In fact, she didn’t realize she had company until a car door slammed.
“I see I missed it.” Grady stood halfway up the walk with his hands in the pockets of his windbreaker, his shoulders drooping in defeat. “As Sheriff, I get paid the big bucks and have most evenings off. Unless, of course, I especially want that evening off, then something invariably happens that I have to get involved in because I’m the one who gets paid the bucks, you see.”
“That sounds about right to me. Lucky for you, though, you have a mother who took more pictures of the kids than I did. You’ll have a digital blow-by-blow account of our little pre-prom party when you get home.”
“Is that your way of telling me to leave?”
Was it? “No, of course not.” He’d already started walking toward her. “Come up and I’ll tell you all about it. Want a beer? I mean, can you have one . . . if you want one? Are you off duty yet?”
He chuckled and settled himself beside her on the swing. His shoulders took up considerable space and his feet on the floor threw her swing rhythm off. She pulled her other leg onto the cushion and sat sideways, facing him, the dim light from the James’s TV at his back—he extended his right arm along the back of the swing, angled his big body at her, and started a gentle back-and-forth motion.
It was . . . cozy. Or it might have been under different circumstances.
“I am done for the night but no beer for me, thanks. I just want to unwind for a minute and then I’ll head home. I’m beat.” She couldn’t see his face in the shadows, but she could hear the fatigue in his voice.
“Bad night?”
“No.” He sounded surprised. “A good night. Just a long day.”
“Anything you want to talk about?”
He shrugged and tipped his head. “A couple of my deputies got called out on a domestic dispute . . . a neighbor heard screaming and called it in. My guys went in to arrest whoever wasn’t screaming and walked into a sweet little meth lab . . . methamphetamines.”
She nodded. “I watch TV.”
“Then you know there’s nothing new about them renting rural farmhouses like your mom’s, where no one can see them, or even houses inside small communities like Clearfield for a few months. People might be watching, but they buy their supplies and sell their product out of town so no one gets too suspicious. They make as much as they can for as long as they can before they start getting antsy and move on.
“Turns out the couple’s not married, of course, and I don’t think they were the only ones involved in the operation.” He traced the curve of her neck with the side of his index finger—she pulled away but not before her body shivered with warm tingles. “Whoever they were working with is, in all probability, long gone now; but when we ran these two through the system, we found they both had warrants out in Maryland, Ohio, and northern Virginia so, since I don’t have the budget for a proper bomb squad, we took a vote and decided to dump the whole thing on the Feds.”
“They were making bombs, too?”
“No. They did have quite an arsenal of guns that I was . . . am grateful we didn’t walk in on, but no bombs.”
“Bomb squad?”
“Oh, right. Sorry.” His hand on the swing back moved again; she braced herself but he didn’t touch her. She hated being so tuned in to his every movement—it made her jumpy. “Meth labs. They’re extremely combustible. Sneeze in one and it can blow up in your face. You need to be really greedy, really desperate for money or really, really stupid to work in one.”
“I thought local cops hated the FBI.”
“Depends on the cops and the FBI guys. They’re good to have around when you need them and they’re a pain in the butt when you don’t. Aside from being able to handle the meth lab better, they also have more resources for dealing with our perps. Since they’re wanted in three states, that automatically makes it a federal case and they’ll end up going to a federal prison. Or, and this is more likely to happen, they’ll try to turn these two for the names of bigger fish. Remember these are the stupid ones sitting in the combustible meth lab. Someone much higher up on the food chain thinks these two are disposable, and let’s face it—there’s no point in filling the jails with disposable people.”
“Disposable people.” Like her. People mothers throw away. People who wander the streets, wash up in gas station restrooms, and beg for food or money. People other people stare at. Lost people. Angry, sad, and sick people. Like her . . . no, like she once was, could still be but for the compassionate hand of Joe Levitz.
Sensing her thoughts, he lowered his voice. “You know as well as anyone that people cling to the hands that are offered to them, whether those hands are good for them or not. You were lucky. But you also made choices, Hannah. Your old man’s hands were bad and you ran from them. Joe’s hands were good and you stayed. So do you have exceptional survival skills or is there something burning inside you that refuses to allow anyone to make you a . . . ah, lesser person, be it a punching bag or a meth-lab chemist?” He took a breath. “The two we locked up tonight are not disposable people. Not to me anyway . . . that’s not what my job is about. But they did make their choices.”
“Would you like to see the pictures I took of the kids?” She didn’t care if he thought the subject change was too abrupt or if it made him suspicious. He clearly thought making choices was a black-or-white thing; that people couldn’t ever be pushed or forced into doing something they wouldn’t ordinarily do. If he was right, then she was a monster . . . and he’d never let a monster have Anna. More, a monster didn’t deserve Anna. He had to be wrong. She chose to believe he was wrong.
“I would.” He leaned back and watched while she removed her BlackBerry from her pocket. “Did the Walkers make it over?”
She nodded. “I’ve met Principal Walker a couple of times at the high school, but Biscuit’s mother is charming. I love the way she calls him, Darlin’ Bobby, with that thick Georgia accent. I could sit and listen to her talk all night. Here. Push with your finger for the next shot, like this.”
“She’s beautiful.”
Hannah nodded her agreement, craning her neck to look over Grady’s arm at a picture of Anna in long, flowing lamé chiffon with deep Caribbean charmeuse trim and spaghetti straps—a tall, cool, lovely drink of water. And in the next shots a thirsty-looking Cal gave her flowers for her wrist, gazed down into her adoring eyes with a smile on his lips, and stood dutifully beside her for his grandmother’s camera.
Grady released a soft, resigned puff of air through his nose and Hannah pressed her lips together—neither of them feeling the need to comment. They both saw it . . . the young, intense affection blooming between Anna and Cal. They saw it and they both knew the futility of trying to stop it . . . and the inevitable heartache that would follow. He passed his finger across the screen and sucked in air this time.
“Isn’t she darling?” She tried to see his expression in the dark as he stared down at a shot of Lucy in a short black halter dress of platinum sequin jersey that sparkled like the billion stars in a night sky every time she moved. Her hose were dark, and on her feet she wore a pair of life-threatening bright red patent leather platform pumps that elevated the top of her head to Biscuit’s chin. “We were so surprised when she picked that dress. It didn’t look a thing like her the day we tried it on at the store. Your mother kept saying ‘It’s too ordinary, we’ll end up bringing it back,’ but Lucy insisted. She had a vision.” She chuckled. “Those god-awful shoes and her hair change the whole picture. She’s a genius with her hair.”
She’d pitched her hair back to one side of the crown and tied it with a shiny red bow that peeked out here and there below pale blond hair tipped in black and platinum . . . well, fairy dust for all anyone knew. She shimmered head to toe like something magical . . . even the light in her eyes was enchanting, if the expression on Biscuit’s face was any indication.
Grady said nothing.
“Don’t you like it?”
“What, that she’s all gr
own up and going to proms? Hell, no. I hate it.” He scanned a couple more pictures and finally gave in. “She looks excited. Happy.”
“She was.”
“Looks like I need to have a little talk with our friend, Darlin’ Bobby, here. What? What’s that smile for?”
“I don’t know much about parenting, but I do know a little about girls—and Biscuit isn’t the one you need to have the talk with. He knows she’s young and he calls her jailbait to her face. Plus he’s a thinker. He isn’t going to do anything to ruin his friendship with Cal or make you angry. Anything more than kissing would be her idea and she’d have to push him pretty hard before he gave in—even then he’d more likely run in the other direction for a while. He isn’t stupid. He definitely might kiss her, though, but . . .”
“What?”
“She needs to be kissed. I hope Cal kisses Anna. It’s important to girls their age to be kissed by someone special.”
“You’re speaking from experience?”
Her smile was small and reminiscent as she nodded. “You know I am.”
“But wasn’t that what got you into trouble that night? Kissing me? Spending time with me? Seeing me behind his back?”
“God, no. Well, yes, technically. But you were just the match that lit that particular fuse. I hope you haven’t been feeling guilty all these years because kissing me . . . loving me back then . . . you saved my life. You gave me life.” She started to speak, closed her mouth, and then started over. “Growing up in a house like that you think, at first, that everyone lives like you and that the fear and the pain are normal so you try to accept it; you push it to the back of your mind and try to ignore it. But then you go to school or to church and you quickly see that you’re very different from everyone else. You see in their eyes that they haven’t been to the places you have. The other kids don’t respond to subtle changes in the teacher’s voice or automatically flinch when someone nearby swings their arms in the air. They speak with loud voices, talk back, and scrape their chairs across the floor. They laugh . . . with their mouths open. You wait for someone to twist their arm or pull their hair or lock them in a closet, but no one ever does.
“So then you realize you’ve been living in hell, that it’s not normal, it’s not the way all the other kids live, and then you begin to wonder, well, why me? And you begin to hope that maybe if someone knew they’d change things at your house. So you let the teacher see your bruises and she’s shocked and sends you to the nurse, who is also appalled and calls your parents—who tell the nurse you fell off the bike you don’t own or down the cellar steps or out of a tree and you’re sent back to class. And guess what happens when you get home? Your daddy twists your arm so hard it breaks and they take you to the emergency room, and two days later when you still can’t hold a pencil because your arm is so swollen, and you think, you hope, the doctor will scold them and tell them not to hurt you anymore, but the doctor gets a different lie and . . .”
She sighed. “Eventually, you learn to accept that your life is the way it is. You don’t understand why or what you’ve done to deserve it but you can’t change it because the harder you try the worse it gets. You begin to think that you are as stupid as he says you are because you just can’t figure out why the women in your family are so unlovable. Sure we were ugly and worthless but . . . But don’t you see that you changed all that for me?”
He shook his head. “I was so self-absorbed. All I thought about was how you made me feel, how I loved being around you, how amazing you were and I was the only one who knew, the only one you let know. I was the special one. I look back now and see it all so clearly. I hear the things people used to whisper, the things I ignored because I thought they were just gossiping and being mean—things I didn’t want to know, I think, because of how it would have changed things between us. I knew you were afraid of him. I knew he was strict. I thought the worst of it would be him grounding you and maybe he’d call and yell at my parents or something. I never would have put you in that kind of danger if I’d taken the time to see the truth.”
“I know.” She pulled the shawl tight, a defensive maneuver because what she had to say next crossed some mine-infested terrain. “I thought you were another mean trick at first—someone like you wanting to spend time with someone like me. But you were so persistent and gentle and patient . . . I fell in love with you like that.” She snapped her fingers.
“Like that?” He snapped his fingers, too. “I seem to recall it taking months and months.”
She grinned. “It took that long to learn to let myself trust you; to decide that maybe I was someone you could love; that I was someone worth loving.” She bowed her head. “And that’s what he tried to beat back out of me that night. He could see I was different, that you’d changed me. Every time I picked myself up off the floor, he’d look into my eyes and knock me down again. He saw it and I did nothing to hide it.”
“What happened that night, Hannah? Tell me all of it.” His voice came from a distance. She scrambled to bring her mind back to the present.
She shook her head. She wasn’t going to discuss those details again. “The point I’m trying to make is that if you hadn’t made me believe I was someone . . . well, someone, I never would have run away that night, or any other night for that matter. Mama, Ruth, and I would have stayed in that house with him for as long as we lived.” Careful! Careful! “I mean, who knows how much more Mama would have taken? So, um . . . what was my point? Oh. Right. So you see how important kisses can be?” His fingers grazed the back of her neck. “For young people.”
“For all people,” he murmured, his hand coming to rest on her nape. “Hannah—”
“Grady.” It didn’t sound like don’t-touch-me. “Grady, please. We’re different people now. We’ve changed.”
He didn’t speak at first but she could feel him studying her face by the light of the James’s TV. He swallowed and caressed the side of her neck with his thumb; slid his hand below her ear and did the same to her cheek . . . and then her lower lip. “I admit we’ve changed. People do. And I like, very much, all the changes you’ve made.” He leaned forward and gave her a brief, soft kiss. “But, you’re wrong about one thing. We’re not so very different than we were before.” He released a sad sigh. His voice was weary. “You’re still full of secrets and I’m still waiting for you to trust me.”
His disappointment in her was like a piece of wicker furniture she could pick up and drag around the porch—were she so inclined. Instead, she left it sitting, prominent and out of place, as she watched him walk away, blinking back tears and trying to ignore the tight, painful, twisting sensation in her chest and abdomen.
Chapter Nineteen
The frequent April showers brought the May flowers the old adage promised. Clearfield rotated into its green season. Daffodils and tulips gave way to lilacs, dogwoods, and bleeding hearts—and then evening primrose, iris, and poppies. Time, like a giant steamroller, was unstoppable. Days disappeared, week after week, until the end of Anna’s school year was only days away.
Grady was either busy or avoiding her; she hadn’t seen him since the night of the prom.
Hannah continued to straddle the line between the life she was building for Anna and herself in Baltimore and the life she was trying to bury, finally and forever, in Clearfield.
She hired an excavation crew to dig out and fill in the hole left by the fire and to tumble down two of the three outbuildings. She’d planned to send the barn the same way, but let the realtor talk her out of it—he thought it picturesque.
When back in Baltimore, she’d spend as much time as she could at the office. Going home meant standing in the doorway of the room newly decorated for Anna and wondering if the girl would ever see it. Too much time to think and worry.
She read—Moby-Dick, and a mind-blistering book on U.S. government and economics, hoping she wouldn’t appear too stupid next year when she and Anna talked about school. Grady would give in and she wanted to be
prepared.
He would give in.
She never missed a track meet on Thursdays, but Fridays—when Anna ran for practice and her own enjoyment—were more fun. She’d gotten proficient at hearing the tiny little noises she made early in the morning before her weekend runs—the faint beep of her alarm, the light brush of wood on wood as she opened and closed her drawers, barefooted tiptoeing outside her room, and a few minutes later the front door closing softly as she left. More than a few times Hannah would leap from bed to watch her warm up and stretch her muscles in the front yard, always dazzled by her innate elegance . . . amazed by the way she looked so relaxed and comfortable in her skin.
Anna did well at the regional track meet. She came in second in both the 1600- and 3200-meter events, but broke her personal best, in both, by several seconds once again. She was delighted.
And still, with all Hannah had done, all she was doing and all she had yet to do, Grady’s ultimatum loomed about her like a tight-fitting coffin—confining her, suffocating her . . . terrifying her. Because no matter how often she told herself that he was bluffing, that it was too unlike him to be so callous, that he would never keep her and Anna apart—there was always the chance that he might. Add to that a distant, niggling hint of a notion that perhaps he should, that she’d never deserved to be so happy in the first place, and the coffin grew tighter.
The Bensons were invited to sit with the Steadmans to watch Cal and Biscuit graduate the last Saturday before school let out for the summer. Hannah and Grady maintained a strained, casual air that didn’t dampen the festivities. Likely, it would have taken a great deal more than his feelings for her to subdue his happiness. He appeared so proud of Cal that the only change in his expression throughout was the size of his smile—big and bigger. And after the ceremony while the graduates milled among the spectators, Hannah watched with envy as father and son hugged without hesitation.
Glancing around, she saw that most of the parents and grandparents hugged their children the same way—with abandon. No way could she picture Karl or Ellen hugging her with anything resembling affection but she recalled—vividly—not wanting either of them or anyone else to touch her at all . . .
What Happened to Hannah Page 27