“I’m right behind you, after the ten o’clock news. Except maybe tonight. I feel like it’s been a really long day. How about you?”
She nodded. “Do you want me to lock up?”
“Maybe you could show me the routine.”
She bounced off the last step and headed for the kitchen. “Do you want to lock the back door?”
“No. That’s all right.” Was it too much to hope for a burglar in the market for stuff? Lots and lots of stuff?
“That’s about it,” she said, after checking on the coffeepot, turning out the lights in the kitchen and living room, and turning the heat down for the night as she’d been taught to do. “When Lucy stays over, Gran leaves this lamp on so she doesn’t kill herself coming down to the bathroom . . . she used to, leave it on.”
“That’s a good idea. I’ll do it, too, for the first few nights at least.” She paused. “Anything else I should do?”
Humor quirked the girl’s mouth and twinkled in her blue eyes. “Like reminding me to brush my teeth?” Hannah gave her head a feeble wag. “No. I’m good. Good night.”
“Good night.” She watched the tops of the girl’s slim, muscled legs disappear from view as she hurried up the stairs, then remembered. “Anna?”
“Yes, ma’am?” She stopped on the landing and Hannah went to the bottom of the steps to look up at her.
“I meant to tell you earlier . . . I’m sorry about your grandmother. And I’m very sad about your mom.”
Tears sprang to her eyes but they didn’t spill. She blinked them away as she shifted her weight uncomfortably from one foot to the other. Her expression solemn and circumspect, she nodded, looked away after a moment and came back. “I’m sorry for you, too. But I’m glad I finally got to meet you.”
What a sweet, selfless thing to say.
“I am, too.”
And she was, but she still wasn’t convinced she was the right person to finish raising her. A teenager in her life would wreak pure havoc on the nice orderly little life she’d created for herself. And, yes, she knew how selfish that sounded, but it was a valid point that needed to be considered.
Still, beyond that, a bigger concern nagged at her: Would the girl continue to be a portal to the past? Would she always remind her of Ruth and mama and the life she’d work so hard to forget?
Yet, if all the stars in the sky aligned perfectly right and she and the girl were a bread-and-butter fit . . . who in their right mind, if they knew the truth about her, would leave a child in her care?
Chapter Six
When Hannah opened her eyes the next morning she barely recognized the room. Her gaze roamed to where bags and boxes of junk had been rearranged and moved aside to accommodate a twin bed, a half-empty chest of drawers, a 4 x 6-foot space in the center of the room, and access to a closet door on which hung her garment bag—the closet being stuffed.
She shuddered, hunkering deeper under the blankets, but she was too stiff to stay in bed much longer. It hadn’t taken her long to discover that she had to sort of spin in the same warm spot between the sheets all night because moving an inch in any direction exposed her body to frozen linen, so cold it would jolt her awake with shock and chills.
All the junk, and it didn’t even provide good insulation.
She wanted to call Joe—from bed—for a motivational speech, but she already knew what he’d say. She couldn’t even call him to report in as she had nothing to report as yet.
She wasn’t in the habit of going to him with every little thing that came along, but he was an excellent sounding board when life tossed her a tangle. From time to time she would gather together a list of several small things to take to him, so sweet elderly Joe would still feel loved and needed. Or so she told him.
At the moment, she just wanted to hear his voice. She could dog-paddle well enough for the deep end of the pool, but this was an ocean: bottomless, rimless, immense. She felt alone, and she was scared and—she knew what he’d say about that, too.
She listened to the rain on the roof for a few more seconds, then flung back the covers and started to swear. “Shit. Shit. Shit,” she whispered, as she hadn’t yet heard Anna stirring.
Rather than mosey down to the kitchen in her robe and slippers to make coffee, she danced in place on the frigid floor and scrambled into jeans, a long-sleeved T-shirt, a thick wool-blend sweater, two pairs of socks, and her slippers, then scurried out into the hall, “Shit, shit, shit,” and down the stairs to the thermostat, cranking it up until she heard the furnace rumble to life beneath her.
Stiff and shivering, she shuffled to the bathroom, then to the kitchen, and almost wept when she found the coffee on a timer, already made and steaming hot. Pouring a cup, she warmed her hands on the outside of the mug, used them to heat her cheeks and the frozen tip of her nose. Taking it over to the kitchen table, she pulled a chair out and remembered from rote the exact right place to position it, over the floor vent to wait for the heat.
Thankful that it was already blowing warm air, she rubbed her toes together over it.
First decision of the day: no more being thrifty, leave the damn heat on at night.
Her coffee cooled rapidly, yet she hadn’t finished the first cup when she heard the screen on the back porch creak open. She glanced at the clock on the wall, the cord trailing down the wall to the electrical socket, and saw that it was 6:15. She barely formed the question in her mind as to who could be visiting so early, when Anna appeared on the porch and smiled at her through the window in the door.
“Hi,” she said entering on a short blast of cold air, her cheeks and nose rosy, her eyes brilliant with health and energy. She wore gray hooded sweats with a bright yellow safety vest. She looked glad to see her. “Good morning.”
“Where the hell have you been?” The question popped out of Hannah’s mouth before she could stop it—as she simultaneously realized there was no timer on the coffee and why she’d gotten such a quick response from the furnace. Anna had been up, made her coffee, turned up the heat and gone running before Hannah could think straight. Some caretaker she was! In addition, even to her ears, the question suggested more anger than surprise.
And sure enough the girl’s smile drooped. The alarm and confusion in her bright blue eyes made Hannah feel like . . . shit, shit, shit.
She held up both hands. “That’s not what I meant to say. I’m sorry. I can see where you’ve been. I can’t believe you’ve been out running already, in the rain. What time did you get up?”
“Four-thirty,” she said, but her bubble of high spirits had already popped. She pulled the hood off her head. She’d scooped her thick hair back in a looped ponytail and a fine sheen of perspiration mixed with rain covered her skin.
Decision two of the day: Don’t assume anything about this girl. And think harder before speaking to her—decision three.
“You’re soaked.”
“Yes, ma’am. I’ll shower in a bit.”
“You run every morning?”
“Most mornings.” She opened the refrigerator door and took out a plastic pitcher. “Unless there’s ice or snow on the road. In the summer I train for cross-country and it’s cooler early in the morning.” She filled a tall glass full of orange juice. “In the winter, I cut back because I don’t like to run in the dark. And Gran wouldn’t let me. There’s less daylight before and after school so I start getting serious again for the track team about the middle of February.” She chugged the OJ in one lift, filled the glass again, and set it on the counter. “I run with the team after school once track starts. Except on weekends.”
“When is that?” She watched as Anna started removing things from the refrigerator and setting them on the counter beside her juice. A large container of yogurt, whole milk, two bananas, frozen strawberries . . .
“It started two weeks ago.” She took honey from the cupboard as well and two tall cylinders of powdered additives—one said protein and the other said fuel. She turned to face Hannah. “I ran ear
ly today because I wasn’t sure what you wanted me to do about track . . . because we haven’t had time to talk about it.”
Hannah leaned back in her chair and crossed her arms over her stomach. This is one amazing kid, she thought. Losing her grandmother aside, it had to be horrible for her to have to wait and wonder on how much her life was going to change because of some aunt she’d never met before; to have to ask permission of a complete stranger to continue doing what she loved best. Looking back, she would have hated it, resented the hell out of it. Yet Anna seemed willing, if not quite eager, to bow to Hannah’s potential authority over her, even when her eyes expressed deep concerns and urgent hopes that went unspoken.
“Tell me what you want to do about track, Anna.”
“Oh. Well. I talked to coach. He called when he heard about Gran,” she said, turning to drop the banana she peeled into an industrial-looking blender she’d pulled to the center of the counter. “He said I could keep training with the team if I wanted to. Until I leave. He’ll have to pick someone else for the relays, I guess, but I’d like to run with my friends for as long as I can. And Cal said he’d give me rides home if that was going to be a hassle for you.” She added the last bit hastily and glanced over her shoulder to get Hannah’s reaction.
“I think that’s an excellent plan. And if Cal is going to be there anyway and it’s okay with his dad, maybe we can work something out with the gas, since we’re a little out of his way.”
She poured and measured her ingredients into the blender—it was very nearly full. “No, um, Cal doesn’t do track. He plays football and basketball. He only said he’d give me a ride . . . if it was a hassle for you. To be nice.”
In case the horrible, wicked aunt made a stink.
“I see. Well, I can’t imagine why it would be a hassle for me.”
“Oh.” She sounded disappointed. “Good.”
“And I’d love to see you run. Would it be all right if I came early to watch?”
“Sure.” She might have imagined a lack of enthusiasm in the girl’s voice as Anna chose that moment to turn the blender on. She let it run for as long as it took her to drink the rest of her juice. All part of the girl’s routine, Hannah realized.
Hitting the off button and reaching into the cupboard directly above for three tall water bottles with large straws, she poured from the blender into two of them and filled the third with water. One shake and the water went in the frig, and she started sucking on the other as she cleaned up her mess.
Hannah found she enjoyed watching her. She had long, slender, graceful fingers—her body fluid and efficient. Her hair was a wildflower yellow, like her mother’s had been, and shiny. She caught Hannah looking and started to fidget.
“Um, I usually take my shower now but I can wait if you want to go first.”
“Thank you, but you go ahead. You stick to your schedule and I’ll work around you. In Baltimore if . . . if things work out you can have your own bathroom.”
“Cool.” She had a nice polite smile.
“By the way, thank you for the coffee . . . and for the extra blankets last night. I forgot how cold and drafty this old place is.”
“No problem.”
The funeral home was sending someone to drive them to and from St. John’s at nine thirty.
It was still raining.
Hannah wore a black wool pantsuit with a silver gray blouse and flat shoes—having learned the hazards of heels in a cemetery at Julie Levitz’s funeral.
Pacing in the hall at the bottom of the stairs, waiting, Hannah tried not to think of the hypocrisy she felt in attending the funeral of the woman she hadn’t made contact with in twenty years. She’d mourned the loss of her mother years ago, cried for her, missed her, reconciled herself to never seeing her again. She still had an aching sadness, but she couldn’t truly call it grief—not like she’d grieved then.
Not like Anna grieved now, she thought. Ellen Benson was a different person to Anna—a different kind of mother, as well as a grandmother. She needed to remember that. Hopefully, she’d been a better mother to Anna—and the pang of resentment she experienced at the thought of it was unfair. She knew that.
She rubbed at the dull, ache throbbing in her temples. She’d been through all this, she reminded herself. She’d come to terms with the fact that the woman had done the best she could but . . . she hadn’t managed to forget, not at all.
She stopped at the door to the living room, her attention stuck on an object she knew though she’d rarely seen it uncovered. A dim light filtered through the large front window and gave luster to the lacquer finish on the rear curved portion of a rocker, concealed beneath a striped-yellow-to-tan-to-brown-knit afghan.
Hannah’s heart chugged sluggish and painful in her chest as she walked closer to it. She noticed a distinct lack of clutter on and around it—as if it sat in a place of honor amid the chaos.
She stood for several seconds, her hands in fists against her chest before she gave way to temptation and carefully pulled the blanket off, unveiling a small armless bentwood rocker. It looked fragile and she knew it to be old; she couldn’t keep from gliding a hand over the floral tapestry on the cushioned back. Roses, faded to a unique shade of red, buds and blooms on a royal blue background.
The pattern on the seat matched. She smiled at the lovely little chair and let the discomfort around her heart yield to a strange sense of triumph and joy. Was this the feeling of peace Joe had been telling her about?
She turned when she heard Anna on the steps behind her. She wore a pair of those thick-soled chunky black shoes kids wore, a long straight black skirt, a black turtleneck sweater, and a black winter coat that buttoned up the front—she’d also painted her nails black.
“You look very nice,” Hannah told her.
“Thanks. You, too.”
“This chair,” she said, looking back at the rocker. “I hardly ever saw it growing up. Mama . . . your grandmother always kept it buried, over there in the corner. She used to have her sewing machine there, near the window for the light. She kept this little chair beside it, covered with boxes of patterns and remnants and whatever else she could find. She said it belonged to her grandmother and that she would give it to whichever one of us got married first.” She gave a soft laugh. “An incentive program, I guess. Like your mom and I would race one another to the altar after . . .” She touched the soft tapestry with the tips of her fingers. “She’d tell us stories about her grandmother, and about her mama and her daddy and her two brothers who lived in Ohio. Then we had to promise not to talk about it—this chair. She was always so afraid that . . .” She hesitated. “She was afraid something would happen to it.”
Anna made a soft noise and when Hannah turned to look at her, she offered a thoughtful expression. “Do you want to hear something strange?”
“Sure.”
“The first time my mom came back here, when she first brought me here to live, I was, like, five, I think . . . She stood there, like you are now, and she told me almost the exact same story. Only she told me what Gran was really afraid of.”
“She did?” Scratches, dust . . . but not the truth. It would be too wrong to tell someone so innocent about something so evil.
“Mom called him Gran’s husband. I didn’t even know he was her father until after she died. Sheriff Steadman explained it to me.”
“He shouldn’t have.”
“Why not? Because of how he died? Because of what he did? Gran never talked about it, but my mom did. She thought it was important for me to know about people like him. So I could avoid them. So I’d know what to do if it happened to me.”
“What would you do?” She had to ask.
“My mom said to call the cops and run like hell . . . like you did.”
“Like . . . She told you?” Hannah, the blood draining from her face, heard the distant shouting in the back of her head and felt dizzy. She lowered herself onto the little rocker, barely noted the creak of the wood as it took
her weight. “What did she tell you exactly?”
“That you were never afraid of him.” She glanced at the floor. “She told me how you used to try to help Gran . . . and her when you could. She said you were smart and brave and that’s why she named me after you. So maybe I’d be like you.”
Her throat tight, her eyes were stinging with tears, she started to shake her head slowly. She couldn’t look at the girl; she had the story all wrong. “I wasn’t brave. I wasn’t smart. And I was always afraid of him.”
She pressed her fingers to her lips trying not to cry—not so much for the past itself, but because her sister, who suffered agonies of her own in ways Hannah could only imagine, had gone to her grave with such misplaced beliefs—had named her daughter after a delusion.
“You all were,” Anna said, her voice soft with compassion. “He was a terrible man. My mom said that you running away to save your own life that night gave Gran the courage she needed to kill him.”
Hannah looked up. She could tell by her expression that she didn’t know any more of the story than that. She didn’t know the truth. Maybe Ruth hadn’t known the truth . . .
“And Gran used it like a time line,” Anna went on. “She’d say: a long time ago, before Hannah left. Or a while back, a few months or years or whatever, after Hannah left home. But it was never before or after he died.”
She smoothed the creases of her slacks and took a deep breath, trying to tug herself together. The less they talked about the past the safer she would be.
“She probably wanted to forget all about him. I’d like to.”
Anna pressed her lips together and nodded, but then she said, “My mom used to tell me that . . . that Gran wanted to forget. But she couldn’t because of me. Gran was afraid it might have been passed on to me, you know, all the anger and the bad temper but Mom said it wasn’t hereditary. You don’t think it is, do you?”
“No, I don’t.” But she once did. And sometimes, in weaker moments, she still worried about it. “Your grandmother was from a different time, she didn’t know. She didn’t know about leaving an abusive husband. She didn’t know that it was a learned behavior, that his father was probably exactly like him. She . . .” thought I had it, that I was the spawn of the devil himself, she almost said. “She did the best she could.” Then when it occurred to her, she grew concerned. “She didn’t accuse you . . . or say something that . . . she never . . .”
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