by Mira Gibson
She flipped the fish, seasoned them with precision, flipped them again, all the while sucking on her Coors and stealing glances at Candice who sat in a comatose daze on the living room sofa.
Hannah and Mary had both given themselves silent permission to feel okay about Candice for the time being since the TV across from her was blaring some kind of celebrity news program. It wasn’t that she was staring off into space, they each told themselves. She was watching her show.
As Hannah studied Mary, she felt a twinge of something in her gut that almost resembled envy, and it was after the third twinge hit her that she endeavored to investigate what it was all about. Was it envy? She could easy pluck her brows away until she looked perpetually startled, but that wasn’t it. It wasn’t her appearance or her misguided attempts to offer fashion advice that may or may not be fashionable that made Mary shine. It was her way. Mary was becoming Kendra, and that was what Hannah envied. She’d never, at any point in time, ever come close to being like her mother, as evidenced by the wilted salad she’d thrown together, a chore at best and one she’d hated doing every step of the way. Mary and their mother loved cooking.
Mary smirked hard then beamed it at her.
“I’m thinking we ought to bake a pie.”
Hannah nearly gaped, but masked it with a veneer of feigned confidence. “With the oven?”
“Hell yeah with the oven,” she smiled. Hannah liked that smile. It made her feel like a conspiracy was brewing between them. It awakened her inner teenager. “I’ll pull the flour and sugar, you grab the rest.”
Shit, the rest of what?
“Strawberries and rhubarb are in the fridge.” She nodded at it.
As Hannah rearranged the cluttered refrigerator to extract the fruit and set it on the counter, she was struck with the significance of what it meant to Mary that she was here. It wasn’t about frying fish, tossing salad, and making pie. It wasn’t that making dinner required two sets of hands. It was that Mary hurt for her mother. She longed for a woman to share the kitchen with. And Hannah, as inept as she was, filled a void. Mary needed her. Maybe Mary even remembered enough about Hannah that she'd missed her directly. But one thing was clear, her younger sister was happy as hell to have her.
Which made Cody’s disclosure in the woods all the more disturbing.
Ask Mary.
Kendra’s perhaps dying declaration, at the very least her desperate attempt to be found, was wrapped up in a fifteen-year-old girl. Ask Mary? So Mary knew. What the hell did Mary know about a van full of meth heads dragging their mother off bleeding in the night, not to be found for a solid month?
“Well, don’t just stare at it,” Mary laughed. “Chop the rhubarb like celery. It’s the same shape, and slice the strawberries.” She knocked back the dregs of her Coors, maneuvered around Hannah to get into the fridge for a fresh one then cracked it open. “I’ll knead the dough. Daddy’s going to love it.”
Hannah went to task. “When’s your daddy getting home?” she asked then cringed at her use of the endearment. Dale was no Daddy, except the dirtiest kind.
“Eh, he’ll float in eventually.” Whatever trouble she'd had with Dale now seemed suspended from her mind. “We do alright the three of us I’d say." She stole a glance at Candice then again beamed a smile at Hannah.
And that was the problem. Hannah wasn’t sure how long she’d stick around. Her workweek started tomorrow. At best, she’d stay in the motel the night, see to it that Mary got to school all right in the morning and Candice was tended to for the day, hopefully with that psychologist. Then she’d be off, return to Gilford and the life she’d worked so hard to establish.
The very notion lit a fire under her ass.
“You know Cody McAlister?” she asked, easing into her greater inquiry.
Mary didn’t even respond except to shake her head, bleached blond locks whipping across her forehead.
“He works in the Sanbornton police station, like me in Gilford,” she lied to make Cody seem more accessible.
“Never heard of him,” she said like an aside, as she pressed the dough into a pie tin.
“Like me, he has access to insider information,” she went on, not entirely sure how this would land, but dreading it would likely destroy the small steps towards bonding they’d managed. “Mom dug a message into the dirt before she disappeared.” She watched Mary, anxious to see her response, any twitch or blink that could give her insight. But Mary remained neutral as though they were chatting about nothing more significant than the weather. That, in and of itself, was odd. “He told me the message said: Ask Mary.”
Mary stopped her kneading, froze in a way. Her whole body stiffened and those surprised looking eyebrows went flat. She turned and Hannah had to dig deep to hold her gaze.
“The fuck are you telling me?”
“Not telling. Just asking.”
Mary glared at her. Hard. So hard Hannah felt her bowels loosen just a bit.
“You’re telling me before Mom disappeared she left a message in the dirt that implies I know what happened to her?”
“That’s what Cody told me.”
“Are you fucking kidding me with this?”
“I thought I’d ask.” Hannah couldn’t keep this up. She turned to the strawberries then quickly realized she couldn’t chop them. Mary’s glare was burning a hole into the side of her head, but she managed to say enough to excuse herself to the bathroom then quickly escaped to the hall.
Ducking into the bathroom, she flipped on the light. It amazed her how the body remembered, her hand had swatted at the wall even before she needed to wrack her brain for the light switch’s location. But when she reached for the lock in the same vein, Hannah discovered it wasn’t there, only a faded strip of wood where the lock panel had once been screwed into the door.
She didn’t have time to scrutinize the matter, not with her need for the toilet so she relieved herself, glimpsing at the jungle of undergarments that dangled on hangers hung from the shower rod. Mary’s version of keeping house she deduced. She finished up by washing her hands thoroughly in the sink.
For all the bras and underwear hanging like jungle vines there wasn’t a hand towel in sight so Hannah blotted her dripping palms against the front of her jeans leaving slap marks, as she stared into the mirror that was cracked like a spider's web and studied her kaleidoscope reflection.
Mary was right about Hannah's eyes, beady and blue, they conveyed an edge of permanent skepticism for everything they looked at just like Mary's did. She could see her mother in her eyes as well, perhaps the only feature all the Cole women shared thanks to Kendra. Nothing else about Hannah looked much like her mother, though. Her nose was long and delicate with a classic English bump, her cheekbones high and her jaw crisp, a handsome woman. She’d told herself she looked like her father, had to. It was the only explanation, but she’d never met the man. She didn’t even know his name. The way Kendra had guarded the information was a warning that Hannah shouldn’t want to know. But she had and the urge never left her.
She returned to the hall not eager to resume the confrontation so she paced slow in the opposite direction. The floorboards creaked as she ventured towards Kendra’s bedroom, which sat adjacent to the end of the hallway, Kendra and Dale’s bedroom.
A square of shiny metal on the upper lip of the doorway molding caught her eye. Shiny and new. She stepped close and eyed it, realizing it was an aluminum cylinder lock, the kind a turnkey fit into. A lock placed high up on the outside of a bedroom?
She started for her old room up the hall, all the while curiosity building. The outside upper molding didn’t have a lock, she observed. She peaked around the door and noted Mary had taken the room. Band posters, tacked crookedly, corners flopping off here and there, lined the walls. Taking a moment to step inside, her gaze scanned over the doorknob then around the molding perimeter where she found a faded patch of wood. Just like in the bathroom the flip-latch lock had been removed, but overhead there was a
nother cylinder lock... overhead? Old locks removed. Shiny new ones drilled in up high?
From the kitchen, Mary coughed and sputtered, probably beer that had slid down the wrong pipe. Hannah felt the pull to return, was hyper-aware she’d been taking too long, but ducked into Candice’s room anyway just to confirm the likelihood her locks were the same as her sister’s. They were.
Ask Mary. Kendra’s message in the dirt, Cody’s voice, surged to the forefront of her mind in tandem with a stab to her gut.
She was out there drinking in the kitchen, comfortable about it, shameless, just like Hannah had when she was her age. That was the difference between Kendra the single mother and Kendra with Dale.
Thinking back, as she inched deeper into the frilly room to have a look around, a funny memory struck her from when Mary had been four or five, little feet pattering around the house, always exploring, trying to grow up fast. Mary had liked to muscle the refrigerator door open, feel the cold air waft out at her, marvel at the crowded shelves. Hannah had been pouring over her homework in the living room when Kendra found young Mary standing in front of the open fridge. Their mother took to educating the girl about what she could and couldn’t have, explaining, this is juice, and this is iced tea, and this is soda pop, but you can’t have too much. And this, Kendra had paused for emphasis, probably pointed it out demonstratively so Mary would never forget, this here is soda that only Daddy can have.
Dale’s beer.
And all Mary had learned was that the cans were daddy soda, which made them all the more interesting.
Daddy soda. It’d been interesting to Hannah as well. Those late nights when Dale had passed her a beer, their secret, his way of bonding, which was anything but.
Hannah pushed the memory out of her head, but a worse thought immediately replaced it.
Were the girls trying to keep themselves safe from him with those locks?
Dale palmed the door wide open, startling her. She hadn’t heard him come home.
“You don’t live here anymore,” he barked, eyes blazing. “Can’t just snoop around like you own the place.”
A six-pack of Coors was dangling from his thumb, a can in his other hand.
“I came to check on the girls.” It wasn’t an apology or an excuse.
“You checked on them yesterday.”
“And I might tomorrow,” she asserted.
His smile was a threat, like watch yourself.
“I didn’t understand until I saw the girls yesterday that Candice literally hasn’t been speaking,” she started up, choosing a reasonable, adult-like tone she’d never tried on him before. “She needs to see a child psychologist.”
“She’ll talk when she’s ready.” Dismissing the notion, he waved her to get out of the room, yet he filled the doorway.
“You have to do what’s right for Candice. It isn’t healthy she’s shut down like this.”
His gaze shifted, weathered mouth working off his set jaw as though the statement had gotten through to him, but he resisted. “She’s been through enough. I’m giving her time.”
“It’s been a month.”
“She needs more time.”
“Which she can spend with a psychologist.” Hannah knew the second she said it she’d pushed him too far.
“You want to talk?” he asked darkly, as he reached for the small of his back and produced a gun from his waistband.
Hannah’s blood ran cold.
Pinching one eye shut, he glanced through the sight down the barrel. “Let’s go talk.”
***
He fired. The deafening crack pierced her eardrums and set them ringing, as a tin can popped and went flying off a wooden block, a perfect shot from fifteen yards away and Dale had done it one-handed so he’d never have to part with his beer.
“Have at her,” he said, passing the gun to Hannah, though she’d made her reluctance clear.
It was dim behind the house. The floodlight that hung loosely from the tin roof wasn’t exactly angled in their direction so the light it cast stirred eerie shadows through the acreage whenever the wind rustled the dying vegetation.
The remaining three cans on the wood block were the faintest silhouette, but she trained her gaze on them, chose the one farthest to the left, as though concentrating would send Dale the message to step back. He’d gotten a bit close, invading her personal space, acting as though it was necessary he check the sightline down the barrel. It unnerved her.
“Check your lines,” he instructed, showing a softer side, which felt so wrong. “Squeeze,” he added, “don’t pull the trigger. Squeeze it.”
She felt a wash of relief when he paced off, knocking his beer back, rattling the dregs down his throat.
Holding the gun, which she identified as a Smith & Wesson M&P 40 caliber - she’d lived with Dale long enough to pick up the jargon and know a thing or two - Hannah’s arms strained from its weight and she reminded herself it’d have a big kick. She didn’t have a prayer in hell at hitting one of those cans, much less the one she was aiming for, but if this little charade were Dale’s prerequisite for agreeing to let Candice see a psychologist, then she’d play along until she won.
She squeezed the trigger. Not one tin can blasted off the block, but a murder of crows shrieked, surging up from the dark brush near the tree line.
Hannah offered the gun to him, but Dale was too busy keeling over in hysterical laughter.
When he sobered up, he pinched his thumb and index finger over his eyes and sighed. “I needed that. A good laugh. Man, you went soft in Gilford.”
“Thanks,” she said, dryly.
Dale stalked over and relieved her of the weapon, got a bit lost in its weight, eyeing it, looking down its left flank then the other side. His mood shifted as he inspected the handgun like he was about to release a breath of truth.
“I miss her.” He shuddered, inhaling deeply, barrel chest swelling. He tucked the gun down the back of his jeans. “She changed, Hannah.”
Because you changed her, she thought, but didn’t dare voice.
“That woman brought God into my life then abandoned Him.” Dale stared off into the burly nightscape, welcoming what revelations might come. “I’ve been going to church. Got real serious about it after Kendra disappeared.” He turned dark, angling his eyes at her. “She’s dead.”
He’d knocked the wind out of her. “How do you know?”
“Just do.” Dale returned his gaze to the woods. “Thinking anything else is damn torture.”
Wrapping her mind around his twisted logic turned her stomach into a lead ball.
“So with your church and your decision to think of her as dead, she’s in heaven?” Hannah guessed so something about this might turn sweet.
“She’s not in heaven. She’s in hell.”
Hannah’s heart leapt up her throat. The guns. The locks. The bone chilling assertion her mother was dead, in hell. She felt suddenly raw, vulnerable, trapped in the woods with a dangerous man.
“Heaven’s for me,” he went on. “For us, me and the girls.”
“Dinner’s ready!” Mary called out through the back window. “Don’t let this pie get cold!”
But Dale didn’t acknowledge her, didn’t even feign a glance over his shoulder.
Moments passed, Dale ruminating, Hannah on guard not quite trusting the silence between them.
Angrily, Mary stomped towards them and wasted no time grabbing Dale by the arm and yanking him inside. The fearless command she had over him was so familiar it was jarring. Kendra incarnate.
“Easy, girl,” Dale grumbled on a laugh.
Hannah stalked through the dying grass after them, but paused when she felt a vibration in her back pocket. The call coming through wasn’t a number she recognized, but she swiped the screen anyway.
“Hannah Cole,” she stated.
“Hannah, hi. It’s Cody.” His tone sounded deep, deeper than it had in person, as though something was wrong. “Sandy gave me your contact. Hope you d
on’t mind.”
“I'm listening.”
“A man came into the station. Hannah, he had a human hand with him. He brought it in a box."
Suddenly, the dark forest was reeling all around her, swallowing her up.
Her voice was a thread. "Kendra's?"
"You might want to get down here.”
Chapter Four
Cody didn’t want to be alone with it. No one did, which was why the rest of his department, the nose-to-the-grindstone and burn-the-midnight-oil types who found ways to live here after hours and through the weekend, had converged with Missing Person's upstairs, as wildly disorganized and habitually oblivious as they were, not that there were many of them presently.
Sandy had gone off squawking like a plucked chicken when the man had stumbled in, his face covered in thick blood so dark it looked like motor oil. She was the main staple this evening next to Robertson, whose approach to finding missing individuals tended to be so cautious, meticulous, contemplative that if Cody didn't know better, hadn’t known him for ten years and seen first hand his capabilities, he’d think the man just plain didn’t care. The real Achilles heel of their department was that people in Sanbornton simply didn’t go missing, not beyond the occasional teen who’d made good on a threat to a parent or a fed up spouse who’d checked into a motel, killed their cell, and claimed a Goddamn moment to breathe. Sure, they’d gone missing and Robertson shined in his calm stealth to locate each individual, but their department had never seen a case like Kendra Cole’s. The fact they now had her hand in a box was a downright anomaly and cataclysmic at that.
The real kicker was that Homicide wasn’t chomping at the bit to take over. Quite the opposite in fact. Chief Marley had all but thrown his hands up and let the ball bounce off his chest to forge a fowl, declaring that until Kendra Cole was found dead this wasn’t his game to play. By the same measure, the Chief had also denied the glaring probability that wherever Kendra was she hadn’t a prayer in hell of staying alive for very long without her hand.