What Happened to Hannah

by Mary Kay McComas

  You being one of only a few in my life who ever had, to begin with. She glanced at him but didn’t skip a beat.

  “After a while he got around to telling me that he was too tightfisted to simply give money away, but if I could show up at his office every Tuesday and Thursday afternoon he’d pay me a fair wage to file insurance policies. He didn’t ask any questions. Not at first. Not about where I slept or what I did when I wasn’t at the office. In time, though, he offered me a furnished room over his garage for more work. I was his Handy Hannah, he’d say. I mowed his lawn, poked around in his gardens, and shoveled the walks in the winter. I filed and filled in answering phones sometimes. Everything I did for him had value. Worth. He’d say things like that, and I was so starved for a little appreciation that I soaked it right up.” She slipped Grady another fleeting look. He didn’t look at her, thank God; his eyes were downcast as he listened intently. “Pretty sad, huh?”

  After a moment he shook his head. “I was thinking more amazing or . . . miraculous. I was thinking he had a good eye for character.”

  He looked at her then but didn’t hold the gaze, thinking, she supposed, that she’d loosen up and say more if he wasn’t drilling her with his eyes. He was right.

  “I started finding brochures lying around in odd places advertising GED-study programs for high school dropouts, and then articles about obscure government and private grants that went untapped and were easier to get because too few people knew about them. Joe’s idea of subtle is dropping an anvil on your head, but he didn’t have to drop that one on me more than once. I missed school; I wanted to go back. I got the results of the equivalency tests on my nineteenth birthday. Joe and Julie bought me a dress and took me to this fancy restaurant to celebrate. I thought I was so grown up and free . . . almost like—”

  She caught herself, she’d said enough. Until that time, she’d been too busy surviving to give her past more than a few cursory thoughts, which she immediately tamped down, solid and sure. But the happier she became with her life—the more secure, the less afraid—it came to pass that she could no longer contain the memories.

  They haunted her dreams, plagued her like so many flies on a cat carcass. They triggered panic attacks that left her weeping; every muscle and bone in her body aching from her efforts to keep her mind intact and clinging to the here and now. And again it was Joe Levitz who caught her before she went under for the third time.

  These fragile moments of her life were none of Grady Steadman’s business—not as a sheriff, not as a man. Not anymore. Twenty years of steadily digging herself out of the hole she’d grown up in and four years of therapy with Dr. Fry made her, at the very least, as normal as anyone else. She had a few problems and a leviathan secret no one could ever know about. But everybody has problems, everyone has secrets—hers were just darker than most and punishable under the law.

  At least her mama said they were. Gradually, over the years, she’d allowed herself to speculate, to consider the circumstances and to hope, briefly. But she always came around to the same conclusion: better to be safe than sorry.

  “Well, I still wanted my own apartment, of course, and a better car and all those things you want when you think you have the world by the tail, but I was still a few years off. Like I told you the other night at dinner, I started out small at the agency and took classes at the community college. Of course, nowadays we do a little bit of everything . . . sell mutual funds, annuities, and securities . . . we offer comprehensive financial planning services like retirement and estate planning. The more we offer the more the agency is worth.

  “Joe didn’t push, but I knew that he hoped I’d like the business enough to stay and make it mine . . . which I did actually, but I was so afraid I wouldn’t pass the broker exam and he’d be disappointed—”

  “Not possible,” Grady said, looking up in surprise as if he hadn’t meant to speak out loud. “He made you his daughter, adopted you as his own. You could never disappoint him. I hope I get to meet him someday.”

  “If you bring the kids up to see Anna on her birthday, you will. He’s going to love having someone young around again. Her especially . . .” She was thoughtful. “There’s something about her, don’t you think? Something special. Or is it my limited experience with people her age showing again?”

  “No. She may look and sound and act gentle, but she’s the toughest kid I’ve ever known, aside from you.” Their eyes met and if she had the tiniest hope that those years in her father’s house had remained a secret, it was crushed—and wasn’t it . . . well, something that she still burned with the shame and humiliation of it? So many years and so many hours of therapy later? “Ruth brought her here when she was four, almost five, and was in and out of her life—mostly out—until that last year.” He paused. “She came home sick. AIDS. Drugs and prostitution. Anna and your mother nursed her to the end. Anna was ten.”

  It wasn’t solely the wind stinging her eyes and making them water. Poor Ruth. She pictured the pretty, fragile blond baby-doll, and while she knew in her heart that it was she who’d given Ruth the only chance she’d ever get at anything resembling a normal life, every fiber in her being regretted not being there to protect her, as she always had.

  They looked at each other and she shook her head—no, she didn’t need to be reminded that there were two ways to handle what she and Ruth lived through; and, no, she didn’t know why she’d chosen her path and Ruth the other. She suspected luck had a great deal to do with it.

  And while it seemed absurd that Ruth’s idea of taking Anna out of harm’s way was to bring her back to Clearfield . . . things had changed by then, hadn’t they? Anna was safe—though Ruth’s life choices made it clear that she hadn’t grasped the same security in her mind for herself. Had the misery of their childhood remained with Ruth until the very end or was there peace at last for her in death’s embrace? A true and physical ache in Hannah’s chest threatened her composure.

  The familiar sound of vehicle-on-dirt-road caught their attention. The car drove by; they had a little more time. “It must have been horrible for Anna watching her mother slip away like that . . . and then Mama getting older and older. I’ve wondered a couple of times, if you’d called me earlier, if I’d have come.”

  “And . . . ?”

  She shook her head. It had been her mother’s idea . . . her command in fact that she run. Go! Take your tainted soul and run, Hannah. You are cut of the same cloth, you and him . . . They’ll come for you, arrest you. Darkness possesses you both and now you’ve shown your hand, girl. Go! Go and beg God’s forgiveness!

  “I don’t know. Joe says there is a time for all things under heaven . . . things happen when they’re supposed to happen, I guess, but I’d like to think I would have come. If I’d known they needed me.” She laughed. “Though considering the song and dance routine you had to do to get me down here now, that doesn’t seem very likely, does it?”

  He smiled and stood as if to leave. “You’re here, aren’t you? You came when you were needed most.”

  “Well, you never did take no for an answer, Grady. I suppose being a pain in the ass is another attribute that made you perfect for the job?”

  “Absolutely. That’s the part I excel at.”

  Apparently they’d come to the end of Phase One of the cross-examination because he turned the conversation to the plans she’d made for the cleanup of the farm and which day would be best for him to rally the troops for Hazmat training. She laughed at his joke but she wasn’t fooled. She’d gotten off easy this time, but she knew he’d be back, and his questions would get much harder . . . and closer to the night she’d run away.

  She knew this by the way he made sure to mention that he was making a simple background check as part of the legal guardianship process. But simple wasn’t a word that applied to anything Grady was or did. It hadn’t as a teenager and she couldn’t imagine that he’d changed that much since then.

  He must have passed the kids bringing Ann
a home because they arrived mere minutes after he left. She got a nod and small flick-of-a-wrist wave from Cal, a cool silent stare from Lucy, and a smile as warm as the day was cold from Anna before she unbuckled her seat belt and stepped down.

  “Thanks for the ride,” she said into the cab, and for the first time Hannah saw Cal smile. She’d noticed before the similarity of his mouth to Grady’s, but no evidence that he’d also inherited his father’s preposterous dimples—noting now that compared to those in Cal’s fresh young face, Grady’s had aged some, matured, elongated and melted into the other lines life had etched on his face over the years.

  Poor Anna. No wonder she had a thing for Cal. Who could resist that easy, generous Steadman smile . . . and those silly, sexy little hollows?

  Hannah stood at the bottom of the steps waiting for her niece to join her, watching the truck back out and head down the lane.

  “Where’s Biscuit?”

  “Home. He’s got his own car. Besides, there’re only three seat belts in Cal’s truck, and the sheriff’s really strict about them. I heard him say once that he’d rather have his kids out robbing banks than riding around without seat belts.” They walked up the front steps in unison to the porch.

  “He’s pretty tough on them, huh?”

  Anna’s brow creased as she thought about it. “Not as tough as you might think for a sheriff. Look at Lucy. Gran never would have let me go to school like that. It’s not my style but still . . . I always thought Gran was way harder on me most of the time.” Hannah closed the front door as Anna unbuttoned her coat. “Sheriff Steadman has rules, though. Everyone at school knows them and most everyone is afraid to break them because . . . well, he tells us all the time that he does take prisoners. And he does. But his rules are mostly common sense, stuff that we shouldn’t do anyway. He’s the same with Lucy and Cal. They have some pretty loose boundaries, but he doesn’t tolerate them stepping over the lines.”

  “So these prisoners he takes . . . these are the kids he puts in jail, I’m assuming.”

  Anna chuckled on her way back to the kitchen. “Depends. Sometimes he has to put them in jail, but most of the time he just makes them wish he’d put them in jail. This kid in Cal’s class, Ronny Templer, got caught driving drunk last year. He had to go to court and pay a fee, and the DMV suspended his license for six months; and then the judge said that for those six months plus three more after that he had to do community service for Sheriff Steadman.” She bent and sent her upper torso into the fridge to retrieve the smoked salmon, broccoli, and penne pasta casserole someone left them, and set it on the counter. “He made Ronny ride with Tony Owen’s Towin’ every afternoon after school and weekends, too, and be on call for night runs if Tony needed him. Most of it was dumb stuff like fender benders and people backing into ditches and getting stuck in the mud.” She frowned at the top of the casserole. “Does this say heat at three fifty for twenty or thirty minutes?”

  “Thirty.” Hannah reached out and turned the oven on to preheat.

  She enjoyed Chatty Anna immeasurably; felt bonded, related, and was already wondering how to keep the flow moving. It was like a corny mother/daughter scene from an after-school special—unlike anything in her experience. She was awestruck. And loving it.

  “One night there was a real bad accident out on I–81. No one died, no one was drunk or anything like that, but people were hurt. Bad. A couple of kids. A mom. This little old man who they think fell asleep at the wheel or maybe had a heart attack or something. The sheriff told Ronny that he’d kept a cool head in an emergency and that that was a real talent.” She slid a plate of brownies up beside the casserole waiting for the oven. “Dessert.”

  “Pre-ssert.” Hannah peeled back the plastic wrap. “We should both have one while we’re waiting for dinner to cook. So we don’t get weak.”

  Anna tried to look appalled. “Well, only because I’m starving.”

  Eyes twinkling, she nodded gravely. “Only because.”

  They both chuckled and snatched up a brownie.

  “So Ronny got permission from his parents to take the EMS First Responder course. He’s all about becoming an EMT or a paramedic now. I think he could go to medical school if he wanted, he’s a pretty smart guy.”

  “So Sheriff Steadman cured him of his drinking problem.” She didn’t mean to sound so demoralized but, honestly, the whole thing sounded so . . . Mayberry that she felt a little nauseous. “And the rest of the kids at the high school are rethinking theirs? Their drinking habits, I mean.”

  Anna tilted her head as she chewed her brownie then gave her aunt a measured glanced and answered, “Not really. I can’t imagine that things for us kids have changed much since you lived here. There’s not much to do on weekends but drink and get stupid, but we have to be more careful than kids used to be because of all the new laws—and that isn’t all Sheriff Steadman’s doing. So we go out in groups. We have designated drivers. We spend the night at a friend’s house. Ronny sleeps where he falls now. At least that’s how it was with Lucy and a few of our friends last summer. I went a couple of times,” she said, bravely testing the waters.

  “Oh, jeeze.” Hannah cringed, covered her face with one hand, and held the other one up all at once. “Wait. Wait a second. I get that you’re trying to be open and honest with me, but maybe, in this case, maybe you shouldn’t. I mean, in the back of my mind somewhere I understand it. I do. I know kids do it; there’s peer pressure and all that. But I sell insurance, for God’s sake. I know the carnage of underage drinking . . . any-age drinking, actually. And . . . and I like to think of myself as a responsible adult . . . and now I’m thinking of becoming your responsible adult, so I’m sure I can’t approve of this kind of behavior. No matter how responsible you are, it’s still illegal. ” She wanted to grab the girl and shake her. Hard. Hadn’t they had enough booze in their lives? Instead she offered Anna a second brownie, and when she declined took another for herself. It was a brownie moment—she needed to be comforting, indulgent, and . . . chewy. “Do you drink a lot?”

  Anna smiled before picking up the casserole dish and opening the oven door. “No. I tried a sip of Lucy’s beer last summer. I didn’t like the flat, icky taste of it. I could have tried hard liquor or pot, too, I guess, but aside from it throwing my hydration levels off when I’m training, I’ve decided not to risk having to live with that kind of insanity in my life anymore. Children who have addicted parents have a higher rate of suicide, lower self-esteem, an increased incidence of depression; on average total health-care costs 32-percent higher than children who don’t, and they have a greater likelihood of becoming addicted themselves. I don’t need that.” She turned and gripped the counter behind her with both hands. “Do you drink a lot?”

  At first Hannah thought the girl was joking. But the flame blue eyes looking back at her were not simply a reflection of her own genetically, they mirrored a steely strength and determination that she knew as well . . . well, as well as she knew her own name.

  “No. I don’t. And I tend not to tolerate people who do drink, which is hard on my social life sometimes.” Alcoholism was not a favorite subject for her—too many questions without scientific answers, outnumbered by memories that were as clear as HDTV. To keep her hands busy, she took a head of red leaf lettuce from the crisper and started washing it for salad. “It’s not like it used to be, though . . . in other people’s minds. Now that so many movie stars belong to AA or Al-Anon, society is more open-minded about it. They consider it a disease or an addiction and not a character flaw.”

  “Do you truly believe that? Or are you saying that so I won’t hate my mom?”

  Stopping mid-lettuce-rip, Hannah looked up. “Do you hate your mom?”

  Anna shook her head, her eyes softened and her lips bowed in a tender smile. “I loved my mom but she was seriously damaged, inside, you know? She was sweet and gentle and weak. She couldn’t figure out how to live in the world. The drugs and alcohol made her think she was hard. Like yo
u. She told me I could grow up to be the perfect person because I was part her and part you—I could be gentle and tough.”

  “She thought I was hard and tough?” Oddly, that hurt.

  “She thought . . . you were her hero. I never heard her say one bad thing about you. Ever. Not even . . .”

  “What?” Anna shrugged and looked away for a moment. “Not even what, Anna?”

  “Not even when you ran off and left her behind. I mean, she never put it like that. I did . . . sometimes. Because you never came back. You never wrote. You never called her. You just disappeared on her. But she explained that.”

  “She did?” Panic and bile rose in her throat. Anna knew? No. She knew and could still look Hannah in the eye? No, no. She knew and hadn’t told anyone?

  Anna gave a grave nod. “You and your father had a horrible fight over a boy. Sheriff Steadman, right?” Hannah nodded. So far, so right. “Gran was afraid he’d kill you and told you to run. She told you to hide and to never come back. Then the next day when you didn’t come home, he started in on Gran again, hitting her, saying it was her fault that you’d left, that she was a terrible mother and when my mom worked up the courage to step in like you always had, he knocked her clear across the room, she said. Knocked her out cold and when she came to, Gran stood over him with the frying pan in her hand and he was dead. Self-defense.”

  Well. That was a nice tidy version of what could have happened. Told by a third party with no experience of the fear and horror one powerfully built man could reign down on a woman and two small girls with his fists and a bottle of Ten High. It came off as rational and straightforward. An open-and-shut case. And maybe it had been for her mother. Heaven knew, she deserved it. But it wasn’t so simple for Hannah.

  The truth was far from out in the open, but the case would remain shut if she could avoid all the traps inherent in returning to the scene of the crime. And get her butt out of town again. Soon.