“Fine. We leave the door closed, then.” Shaking her head in resignation, she reached for the 2 x 4 handrail attached to the wall to haul herself up, reaching back with her other hand to push from the top step. That’s when she came across the rough grooves on the lip of the stair and let her fingers slip over them like brail. She recognized the code.
Crouching and sitting again she traced the etching with her fingertip and smiled a little—though she wasn’t sure why.
Dirty and dusty and old, the etching was barely visible but she remembered it, perfectly.
“Is it true, girl?” Mama was pale and bug-eyed when she opened her eyes, looking up at her from the kitchen floor where her daddy had left her. Her head pounding, she noticed the scarlet mark on her mama’s left cheek that was clear evidence of a recent slap. Ruth sat on a chair in the corner, her knees drawn to her chest, her arms holding them tight—she looked like she was trying to make herself so small no one would see her.
The moment she recalled what had happened, her heart sank and dread like thick, black crude oil coursed through her veins.
Buzz Weims told her daddy he’d seen her kissing Grady at school.
“Is it true, Hannah? You been kissing the Steadman boy?”
“What?” Not what like she misunderstood, but what had gone wrong because they were always so careful—stealing kisses, brushing fingers, they’d become experts at speaking with their eyes; and she always rode the bus home terrified of being seen with him.
Yet in that suspended moment in time, those were her regrets. If she’d known she was going to get caught anyway she would have kissed him every chance she got, held his hand every second of the day and night, and told him all the secrets in her heart without fear or reservation. She loved Grady.
She was a fool. She should have known that it was only a matter of time before their secret came to light. Eighteen months had passed since that first ride in the bed of Grady’s truck—she’d pushed her luck too far.
She struggled to her feet only to stagger from another blow to her left cheek that had her blinking through the stinging in her eyes as her mother shouted, “Do not lie to me. Is it true? Did you kiss him?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Did you . . . he do anything else?”
Some things—like the mating of two souls—were sacred and private . . . and might hurt Grady if anyone else knew.
“No, ma’am. Nothing else,” she said without compunction. “We hold hands, we kiss sometimes, mostly we talk.”
“You sure? Nothing else?”
“No. Nothing.”
“He can take you to a doctor. He can check. He will know.”
She’d cross that bridge if she made it over this one. “Nothing else.”
Perhaps wanting to believe more than actually be convinced, her mother sighed and stepped closer, put her hands on Hannah’s shoulders, scanned her face with troubled eyes. There were always a few strands of hair that escaped her dark braid at the end of the day—tonight there were more than usual—and Mama smoothed them back in place with a shaky hand.
“He . . . he’s gone after the boy. I doubt he’ll do him any harm. Tell him to stay away, most-like.” She glanced over at Ruth. “But I think it best if he don’t see you first thing in the door. Neither one of you. You go to your room and stay there,” she said to Ruth, who scrambled from her chair to obey. “Take a sandwich. And you,” she said, her eyes filled with the hopelessness she felt for her eldest daughter. “I’ll say I struck you, again, and sent you up there for the night with no food. I’ll say you swore not to see the boy again.” She hesitated. “You swear?”
If anything ever happened to Grady because of her . . . the decision was easy.
She nodded. “I swear.”
Turning in haste to the refrigerator, her mother opened the crisper on the bottom and removed an apple that had seen better days and stuffed it into Hannah’s hand.
“How could you have done such a stupid thing?” A rhetorical question that her mother didn’t expect her to answer. She shook her head and motioned with her arm the direction in which to exit. There was nothing left to say . . . no point in making recriminations. It was all in God’s hands now—God’s and Karl Benson’s.
And while she could easily confess to not understanding the ways of God at all, she understood her daddy better than anyone.
He was going to kill her . . . or get as close to it as he legally could, she determined, opening the attic door, stepping inside and closing it behind her like a trained mouse in a maze. She took each step slowly to the top and sat down to await her fate.
She played with the apple for a few minutes then set it aside. Her stomach was too tight to eat now. If she lived through the night she’d eat it in the morning or save it for supper if it looked like she’d be there the entire weekend. The most likely scenario, however, would be its becoming an unexpected treat for the mice.
If she lived through the night she’d run away, she decided—wanting to cry, wishing she could but feeling already dead inside. She’d go to Grady and they could run away together. If she lived and if she ran away, she’d never come back to this place. Never. Not for Mama. Not for Ruth. Not for anyone or anything. If she lived . . .
Inspired, she stood and blindly felt her way to the back of the attic for her emergency stash of a candle and matchbook and lit them. It was hard to tell if it was dark out yet or not—the windows having long ago been buried in junk to prevent that very thing—but she found what she was looking for and let the candle burn as she returned to the top stair, stepped down twice, and sat again.
For the next however long she had, she used a flat-head screwdriver to scratch and gouge as she picked at and blew on her artwork, at what might be the only permanent evidence that she ever existed after tonight—her name dug into the lip of the top step of the attic in an old farmhouse in Virginia. It wasn’t a national monument in her honor but that wasn’t the point. That wasn’t what she wanted; it wasn’t what she deserved.
The point was that she lived. Period. Maybe not for very long but long enough to know real love—something lots of people never knew. Her parents, for instance. Grady taught her about love and trust. She hoped he’d come someday and see her name; that he’d remember her and that she loved him once.
The longer her daddy was gone, the more certain she became of her doom. It meant he was bottlenecked at a bar with Buzz Weims soothing his pride . . . fueling his rage. Still, she didn’t pause in her work on the last N of her name when she heard his old truck rumble and crunch to its place in the drive outside the back door.
She brushed the last of the scrapings off the wood and used the candle to inspect her work. She heard a door slam closed and glass breaking as she traced it with her fingertips. She blew out the candle and hid it and the matchbook with the apple . . . then wondered why she wasn’t trembling with fear. The tightness in her belly remained but it wasn’t fear, she realized. She was angry.
“Hannah!” she heard him barking from the first floor. “Come down!”
Her fingers turned to fists. She was going to get the beating of her life for falling in love. He was going to try and ruin the one truly good thing to happen in her life—dirty its innocence, scar its beauty.
“Hannah!”
He was going to take Grady from her. Grady was going to feel responsible for getting her in trouble when he didn’t do anything but make her happy.
“Hannah!”
The anger had free reign of her now. She wasn’t going to make this easy on him. If her daddy wanted to beat her bad enough, he’d have to stagger up the steps to get her and fight her all the way back down. When he knocked her down, she’d get up again. When he punched her, she wouldn’t cry. She’d do her best to stifle her screams to minimize his satisfaction—killing her was going to be a bothersome chore.
“Hannah!” His voice on the second floor, not far from the attic door, made her hammering heart frantic. She scooted up to the t
op step and pressed her fingers over the name she’d carved in the step. Her name. Hannah Benson . . .
Oh, yes—dirty and dusty and barely visible, she remembered it. She remembered, too, the attic door flying open and her daddy taking the steps two at a time despite his inebriation, grabbing her by her hair and dragging her down two flights of stairs. She recalled trying not to scream and failing; refusing to cry but doing it anyway. Eventually she fell and she couldn’t get up again.
After that there was the blur of waking in the darkness, her cheek glued to the kitchen floor with dried blood. And running, running, and falling—coating herself in dirt and dried leaves—running till her lungs were on fire. The look of alarm and horror on Mrs. Steadman’s face flooded her with shame . . . and then the despair, like a giant tsunami, for having forgotten Grady’s camping trip. Where else could she go? Who else could she turn to?
The attic door flew open and she gasped, startled.
Grady shrieked.
Chapter Seventeen
What are you doing?” Hannah shouted even before she could breathe normally again, scrambling to her feet and stomping down the steps, taking the offensive. “Trying to scare me to death? Aren’t cops supposed to identify themselves? Fire two warning shots or something?”
“Are you okay? What happened? You’re pale,” he said, backing up, as shaken as she.
“No shit!” She smacked his chest as she slipped by him into the hall. “You just scared the crap out of me.”
“I called your name. I called for you to come down. When you didn’t I . . . What were you doing up there anyway? I told you I’d clean it on Saturday.”
She whipped a rumpled piece of paper from her back pocket and waved it at him. “It’s on my list. See? Third bedroom. Storage closet. Attic. Last two bedrooms, linen cupboard, and Anna’s track meet tomorrow. The basement on Friday. I’m on a schedule. I need to get out of this place.” He slid into observant-cop mode; she could see it in his eyes. “I told you. I have a business to run and getting this place ready to sell is taking forever.”
He studied her. “Are you sure that’s all it is? You’re sure you’re okay?”
“Yes,” she said on the tail-end of a calming sigh, realizing she sounded a little hysterical. “I’m fine. I just don’t like surprises, is all. So, why are you here?”
A whole minute passed before he held up a paper bag of fast-food and a soft drink. “I knew you’d be out here alone and took a chance that you didn’t pack a lunch for yourself.”
Now that he mentioned it, and with the familiar scent of burger and fries wafting in her nose, she was starving.
“Okay, I forgive you.” She grinned at him and reached for the food.
He snatched it away, smiling back. “It’s beautiful out. Go clean up a little and we can have a picnic on the front steps.”
Self-conscious of what she must look like she didn’t argue, though she did pause at the top of the stairs to say, “By the way, Sheriff, you scream like a girl.”
He turned on the steps to catch her teasing expression. “I was hoping you hadn’t noticed.”
“But I did.”
He nodded and looked sheepish. “Then I’ll rely on your discretion at election time.”
“Or . . .”
“Or?” He looked like it never crossed his mind that he might not be able to count on her. “Or I’ll send Lucy to live with you while I hunt for a new job.”
The thought of it made her laugh out loud. But while she washed her hands and splashed water on her face, she mulled it over; and by the time she joined Grady on the porch, she was thinking quite differently.
“You know that isn’t much of a threat,” she said, walking across the porch and sitting down beside him, spreading her lunch out next to his. He looked askance. “Sending Lucy to live with us. Not anymore. I like Lucy. She grows on you like . . . like lichen. Not an ordinary fungus, mind you, but a complicated mix. Intricate and often exquisite. Interesting. Temperamental—vulnerable to environmental disturbances . . . like lichen. She’s somebody very special, Grady, and I like her.”
Holding his hamburger, feeling both humble and proud, he stared and listened to her remarkable description. Then he nodded to say she wasn’t telling him anything new, glanced away and then back with an expression that told her he didn’t need her approval but was glad to have it all the same.
“Just remember all that if she reacts badly to the environment in Baltimore this weekend. Are you sure you want to take them both this first time?”
“I think having Lucy there will make it easier on Anna. Don’t you? She’ll have someone to share it all with . . . and if Anna’s unhappy, Lucy won’t hesitate to tell me.” She chuckled and took a bite of her burger. He still looked worried. “What is it?” she asked. “Is it a murder rate seven times the national average?”—He shook his head—“six times New York, three times L.A.? If I had to, I could probably find documentation of at least one kid who grew up in Baltimore in the last twenty years who’s never heard the sound of an AK-47. Or even a handgun.”
“Very funny.” But thinking about it, he asked, “Have you? Heard gunfire?”
“No, I live in a nice quiet neighborhood.” She paused. “Knives and stranglings mostly.” She laughed at the droll look on his face. “Isn’t where I live part of that background check you were doing on me? Didn’t you check to see how many child molesters live on my block?”
She was half teasing and so was half surprised when he answered, “As a matter of fact I did. Did you?”
Her mouth dropped open. “There are pedophiles on my street?”
“I didn’t say that. In fact, your background check is clean. You live in a nice middle-class neighborhood. Your neighbors trust you with their pets when they go on vacation. You’ve never even had a speeding ticket.”
Her mouth went dry. This was no friendly burger break. It was an ambush, another interrogation that, stupid and naive, she hadn’t expected. She thought he’d begun to trust her, that in these past few weeks she’d won over his suspicions and he’d stopped looking for cracks in her defenses.
Nibbling at her tasteless burger, she tried to chuckle. “You don’t have to sound so disappointed.”
Shaking his head, he put his sandwich down and wiped his mouth with a napkin, looking her straight in the eyes. “Believe me, I’m not disappointed. I’m . . . confused.”
“Confused?” Appetite gone, she stopped pretending to eat. “About what?”
“You.”
“Me?”
Nodding, his hazel-green eyes keen and astute, his charming dimples nowhere in sight, he studied her. Probed. Waited.
And the longer she had to gather her defenses, the shakier she felt. Soon she was obliged to go on the offense. “What do you find so confusing about me? The fact that I dug myself out of this hole or the fact that once I did I didn’t come back for you? I explained why I couldn’t come back and I said I was sorry. If you can’t get over it, that’s not my problem.”
“That’s not it and you know it.” He wasn’t pretending to eat anymore, either. “You’re hiding something. I can feel it. Whatever it is, Hannah, I can help. I just want to help.”
“You’d be better off helping someone who needs you. And that ain’t me.”
He shook his head. “I knew it when we spoke at the cemetery the day you arrived. I’ve been over it a thousand times in my mind—what am I missing? Then it hit me. If you started running that Friday night and never looked back, how’d you know your old man was dead? When I called I told you about your mother and Ruth. You already knew he was dead. How? You didn’t ask me. And the first place you went when you got here was the cemetery. Why?”
“To make sure, okay? I went . . . I needed to make sure he was dead.” A little truth. A little lie. “I figured I’d be the very last person anyone would call to care for Ruth’s child, especially if he was still alive so I simply assumed he was dead. Then I began to imagine a dozen different ways he could
still be alive and not involved with Anna so . . . so I called St. John’s anonymously about Mama’s passing—said I was distant relative. I said I couldn’t get in touch with Karl to give him my condolences and the woman told me he’d been dead for twenty years but . . . well, I still needed to be sure. Part of my neurosis, I guess.”
Grady listened to her story in silence, revealing nothing of his thoughts—which annoyed her more. “That clear everything up for you, Andy? Feel better? Frankly, I feel cheapened by the fact that you thought you could bribe me with a hamburger and fries. Next time you want to ask me stupid, suspicious questions bring something with a bigger price tag on it.”
Furious, she stalked across the porch, flung open the screen door, walked inside, and slammed the door hard enough to make the dust on the floor bounce.
Sighing, leaning back against the door when she heard his cruiser start up, she let her chin hang to her chest and closed her eyes until her pulse slowed. Damn his cunning cop instincts and damn him for catching her off guard. How could she have been so careless? Well, she wouldn’t let him throw her. Couldn’t. His background check on her was clean and everyone else involved in that night was gone. He couldn’t prove a thing.
But that knowledge was of no comfort at the moment because as the anger and fear drained away and her breathing slowed and the silence in the old house closed in around her, she heard a voice from deep inside—a familiar voice; the voice that told her to turn left instead of right, to stop instead of go; the voice that kept her alive. It told her to tell Grady the truth.
It wasn’t as hard as she thought it would be to admit that she longed to tell him—to purge her soul and release the memo-ries . . . to Grady. He would listen. He would care. He would accept her as he always had. She was as certain of that as she was that she didn’t dare tell him.
There was too much at risk. Anna primarily. Hannah wasn’t going to let anything interfere with the little family they were making together. She’d waited too long, wanted it too much to let the dead and buried past rise up to mar it.
What Happened to Hannah Page 24