strange relatives when you knew you weren’t going to have to hug them . . .”

With the Steadmans leading the way to the house, Hannah leaned toward her niece and murmured in a low voice, “Just so you know, I’m not a strange relative. I’m a relative who’s been a stran-
ger
.”

Anna’s shy smile widened and her eyes lit with amusement for a second or two.

“Besides, there were always hugs all around by the time Aunt Kathy had to leave. It never failed. There’s a reason why people say that blood’s thicker than water and that’s because it’s true . . .”

Lucy’s smile, however, was not shy . . . and neither was she. Dropping back two paces she slipped into the space between Hannah and her niece and whispered, “Gramma’s a little wound up right now, but when she runs out of steam we have, like, a million and a half questions we need to ask you.”

“Great.” Hannah appreciated the warning. “I’ll look forward to answering any I can. I have a few of my own.” She hesitated. “Nothing too tough though, right?”

Lucy scrunched her face and shrugged ambiguously.

They followed Mrs. Steadman up the steps. Cal opened the door for his father who carried the greater load, let Biscuit follow, and stood waiting for his grandmother and the girls.

“I’ve seen it a hundred times or more,” Mrs. Steadman rushed on. “People always bond faster to their own flesh and blood than they do to people who are not related. And that makes sense, doesn’t it? Go ahead and take those up, please, boys. The girls made up the bed in the last room on the left for Hannah.”

From his place several feet inside the door, at the bottom of the stairs, Grady caught her attention as she stepped up onto the porch. He was merely checking on her, making sure she was still all right, and for that he got a grateful smile.

“And we made a nice Sunday supper. Grady wanted to have you over to the house, Hannah, but the girls thought you’d be more comfortable here, and after driving all day it would be a shame for you to have to get back in the car and drive all the way out here with your stomach full. That’s how accidents happen. You’re tired, you get a full stomach and there you are, asleep at the wheel. Grady’s seen it a hundred times or more, haven’t you, dear?” He hummed something in the stairwell. “And we all decided that on this first night you and Anna wouldn’t mind a little company, what with the newness of everything, and the funeral tomorrow and whatnot. And it’s pot roast, you know, so we can clean up quick and leave early if you’re tired from the drive.”

“It smells wonderful. This is all . . . very thoughtful of you, Mrs. Steadman. I appreciate it.”

“Oh Lord, call me Janice, dear. I’m not your teacher anymore. I retired several years ago, you know. How many now . . . ? Let’s see . . .”

Chapter Five

A
s there were more of them than would fit around the small Formica table in the kitchen, someone had cleared away the boxes of . . .
stuff
that had covered the dining table for as long as Hannah could recall, and piled them in two corners of the room.

Possibly, they were not the same exact boxes of stuff that had been there before, but boxes of the same
sort
of junk that crammed every nook and cranny and cupboard and drawer; that was stacked in layers around the edges of every room and piled high on every flat surface of furniture in the house.

Stuff. Like trash bags of clothing coming from or going to Goodwill; stacks of newspapers and magazines someone may or may not get around to reading someday; thirty-year-old lamps that are perfectly good except for a short in the wiring; ancient broken toasters kept for just-in-case; bags of knitting yarn and oil cans and hats, a few books, picture frames . . .
stuff.

And it wasn’t like her mother had been a terrible housekeeper. She’d done her best. Level II hoarding was a gene in the Benson DNA and her mother had acquired the habit by marriage. She couldn’t bring herself to throw anything away. But Hannah knew as well as she knew her own name that most of the junk got dusted off on a routine basis up until the day her mother died.

To tell the truth, Hannah wouldn’t have recognized the place if it had been any other way.

And she did recognize it—from the scratched and scarred dark-pine floors and trim to the faded pastel paint on the walls . . . though the color might be different, so it could have been painted at least once since she left. Or not.

She recognized it but that was all she allowed herself. She sensed the memories crouching in the dark corners and shadows everywhere she looked, but that’s all they were, right? Just memories as old and worn as the living room couch—which was also new to the job since her time, but shabby and frayed nonetheless. At the moment there was no lingering sense of evil or danger—or joy, for that matter. It was only a tired, old rundown house . . . full of stuff. No more.

Mrs. Steadman gave everyone but Hannah a chore to do before dinner—the boys setting the table, the girls helping with the meal. Grady made a brief call on his cell phone from the kitchen, then came looking for her. He found her in the hall outside the living room, looking in.

“Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” she said, turning to him, leaning back with her hands between her and the wall. It was a whole new jolt of strangeness to see him without the brown jacket, wearing the khaki-tan uniform with the brown epaulets and insignia and the shiny gold star on his chest. Not that he didn’t look good in it . . . and it wasn’t purely that thing about a man in a uniform. Grady wore the uniform like a comfortable second skin, and there was something about
that
she found . . . . well, arresting. “Don’t you wear a gun?”

“My mom won’t let me wear it or my hat at the dinner table.” His tone was grievous and childlike for a second before he sobered to ask, “Is this too much? Did you want to be alone with her?”

“God, no.” She put her head back against the wall. He smelled good, like soap and starch. “This is . . . awful but much nicer than I anticipated. Thank you for thinking of it, and for going to all the trouble.” She skipped a beat. “Will your wife be joining us? I’d like to meet her.”

“No. She doesn’t eat with us anymore. She left when Lucy was four.”

“Oh. Sorry.”

He shrugged and looked away. “It happens. Lucky for me she left the best parts of herself behind.”

“So it’s you and your mother raising your kids.”

Nodding and frowning absently, he rested his hands on the top of his belt as he surveyed the living room in the low lamplight. “They had that in common. Lucy and Anna, back in kindergarten. They were both being raised by their grandmothers essentially, so they ended up friends. Jesus. Will you look at all this shit. Your mother really was a pack rat, wasn’t she?” He shook his head. “You’ve got your work cut out for you here.”

Denial muddled Hannah’s mind. Her gaze roamed, slow and befuddled around the room, over the heaps of clutter, then up to his face. “What?”

“Well, if you and Anna plan to sell this place, you’ll need to clear it out first.”

“Get real. There’s no way to get a backhoe in here without widening the front door first . . . or removing one side of the house.” He laughed. “I’m serious. I’m not going through all this stuff by hand.”

“It’s the only way you’ll know what to keep.”

“Job done. I don’t want to keep any of it.”

“Anna might.”

The sudden picture of hauling all this back to Baltimore rocked her. She envisioned her three-bedroom condominium bulging with junk
and
a teenager. Suddenly she wanted to weep.

He looked at her, chuckled, then used one finger under her chin to close her mouth.

“The girl is one thing, Grady. Maybe. But all this . . . this is . . . too much.”

“Obviously. But there might be a thing or two she’ll want to keep to help her remember her mom or her grandmother. You might, too, once you’ve had a chance to go through some of it. There’s no way to tell what’s here until you go through it.”

She didn’t care what was here. She had her own stuff. Nice, fairly new stuff—she didn’t need or want what was here.

She thought she heard Grady say, “We’ll all pitch in and help.” But that couldn’t be right . . . they’d be pitching until the kids turned fifty.

Mad laughter bubbled in her chest again, and she couldn’t make herself blink. She heard an odd calmness in her voice when she asked, “Do you have any idea what you’re saying? There’s an attic . . . and a cellar. Do you know how long there have been Bensons living in this house?”

“A good long while.” He took her by the shoulders and helped her turn away. His hands were big and strong and warm through the thin knit of her cashmere sweater. They were capable hands—her hands felt more like fins. She caught herself leaning back into them for comfort and direction as he coaxed her down the hall, then stepped to one side.

“Come on,” he said, shoving his hands in his pockets but looking straight into her eyes. “It’s time to eat. You’ll feel better after you’ve had some food. Tomorrow after the funeral, we’ll get organized. You’ve got eight, ten, probably a dozen extra hands to help you. It won’t be as bad as you think. We had to do it at our old place when my mother moved into town with us. Of course, it wasn’t quite this . . . well, like this, but we’ll manage. It’s all about getting organized.”

“You don’t live down the road anymore?”

“No. I moved into town when I got married. Then Mom moved in with us. It was never more than a hobby farm anyway, and I don’t have the time to work it. So, now there’s a commuter from Charlottesville playing gentleman farmer on the weekends. The rent pays the land taxes and gives my mom an extra income. Why don’t you sit here at the end.” In a softer voice he added, “So we can all keep an eye on you,” like she might run away. Again.

And so the evening began, with Janice Steadman’s friendly chirping now an incessant buzz in Hannah’s shell-shocked ears and the rest of them making furtive eye contact with each other, sending messages back and forth and around the table. And she wasn’t being paranoid. Anna and Lucy sat on her left, Grady and the two boys across from them, and Janice faced her from the other end. Hannah couldn’t count the times she sensed that the cutting of her meat held them riveted, only to look up and have them discover that their own plates were more fascinating.

However, the food did help. The more she ate of the ordinary meat-and-potatoes meal the stronger she felt and the clearer her inner voice became. She might have come back to her childhood home but that didn’t mean she had to revert back to the weak, frightened girl she was when she lived there. She was not the sort of woman who allowed things to simply happen to her anymore. She had choices. She was in charge. When she got handed a problem she dealt with it.

She had two weeks to decide the best thing to do for the girl . . . and to ready the farm for sale. Both tasks were doable. Daunting but doable. Mentally, she rolled up her sleeves and prepared to dig in.

“Grady says you sell insurance, Hannah,” Mrs. Steadman said from her end of the table, after an all too brief moment of silence. She was clearly determined to keep the conversation flowing. “That must be interesting work.”

“No, not really,” she said. Seeing that Janice was taken aback, she added, “It’s more challenging than it is interesting. Insurance, the basic idea of it and the way it works, is cut-and-dry. The challenge is to decide if you want to work for one company or for several different companies. I’m an independent broker, so I need to know which companies are easiest to work with, which ones serve the general public the best, which ones an individual client can afford and still get adequate coverage with. Then there are the claims and the rest of the business end of it. It’s not fascinating but it serves a need. And sometimes it’s the difference between right and ruin, as my former partner puts it.”

“How did you end up selling insurance in the first place?” Grady asked, looking enthralled, but only because he couldn’t connect the dots between the sixteen-year-old girl he’d known and the thirty-six-year-old insurance agency owner he looked at now.