Not knowing how much a farm sold for or how much of that money would go to her for food—the concern in Anna’s eyes escalated and Hannah felt like a heel.
“Oh, Anna. I’m sorry. Honestly.” She gave a soft laugh as her expression asked forgiveness. “I’m kind of a . . . smartass sometimes. There will be plenty of money for anything you want. Food, school, travel. Oh! I have the best idea. What if I take you to Europe as a graduation gift? Would you like that?” She glanced at a confused Anna. Did that sound like a bribe to her, too? It did, didn’t it?
Okay, so scrape away the fear and uncertainty, vanquish the memories, throw ice on the anger and pain, and deep down under it all somewhere, struggling to stay alive, burgeoned the tiny hope of family. She was stunned to discover it still existed. She was. At first she wanted to laugh at the absurdity of it—and it was daunting to realize that her heart hadn’t turned to stone after all. But it thrived as true and real as the frightened and hopeful girl beside her . . . this girl who could well be Hannah’s last chance at ever having a family.
Like she knew anything about family in the first place . . .
Plus, Hannah was lonely. There, she could admit that, too. She had Joe. She had a few other friends, good friends, caring friends that she cherished but . . . well, it wasn’t the same. It wasn’t what she hoped to find in this girl.
It was worth a try, wasn’t it?
“Well, it’s only a thought. We have time. You can think about it.” She hesitated, taking the left at the church toward the farm. “You know, Anna, for the record I want you to know that I think I want this to work. I’ll be honest and tell you I wasn’t sure at first. In fact, I told Grady no a dozen times before I agreed to come down here but . . . I don’t know. Being here, being with you . . . well, I’d like to keep what’s left of our family together.
“It won’t be easy. I’m old and set in my ways; I’m used to doing and having things a certain way . . . and I’m not used to having someone else around. I could very likely drive you nuts. But I think we should give it a try anyway.
“So I’m going to leave it up to you to decide. And while I think it would be less complicated for you to come live with me in Baltimore I don’t want you to feel like that’s your only option. It’s not. I’d have to be your legal guardian, I think, to keep you out of the foster system, but there are boarding schools or we might be able to board you with someone here in Clearfield for a couple of years. You seem to have your head screwed on straight. We could go to court and have you declared an emancipated minor, if that’s what you want, and you wouldn’t have to send me Christmas cards if you didn’t want to. But you do have choices, Anna. There’s nothing worse in the world than thinking you don’t have choices, so it’s important to know that you do. You can even make a choice and change your mind if you want. It’s up to you.”
God. Was she bungling this—giving the girl too much freedom, too many options? Where was that fool Grady when you needed him for parental advice? She should have kept her mouth shut until she conferred with a responsible adult who knew something about children.
Joe. He said be yourself and go with your gut. Grady had as well. Yet she couldn’t help thinking that logically one’s gut, hers in particular, would be predisposed to be as dysfunctional as one’s dysfunctional life experiences, hers being particularly so.
Have faith, Joe said. So perhaps a queasy gut would be her natural state from now on.
Instincts on high, she peeked at the girl as they pulled onto the gravel drive to the house. Eyes downcast as she considered the black polish that looked so unnatural on her nails, her lips curved in a light smile, the swell of her cheek drawing hope into Hannah’s heart when Anna nodded the understanding of her freedom.
Chapter Nine
It was that sort of day.
It started early. Shortly after Anna left for school, the three antique dealers (one from Clearfield and the others from nearby towns) that she’d invited for the initial walk-through arrived with clipboards and colorful stickers to mark those things they found valuable and wished to bid on later . . . after Anna had a chance to see what they were taking. They would return in a week or ten days to do it all over again on whatever they uncovered under all the stuff.
They were surprisingly methodical. One started at the top of the house working his way down from the attic; one from the bottom up—the cellar being the truest test of a man’s tenacity and gumption in her opinion. And the third dispatched himself to the wobbly barn and out-buildings saying it was quite possible that this first pass-through would take more than one day.
Truthfully, this calculation figured far more realistic than her own, so she called the two used-furniture dealers she’d scheduled for Wednesday and asked them to come Thursday instead. Neither was thrilled or very gracious about the change to their schedule, but what could she do?
She, on the other hand, had no idea where to start. At random, from whatever room she happened to be in, she took a box or a bag or an old cookie tin to fret over the contents. How old are these buttons? Should I set them aside for the dealers? Toss them? Jesus, a whole box of yellowed crocheted doilies—did Mama crochet? Grandmother Benson? Dealers? Keep one for Anna? Recycle these old newspapers . . . from 1984! Good Lord. Were they on microfilm or would someone be happy to see them? And so the day went, one ineffectual but seemingly dire decision after another with barely a dent made in the actual tonnage of stuff in the house. By lunchtime, she had a headache and felt so frustrated and discouraged, she hid herself amid the junk in her room and called Joe.
“I’m drowning in this stuff.”
“And making everything harder on yourself than need be.” He sounded distracted. “Let the professionals do their work. Don’t worry. If the ancient newspapers have any value, they’ll know and take them off your hands. That’s why they’re there.”
Oh, yeah. “I knew calling you was the right thing to do. How’s everything at the office?”
“To be honest, I’m not sure.” This un-Joelike ambiguity made the muscles in her shoulders and neck bunch and twist like rope. “Nothing to be alarmed about yet, but apparently young Jim didn’t understand that your clientele were to be routed to me in your absence and not simply added to his own small kettle of fish.”
“You think he’s trying to steal my clients from me?”
“I answered a call while Jim was at lunch, a simple claim for damages done to a neighbor’s boat—a can of yellow house paint dropped on it while it was parked in the drive—and you’ll never guess who it was.”
“Who?”
“Clive Morrison. Remember him?”
“How could I forget? He bought that homeowner’s policy from me thinking he was buttering me up for a date. He all but stalked me for months and then suddenly he fell in love with one of the girls from my exercise class . . . and just so there weren’t any hard feelings, he came back and bought life insurance policies for both of them after they got married.” Her soft laugh was incredulous. “A very weird guy.”
“Indeed. But the reason he called back after reporting the incident to Jim, who said he’d happily handle it for him, was his curiosity as to whatever happened to you.” She heard his reluctant sigh over the line. “Any one of the three incidents I’ve counseled him on in the last couple of days would be nothing, but taken as a whole, I admit, I’m concerned.”
Selling insurance is a business, meaning the whole point is to accumulate as many customers as possible to make more and more money; concurrently it is equally as important to keep those customers satisfied to prevent them from wandering off and taking their business to another broker who might offer them a better deal—or more often, since most companies were pretty competitive with their prices, to another broker who is friendlier to them, remembered their children’s birthdays with bright-colored company cards or, and—this is the big one—is consistently there when they are needed. It’s a part of the business to look for, bait, and reel in new customers but in th
e broker biz there is no greater sin than stealing clients from other brokers in your own office. Generally, if detected, it’s a signal that the thief is preparing to break off on his own and had no qualms in taking your livelihood with him. But also, generally, if the company owner is wise, a noncompete clause is part of the standard employment contract—and Joe taught her to be very wise.
And so aside from their unwillingness to accuse Jim Sauffle of cheating or stealing or of being just plain too stupid to see the lawsuit they’d slap him with, they had to wonder what he was thinking and if his actions were simply ill considered or deliberate.
“And you say you spoke to him again yesterday about channeling my clients on to you?”
“I did. I made myself very clear.”
“I guess he needs to hear it again from my lips.”
“Perhaps that would be helpful,” he said, stiff and rightly riled at having his instructions, his words, questioned. “Meanwhile, I will arrange to have Gwen and Caroline organize their schedules to be in the office whenever he is, and to answer the phones.”
“Okay. Tell them I’ll be home as soon as I can be.”
A few hours later she sat on the front porch steps in her coat, hunched over the thin county phone book with her cell phone in hand when Sheriff Steadman’s SUV rumbled up the drive, dust drifting under the wheels.
It was bright but chilly out. The breeze had a sweetness to it that she was 98-percent sure was all in her head, because it blew so clean and refreshing and so the opposite of the inside of an old farmhouse stuffed with stuff.
The truck stopped and Grady spent a few more seconds talking on his cell phone before flipping it closed and getting out. His eyes were hidden behind his menacing cop shades again, but she didn’t need to see them to know they were trained on her. She could feel them.
“Hey.”
“Hi.” He took long lazy strides to the porch and stopped at the bottom. “What are you doing? It’s cold out here.”
“Promise not to laugh?”
“Sure.”
She leaned forward to whisper loudly. “I’m pretending that I’m not waiting for Anna to get home.” He smiled but he didn’t laugh. She held up the phone book and her cell. “I brought these out with me so I’d look busy trying to track down a sanitation department or something to have one of those big Dumpster things brought out here, but mostly I’m watching the road.”
He took off his glasses and made a to-do of glancing at his watch. “I’d say you’ve got at least another hour or more.”
She nodded. “That’s the laughable part. Who does this? I’m like a kid with a new toy. I’m going to end up suffocating her, aren’t I? Or I’ll overcompensate and she’ll think I’m ignoring her like she doesn’t matter.” He kept his head down and took two steps up before sitting on the step below hers, his thick leather belt with all his police accessories rubbing with an indissoluble sound. He blocked most of the bite in the air with his shoulders—and didn’t bother to hide his smirk. “See? I knew you’d laugh.”
“I’m not. I don’t think it’s funny. I think this is normal and I’m glad to see it.”
“Normal.” She scoffed at the word. “You’re not obsessive with your kids, I’ve seen you.”
“Obsessive would be lurking in the halls at the high school or riding the bus home with her. This is only normal parental worry, which I do constantly, by the way. It’s my job. When they’re out at night I wait, awake, until I hear them come in. If they’re not home after school when they’re supposed to be, I wait and depend on my mother to let me know immediately. I wait and watch and pray that I’m making the right decisions for their futures, for their psyches, for . . . everything until they’re old enough to make their own decisions—and even then I know it won’t be over. I wait to see them all the time, to see if they’re okay. It’s what I signed on for.”
Something he said before niggled at her. “You said you were glad to see it. What were you expecting? Did you think I wouldn’t feel anything for her?”
“I didn’t know what to expect,” he said honestly, looking to see how she’d take it. “My hopes were high, I admit, but, well, we don’t really know each other anymore, do we?”
Oh, he’s good, she thought as she shook her head and silently tiptoed around her inner stronghold to make sure all the windows and doors were locked against him. That might well be the nicest, smoothest preface to an interrogation she’d ever hear.
“People can change a lot in twenty years. I’m still trying to hurdle this cop issue.” She wagged her head ingeniously. “A little track allusion there in case you missed it.”
He chuckled and turned to her more fully. “That’s a nice change. The humor. You used to be so serious and grave about everything.”
“As opposed to now, when I’m obsessed and neurotic about everything?”
He tilted his head. “Okay, so maybe that’s just another form of serious and grave only now it’s coated in humor and not so obvious.”
“Maybe.”
“That would mean that somewhere along the way you’ve learned the art of camouflaging your thoughts and feelings. That would be new, too.”
“They taught you all this fascinating psychology at cop school, did they?”
“No. In fact, I learned more about reading people in the army, before cop school. I tried college for a couple of semesters after high school, but sitting at a desk preparing for a future that would take place at a desk made every bone in my body ache. So I quit school and joined the army—learned all my best lessons there. I even married an army brat. I was very gung-ho army.” He gave her a lopsided, one-dimpled smile. “Unfortunately, it took my wife another seven years to figure out that she’d actually hated the army all of her life, that she hated me more than the army, and that she wasn’t too keen on kids, either.
“She went off to find the life we’d robbed her of, and I brought a four- and a six-year-old back here to live with my mom, who was already worn pretty thin caring for my dad, who’d had his second stroke in four years.” He gave a derisive chuckle. “It occurred to me then that someone was, maybe, trying to tell me something. So I took a hardship discharge and spent a little time over in Ashburn at the police academy. Of course, I was only a deputy at first but that worked out well, too. It gave me a little more time with the kids, helping them to settle in and get used to the new way things would be. It was tough on Cal—all of us, but especially Cal. It changed something in him.”
She knew about those kinds of changes, the kind that occur when the innocent hardwiring of a child’s mind, or even worse his heart, is painfully and cruelly ripped out and left to reconnect in any way it can . . . or not.
“Anyway, three or four years later when old Charlie Barton decided to retire, the good people of Turchen County elected a local boy to take his place. That was eight years ago.”
“Did you resent having to redirect your life like that?”
“No. Well, maybe a little at first. I was a Ranger. I had plans. But I had bigger responsibilities here.” He paused. “Much bigger. Eventually I realized I could do more direct good for more people here. I don’t regret the redirection I chose.”
Of course, he didn’t. He was one of those people, wasn’t he? The kind who assumes things will work out, and they do. The kind who is always so sure that the ice he’s standing on is frozen solid and it never once, ever, cracks under his weight.
“So what about you? Why insurance?” Ah, the slick lead-in. She’d seen it coming; could have put it off a little longer if she hadn’t been distracted by how easily he narrated his rendition of the last twenty years.
No, that wasn’t completely true. It came to her that she wanted to tell him her story, at least some of it. She’d suffered hardships, like him. She’d made something of herself, like him. She was proud of her decisions—most of them—like him. She was proud of herself.
Pride goeth before the fall. Loose lips sink ships. But Keep your friends close and yo
ur enemies closer was the maxim she aimed for.
“Joe Levitz.” Her answer to so many questions. “I owe him everything. I was sixteen when I left here. Sixteen. Barely a year older than Anna.” He nodded but let the aperture go by. The night she left was, apparently, another story for another time. “I read about homeless, runaway, throwaway kids now and wonder how I didn’t end up drug addicted or dead or . . . worse than dead that first year but . . .” She looked at him and gave him a reticent smile. “Joe says I just ran out of the bad luck I grew up with. It was time for my luck to change. And maybe growing up the way I did, did give me an edge on the streets. I knew to keep my head down, my defenses up, and to blend in wherever I went.”
She didn’t think it important or necessary to describe the terror of living on the streets to him. If he didn’t know or couldn’t imagine, then nothing she said would faze him anyway.
“I traveled light and washed up in restrooms; I avoided other homeless people, thinking I could mix better without them; and I rarely slept in the same place twice. I slept best in churches; no guards and they were locked up tight at night. Some of the smaller, neighborhood libraries were good, too. Lots of good hiding places.” She took a deep breath.
“I was panhandling when I met Joe, a few blocks from his office. That’s Joe’s word, by the way, “panhandling.” A nice way of saying I was begging strangers for the change in their pockets. It was January, I’d just turned seventeen, and it was so cold I had to keep stomping my feet to keep them from freezing. His wife, Julie, had him drinking decaf coffee at home for his blood pressure, so he stopped at the coffee shop every morning to get his motor running.” Her laugh was soft as she recalled that morning like it was yesterday. “That’s what he told me, right there on the street, like I’d asked him. He told me how he’d met Julie on a blind date and loved her the minute he saw her, and about his two boys. It was very weird. I thought he was a sweet, lonely old guy who liked to talk . . . talked so much no one wanted to listen to him anymore. And I didn’t mind. It had been a long time, months and months, since anyone spoke to me like a real human being.”
What Happened to Hannah Page 10