They crossed the parking lot in silence. Frank opened the door and stood back for her to pass. Regina took a deep breath, willing herself to be calm. The anger, once out, was hard to put aside.
She kept her voice low under cover of their echoing footsteps in the hall. “Everybody thinks I’m mean and selfish for not understanding.” Frank started to speak but didn’t interrupt when she continued. “And then they say I hurt Mary’s feelings when I wonder why my real mother didn’t want me.”
Frank slowed to a stop and glanced ahead at an open door.
“They think I’m hurting him too.”
“You got the short end of the stick, Ree. I do understand that.”
They both looked through the open door, where the foot of a bed was just visible.
She whispered, “Do you think I’m mean to him?”
He answered in a soft voice. “I think he loves you and misses you and feels bad about everything that happened. That’s not you being mean. That’s him regretting what he did—and didn’t—do.”
“Mary thinks I should make up with him. For my own sake.”
“Now, she may be right about that.” He gave her a bracing side-hug. “He’ll be happy to see you.”
“If he even knows I’m there.”
William Hannon lay on his back, his body shrunken, face gaunt, hair white. Regina blinked and glanced at Frank, who didn’t seem surprised or shocked. Three years earlier, her father had been his robust self when he’d fallen to a stroke. She’d pictured him more fully recovered.
Frank leaned over his father. “Can you hear me, Papa?” He offered her a chair beside the bed.
Regina sat and, following Frank’s example, leaned forward and said, “It’s Regina, Papa. I came home last night.”
She cast about for what else she could say. How are you? Hope you feel better? Long time no see? How did everyone else know what to say at times like this? She felt nothing but panic. She bit her lip and sat back.
Frank pulled up a second chair. “Bebe flew in last night. Edith is picking her up and they’ll be here in a little while.” He rambled on in this vein, assuring his father that they were taking care of Alice, taking care of everything at home, everybody was fine, everybody was coming to be with him.
William Hannon lay inert. There seemed little point in talking to him; Regina could see no sign that he heard or understood. A coldness stole over her. She’d stayed away out of what she considered justified anger. But the possibility now loomed that she had missed the chance to reconcile. A demon on her left shoulder said he’d missed the chance as well as she. But a voice on the other side told her that she would live the rest of her life with what she’d done.
After a while, Frank sat back in his chair and asked in a soft voice about Regina’s job, then talked easily about his own family and work. Their eyes met at the sound of footsteps and voices. Edith and Bebe. Regina gritted her teeth as she and Frank both gave up their chairs as the women walked into the room.
Edith was dark and strong-featured like Mary, but slimmer and more stylish. Bebe was a more gingery take on Alice’s coloring, the only one other than Regina to share it, but she was bigger-boned.
Bebe eyed Regina appraisingly. “Well, look who’s here. The prodigal daughter.”
Regina flushed, then Edith exclaimed, “Oh hello, Papa. Look, he’s awake.”
William Hannon’s eyes traveled slowly from Edith, who had just spoken, to Bebe and Frank, then came to rest on Regina, who caught her breath.
“He can’t speak,” Edith said. “That’s what Mary told me yesterday.”
Bebe stepped forward and enunciated clearly, “Hello, Papa. Edith picked me up at the airport. Pace’ll visit this afternoon.”
Her father’s eyes still held Regina’s, and water leaked along a crack in his cheek. Regina looked at the others in a panic, and Bebe’s face hardened.
Frank said quietly, “He knows you’re here.”
Their father’s eyes fluttered closed, and a minute ticked by, then two more.
“He can’t understand anything we say,” Edith assured them all. She picked up the phone on the bedside table. “I’m going to make sure Alice knows we’re here. Mary wanted to know if we’d be there in time for lunch.” She called, and they listened to her side of the conversation. At one point, she fell silent before saying, “Did you get a number?”
She pulled a pen and envelope from her purse, tore off a scrap, and wrote down a phone number. After she hung up, she handed the paper to Regina. “A Mr. MacDonald called for you.”
Regina colored and looked at the number.
Edith said, “Do you want to use this phone to return the call?”
Regina’s face grew hot. “No rush.” Without looking, she felt Bebe’s eyes on her.
“I remember Al MacDonald,” Bebe said. “I didn’t know you were still seeing him.”
“I’m not. I haven’t in years. I mean, I hadn’t until yesterday.”
“Well, that’s nice. Since you’re here, you might as well catch up with your friends.”
Frank said nothing.
Edith said coolly, “There’s a pay phone outside in the hall, if you’d rather use that.”
On impulse, Regina straightened. “Maybe I will.” She turned to Frank, trying to hold her head up and her face expressionless. “I’ll get back on my own. I’ll see you at the house later.”
In the corner of her eye, as she bolted for the door, she saw Bebe turn to the others with outstretched hands and a smile.
9
One Mystery Solved
Visiting home, for Al, was never dull. His parents had chickens, and there was always Ruby to walk and play with. His mother kept a large kitchen garden, saving all the heavy labor for Al and his brother. Since Phil had kids and a house of his own, it came down to Al. He enjoyed the work. He also mowed the grass and cut down trees. His mother could talk all day once she got going. He didn’t mind that either.
Saturday morning, he lingered over the paper until nine, waiting for the grass to dry. His father planted himself in front of the TV in the living room, watching news, talk shows, and cooking shows, not that he ever cooked. Al and his mother sat in the kitchen and drank coffee and talked, mostly about his brother and sister, their spouses and children, and the rest of the extended family, which was large and close.
In the back of his mind the whole time was Ree Medina-now-Hannon. At mid-morning, at last, his father ambled off to put in a few hours at the showroom, and his mother headed for the grocery store. Al waited until his parents had left before he called the number Regina had given him. After seven rings, he thought no one was going to answer and wondered if he should hang up rather than appear importunate.
Just as he was about to do so, someone picked up and said in a soft, cultured woman’s voice, “Hello?”
He gave his name and asked to speak to Regina. For a moment, it seemed as though he might have dialed the wrong number.
Then she said, “Oh.” The rest was slow in coming. “She isn’t here now… is there a message?”
“If you would just tell her I called.”
She took his name and number, calling him Mr. MacDonald. His name clearly meant nothing to her. She added that Regina was at the hospital. After another pause, she said, “My husband is ill.”
The words carried a note of reproach, as though his calling were an unwanted intrusion in a bereaved household, which he knew it might very well be.
He apologized and ended the call as politely as he could. He said to Ruby, “That did not go well.”
He slapped his thigh for Ruby to follow and went outside to work in the garden. He pulled weeds for about thirty minutes and decided he needed to go back to the house for clippers. The phone was ringing as he came in the door, and he picked it up, somewhat breathlessly.
There was a brief hesitation, then, “Al?”
“Ree? I mean, Regina?”
“I—could you come pick me up?”
He
was surprised, but without hesitation said, “Of course. Where are you?”
“At the hospital.”
“In Lynchburg?”
“No, Mercy, in Bedford.”
They agreed she’d be waiting outside.
He was amazed and delighted that she’d called him. He felt guilty about that, because it had sounded as though she was upset. She’d said the day before that her father was dying. He told himself to be sure and wipe the grin off his face before she saw him.
He jotted a note for his parents, changed his shoes and shirt, and set out at the speed limit, his idea of hurrying. She was waiting outside the main entrance in jeans and a white blouse, her hair tied up in a loose knot. She reached for the door before the car came to a full stop and jumped in as if she’d robbed a bank. Her air of needing to escape communicated itself to him, and he peeled away. Pulling around to the exit, he saw a group of older adults leave by the same door she’d been waiting in front of, and he thought they might be Regina’s family. One of them, the gingery one, looked familiar.
Regina barely cut her eyes at them over her shoulder before she faced front. “I’m sorry. I hope it wasn’t inconvenient for you to come get me.” Her voice was a husky whisper.
“Not at all, I’m glad you called.”
She didn’t answer, and it hit him with a shock that she was struggling with tears. He had an urge to touch her but didn’t. Her arms were folded, hugging herself, and he would have had to touch her leg, which would not have been the gesture he intended.
“You were visiting your father?”
She nodded and sniffed, and there was no doubt she was crying.
“I’m so sorry. Should I take you home?”
She shook her head. He supposed she’d gotten to the hospital with her family and wondered why she wasn’t leaving with them.
“Where do you want to go?”
She shook her head again, so he drove, racking his brains over the next couple of miles. “Do you want to go somewhere and get a cup of coffee?”
She shook her head no. Another mile went by.
“So how is he?”
Her voice was low and shaky. “Same. Not responsive, or not much.”
“He, um, did you say he had a stroke?”
She nodded.
He decided on a more direct approach. “You said he might be dying.”
Nodded.
“That’s tough. I’m sorry.”
He was on the outskirts of town but turned on impulse toward a small park where the two of them had once gone. She pulled a Kleenex from her pocket and blew her nose, looked up and around, then back at him under wet lashes, a question in her eyes.
“The park. You want to walk around? We could take the trail to the overlook.” They both glanced at her shoes, plain black flats. “They look like you could walk in them.”
A weak smile, like faint sun on a rainy afternoon. “Okay.”
The parking lot was deserted, the morning air cool.
On the trail, which wound between tall pines, he asked, “Who were those people that came out of the hospital after you? Were they with you?”
“That was my brother and two of my sisters.”
“I used to think you were an only child.” He tried to picture the people he’d seen at the hospital from a distance.
“There are five of them altogether. Two brothers, two sisters. All much older than me.”
“Your mother must have started early.” He cringed. Foot in mouth again.
She blew a little laugh. “At nineteen. She was forty-two when I was born.” She sniffed. “They all left home before I can even remember, except for Mary, who never did leave. When she got married, she moved into the old gardener’s cottage.”
“That little house I knew.”
She nodded. “So I only saw the others when they came home once or twice a year.” Her voice quavered. She took a deep breath. “It’s like they’re a whole other generation. They grew up before the war. In the twenties and thirties.” She waved. “Different world altogether.”
“So you went to the hospital with them. How come you left?”
“My sister hates me. Bebe.”
“Which one is that?” But the gingery one came to mind. She could have been the younger of the two women he saw the night of the prom.
“She’s the youngest. The redhead.”
He stopped walking and waited until she turned around and looked back at him. “You’re the youngest.”
She looked momentarily confused, then irritated. “She was the youngest daughter back then. When they were all growing up.”
“Why does she hate you?”
“I don’t know, she always has. I guess because she’s the youngest except for me. That’s what Mary says. I took her place as the baby of the family.”
“My sister had a cat like that.” She rewarded him with a surprised laugh, so he explained. “Gracie had this fat, spoiled old tabby named Maggie. We took in a stray kitten once, and Maggie was furious. She wouldn’t let the kitten out of the basement. We had to give it away in the end.”
Regina sniffled and ducked her head.
Walking beside her, he couldn’t see her face. “So is that why you lived with your other sister?”
Huge sigh. “No, it was my mother. She couldn’t take care of me. Mary wanted a child, so…” She opened her hands. “She was like my mother, and my mother was more like my grandmother.”
That sounded simple enough. Not such an uncommon story.
They walked a bit farther before he asked, “What was wrong with her?” Then he wondered if he shouldn’t have asked, because she was a long time answering.
“She never recovered from the loss of her child.”
“Oh. The sister who drowned.”
The trail steepened and they slowed down, leaning into the slope. “Her daughter drowned, and she never got over it. They say she was a beautiful child, a little blond girl just like her mother.”
He started to say something and hesitated. She glanced at him, and he said, “But you were a beautiful child, blond just like her, weren’t you? I guess I don’t understand why she would give you up. You’d think she’d be doubly glad to have you.”
They came to a halt. She blinked back tears and her chest rose and fell. She stifled a sob, half turned away, and this time he did put his arms around her. She resisted him for only a second, then put her head against his chest and cried, arms folded between them.
“You said your dad was dying.”
She shook her head but only cried. He pulled her closer and felt her relax, her head nestled into his shoulder.
“I suppose,” he continued, returning to the subject of her mother, “it could have been so traumatic she couldn’t stand to take the risk again. Kind of like she couldn’t get back on the horse.”
She pulled back and wiped her eyes with her sleeve. “Alice never fell off a horse in her life.”
He laughed, and so did she. They walked on in companionable silence. The sun was high enough overhead to fall between the trees onto the trail. The day was heating up.
After a while, Al said, “So that’s the mystery. Your mother, Old Lady Hannon—oh, sorry!”
She laughed again. “I never thought of her that way.”
“I’m sorry.”
“No, I like it. Old Lady Hannon! She would faint! She’s Alice Hannon. Everybody calls her Alice. She’s the grande dame.” Her smile faded.
“So after the one sister died, you lived with your other sister in that house I used to walk you home to. But the Hannon house was your real home.”
“Well. Yes and no.”
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen it. That time at the lake, it was dark and we were in the woods. The house must have been on the other side.”
“It’s a nice old house. Not what it once was, but I love it.”
“Ree—”
“My name is Regina.”
“Well, that’s just it.” He threw caution to the
winds. “You were Ree Medina in high school, I know you were.” He held up one finger to forestall any argument she might be about to make. “I looked it up.”
Consternation on her face. He waggled the finger and saw her soften. Then she laughed before sniffling and blowing her nose. She was beginning to be the girl he once knew. They fell to walking again.
“In the yearbook, there you are, Ree Medina, with your picture. No Hannons.”
“Medina is my sister’s married name.”
“They adopted you?”
“No, not really.” She reached around her head and dragged her hair to one side. “I don’t know how she could do it without formally adopting me, but she signed me up for school as Regina—Ree—Medina. She always called me Ree. It was like a baby name. But then…” She sighed and made a face. “If you make me Medina, then it’s Regina Medina, which sounds pretty stupid. I mean, who in their right mind would name their daughter Regina Medina?” She made an irritated tsk-ing noise.
“So as far as the school was concerned, your name was Medina. But it wasn’t really.”
“Well, no. I wasn’t Mary’s daughter. I was her sister. Legally. And in fact!”
They walked on, Al digesting what he’d learned. A question formed in his mind. “So you lived there with her and her husband, who I think I saw once.”
She climbed on in silence, lips set in a tight line.
“What about your dad? He never said anything?”
“He’s not my father,” she snapped.
Al stopped in his tracks and looked at her in amazement. “He’s not? Wait, didn’t you say…”
She looked back at him, momentarily nonplussed. “Who are you talking about?”
“Who was that you were visiting at the hospital? Isn’t he William Hannon?”
“Oh. Yes.”
They resumed walking. “Isn’t he your dad? I thought that was the idea. Mrs. Hannon is your mother.”
“He’s my father, yes.” She was grim.
Blue Lake Page 8