What Happened to Hannah

by Mary Kay McComas

  She stopped abruptly and scanned his face for answers; looked into his eyes for the friendship and support she needed.

  “Speak,” she said, lowering her gaze, waiting to be castigated. “Tell me what to do.”

  He pressed his lips together and tried to stop feeling sorry for himself—he regretted, more than he could say, having missed all the action. She needed him now and he wanted to give her the best answer he could.

  “The sooner you face her, the sooner you can deal with it and move on. However,” he said emphatically, “I can’t believe it’s going to be as bad as you say. Anna knows you’d never deliberately do anything to hurt her.”

  And when were his doubts on that subject going to abate?

  Whenever his gut stopped telling him she was hiding something from him, he reflected, defending his suspicions. He didn’t know what it was, couldn’t even imagine, but it was there in her eyes like the dark side of a lighthouse beacon.

  “You didn’t see her face before she ran off. She looked ready to fall apart.”

  He nodded. He empathized. He hated it when the women in his life cried. It made him feel helpless . . . it made him want to make everything perfect for them. Even when he knew perfect didn’t exist.

  “Come on.” He turned her toward the house, putting his arm around her shoulders but holding her as far away as it allowed to the avoid the fragrance of her and the flowers. “You’ll feel better once you get it off your chest. I promise. And I don’t think you’ll need me, but I’ll hang around in case you do. I’ve got your back, remember?”

  Chapter Sixteen

  Nodding silently, looking entirely inconsolable, she allowed him to lead her up one step to the next, across the porch, past a couple more guests who thanked her for the party, and into the house. Like a woman facing a French guillotine, she bravely took stair after stair to the second floor and stopped outside the closed door to Anna’s room.

  He reached out to tap on the door but Hannah grabbed his hand and held it as she leaned in closer and closer to the door to listen. After a moment he did the same . . . to listen and to breath her in again.

  He couldn’t hear what was being said, but the tone of both girls was weepy and one of them blew her nose; the other said something and the response was muffled with something.

  Hannah looked up at him, her true blue eyes welling with tears. He hated it when the women in his life cried.

  “Want me to take this one?” he whispered. “I can—”

  “No.” She straightened her shoulders and took a deep breath. He knew this Hannah—this brave, brave Hannah—and he admired her as much now as he did when he was seventeen. More, actually, knowing what he knew now. “I’ll do it.”

  He stepped back as she rapped lightly at the door.

  “Anna? It’s Hannah. I . . . I don’t know a word big enough or . . . or powerful enough to express to you how truly, truly—”

  The door flew open and Anna, tears streaming down her face, flung herself into Hannah’s arms, sobbing and gasping for air.

  “Oh, God,” Hannah muttered holding on tight with one arm and smoothing her hair with the other hand. “Anna, I’m so, so—”

  “Aunt Hannah!” the girl wailed between racking sobs. “That was such a great party! Can we do it again next year?”

  Shocked, Grady looked around the doorjamb for his daughter, who lay sprawled on the bed, eyes and nose red and puffy, laughing hysterically. He looked back at Hannah’s stunned expression as she held her niece at arm’s length to connect the tears to the laughter. She couldn’t get it to sink in.

  “Daddy, you should have been here,” Lucy said. “Malcolm snatched off Mr. Mahoney’s toupee.”

  This comment sent Anna into a fresh fit of laughter that made her knees so weak she wrapped her arms around Hannah’s neck again.

  “Who’s Malcolm?” he asked.

  “The macaw,” she squealed, rolling into her own grand mal of delight.

  He watched and waited and at last Hannah’s eyes shifted to his, and when he smiled she finally let herself hope. And yet . . .

  “I don’t understand.” She shuffled Anna back into her bedroom and Grady closed the door on the four of them. “What’s so funny?”

  The girls tried to sober up but would snort laughter out their noses and burst into giggles and hoots all over again. All it took was a word.

  “Knife!”

  “Table!”

  “Fish!”

  “Fire!”

  “Duck!”

  That one got Hannah’s attention. “There was no duck out there.”

  “No,” Lucy said tightly, fighting the hilarity. “You ducked. Malcolm swooped off the porch when Mrs. Yates screamed and fell in the water, you ducked and he snatched Mr. Mahoney’s toupee right off his head and flew away with it.”

  “I couldn’t stand it anymore.” Anna wept with laughter. “I’m sorry I left you to deal with all those people alone but I thought I was going to wet my pants.”

  “You did wet your pants,” Lucy reminded her and they fell helplessly, gleefully into each other’s arms.

  Their laughter caught like wildfire. Hannah released a reluctant chuckle and then a giggle and then a flat-out laugh as joyful as any he’d ever heard before.

  “Did you see poor Lyndsey’s face the first time the cops showed up?” She sat on the bed next to Anna. “I thought she was going to blow a fuse.”

  “I know. Her face got all red and her eyes were bugging out.”

  “Yeah, Dad.” Lucy made room for him on the bed next to her. “You don’t want to cross that one. She may look cute and bubbly and all that, but she can get really scary really fast.”

  He nodded, eyes wide. “I met her. I almost turned around and went home.”

  The women in his life started laughing again. He leaned back against the foot of the bed listening to more party details, wishing again he hadn’t missed so much of it . . . though truth told, it seemed to him like this was the best part of the party anyway.

  The next day, Sunday, dawned sunny and bright and sweet April warm. Aunt and niece faced each other over coffee and a banana-protein milk shake the next morning and decided they couldn’t face the farm and all the work that still awaited them there. Hannah would be there all week and they deserved a day off.

  They spent the morning slopping around in pajamas and sweats, reading the paper and giggling with friends about the party on their cell phones. Joe, like Anna, was hoping for a reenactment on her seventeenth birthday—and Hannah promised to see what she could do.

  The crack in the back laundry-room window was indeed not attractive. But all other evidence of the party had been swept away and Lyndsey Makel, Party Planner Extraordinaire as they now called her, said there would be no charge for the koi Mrs. Yates squished when she fell in the pond, and the window would be entirely covered by their business insurance.

  Still, after Anna left for church, Hannah called May and Don James to tell them and to apologize, profusely.

  They laughed and said they’d already had several calls from neighbors, including Jim Mahoney who wanted his toupee back if anyone found it.

  Sighing, Hannah terminated the link on her BlackBerry and held it against her top lip as she thought about people like the James’s and . . . well, like most of the people at the party last night. Small-town people. She didn’t know who had complained about the noise, but she’d sensed they’d all been happy to join the festivities, happy to wish Anna well.

  They were Anna’s people.

  However, some of them she recognized as people who’d lived in Clearfield all their lives, who had lived there when she lived there; people she knew—if not personally at least by sight. Most had acknowledged that she was a child of Clearfield come home. And while they all knew about it now, part of her was grateful none mentioned the manner in which she’d spent that childhood. But another part of her—unfortunately the greater part—ranted and screamed, “Where were you? Why didn’t you help
us? How can you look me in the eye and pretend to be forgiven when you never said you were sorry? When you never lifted a finger . . .”

  Why hadn’t they been her people, too?

  She stood and shook her arms and hands to loosen and release the venom building inside. These were the thoughts and feelings she’d gone to therapy for so long to dispel. The conclusion: She would never know or understand why no one helped her or her mother or poor little Ruth. Nor could she take responsibility for their inaction, she knew, though in low moments she suspected it was her basic unworthiness, her worthlessness. But as low as those moments became, her rage surged tenfold in response. She might not have been as sweet and lovable as some children but she was, ultimately, a child. Ruth was quiet and gentle and totally adorable and no one had come to help her, either.

  Why? Why?

  Dr. Fry had alluded to the possibility that her inability to make sense of the town’s apparent apathy had damaged her capacity to trust; had warped her attitude toward personal relationships. She’d laughed. She’d scoffed. She’d said most people weren’t worth her time to begin with . . . but she sensed he was right. How to rectify those flaws was still a bit of a mystery but simply being aware of them was sometimes helpful.

  As for the citizens of Clearfield, her favorite explanation was that it was a different time. There were more laws now and a greater public consciousness of child and spousal abuse. But set on a scale with the pain and misery endured in her home all those years, it was a lightweight excuse.

  Still, it was all she had. That and the conviction that being solely responsible for herself alone wasn’t something she’d tolerate in or around her life ever again.

  By Wednesday, Hannah saw that even the most insurmountable looking projects were surmountable with a lot of help and stick-to-itiveness.

  The dealers and auctioneers had taken all they wanted; secondhand stores near and far were stuffed to the windowsills with leftover Benson paraphernalia. The recycling center in Charlottesville would, she was sure, be sorry to see the end of Cal’s after-school deliveries.

  It was a bright sunny day with the barest of breezes blowing the scent of spring through the air like expensive perfume.

  With her track season in full swing, Anna went straight home to the James’s after practice to start her homework and Hannah met her there at six thirty, or whenever she got tired, for dinner. Cal and Biscuit came faithfully to help her at the farm after school—on Grady’s order she suspected, but hopefully with no resentment once she convinced them to let her pay by the hour (they did have a prom coming up). Her friends Sam and Jeremy Long came, too, their mother dropping them off to feed and water their cows and to help, and then picking them up in time for their own chores and homework and supper at home. Even Grady and his mother came from time to time to help when they could but . . . well, eventually there wasn’t that much to do anymore.

  So she was alone at the farmhouse that day, refusing to feel or acknowledge any qualms at being isolated there. The house was nearly empty now, so in light of the fact that they hadn’t unearthed a single skeleton or glimpsed a solitary ghost, it was looking more and more ordinary all the time. More like an empty, rundown old farmhouse with dusty walls and floors and grimy windows . . . which she planned to sic her favorite teens on Saturday. Girls inside, boys outside, she decided, boosting every one she came to wide open.

  With no drapes left, the sun filled every room in the house with cheery light—something that made her pause and wonder if there had ever been a Benson living there who might have appreciated such a thing, who took the time to enjoy the feel of the sun on their face. She smiled, closed her eyes, and let the warmth sink into her cheeks—if she wasn’t the first, she didn’t mind being the last this time.

  As each room became emptied out—closets, furniture, rug, everything—she headed in to dust and sweep up the big chunks of debris and then went back to repeat her steps with her mother’s canister vacuum and warm soap and water—sucking up cobwebs and dust bunnies the broom scattered and missed; scrubbing the very top shelf in the closet, the light fixtures and anything else that needed it. By the time she finished, the room looked old and faded but clean and tolerable.

  She’d finished two of the upstairs bedrooms the day before and another that morning with a huge linen/storage closet. According to her chore list she still had her mother’s room and Anna’s; and the attic had been reported empty and ready for her down-and-dirty brand of housekeeping.

  “Great, I’ll take that one,” Grady said on hearing this, as if keen to get the cobwebs in his hair. “First thing Saturday morning, it’s mine.”

  But when he wouldn’t meet her eyes, she knew it wasn’t the project he wanted so much as he wanted to save her the memories, from looking back again on the story she’d told him.

  Standing at the bottom of the attic steps, broom and bucket of water in her right hand, the vacuum and its tubing in the other, she smiled at the idea of him trying to save her from her own thoughts.

  But the attic was on her list, ready for her, and she was on a schedule. She’d have the entire top two floors finished and out of the way before Saturday if she stuck to her schedule.

  Grady. He was a good man. Always. But he didn’t need to protect her—she couldn’t afford to let him try for fear he’d come too close to the truth. Still, it was kind of him to make the effort.

  So, what sort of insanity did the women in Clearfield share that none of them had persuaded Grady to marry again? Her smile drooped and her brow furrowed. Come to think of it—and she was a little surprised she hadn’t before this—there had to be at least one woman in town he . . . associated with. Right? He was still a young man. He had needs . . . urges. Prostitution came to mind but there was the cop thing, and try as she might she simply couldn’t picture him paying for sex. The abstinence thing got a disbelieving mumble as she started up the stairs, and that left the last two alternatives: do-it-yourself or friends with benefits—her own answers to the dilemma.

  So who was his lady friend? She couldn’t help speculating as she came to the top of the stairs and set her cleaning gear down.

  She realized she hadn’t been in the attic once since returning to Clearfield. She braced herself for a flood of emotion but barely a trickle got through. Maybe because it was empty now and someone had already opened the 18 x 24-inch windows on either end to let in fresh air. Perhaps because she’d come up voluntarily or because she was twenty years older now, hard to tell.

  “Okay, then,” she spoke out loud, feeling confident. Using the wireless headset to her BlackBerry, she turned up the music and took the broom to the rafters.

  She liked music and her taste was diverse—Queen, Sarah McLachlan, Abba, Coldplay, Garth Brooks, Bach, Rogue Wave, Rod Stewart . . . more recently the Jonas Brothers, to have something else in common with Anna. The trouble was that no matter how hip or harmonious the tunes were, they couldn’t occupy every corner of her mind, couldn’t keep it from wandering off task. And since the passage to the past was bolted and off limits, that left her with only two directions to go . . .

  So who was Grady’s lady friend? Generation after generation of spiders lost their homes as she reviewed every instance of seeing Grady in public since she came back. She scanned each event mentally for any woman—not his mother, daughter, Anna, or herself—that he’d shown favor to or who had looked at him with longing. Surely, Anna or especially Lucy would have said something about a female friend he was partial to . . .

  She sneezed, twice, and rocked her brain back on track.

  Thinking about the present or the future didn’t involve thinking about Grady. Except for how to avoid him. It was none of her business if he had some mystery woman—who likely lived in a nearby town, most likely Ripley—who he consorted with . . . probably every chance he got!

  She gasped and stood statue still until she had her thoughts where they belonged.

  The girls. They were excited about their coming weekend in t
he city, and so was she. They were leaving right after school Friday and they’d be in Baltimore by ten o’clock. The decorator promised to have Anna’s room finished by then. Up early the next day for a surprise day of prom-dress shopping, dinner out, and maybe a play if Joe was able to get tickets for them at the last minute. If not, they could always take in a movie. Sunday morning they’d lounge around or do anything the girls chose, then start out around noon and get them back by six thirty or seven o’clock—Hannah loved a good plan, she genuinely did. And the only thing that could go wrong this time would be if they couldn’t find dresses they—

  She felt more than heard the attic door when it slammed shut. It reverberated and the flow of the breeze in that direction stopped. It startled her. But it would have startled anyone.

  She turned off the vacuum and the music and listened for a moment to the silence. The silence—and the chirping of the birds outside. Stepping over the long tubing she went to stand at the top of the stairs and looked straight down at the door—no shadows at the bottom, nothing hiding.

  She skipped down the steps to open the door and could feel herself melting like a warm stick of butter when it opened with barely a touch.

  She let out one large nervous laugh and it echoed in the hall. Silly. Ridiculous. But understandable, she thought, deciding to be kind to her psyche. She roamed in dangerous territory today, but she was okay and she’d stay that way—for Anna, but mostly for herself.

  Resolute, she set the attic door wide open again and spun on her heel to go back up the steps. Nearly to the top, reviewing what she had left to do, the door closed with a bang again; a sound so loud it could have been gunfire.

  Caught off guard and off balance she slipped on the step, grabbed the left handrail as she bumped her head against the wall, turned and lowered herself to the stair second from the top, her heart beating wildly under her palm. She cursed as soon as she could breathe again.