by Mira Gibson
Mary hadn’t elaborated on the phone. The teenager in her - in her? A teenager was what she was but Mary had a way of denying it, two fists in the air, ready to take on the world; hadn’t shared much after Hannah had agreed to come. Stubborn, yet in need of love, that’s how Mary had struck her during their call.
So it became a real challenge not letting her mind wander into the dark territory of guessing what might have happened to their mother. And soon Hannah gave in. She didn’t even see the smooth road stretched out in bends and curves before her. She was blind to the trees, the leaves rattling in the wind. She couldn’t even smell the air anymore. She was consumed with Kendra: the woman Hannah remembered her to be and the woman her mother had become once Dale entered their lives.
Kendra had been God fearing. A woman who curled her hair and kept her nails clean, though the sheen of polish would’ve hidden any dirt from prying eyes. She had been conscious of how she was seen from the outside as well as within. And Lord was she stern. She’d watched Hannah like a hawk. Never let her go off on her own, not even as a teenager, which Hannah grew to resent. But Kendra had had her reasons, the look in her eye said as much. She’d been the veteran of a silent war that had occurred before Hannah entered this world, and Kendra lived her life and went about her motherly duties as though a second war was on the horizon, waiting for her to be weak enough, waiting to take her life as it had failed to do all those years ago. Kendra had never divulged what she’d survived and Hannah hadn’t asked. Instead, she came to respect her mother, though she fought her tooth and nail. Kendra had been strong, unlike anyone she’d ever encountered. When Hannah had taken her job as a receptionist in the homicide department she came to realize the possibilities of what might have happened to her mother to make her the way she was. The world was a very dark place.
As she veered right at a fork in the road, hugging Hermit Lake not far from the house she’d promised to be at by eleven, her childhood home, Hannah’s heart ached for her mother. She truly had respected Kendra, but she never had it in her to tell her.
What the fuck happened?
Her imagination ran wild, but she pushed it down until it felt like a ball at the pit of her stomach. Instead she hooked her mind around Dale.
The man was no good.
She nearly let the memory touch her, but she forced it down as well, taking in the scenery to get her bearings. Crushed beer cans that littered the shoulder stole her attention. Why was it that the closer she got to the her family’s small corner of the lake, where the dock sat rickety like death on the water and the house sank into the soggy earth, did the side of the road have to be marred by Dale’s hand? Not that he was the only one responsible for chucking empty’s out his truck window, but he was certainly among the guiltiest. Had to be, unless some kind of miracle had taken place.
Christ, the mere thought of him got her hands shaking. She reminded herself he wasn’t her father, not her flesh and blood, which got her to calm enough to veer left at another fork. She glided over the weathered asphalt, the lake falling away to her right. She promised herself she wouldn’t be late. Breakfast at the diner seemed reasonable, and all joking aside, she needed to pull over, thoughts of Dale driving her to drink.
Trying to forget, that’s what alcohol amounted to.
A memory flashed in her mind, but she shoved it down, as she rolled her Taurus to a stop, dirt crunching under tires, in the parking lot of Gemma’s Diner.
As soon as she killed the engine, she popped the glove box and grabbed a flask she was proud to say she hadn’t touched in months. Glancing around, she confirmed there wasn’t a soul in sight then knocked back a long swig, feeling the sting of that silly outfit she’d worn yesterday. Look how fancy I am, she thought with a self-deprecating snort, as she took a long, hard look at herself - swigging booze at ten in the morning in a dusty diner parking lot tucked so deep in the rural northeast that even God didn’t bother watching over.
She threw the thing into her purse and climbed out, locked her car out of habit rather than precaution, then ventured into the diner that wanted so badly to be a classic fifties joint but so clearly failed on all fronts.
The bar stools were cracked, though red, so they scored some points there, but the mirror behind the bar was so tarnished it didn’t so much reflect images as bounce hazy circles of them. The booths were just as dismal, but the wait staff took the cake. Hannah was sure that at one point in time their blue smocks had been bright and presentable. They might have even had a bit of a starched billow at the hips, but that era had long since past. They seemed to hug the girls with soft desperation, material thinned from many stains, many washes, not unlike the waitress's hairdos. Not that there were many waitresses there. Hannah spied two, as well as a tired looking cook in the back. She guessed high school dropout and that was kind of her. Who knew what that man had survived? The creases in his face had shadows that had shadows, like every inch of him was a dark story so sad you’d die if you heard it.
She slid into a booth at the windows since it was her best option for privacy then buried her head in a menu; though in the forefront of her mind she was angling to extract her flask from her purse, get it ready in case her waitress came with coffee.
“Well, I’ll be, that’s not Hannah Cole, is it?”
Every fiber of her being wanted to say no, but this town was too small to lie, always had been. She lowered her menu and feigned a smile at her fifty-year old waitress, who she recognized, of course.
Marjorie Abbott, batting her eyes that popped with heaps of blue shadow as though the color made up for the rats nest atop her head, an attempt at a beehive, Hannah supposed, was grinning down at her.
“It is,” Marjorie decided.
“Hi, Marjorie,” she said in a warm enough tone. “How’ve you been?”
Considering her answer, Marjorie sank into her hip, a feminine stance that worked against her. Rather than shaving off years it seemed to have added them. “I’m holding up,” she smiled, face peeling up to her ears. “Christ, I’ve been so sorry about your mother.”
Sympathy made her uncomfortable, but Hannah couldn’t deny it felt good to drop her smile.
“That why you’re in town?”
On a sigh, she admitted it was. “Need to check on the girls.”
“Damn shame what happened to Kendra, and I feel pain in my heart saying that much, ‘cause fact of the matter, no one knows what happened to her. Things like that don’t happen in these parts.” Marjorie was shaking her head and gazing out the window at the foliage as though if she didn’t break eye contact she’d shatter. “I was out there looking for her. The whole town was. I pray to the Lord he keeps her safe.”
Hannah felt the impulse to comfort her, but it left her more awkward than endeared. She was itching for her flask.
“What can I get you?” she asked, tipping her pen hard against her pad. “And it’s on the house. Don’t you dare even reach for your wallet.”
“Coffee for sure,” she started then glanced down the menu. “And I suppose eggs, any way is fine, whatever’s fast. Hash browns and-”
“Few pancakes?” She brightened. “I know how you girls like your pancakes.”
“Sure.”
She collected her menu, which Hannah nearly cursed at. What would she use as a shield now? Then Marjorie angled her worried eyes down on her, stare lingering, as she added, “You got the same look in your eye as your mother, like you can do anything. Never lose that look, Hannah. It suits you too much.”
Hannah smiled to herself and said thanks, but Marjorie was already walking way.
When her coffee came, Hannah was sly about pouring in a generous nip of whiskey, and when her breakfast arrived she was too consumed with the warm burn of her coffee to eat. She kept an eye on her cell, noting the time at intervals, and reminded herself that drinking so early was excusable. This was her weekend after all, and venturing into the house she’d grown up in would take the kind of courage she hadn’t needed to
exercise since the day she’d walked out of it.
Hannah allowed herself to enjoy the sight of leaves fluttering down to the dirt parking lot beyond her window, as her whiskey laced coffee warmed her stomach and sent a smooth rush of calm through her veins. The minutes ticked by, but she barely noticed. Some things about Sanbornton were undeniably beautiful, and she owed it to herself to appreciate them.
“Hannah?”
A man this time and she wasn’t exactly eager to look up, but when she did she almost didn’t believe her eyes.
“Cody McAlister,” she said like an accusation. “Christ, it was a lifetime ago.”
“A bit like seeing a ghost.” He gazed down at her, the same determined face ever desperate to prove himself just as he'd always looked, green eyes lingering, but not wandering like they used to in high school, and an easy smile helped his lips curl crookedly, arching up on the right side, showing the imperfection of his gums in a way that used to set her heart pounding, and, she discovered, still did.
“Just call me the ghost hunter,” she said, but the joke didn’t land. His smile remained, though his brow furrowed slightly, eyes narrowing like he was trying to get it. “Never mind.”
He dropped it, glanced over his shoulder at Marjorie and asked for a coffee, black with two sugars, giving Hannah just enough time to take in the sight of him.
Damned if men didn’t age well, she thought. Here she sat, her brown hair a mess of cowlicks that provoked her natural waves, unruly and not at all like the magazine models she'd eye out of boredom each night. And she didn’t have a stitch of makeup on, except for the two strokes of mascara she couldn’t leave home without. Even her fingernails were a fright, chewed to the bone like a boy’s.
Cody on the other hand seemed to have grown into his looks. The broad shoulders and pronounced jawline that had lent a goofy air to his overall towering appearance during high school now served to punctuate his muscular build. His built chest, hugged by a dark tee, she observed where his jacket hung open, could only be the product of a lifestyle dedicated to manual labor, which seemed about right for Cody. He’d been a smart kid, but hadn’t exactly applied himself. She wondered if he was some kind of mechanic, maybe a contract laborer. God, she was glad she got out of this town.
He angled his green eyes down at her and smirked. Then a hint of awkwardness shone through. She hadn’t welcomed him to sit. It was the unspoken conversation between them. It made her stiff and just as awkward.
“How’ve you been?” he asked to fill the silence.
Hannah shrugged, wondering how long this’d play out. It wasn’t as though he’d found her on Facebook in all these years. Clearly, he didn’t care. He was enduring some kind of social obligation. He’d run into her, now he had to ask.
“Fine,” she said, keeping it brief, giving him an out. “I’m over in Gilford. It’s not like I made it out of the state.”
He shot her that crooked smile of his, and for a second she was foolish enough to think it was genuine.
“You’re over in Homicide, right?”
“In reception." The impulse to roll her eyes was a stretch to overcome. "I’m a receptionist. Not much to write home about. Our alumni newsletter wasn’t exactly begging me to draft an exposé on my exciting life.”
It got him laughing and Hannah remembered what a beautiful sound he made when he did that. They’d been best friends in high school or close to it. Hannah a freshman, Cody a senior, two dorks that'd been more or less shunned by the student body. Then he’d gone and done the unforgivable. Cody had led her to believe he was actually interested, got her under those bleachers, kissed her, got her thinking this was something real, touched her, and the next thing she knew a nightmare had befallen her, one that the whole school talked about as though it'd been her fault. He’d blabbed, revealing his true motives. He’d only wanted to get out of the dork circle, prove he deserved to be with the cool kids. And she never lived it down.
He didn’t ask to join her, but asserted as much when he wriggled his jacket off and tossed it on the seat across from her. She didn’t have the opportunity to object either. He was focused on Marjorie, shouting his order for hash browns at her across the diner.
When he plopped down across from her he sealed her fate. They would eat together. She wasn’t sure he deserved it, which was why she didn’t ask how he was, what he was doing with himself these days, or why he’d stopped off at Gemma’s even though, as far as she'd heard, he lived on the other side of the lake.
“So tell me about Homicide,” he said, smoothing his intrusion over. “Busy over there?”
Marjorie dropped his black coffee and Hannah wondered if he really expected an answer. He was focused on tasting, testing, adding a packet of sugar. She took it as an opportunity to refresh her own mug, a splash of whiskey, which of course he caught.
When his brows rose, she took it as admonishment, but he was in no position as far as she was concerned.
“For the record,” she stated authoritatively, as she twisted the flask’s top and tucked it back into her purse, “I’m not judging you.” It was close enough to the truth.
“I’m not judging you either,” he said, smirking and glancing down. If his eyes widened she’d throw her mug at him. But they didn’t. “Is that why you’re here?”
“You think I need to drive thirty minutes to Sanbornton to swig booze?”
“No,” he laughed on a breath then sobered up. “Because of Kendra, her disappearance. You work in Homicide now.”
“First of all, stop saying I work in Homicide. I don’t. Second of all,” she leaned in close as though he might be her best friend again for a moment before she called it off, “no one called me. No one told me, until yesterday.”
“But that’s what you’re doing? Going over to the house?”
It seemed to worry him, but she affirmed it none-the-less.
“So what have you heard?”
“Not much,” Hannah started, losing all sight of the man across from her in favor of envisioning Mary on their call, the pain in her tone masked by her teenaged pride. “Just that she disappeared a month back.”
Cody leaned in, head low, but looking up at her in a way that echoed seduction, though Hannah pushed the notion from her mind. Her gaze locked on his mouth, as dangerous as it was to do so.
“No one knows what happened, Hannah, but people think she was murdered.”
Hannah took a beat to absorb the magnitude of his statement. It hadn’t even crossed her mind her mother had been killed. Though she had to admit she’d done a soldierly job of not letting herself go there.
“Why do people think that?”
Cody’s lips pressed together as he searched for words that wouldn’t scare her, but there were few, so he came out with it.
“The blood. The scene.”
“Scene? What scene?”
“Where she was taken. It...” he trailed off as though there was no easy way to say it. “What happened to Candice, I mean all of it... It doesn’t add up and at the same time it does.”
He punctuated the sentiment with rising brows and a hard stare. Hannah had heard enough. She didn’t bother checking her cell. It was time to go.
“You’re heading out?” he asked when she rose from the booth. “Want me to come with you?”
As busy as she’d made herself riffling through her wallet for cash, his offer halted her. “Why would I want you to come with me?”
“Are you planning on staying in town long?” He was deflecting, and she wasn’t exactly happy about disappointing him a second time.
“No,” she asserted. “Just the afternoon. Just until I know the kids are okay.”
“I’ll walk you out.”
“It’s fine. I have to get going. Nice seeing you.”
Cody was halfway out of the booth, but Hannah hadn’t lingered to watch him start after her. She was already out the door.
Marjorie sauntered over with his steaming hash browns and grunted as she set it
gingery on the table.
“She take off?”
***
The house looked worse than it had when she'd grown up in it. It looked like shit. There was no other word for it. Years of harsh winters - rain and snow and sleet, had turned the side paneling to rot. The grain on the wood looked brittle like it’d flake off if you dragged your nail over it. The tin roof was bent at strange angles and the porch sank low in front of the door.
There was vegetation surrounding the house. House? In Hannah’s mind it was a shack. Standing before it now was surreal. The bushes and trees didn't quite look as they had, as though all the plants hugging it had swelled, wildlife bursting everywhere human life had shriveled. That’s how Mary had sounded on the phone towards the end, shriveled up.
Hannah stalked over mud to get to the porch and hoped the memories wouldn’t come flooding back the second she got inside. It was that hope which distracted her from watching her step when her left foot hit the wood slats. She heard a crack then a snap and gravity took hold, boot falling through, splintered wood slicing through leather, a sharp twist at the ankle as her palm smacked the door.
“Shit,” she hissed, wincing as the sting of it reached her brain, but she claimed some balance, shifting her weight to her other foot and hoisting herself up.
There was a nasty gash in the porch where her foot had fallen through, an even worse one at the side of her boot, which had saved the skin beneath.
“Christ Almighty, get me out of here in one piece,” she grumbled then considered if that had been some kind of omen.
Mary was quick to open the door when she knocked. The young woman staring her in the face wasn’t even an echo of the seven year old she’d left behind all those years ago. Except the eyes. Small and blue and screaming. Mary had made a solid effort of hiding them though, rimmed black around the lashes, which were thickened with clumps of mascara. Her once sandy, blond hair had been bleached into a coarse texture and cut sharp at the chin, and her eyebrows had all but been plucked clean off her forehead, penciled over with an arch that made her look surprised.