by Mira Gibson
“What?”
Hoisting her window open and swinging a leg out, she firmly repeated, “Don’t let him down the hall.” Then she dropped into the cold night outside, Candice screaming and thrashing all the while behind a locked door.
Obeying, Hannah made her way down the hall and peered at Dale just as he started yelling, “The fuck’s going on?” She stepped into the kitchen, but it didn’t prevent him from muscling to his feet. How the hell was she supposed to stop him from heading over?
Then Mary called, “Hannah!” through the open doorway, letting her off the hook. She rushed, Dale at her heels, into the bedroom where Candice was flailing and yelling and gasping.
“Wake up, Candice!” Mary said, holding her arms down so they wouldn’t hit the wall, but her feet were still kicking something fierce.
Stunned, Hannah felt immobilized, as Dale tore past her to catch Candice’s feet.
“It was too much for her!” He growled at Hannah over his shoulder. “She doesn’t need to remember that shit! She needs to forget it!”
“Candice, baby, wake up. Come on.” Mary gently slapped at her cheeks to rouse her, pull her out of the night terror that had her quaking.
Hannah had never felt more detrimental in all her life. Tears stung her eyes, as she watched them wrangle her youngest sister awake.
When Candice finally calmed and her eyes locked with Mary’s, Mary said, “I’ll stay with her.” She motioned to get off the bed, but Candice desperately clung to her so she settled in beside her sister and indicated for Hannah to come over.
As she did, Dale lumbered out, didn’t even look at Hannah he was so disgusted with her.
“Want to grab me a tee and boxers? They’re in my dresser. Maybe a beer?”
Voice thin as a thread, “Sure.”
When she returned with the items, Hannah eased the door so that it was partially closed then handed Mary her sleeping clothes, but Mary took the beer first.
“Has that happened before?”
She squared her gaze at Hannah. “No. It hasn’t,” she said, wriggling her jeans down in a manner that wouldn’t have her parting with her sister. She pulled her boxers up then changed her top fast after removing her bra, pulling it through her sleeve. “Good news is you can sleep in my room instead of the sofa.” She punched a glare at her then added, “You know where the lock is.”
“Where’s the key?”
***
Hannah had never felt so wrong. The conflict inside was pulling her apart at the seams. She’d been certain Judy had worked a miracle with Candice and that their time together had been the sole ray of hope since Kendra had disappeared. But if it’d caused a night terror, if it’d disturbed Candice so greatly that it caused the trauma of it all to emerge as nightmares, then what good was a therapist?
Her crushing sense of shame at being so arrogant as to assume what was best for the investigation would be best for Candice made her wish to skirt off into Mary’s room and hide until tomorrow. But a greater sense of responsibility, or maybe it was the bright side of self-hatred, told her she ought to spend a minute or two with her stepfather, as uneasy as it would make her.
She rounded the corner at the end of the hall and found Dale spread-eagle and monopolizing the sofa, one arm hooked around its back, a hand wedged too far down his pants, his beer cradled against his crotch. He was watching the TV that wasn’t on.
Hannah stepped out from the stack of boxes that seemed an extension of the wall and dared to take a seat in the wooden chair she’d exhumed the first day she’d set foot in this dump. Christ, it felt like a lifetime ago.
“Coors' is in the fridge,” he said without looking at her then knocked back a long haul from his can to demonstrate what he was referring to.
“It’s all right.” She leaned to the side, pulling her flask from her back pocket to show her bases were covered on that front.
“She get down okay?”
“Yeah, I think she’s sleeping now.” The way he was staring off welcomed Hannah to study him. His dusty-blue eyes were dark under a jutting brow of thick hair. Straight and coming to a crisp point, his nose was the same as Mary’s, and his mouth, weathered as it was, had a cowboy’s snarl. He was attractive and knew it, and that was his deception. The real man beneath didn’t deserve a means to lure.
Hannah realized his gaze had settled on his own reflection in the black TV screen, but he didn’t appear to be seeing himself, more looking through to something less menacing on the other side.
“I know you don’t agree with Candice seeing a psychologist,” she ventured to level with him. “But I think it’s important.” She tried to gauge his reaction, but he didn’t have one. “For her and for the effort to find Kendra.”
“Why do you call her Kendra? She’s your mother.” Beer to mouth, knocking it back, Dale still didn’t feel like looking at her or at least that's what his demeanor told her.
“Yeah, mom,” she offered to show she was capable of agreement. “It’s helping the investigation.” She hadn’t answered his question so she added, “Because you know her as Kendra. I do that sometimes. Making dinner the other night with Mary I called you Daddy.”
It got him grinning and he finally glanced at her.
“Daddy, huh?”
Her stomach clenched.
“I’d rather have your blessing taking Candice to see the therapist, but I’m taking her just the same.”
“I figured that.” Grin gone, he found his drinking momentarily more interesting.
“It’s good for her,” she asserted.
“She never flipped her shit like that before,” he countered, meeting her gaze in a way that shook her conviction. “Never happened before you came along, before you dragged her off to some shrink head, who’s probably itching to fill her head with all kinds of fiction so they stay entertained.”
“That’s not what the therapist is doing.”
“You going to drink that or is it just a prop?”
She had planned to, but under his encouragement she wasn’t so sure. Then it occurred to her being his drinking buddy for the time being could work to her advantage.
So she showed a little good faith and posed as an ally so he’d be inclined to open up about the topics that interested her most. Hannah unscrewed the top off her flask and drank, took a stab at staring him down as she did so, but stopped when it seemed he might get off on it.
“I need to ask you,” she started up in a low tone not that Mary would be able to hear her, “I found a couple things out about Mom. She had a few arrests. Drug possession. You know about that?”
Dale snatched his beer, leaned forward, elbows on knees, and hung his head for a beat, as though remaining comfortably reclined wouldn’t do his answer justice.
“How’d you hear about that?”
“Just trying to hunt for the pieces.”
He angled his eyes up at her then sighed his back to the couch, teeth scraping over his lower lip in hesitation.
“She went down that road, Hannah.”
“Why?”
“Fuck if I know why.”
“When?”
“Like she called a family meeting to get our approval.”
“When’d you notice, Dale?”
“I didn’t.” Again, he sighed, but this time it carried the burden of having failed his wife. “Her first arrest. I was shocked. Downright blew my mind.” He managed a laugh. “If it can’t be fixed with alcohol, then it can’t be fixed.” He fell silent after that.
“What couldn’t be fixed?”
“Life, Hannah.” He let that hang and peculiar warmth hit her heart. No tension between them, he was opening up. “Them drugs she turned to was just a new God for her.”
“Did something happen that caused her to believe her old God wouldn’t be good enough?”
“You think she got involved with the wrong sorts and they dragged her off, killed her? Well, probably. I’ll be straight with you girl, because it was real nice of you
to take the time out of your fancy life to come on over to our corner of the lake. I don’t give a rat’s ass she’s gone.”
Sudden chill knocked out any sense of warmth she’d had for him.
“You don’t know what she turned into,” he went on, perhaps needing her to understand. “Cold eyes. Cold heart.” Dale stared off, gaze soft, seeing Kendra in his mind. He grimaced, swallowed a sick taste down. “The girls will get over it. You will, too, not that you have a damn thing to do with this family.” He straightened up, drank his beer, chased it down with an optimistic statement, “The Lord, he doth work in mysterious ways.” He looked bizarrely alleviated when he set his eyes on her next. “You said you found out a couple things about Kendra so what’s the second?”
Her hand in a box came to mind, but she went with “Nothing,” then got to her feet, visions of Mary’s bedroom in the forefront of her mind.
He didn’t let her get far.
“Hannah, I’m warning you. Don’t you tell those girls there’s any hope for their mother.”
Chapter Ten
Mary hadn’t slept. Not one wink. She hadn’t even properly laid down next to her sister but had leaned against the wall, watching the epic stillness ever since, shadows dripping off of even darker shadows, a sea of secrets all around her.
She’d gotten Hannah back. First to Sanbornton and now into their house, it was something. It’d been a little evil of her not to give Hannah the keys so she could lock herself in her room. She shouldn’t have been such a bitch to her, but it was hard to resist, even harder quelling the resentment that seemed to influence her heart at times. She’d do better, she told herself. She’d have to.
Candice stirred, letting out a faint murmur, turning on her side, and releasing her in favor of laying her cheek on the cool end of her pillow. When she settled into deeper sleep Mary grabbed her empty - slick can cool to the touch thanks to a steady draft that seeped through the windowpane, and climbed out of bed, certain not to shift her weight too abruptly and wake her sister.
She secured the can under the waistband of her boxers then eased the window open. A chilly breeze blew in, damp and carrying the marshy scent of the lake. Swinging her leg over the sill, she gradually wriggled out, bare foot pressing into frost-encrusted grass, prickly until she crushed it flat, her foot meeting with the freezing, soggy earth.
Tugging the window down took three determined heaves, but she managed to shut it then started along the house for the other window. Overhead, the moon was waning, but it still offered a hint of light, which kissed the deteriorating wood siding, the window ledge, and the endless acreage at her back.
Goddamn, it was cold out. Her skin had turned to leather it was so riddled with goose bumps and her toes were already numb.
She pried the window up a few inches then crooked her palms under, pushed it upwards, tried to be quiet about it so she wouldn’t scare the shit out of Hannah.
After hauling herself over the sill, wooden lip digging into her stomach, her hands met the floor and she crawled forward, scraping her length through. When her feet touched down she righted herself, placed the empty in a waste bin near her desk, and produced the set of keys she kept tucked under the band of her underpants.
Carrying her desk chair over to the door, Mary used her free hand to flip through her keys until she had the one she wanted. Then she stepped on the chair, slid the key into the lock, and twisted, dead bolt grinding inside the doorframe. She could hear Dale snoring in the living room. Of course he hadn’t put himself to bed. He’d be her next stop.
She hadn’t asked for this job, but couldn’t deny no one was better suited.
When she stepped down she returned the keys to her underpants then set the chair back where it belonged and glanced at her bed.
Hannah wasn’t there.
It took the wind right out of her until she realized the bedding was gone as well and started investigating. Then she caught sight of her comforter poking out from the foot of the bed and her sudden panic subsided.
She eased across her naked mattress and spied Hannah, balled in a nest of blankets between the far side of her bed and the wall.
It amazed her how time changed a person - Hannah, Daddy, her mother. Mary had been seven when Hannah left and at the time her older sister hadn’t been nearly so bony, face like it’d been carved from marble, hair a wild mane she’d had the pleasure of taming earlier that night.
She didn't recall Hannah favoring sleeping on the floor like a mouse when they were growing up. Back then her sister had had a ray of innocence in her eyes. At eighteen, on the day she walked off and never came back, the innocent glint was gone, replaced by a grim sense of hopelessness she tried to mask with a plastic smile.
Mary had hated her for leaving and a greater part of her still did. It’d taken their mother disappearing for her to come back. Dark circumstances. But now she had Hannah like she always should have. She was pleased. And yet, she didn’t trust her. Couldn’t. The threat that she could walk out again never left her mind.
A sick feeling came over her staring down at Hannah, love and hatred like a sandbag on her chest. Her stomach felt raw and empty or maybe that was her heart.
Angling over her, she leaned in, set her cool cheek against Hannah’s to feel her warmth, her softness, remind herself her sister was just like her, alive and hollow. They needed each other. Didn’t Hannah know that yet?
Cheek lightly brushing over cheek, skin on skin, she explored how Hannah felt. Angel’s wings came to mind. That’s what her sister felt like, feathery and as ethereal as air itself. She studied the arch of her dark lashes, the curvature of her nose and its fleshy divot below that pulled at her upper lip.
Then Mary whispered, “I’ll never let you go.”
When she drew back, straightening up, compulsion gripped her. She wouldn’t be blindsided. Not again. Not for any reason.
Hannah’s overnight bag was resting across from the foot of the bed so she went to it. It pained her to know her sister hadn’t dragged her suitcase inside, but kept it in the trunk of her Taurus. She’d seen it earlier, had popped the hood, peaked in. It killed her to know Hannah hadn’t embraced being home.
She only wanted an indication of where her sister’s head was at, her heart, a little heads up so she could mitigate impending damages. So Mary took to going through her belongings. A plastic case of toiletries was on top, which she set quietly on the floor. Next she found clothes amounting to one outfit by her estimation. She reminded herself that Hannah had bought a few things to experiment with the advice she’d given her. It was encouraging, but not enough. Digging deeper, there were socks, a hairbrush, a toothbrush that should’ve been in the toiletries case, and then she felt cool metal on her fingertips, but it was knotted up in a bra - a handle, a barrel. She lifted it out and stared at the revolver.
For protection?
Mary would protect her.
She didn’t like it one bit.
Then that awful question Hannah had asked her sprang to mind.
Ask Mary.
Her teeth clenched hard, causing her jaw to ache, tension rising with her heart rate, and a fresh wave of hatred rolled through her.
She fit the revolver down the front of her boxers being sure to angle the barrel under the elastic band of her underpants so it’d be sure to stay put then returned all of Hannah’s belongings to her bag.
She couldn’t look at her sister as she crossed to the window and not just because Hannah was tucked out of view. She eased out and when her feet hit the soggy grass she used the full weight of her body to draw the window down.
Jogging quickly, she rounded to the front of the house and padded across the porch, unlocked the front door, slipped inside where the air was stale and warm, and locked it back up good.
Dale was a heap on the sofa. Nearly two hundred pounds of pure trouble she’d never be able to lift so she sat beside him, relinquished a beer can from his loose grip and set it on the floor where neither of them woul
d kick it on accident, then took to rousing him. An easy slap or two to his face, a jiggle to his shoulder that turned into a firm shake, pats to his leg.
He was a fucking mess.
Half asleep he found her waist and groaned, “Come here, girl.”
“Let’s get you to bed,” she suggested, countering his offer, which may or may not have been intended for Kendra. Who knew where he went in his dreams. “Come on.” She held his chin and shook firmly, rattling his brains she hoped. It did the trick. He came to, gave a start when it registered it was Mary. “Don’t make this hard on me.”
He grinned, tugged on her hair, asked her for that hug again, which she supplied now that she knew it was her he needed. But his grip was too tight, like a bear smothering its rival. She twined her fingers in his salt-and-pepper hair and twisted so his scalp would burn and he released her, chuckling to himself.
Hooking his arm around her shoulder, she got him to his feet and he was good about not collapsing on her. He used her for balance, and together they slowly paced up the hall - Dale, one heavy foot after the next, Mary’s strides short and soundless, until they turned into his bedroom.
She let him fall to the bed and assessed what she could get away with, the absolute minimal assistance being her goal.
She wrestled his boots off. Let them drop to the floor. His feet were dangling off the side of the bed and if he slept on his stomach like that, cheek to mattress, it’d crook his neck something awful and she’d have a whole new mess on her hands come tomorrow so she heaved him over onto his back, grabbed his feet and swung him sideways so he wasn’t all cockeyed. His feet were still over the edge, but fuck it. If he woke he could slide his damn self up.
As she stared down at him, Kendra surged to the forefront of her mind. Had she loved this man? Had she loved anyone?
Mary was pretty sure she’d known the first time her mother had come home high and twitching with excitement that couldn't be contained. It hadn’t been long ago, though it felt like a past life. Mary had been nearing her fourteenth birthday. She’d been sitting at the kitchen table, flipping through a party supply catalogue and trying to remember how Hannah’s fourteenth had gone. It’d driven her nuts she couldn’t place it, which made her all the more mad her big sister wouldn’t be at her party. Everyone knew Hannah had stolen off to Gilford, but no one made a damned effort to get her home, not really. Kendra should’ve begged. Dale should’ve set off, guns blazing for her. No one had the sense of urgency about it that had seemed to consume Mary on a moment-to-moment basis.