by Mira Gibson
Hannah had seen this face so many times before in her day-to-day life, apathetic boredom staring back at her from a drive-thru window, but Hannah knew Mary had a hundred times the ambition. She had to unless she truly had changed, inside as well as out.
“Sorry about the porch,” she said, indicating the hole.
“Yeah, I heard you stumble.”
“Thanks for the help then,” Hannah said dryly, as she tested her ankle, rolling it to see the damage. She'd live.
Mary stepped back heavily on her bare heels in such a way that sent a jiggle up through her, as Hannah passed.
It smelled just the same, the mudroom, the hallway not two feet deep. Nothing brought the past back like a distinct scent, but it wasn’t memories that came to mind so much as the way she used to feel living here, weighed down and empty at times, yet so full of dreams, lovely dreams that lifted her heart and made it ache just the same.
“Drive okay?” Mary asked her as she led Hannah around a corner overwrought with a mess of haphazardly stacked boxes.
“It was pretty enough,” she admitted.
Watching Mary’s bouncy step as she crossed to an old sofa and sat on its cloth-torn arm reminded Hannah of their mother. She’d never seen much of Kendra in Mary when they’d lived here together, but now their mother shone through Mary’s figure, her wide hips, the long legs that were a touch too thin to make sense beneath her large breasts, a genetic trait Hannah hadn’t received.
Mary fisted her hands around the hem of the white tee shirt she wore and munched on her lip.
Innocence mixed with pure trouble, that’s what Mary looked like.
“Thanks for coming,” she said softly, looking lost to be having this conversation. She’d been determined on the phone, but Hannah had to figure that being face-to-face with the sister who’d abandoned them, Mary wouldn't have much to say until she let her anger go.
“Want to explain to me what happened?” she gently prodded. She made a point not to look at Mary, a tactic to take some pressure off. Instead, she glanced around the living room for a decent place to sit.
“I told you what I know over the phone.”
“Then tell me about how I can help,” she suggested, settling into a wooden chair she’d found under a stack of old magazines.
Her answer came on a cracked voice that finally showed her age. “I just want to find Mom.”
“You say it’s been a month?”
She nodded, lip quivering so she bit it hard, which forced her chin to wrinkle.
“Candice isn’t talking. She hasn’t said a thing, but she was covered in Mom’s blood. I’m telling you, Hannah, I checked every inch of her and besides a few bad scratches from running home through the woods, she was fine. I can’t stand thinking that Mom is off some place she doesn’t want to be... suffering.”
Mary curled into herself on a silent sob, shoulders hunching and hand pressing the bridge of her nose.
Hannah was overwhelmed by the impulse to go to her, hold her, and yet something held her back. Whatever touch of closeness they'd once had, it was gone.
When Mary sobered up and swept the mascara from under her eyes Hannah felt safe to join her on the opposite end of the sofa. Mary slid down to the seat, facing her, one leg curled beneath her, causing her jeans to pull taut.
“It’s like I’m pissed at her for not talking, and I mean, Hannah, she’s not talking, like she hasn’t spoken a word. It's like she's trapped in there.”
“Shit,” she breathed.
“Things are falling apart over here and I can’t hold it together. I just want her found.”
It was Dale's job, if anyone's, to hold things together. Mary shouldn't have to take this on.
“What do you think I can do?”
“You work in Homicide,” she pointed out, asserting the same misconception Cody had assumed.
“I’ll do what I can,” she assured her. “Make some calls.”
“Thank you,” she barked as though it’d taken more effort than she possessed to get this far. She started shaking her head and took a gander at the heavens. “Being here...” she sighed then sucked in enough air to pull her through. “Living with Dad and Candice... the way he is now, the way Candice has dropped off into another dimension... It doesn’t feel right being here.”
Hannah was impressed with her use of the word dimension until she remembered Mary was exceptionally bright.
“I don’t know how to get through this.”
“Are you telling me you’re thinking about leaving?”
“I wouldn’t leave Candice,” she said. “But this past month without Mom...” more head shaking, gaze falling. “I don’t know who these people are that I live with.”
Mary met Hannah’s gaze and her cold blue eyes warmed as if the girl was having an honest go at connecting.
“We have the same eyes,” she said, surprising Hannah.
Hannah felt examined, intrusively so as Mary leaned forward studying her irises, the flecks of color all around.
“I could help you with your look,” she offered.
“My look?” Hannah nearly snorted a laugh.
“Yeah, your makeup and stuff. You don’t really have a look yet, do you?”
“Why don’t you let me see your sister?” Hannah asked through an evasive smile.
“She’s out by the lake.”
Mary was on her feet padding into the mudroom. When Hannah reached her, Mary slid one foot then the next into a pair of beat up Converse sneakers then threw her jacket on.
“Watch the hole,” she told Hannah as they crossed the porch, as if her sister hadn’t created it minutes ago.
There was something motherly about the command and Hannah obeyed, stepping carefully around the weakened board then down the steps.
She kept by Mary’s side, trekking through the dying grass, which spanned the same fifteen yards that had always led to the lake. As they approached, Hannah observed the lithe silhouette of a girl seated at the edge of the dock, facing out toward calm waters. The lake looked black other than the stark reflection of the sun on its surface.
When they reached the edge of the grass where the dock began, Hannah glanced at her sister for permission.
“It’s not like she’s talking to me,” Mary shrugged, folding her arms and squinting through the glare at Candice.
As Hannah stepped along the dock that shifted much to easily under her weight for her to trust it, Mary shouted, “Don’t be rude now!”
Confused, she shot a glance over her shoulder and saw that Mary’s gaze was locked on their younger sister. Again, that motherly command, stern yet warm and so much like Kendra.
Hannah knelt beside Candice and stole glances at the young girl’s profile, but felt like a gawker about it. She hadn’t seen her since she was four, Hannah eighteen, on the day she left home. And in so many ways the twelve year old she knelt beside was a stranger.
“Hi Candice. Do you know who I am?”
Candice stared vacantly across the water, pupils dilated as though she saw nothing at all.
“I’m Hannah. I’m your big half-sister. I live a few towns over. We have the same mother.”
Nothing. Not a breath. Not a blink, and certainly not a shred of acknowledgment. It was heartbreaking.
“I’m here to help you find Kendra,” she went on not that she had a prayer of cracking her. “It’d be a big help if you could tell me what happened, everything you remember.”
Hannah let that hang in the air knowing full well the girl wouldn’t latch on. Her knee was feeling raw against the wood so she stood and glanced across the water, felt the cold breeze on her face, drank it in, tried in some sense to connect with the girl through the serenity that surrounded them.
Candice got to her feet and for one shining moment it seemed promising. Then she turned and padded down the dock, across the soggy grass without so much as a glance at Mary. As decisive as her direction had seemed, Candice took to walking in circles, staring at her feet,
somewhat playfully, but to Hannah it was disturbing.
Mary locked eyes with Hannah, threw her palms to the sky, and shrugged as if to say that's how she is now, so Hannah started for the grass.
When she reached it, Dale stalked out from a line of thick maples not eight feet from the lake. He was zipping his fly and staring hard at her. The man was a grisly bear, as broad and tall as she remembered, but the look in his eye, steely and hardened, like a war veteran who’d seen some shit and been forever changed, chilled her. And his tone was just as threatening.
“What the fuck do you think you’re doing here?”
Chapter Two
The Sanbornton Police Station’s Missing Person’s department was God’s joke on the county. The receptionist had passed Hannah from detective to detective, Henderson had referred her to van Valkenburg who’d told her she had to speak with Henderson, and it went on like this for hours, a virtual cat's cradle of administrative nonsense. The silver lining, if there was one, was that Hannah no longer felt like the failure she’d assumed she was. At least she ran Gilford Homicide with the kind of omniscient understanding of the department's inner workings, thumb on the pulse of each case, that ensured civilians wouldn’t leave her station house bald, having pulled their hair out in frustration.
“We’re not holding the Cole file I guess,” said Sandy, a woman so frazzled by her duties in reception that she took to binging jellybeans, popping a bean or two in her mouth to punctuate each sentence, whether spoken or heard.
“You just sent me around, because you said you were investigating Cole,” Hannah pointed out and not politely.
Sandy frowned, but managed a brittle smile at the same time, shirking all blame in such a way that made her look constipated. “Try Homicide?”
“They haven’t received it up there,” she told her. "Homicide was my first stop and they confirmed as much with a click of a mouse, which ate up two seconds of my morning.
“Well then it’s archived.”
“Archived? You mean closed?”
“No, we can’t actually close the case,” Sandy assured her, not that she’d succeeded. Hannah was far from assured. She hadn’t a shred of confidence in this woman or her department.
“So, what are you telling me? Kendra Cole’s case is stuck in some kind of administrative purgatory?”
Sandy chuckled. “That’s a great way of putting it, very humorous.”
Christ, she was being serious.
“I don’t find this funny.”
The receptionist held her breath, which made swallowing the jellybean a real task then offered, “If you leave your name and number we’ll get back to you as soon as we can.”
It made no sense in the context of Hannah’s demands, but she resigned herself to the fact she’d hit a wall, grumbled and jotted down her information.
When she handed the pad back to Sandy, the woman looked it over and praised her that she’d done a good job. Hannah’s eyes glazed over at that, but she didn’t linger. She started for the lobby where she recalled she’d seen a bench. Getting situated, she fished her cell out of her purse, which took some maneuvering since she hadn’t bothered to take off her bunchy coat. A few people in the Missing Person’s department in the Gilford station had been friendly with her. She decided on Cranston and dialed him up even though it wasn’t likely he’d be in on a Sunday.
Like everything else that morning, from her cold shower at the Super-8 Motel, to her Taurus, the engine of which had refused to turn over until she’d tried thrice and said a swear filled prayer, Cranston didn’t pick up.
Hannah left a detailed message in as even a tone as she could muster then tossed her cell into her purse and set her head back against the wall.
“I thought you weren’t staying past the afternoon.”
Cody was approaching, easy smile, green eyes darker than yesterday’s lake, angling down at her as he came to a standstill near the arm of the bench.
“I'm leaving tomorrow. Figured I’d stay the weekend. There’s a motel on Route 12 that had a vacancy,” she stated, interest at seeing him suddenly reeled in when she caught sight of the badge dangling from his neck. It took a moment to process.
“The Super-8? I bet it’s got a lot of vacancies.”
“You work here?”
Cody made a performance of checking out his badge then let it drop. “I didn’t mention?”
“No, you didn’t. What department?”
He seemed to hesitate. “Homicide.”
She stared at him, decided to cross her legs and sit up straighter, then decided she ought to stand.
“I was just up there, didn’t see you.”
He frowned a hair then searched her eyes as though offending her mattered.
It was then that Hannah realized she was offended.
“So you know more about my mom then you let on yesterday,” she surmised.
“Not really.”
“I doubt that.”
“It’s not my department.”
Hannah snorted a laugh, implying he was more than part of the problem. “It’s not anyone’s department, evidently.”
“You came here to get answers?”
It wasn’t lost on her his question was probably genuine, but it felt like an insult. What was she going to say? Admit she was foolish enough to think she could get further than a teenaged girl?
“I didn’t come here for anything,” she said, dryly. “And I was just leaving.”
“I’ll walk you out.”
Cody was quick to open the door for her when they reached it then stepped up beside her as they started across the dirt parking lot. Protectively, he kept looking both ways as though any vehicle might speed through this deserted ghost town.
Hannah was ready with her keys and pressed the remote well in advance of reaching her Taurus.
“It’s not a total loss, Hannah,” he told her, a means to prevent her from escaping into her car.
“No?” she challenged.
“I’ve been keeping an eye on Missing Person’s, reading the reports, things they’d never share with you even if they hadn’t archived the file.”
“Okay.” She waited for more, but didn’t indicate how eager he was making her.
“I just want you to know I’m watching them. You’re in good hands.”
“That’s not good enough, Cody. If you know something you have to tell me. This is my family.” She felt herself getting choked up, but Hannah shut her mouth before her voice could quaver.
He leveled his gaze on her, asking, “You still feel like they’re your family?”
“I can’t believe you.” A breathy laugh laced with agitation tumbled out and she had to turn away, thumb her keys, pantomime unlocking her vehicle as if she hadn't already accomplished that on the walk over.
“You left.”
“You sound like Mary.”
“Like a teenaged girl?”
Good if he was put off, she thought.
“Like someone who blames me for leaving. For the record, I didn’t get very far, so what the fuck’s this animosity?” She touched eyes with him, but there was too much there to hold his gaze. One shining year shared between two dorks so many years ago and the sting of it had her heart slicing open all over again, damaged like it’d been yesterday that he’d laughed at her, his virgin sacrifice to join a pack of hyenas. “I left, but I never stopped loving my mother. I never stopped caring and worrying about my sisters. I’m not going to explain myself to you or defend what I did. You don’t get to weigh in on this.”
Now she was able to stare him down. He shrank a little under her narrowing gaze.
“I don’t know what you want me to say here,” he said so softly he sounded like a child. “My hands are tied. Some things are confidential. You work in Homicide-”
“Christ! I don’t work in Homicide!”
“But you get it,” he clarified. “You know what I mean.”
“You want to keep a cold case confidential? For what?”
“It’s not cold.”
“It’s stuck in a box in the basement over there. It’s done. Something happened to my mother and it broke my already broken family. Fuck. Help me out, Cody.”
He shifted his weight, tipping his chin up in a way that made her feel assessed. Whatever she was supposed to live up to, whatever she was supposed to be to make her worthy of finding her mother or at least gaining some semblance of understanding, Hannah was sure she wouldn’t make the grade.
“Kendra’s blood was found in the woods near your family’s property.”
“Yeah, that’s not a shocker. Candice was covered in it according to Mary.”
“Not in the way you think,” he said vaguely to stir intrigue. She didn’t appreciated being toyed with, but couldn’t be sure if he was doing it on purpose. He looked conflicted, so much so that it told her perhaps whatever had been found in the woods was worse than anything Missing Person’s thought her family could bear to hear. “There were tires marks and other... pieces of evidence.”
Hannah’s brow furrowed. “I want to see it.”
“It’s grown over.”
“Not by much,” she countered. “A month in autumn when trees are drying up and the grass isn’t growing couldn’t change it radically.”
Yielding, he eyed her Taurus and said, “The back roads will beat this thing to hell. We'll take my truck.”
***
Tension, a wall of silence, thick and oppressive, rose between them, as Cody steered his Ford, maneuvering it away from gashes and frost heaves. The forest was dense all around them and Hannah wasn’t convinced this was a road. It looked more like a happenstance path - dirt and gravel beat down from years of trespassing. The pickup bounced and bucked as it tore deeper through the woods, but soon Hannah spied the lake she’d grown up on, through the trees. She’d never journeyed down this stretch of wilderness in all the years she’d lived here. In a sense, she felt betrayed by it, like her home had committed a lie of omission.