“Aack!” Her short gasp for air echoed in the night beyond the gazebo. Her heart went wild. She struggled for her freedom.
“Shhhh.” She recognized the whispering voice against her neck. “Jeeze. You are the jumpiest girl I ever met.”
“Then don’t sneak up on me.”
“I like the way it makes your heart race.” Grady slid his hand the short distance from her upper arm to her breast above her heart. They were both comfortable with and excited by the move. “It’s the only way I can feel it since you won’t let me touch you under your clothes.”
“That’s not true. You said you could feel it when you kiss me.”
“Oh. Yeah.” She laughed. He was teasing her. He often teased her about having sex but he never pushed her.
They talked about it sometimes. He’d done it. And when she’d asked with whom, he wouldn’t say and, for some reason, that had pleased her. It had taken months of gentle patience before she stopped cringing every time he touched her, months almost forgotten now that she was so comfortable in his embrace. He said he loved kissing her. Kissing her made him feel invincible. Invincible! And sex would happen when they were both ready. No need to hurry, he said. Though . . . well, sometimes they got so worked up kissing that she wanted to climb all over him, consume him, bore into him like a giant Body Snatcher and even then she wasn’t sure it would be enough to satisfy the hunger in her. Her skin craved his touch. At times like that, with his arousal pressed hard and tight against her—the mystery of it something that she both feared and delighted in—she knew no greater sense of loss than when he pulled away from her and kept his distance.
Lost and yearning to be touched, by him alone . . .
“Will I see you later, then?”
“What?” Grady stood in front of her, knees bent to be eye-to-eye with her.
“Will I see you at the house later? I have to stop by the office for a few minutes, but I shouldn’t be long.”
“Yes. I’ll be there. Wouldn’t miss it.”
“Are you all right?”
“Yes, of course. I forgot my sunglasses. The light’s giving me a little headache.”
“Take something for it.” He turned to walk away.
“I will.” She watched him grab Biscuit by the back of the neck and shake him fondly; he also got a pleased clap on the upper arm as the Sheriff said something to the Walkers and all four of them laughed. She followed his wake through the crowd. By the time she made it to the young man’s side, though, Grady was long gone and the Walkers had been claimed by another set of parents.
“Congratulations.”
“Thanks. How lame was it?”
“Not at all. It was . . . way awesome.” She grinned at Biscuit.
“At least you didn’t say bitchin’.”
She scoffed. “I wouldn’t have said that when it was cool.”
He nodded and tipped his head to one side. “So, I see you and the sheriff are putting on a civil front.”
“A . . . why wouldn’t we?”
“Rumor has it that since the last day of school is Tuesday, that on Wednesday when you try to take Anna to Baltimore, the sheriff is going to put up roadblocks and arrest you for kidnapping.”
“Rumor or Lucy?”
Biscuit shrugged. “Same thing.”
“Roadblocks, huh?”
“Well, the other scenario is a high-speed chase halfway to Baltimore, but I don’t think you or the sheriff would put Anna through that.”
“Thank you for that.” She sighed. “I thought Lucy was starting to like me a little.”
“She does. You haven’t heard the rest of it.”
“Do I want to?”
“At the roadblock you break down and cry and tell the sheriff whatever it is he needs to hear; you guys make out; you get married and live happily ever after so she and Anna can be like real sisters then.”
“What. Here in Clearfield? Yeah, that’s going to happen. And you shouldn’t encourage her fantasies.” She bumped her shoulder to his upper arm. “They just make reality harder to live with.” His parents called to him. Hannah waved and smiled at them. “Will I see you before Wednesday?”
“Sure.” He started walking away and spoke over his shoulder. “If not, I’ll see you at the roadblock.”
“Very funny.”
The postgraduation get-together at the Steadmans’ was very nice, but she was indeed working on a headache. When the sheriff arrived and continued to treat her with polite indifference—with a sad, disenchanted expression in his eyes—it escalated to an all-out-throbber and she decided to excuse herself.
“Oh, my.” Janice fretted. “Well, stay in the house out of the sun and rest awhile. Let me get you some Tylenol or would you rather have Advil. I have both, but I have no idea what difference it makes if you take one or the other, they both seem to work on headaches.”
“Thank you, Janice, but I’ve already taken some. I think I need to go home and sleep it off. That usually works best for me.”
“You have a lot of headaches, do you?” Grady asked, walking up behind her through the open patio door. He made it sound like headaches equaled a guilty conscience.
She turned and spoke quickly. “No. I mean, no more than anyone else. Hardly ever, in fact. Rarely.” Somehow she made not having headaches a sign of guilt. “But I did want to congratulate you, both of you, actually. Cal’s a great kid, a fine young man. I know you’re very proud of him.”
Grady nodded his thanks, disappeared into the kitchen for more ice cream and beer, and left the way he’d come in without a second glance at her. Janice, of course, was more gracious.
“Cal reminds me so much of his father, who was very much like his own father. I believe the Steadman men have a very special gene that’s passed down from generation to generation . . . like those silly dimples.”
Hannah laughed. “Your husband had them, too?”
“Oh my, yes. I can’t tell you how many arguments I lost to that smile over the years.”
“I can believe it.” She went silent for a moment, remembering . . . and when she glanced back at Janice, she could see that the older woman knew where her thoughts had gone.
“I’ve tried talking to him, Hannah. He’s just so stubborn, I could shake him sometimes. The whole town thinks he’s in the wrong.”
“The whole town?” That didn’t seem likely.
“Everyone I’ve talked to. They don’t want Anna to leave, but they all know she’s better off with family.”
“Even me?”
“Of course, dear. Who else is there?” She reached out and touched Hannah’s arm. “But, you know, you had faith in him once. I believe you can again.”
On impulse, without hesitation, she leaned in and hugged the old woman. And with abandon Janice hugged her right back.
More than anything she wanted to believe Janice, but the circumstances were different. She couldn’t look to him for safety and comfort as she had in the past. Their lives had taken them in different directions. She’d broken the law and he’d sworn to uphold it. Even if he wanted to help her, he couldn’t. Not anymore.
Damn her! Grady hotly flipped another burger on the barbeque and tried not to think of the stress he’d seen in Hannah’s face—the dark circles under her eyes, the hollow in her cheeks. One look at her and he’d known she wasn’t sleeping or eating . . . and that it was his fault.
“Shame on you,” his mother hissed angrily at his left elbow.
“What now, Mother?” he snapped back softly. She’d been harping at him for weeks about this mess with Hannah. Rotten thing was: It wouldn’t make him half so angry if at least part of him didn’t agree with her.
“You know what—and if you hurry you can catch up with her and tell her what a fool you’ve been and that you’re sorry.”
He took a deep breath. He was tempted, powerfully. Then he sighed and shook his head.
“I can’t. She’s keeping something from me.”
“How do you know?�
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“Because she did it before. When we were kids. I thought it was her distrust of people in general I was fighting but it wasn’t. She was hiding what was happening to her at home. From everyone, but from me specifically. And she’s doing the same thing now. She’s hiding something from me.”
“But how do you know you need to know what it is? That’s what I want to know. Maybe it’s personal. Maybe it’s none of your business—not anyone’s business but hers.”
He went back to flipping the burgers, ignoring his mother until she wandered off to mingle with their guests, sick with the feeling that she was right. He reached for a few hot dogs to add to the grill and stood holding them unopened for what felt like hours as he fought the urge to do exactly what she’d told him to do—go after Hannah. Only the soul-deep conviction that everything about Hannah was his business held him in place. Presumptuous, he knew, but he couldn’t help it. More than anything he wanted—no, needed—just once, just one damn time for her to trust him. Just once.
His chest closed in around his heart, squeezing, and he cursed again. She did trust him. Once. Twenty years ago. She’d let him love her, loved him back; and when she’d needed him most he’d been camping, for God’s sake! But he would have been there. He would have. He would have done anything he could to help her.
Okay, so he wanted a second chance. And he still didn’t think he was asking for too much.
He tossed eight dogs on the grill and admitted this was all personal stuff. It shouldn’t have anything to do with Anna’s custody. Not legally. Except the cop in him sensed trouble—Hannah’s secret was big and painful; it was hurting her, he wanted to help.
This time he wanted her to walk away from Clearfield a free woman—no pain, no fear, no ghosts. He owed her that much. And Anna was the only leverage he had.
Traditionally the graduating seniors were allowed to stay out all night and celebrate with their friends, but Janice had warned Hannah to hold firm to Anna’s curfew. She was a “firm believer that nothing good ever happens after midnight,” and as Hannah lay half awake, listening for Cal’s truck to pull up outside her window, she was hard pressed to think of an exception.
Cinderella’s clothes disintegrated at midnight. Visitations from spirits, ghosts, demons, and devils are most common after midnight. She once had her right baby toe smashed at a Black Friday Midnight Madness Sale—it hurt long after Christmas. Fevers often peak at midnight—she’d heard that somewhere. Midnight at the Oasis . . . Midnight at the Oasis . . . Midnight at the Oasis . . . Ah God, the tune was stuck in her head now. Clearly it was after midnight.
She stuffed her head under her pillow to block out the song but it kept coming. She rolled over on her back and lay, spread- eagle, in her pajamas and stared at the ceiling.
Slowly, like ooze, Grady, Anna, the truth—the consequences of telling and not telling—filled her mind again. She couldn’t win. No matter what she did there was no right or good way out that didn’t weigh heavily on her future.
At last Cal’s truck rumbled down the street and stopped in front of the house. The engine died. When no car door slammed she got up to make sure it was Cal bringing Anna home. She stood mystified for several minutes wondering what could be wrong. Why didn’t they get out?
“Oh!” She covered the second half of the word and the giggle that followed with her hand and scrambled back to bed; pushed her face in the pillow and screamed with glee.
“Yes, yes, yes,” she whispered in the dark, folding her arms beneath her head.
Kissing or talking, Anna would remember these few minutes after midnight as pure magic. And Hannah refused to be the skeptical, insipid, thirty-six-year-old woman to forecast no future for the young lovers. Not in this day and age. Not if it was a true love. Not if their love was anything like. . . .
Well, circumstances and times were different for her and Grady, weren’t they?
Hannah stood up, straightened her sheets, plumped her pillows and laid back down on her right side, her favorite side, looking for sleep.It eluded her most of the night.
Morning came. Anna ran, came home and showered, went to Sunday Mass with May and Don James, and brought her back a homemade sticky bun from the CCD Bake Sale after church—and it barely registered through the foggy haze inside Hannah’s head.
“Are you okay?”
“Sure, sweetie. I just didn’t sleep very well last night.” She tried to muster up some perky. “How about you? Did you have fun last night? Anything you want to share?”
“We had a great time.” She started to walk away then turned back. “And thanks. For not waiting up to make sure I got home on time. I mean, I did, but Gran always stayed up and watched TV and it made her tired in church the next day and . . .”
“And it didn’t feel like she genuinely trusted you?”
“Yeah, sometimes.” Anna shrugged.
“She was probably more worried than distrustful, don’t you think?” Hannah felt big inside for giving her mother the benefit of the doubt, but was it worry or distrust last night that kept her company while waiting for Anna to come home? Neither, she decided. She simply hadn’t been able to sleep.
“Probably. But thanks anyway.”
She said, “You’re welcome,” but it was another misdirection of the truth, a lie.
It was beginning to feel as if that’s all she could do anymore . . . lie.
She went out for a sluggish walk, came back an hour later and tried to settle down with a book while Anna studied for her last biology final the next day.
“What?” She looked up to catch Anna staring at her, a frown creasing her brow.
The girl shrugged and shook her head. “Nothing. Is that my copy of The Crucible? I thought I packed it.”
“You may have. This is May’s copy. I missed a lot of these books when I went to high school. I’m trying to catch up with you.”
They discussed the dangers and madness of a group mentality and how important it is to think for oneself and to make one’s own decisions. A perfunctory conversation that was quick to wear itself out . . . and yet Anna’s brow remained clouded.
“What is it, Anna? Seriously. You look worried about something. Talk to me.”
“You are still planning to take me with you to Baltimore on Wednesday, right?”
“Right.”
“What about Sheriff Steadman?”
“I think he wants to stay here in Clearfield, for one thing. For another, I don’t think–”
“No. I meant, what about what he said? Did you talk to him? Did he say it was okay for you to take me?”
“Lucy, Lucy.” She sighed. It didn’t matter. “I don’t need his okay. I’m your aunt.”
“But you do. He’s my legal guardian until you adopt me and he can—”
“He won’t keep us apart. He’s not a cruel man. He’s bluffing. He thinks I have some deep dark secret that he’s trying to sweat out of me, but once he realizes I have nothing to tell him he’s going to look like an idiot for making such a fuss.”
“Really?”
“Yes. Really.” Anna nodded, gave her a small smile, looked away but continued to knit her brow. “Anna! Stop it. You’re fretting about nothing.”
“I know. I’m sorry. I can’t help it. Lucy says the sheriff told Cal to start boxing up his bedroom because once he leaves for college, I’ll be moving into it. They’re going to section off a space in the garage for him when he visits. I don’t want him staying in the garage when he comes home. He’ll hate me.”
“He won’t hate you. He could never hate you; he’s crazy about you.” There was no enthusiasm to her reassurances . . . she was in far too great a need of her own bolstering. “And the Sheriff only told him to pack his things up because he knew it would get back to me. He’s taking this too far . . . making a mountain out of a molehill.”
“So there is something to tell?”
“No.”
“A mole’s hill worth?”
“No.” It was annoying
and hurtful that Anna was doubtful despite the fact that there was a mountain to tell. She began to wonder if I have a secret was tattooed on her forehead. She put her fingers there and rubbed for a moment. “No. Nothing.”
Anna nodded and gave her an awkward guilty/forgive-me expression that she couldn’t refuse . . . though she also didn’t deserve it.
Anna went back to doing her homework and Hannah stared at the same page of The Crucible until the words blurred and disappeared.
Less than four months they’d known each other and already she was feeding Anna boldfaced lies. The very foundation of their relationship was a lie. Anna thought her some sort of hero for running away. What would she think if she knew the truth?
Her one regret with Joe was not telling him the entire truth. But it had been easy—an act of self-preservation in fact—to separate her life with him and her life before him with a thick black curtain of memory loss.
But she was no longer a child and she wasn’t struggling to survive anymore. She was an adult who knew about accepting responsibility for her actions . . . and who planned to teach Anna to do the same.
Christ. That made her a coward and a hypocrite—and their foundation doubly weak.
Maybe Anna was better off with Grady.
The thought made her nauseous with fear and hot along the sides of her neck with anger. It finally occurred to her that she was waiting for one of Joe’s miracles and she wished she’d taken them more seriously.
Grady flipped through the Benson murder file once again trying to read it with a fresh eye. It was always the same. And aside from the fact that Hannah had run hard and far and had not gone back to the house the night before as everyone had surmised, it was as clear and accurate as he remembered it.
He tossed the folder on his desk and pick up the background check required by the state as part of the child welfare petition for custody of a minor. Nothing suspicious—unless Hannah thought her four years of therapy would count against her. And frankly, knowing even a fraction of what she’d been through, he would have been more concerned if she hadn’t had any.
What Happened to Hannah Page 28