“I . . . I told you that Daddy didn’t hit Ruth, that he . . . I think he was molesting her, though she never said so. But she hadn’t gone down in the cellar for a couple of years . . . I hadn’t heard her scream . . . I didn’t recognize it, at first. My mama’s screams, I knew, and I could hear him yelling all the way out in the barn. He thought they knew where I was, that they’d hidden me from him.”
She was talking so fast now she had to stop to take a breath. “I thought it was a dream. I’ve had that same dream over and over ever since. Mama crying out and Ruthie’s screams.” She closed her eyes. Tears slipped down her cheeks from the corner of each one. “It went on and on and on while I listened, too weak and in too much pain to help them. But then I opened my eyes. I saw Ruth sprawled in the doorway to the hall. She had a split lip and a cut on her forehead. There was blood everywhere. On her little face and dress. Mama came up beside me. I’d never seen her so bad. There were whole chunks of hair missing from her head and those horrible marks around her throat from where he choked her, but she was looking and acting more afraid of me than she was of him. She reached out, like this . . .” Hannah opened her eyes and showed him trembling fingers. “And that’s when I looked down . . . and saw Daddy on the floor . . . and saw the fry pan I hit him in the head with in my hand.” Another deep jagged breath. “Mama took the pan from me by the handle and . . . and she said she’d lie for me, that she’d take the blame. But I’m the one who killed him.”
The silence that followed her declaration made it seem unfinished somehow, like there was a great deal more to the story that she wasn’t telling. They stared at each other across the desk until she cleared her throat and asked, “What?”
“Is that all?”
“Isn’t that enough?”
He’d read the police reports. He’d seen the crime scene photos. There was more to the story.
“Did your mother say anything else to you?”
She’d been so forthcoming with the rest of the story that her sudden reluctance was telling. This was the deepest, darkest part of her secret—this hurt the worst, affected her most.
She’d tell him. He sensed that she’d come to get everything off her chest once and for all. He listened to himself breathing while he waited for her to speak. How she’d survived that house with her mind and soul and her heart intact, he couldn’t guess. His gaze roamed over her face and slender form with gentle appreciation. She looked like a flesh-and-blood woman to him—a smart, kindhearted, funny, wonderful woman. Who knew mere humans could walk out the front gates of hell and then thrive?
She looked out his office window into a long-ago kitchen where her sister and father lay on the linoleum bleeding—dazed both then and now.
A grimace crossed her face and the right side of her body cringed protectively.
“What, Hannah?”
“Mama. She takes the fry pan from my hands and raised it over her head. She’s going to hit me with it but then . . .” she winced and covered her right ear with her hand, “ . . . she starts screaming at me. She tells me to get out of her house. She says my blood is tainted by his. I’m a violent soul. I killed him. That makes me as evil as he is and now I’ll go to jail. I’ll rot in prison. Someone, me I guess, I say, But . . . he was going to kill us. Not you, she says, not this time. He was after her and Ruth, looking for me, but it wasn’t self-defense for me. And no one will believe I was there with them because there was no fresh blood on me. They’ll know I came back to kill him—murder him. I have to go. She’ll take the blame for killing him; she’s my mama and she owes me that much, but I’m not to ask her for anything more. Ever. She wants me to go and never come back.” The sorrow and defeat in her eyes when they gravitated around to meet his was crushing. “So that’s what I did.”
He studied her for a long minute. “That’s it then? That’s all?”
“Jesus, Grady, I just confessed to killing my own father. What more do you want?”
He almost grinned. There she was, his scrapper. That’s how she’d survived in that house, she was a fighter. He stood and walked to the other side of the desk—to be closer to her but also to nonverbally let her know the worst was over and he was there for her. “Well, for starters I’d like to know why you gave in, why you decided to come in and tell me all this.”
“Anna.” She sighed. “Mostly. I don’t want to spend the rest of our lives lying to her. Everything I say to her should be the truth. Ruth told her I was a hero for running away . . . and I think there’s a part of her that thinks I’m a jerk for not coming back for Ruth when I got on my feet. I want her to know the truth. And Mama . . . Anna has no idea who that woman was when I left here because I have no idea who they’re talking about now. She’s like Jekyll and Hyde . . . Hyde when I left and then Dr. Jekyll. She raised Anna very differently than she raised me. Thank God.”
“I would imagine that getting out from under your father’s fist your mother simply reverted to the woman she was meant to be in the first place. Maybe. She did change a lot. I didn’t recognize her when I first came back to town.”
She nodded and went silent for a moment. “I’m glad . . . I guess . . . you know, that she found a way to become happy with her life. We have that in common, at least. That we survived and made better lives for ourselves.”
Grady loved that her expressions were so easy for him to read now. He watched the dawning of awareness light her features. She’d confessed to murder—her better life was no more.
“And if Mama straightened herself out to set a good example for Anna, then I feel like I should, too.” She stood, faced him, and put her wrists out ready for cuffing. “If I’m never able to teach her anything else maybe I can show her that I loved her enough to tell the truth and to take responsibility for my actions. That’s something good parents teach their kids, isn’t it? Taking responsibility?” She dropped her hands abruptly. “And you are going to take care of her for me, aren’t you? Raise her with Lucy? She’ll have plenty of money after the farm sells and I have savings I won’t be using. Promise me, Grady.” He shook his head. “Grady! Please.”
“Hannah. Sit down. Please. You may be finished, but I’m not. I have a couple more questions.”
“Oh.” She sank back into the chair. “Sorry. I’ve never been arrested before and I want to get it over with. But maybe I shouldn’t be so eager, huh? Go ahead.”
Now that the story was out she was calm talking about it, relaxed with the fact that she’d killed her own father. “Did you ever think your mother might be wrong? That you could have claimed self-defense or temporary insanity from what he’d put you through the night before?”
“Not at first, no. I believed her completely. It was years before I even wondered if maybe . . . you know, after watching TV and reading newspapers. But I was scared. Once I even considered going to a lawyer and asking, you know, because they have attorney-client privilege . . . but aren’t they also obligated to report a crime if they know one’s been committed?” He nodded. “I guess they could have defended me then, but I’d also covered up and withheld the information for so long that I figured that even if I somehow got off for killing him I’d still go to jail for keeping quiet. Right?”
He shrugged. “Theoretically. But probably not.”
She thought for a moment. “I also thought I’d have to be sorry I did it, like show remorse for my crime? But I was never sorry. Killing him was the best thing I ever did for me and my family. The only regret I have is that it’s going to keep Anna and me apart.”
He folded his arms across his chest and stretched his legs out in front of him. “Something in your story doesn’t add up for me.”
“What?”
“You haven’t mentioned how many times you hit him.”
“How many–” He could tell she was rewinding the film in her head to come up with a plausible number. “Once? I think, just the once. The pan was heavy. Really heavy. And I was in bad shape. I could barely hold it off the floor when Mama took it
from me. I don’t remember how I got from the barn to the house . . . or deciding to kill him but. . . .”
“Okay, answer me this: When you left the house, when you ran, could you still recognize your father’s face?”
“What?”
“Hannah, honey, I’m trying to avoid showing you the crime scene photos. Tell me if your father’s face was . . . intact when you left.”
She jerked a slow nod, her expression wary. In a soft voice, she muttered, “Show me.”
“You don’t want to see.”
“Please.”
Reluctant to leave her side, he went back to his chair and opened the bottom drawer of his desk to remove a thin file folder. Clutching it close to his chest, to keep as many of the memories of that night inside and unseen, he combed through the pictures until he found the least gruesome shot of Karl Benson’s corpse.
Glancing up at Hannah again he saw that she’d steeled herself for whatever was about to come but he still hesitated.
“You don’t need to do this. I believe that you only hit him once.”
“Show me.”
Reaching across the desk he laid out one 8 x 10 photo of a large body in a pool of blood on an old linoleum floor with a mash of meaty pulp where his head should have been. Hannah leaned forward, took half a glance and squeezed her eyes shut. He flipped the photo over and brought it back to his side of the desk.
“You stopped him, Hannah, but she killed him. Just like she always said.”
When she opened her eyes, they were brimming with tears and pain. “She . . . All this time . . . She let me think, all this time, that I killed him. She . . . she could have looked for me . . . she knew I wasn’t dead. She could have looked for me sooner and told me. Even if she didn’t want me back, she could have told me. She should have.” She was full out crying now and it was tearing him apart. He knew the recorder was still on but he hadn’t put a tape in it anyway. He couldn’t sit in his chair and pretend to be professional any longer. He scooped her into his arms, held her close, and let her cry. “Why couldn’t she love me, too?”
He didn’t know what to say—he didn’t understand it any better than she did.
Chapter Twenty-one
September 9, 2007
Dear Hannah,
If you are reading this I have gone to meet my Maker. Even as I write I am hoping and praying that I have already found the strength in my soul to contact you and the courage and humility in my heart to apologize for the way I have treated you.
Many times I have started this letter and many times I have failed. I have been a coward all my life, something you will never have to lower your pride to admit.
After I sent you away that night Karl started making noises and moving across the floor. I was terrified that he’d come around and blame me for what you’d done. I hit him in the head with the pan again. But once I started I could not stop. Not until I realized I was hitting something soft not hard anymore.
I couldn’t believe what I’d done, how coldly evil I was and what a relief it was that he was gone. I couldn’t confess to Father Paul or beg God’s forgiveness for some time because I felt no remorse. Still I knew I would go to hell and be there with Karl forever if I didn’t. So I went to Father Paul and we talked.
He taught me so much, Hannah. He showed me what an ignorant woman I was. He called it unenlightened but it was ignorance. I was a stupid and fearful woman. He showed me how hurtful it can be in so many different ways. He gave me books to read and I learned to drive so I could go to a special doctor in Charlottesville. I tried to get Ruth to go but she did not like him. She did not like men at all.
Mostly I learned about you though, Hannah. All the times you stood between me and Karl, when I believed it was the evil in your blood rising up to meet his, it was you defending me, like a Guardian Angel. And I should have been the one defending you. You and Ruth both. I know that now. I know you were defending us that night and that I was wrong to condemn you and send you away.
I know now. But it was many months before I learned that the evil in Karl was not in his blood but had been put there by someone else. His own daddy is my guess. And for all those months I let the police look for your body even though I knew you weren’t dead. By the time I realized the mistake I had made I was too ashamed and embarrassed to admit it. To the police, but most of all to you. I allowed everyone, including your sister and my priest to believe Karl had done something to you.
I write this letter because I am still a coward. Because I need to beg your forgiveness and I am afraid you won’t give it. Not because you are not able to forgive because God and I have seen you do it often enough, but because I do not deserve it.
I have tried to make up for my sins with Anna. I have given her the love I have always felt for you but was too weak and afraid to show you. But I am certain that I will never sit with my Lord God until you are able to find it in your heart to forgive me. I pray someday you can.
Your loving mama
It was the ninth day of an August heat wave in Baltimore. Fuses were short and tempers were exploding all over town. Newscasts were full of reports of road rage, elderly victims with heat prostration, and power outages that kept the circle revolving—like a dog chasing its tail.
At Benson Insurance & Investments where the power didn’t waver and the AC blew like a nor’easter in January, one particular temper had been simmering—and boiling over from time to time—since early June.
“You fired Jim?” Joe’s voice on the phone didn’t sound as disapproving as much as surprised.
“I asked him to leave, yes. I told him I’d give him a good reference and help in any way I could, but I’m sick of him drooling down my neck and expecting me to make him a partner. I hate that sense of entitlement some men have. I mean, what makes them think everything has to be their way solely because they’re men? What happened to give and take and compromise and stuff like that? Give a little, get a lot, you know?”
“Are we still talking about Jim Sauffle?”
Were they?
She hadn’t heard directly from Grady in almost two and a half months.
The morning she and Anna left, the Steadmans and Biscuit joined Don and May James to wave them off. With the car packed up, with barely enough room left over for driver and niece, they were being passed from one person to the next for hugs, and Grady . . . cheated. He kissed her—like she was going off to war.
The kids made embarrassing noises and the other adults smiled and looked at one another like it didn’t surprise them at all.
And all he said was, “I’ll see you soon.”
She was halfway home before she’d collected enough thoughts in her head again for a proper response. “How soon?” It took her the rest of the trip to realize he was talking about driving the U-Haul up for her—eventually.
Since then, he hadn’t called once. Not even to see how Anna was settling in. Though, to be fair, the girls had been Skype-ing practically all day everyday and he’d peeked in over Lucy’s shoulder several times to say hello to Anna—but he never passed a message on for her. And she missed him. More than she thought she would.
Well, she’d learned to live without him once before, she could do it again.
Their relationship had been doomed from the very beginning. It wasn’t meant to be. The people of Clearfield needed Grady and he would never fail them—she admired that about him. And unfortunately, while she’d put many of her ghosts to rest in Clearfield, she simply couldn’t live there again. Plus she had responsibilities of her own, employees who were counting on her . . . and there was Joe.
Still, she was going to miss Grady. The quick intelligence in his green-hazel eyes, that wonderfully stupid smile that warmed her like the coals of a campfire . . . that strange magic in him that spoke to her heart and soothed the mistrust in her soul.
“Hello?”
“What. Oh. What did you say, Joe?” She rubbed at the tense dull throb across her forehead. “Sorry.”
&n
bsp; “Are we still talking about Jim Sauffle?”
“Um. I don’t remember. How was Anna’s practice? Did you go to watch again today?”
“I did. And I’m glad she doesn’t mind because I very much enjoy watching her.”
“She’s beautiful, isn’t she?”
“She is, indeed, very graceful. And her new coach waved me down to the track. He says she’s very talented and in just the few weeks she’s been with his team she’s improved and now runs in the upper five percent. She’s very much self-motivated and he has great hopes for her.”
“Was she there? Did she hear all this?”
“I told her after.” He chuckled. “She blushed.”
“Tell me you’re not falling in love with her, too, Joe.”
“I can’t. Next to you I think she’s one of the finest young women I’ve ever known.”
Hannah wasn’t altogether sure how or what she felt about her mother these days—except that she’d done a good job of making up for her sins with Anna.
Her legacy to Anna was not that of the beaten and downtrodden but that of a resilient spirit determined to live in peace and of a woman aching to love and nurture and protect the family she was always meant to have.
Anna had, at first, been hurt to think Hannah preferred going to jail than staying with her but once the lies and nightmares were explained, the importance of truth between them discussed and the promise to be there for each other made and sealed with a hug, Anna recovered.
Anna forgave easily and she loved her for it.
Hannah tried to forgive her mother. She did. Some days she was more successful than others—if she used every ounce of understanding and empathy she could muster. On those other days, she couldn’t quite make it and the pain and resentment and anger came anew. But she kept trying.
What Happened to Hannah Page 30