Half Past: A Novel

by Victoria Helen Stone

  CHAPTER 19 Another rental car. Another highway. But here the sky was a blindingly crisp shade of blue and the clouds had sharp edges that didn’t hint at any danger. At long last, Hannah finally felt at home. She’d driven straight through, unable to sit still and wait for a morning flight to Des Moines. She’d needed to move, so she’d rented a car and driven all night to get back to Coswell. Her own car was still at long-term parking in Des Moines from her original trip. She’d need to drive the ninety minutes down later to return this car and retrieve her own. But she had more important things to do first. She’d managed to snag five hours of sleep once she’d pulled up to her dark, silent house, but she felt as if she’d had ten. For the first time in a very long while, she felt sure of who she was and what she was doing. No longer running on pure fear, she didn’t clutch the steering wheel or face the coming meeting with dread. She was ready to take this on. When she reached the care cente

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR Victoria Helen Stone, the author of Evelyn, After, is the nom de plume of USA Today bestselling romance novelist Victoria Dahl. After publishing more than twenty-five books, she has taken a turn toward the darker side of genre fiction. Born and educated in the Midwest, she finished her first manuscript just after college. In 2016, she was the recipient of the American Library Association’s prestigious Reading List Award. Having escaped the plains of her youth, she now resides with her family in a small town high in the Rocky Mountains, where she enjoys hiking, snowshoeing, and not skiing (too dangerous). For more on the author and her work, visit www.VictoriaHelenStone.com and www.VictoriaDahl.com.

  ALSO BY VICTORIA HELEN STONE

  Evelyn, After

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Text copyright © 2017 Victoria Helen Stone

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  Published by Lake Union Publishing, Seattle

  www.apub.com

  Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Lake Union Publishing are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.

  ISBN-13: 9781477819791

  ISBN-10: 1477819797

  Cover design by Damon Freeman

  This book is for my mother, who’s always been there.

  I love you, Mom.

  CONTENTS

  IOWA

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CALIFORNIA

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  HOME

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  IOWA

  CHAPTER 1

  “You’re not my daughter.”

  Hannah Smith had heard the same thing at least a dozen times in the past month. Often enough that she’d grown impatient with the conversation, but not so often that it didn’t still shock.

  She drew a deep breath and held it for a moment. “Mom . . .”

  “I want Rachel.”

  Hannah forced all the hurt and impatience from her throat before she spoke again. She swallowed the emotions to store them with the rest of the feelings she’d been stuffing down for months. “Mom, I already told you. Rachel moved to Blue Lake. I’m taking care of you now. I’m Hannah. Remember?”

  “I want Rachel!”

  “I know. She’ll be here on Saturday.” Her mother’s blue eyes swam with confusion. Hannah patted her arm. “That’s three days away.”

  Her mom recoiled. The hand that had changed Hannah’s diapers, combed her hair, fed her, hugged her, tended her wounds . . . it curled in on itself in horror that Hannah had touched her.

  “Where’s Becky?” she asked in a querulous voice that none of them had ever heard before the dementia. It was a child’s voice. A helpless, demanding whine from a woman who’d never whined about anything. Nose to the grindstone had been her favorite saying. No time for complaining if a body keeps busy. But Dorothy’s body wasn’t busy anymore.

  Hannah bit back a sigh. She had no right to her weariness. Her sisters had been dealing with this for years while Hannah had lived in a Chicago high-rise six hours away. She’d been back home for less than a month. She hadn’t put in enough time to be impatient yet. She’d only just started paying her dues.

  Surely this would get easier.

  She smiled. “Becky’s at home with her family. She’s coming on Saturday too.” Hoping she could wrap it all up into something her mom could understand, she added a cheerful footnote. “All three of your daughters to yourself for a whole afternoon! Rachel, Becky, and Hannah! Won’t that be nice?”

  Judging by the scowl her mom aimed in her direction, it wouldn’t be nice at all. Or maybe she was still sharp enough not to buy the upbeat helpfulness Hannah was trying to sell her. Rachel and Becky had always provided enough sunshine for the whole family. On her best days, Hannah was more of a crisp, bracing breeze. On bad days . . . well, her dad had sometimes described her as a handful. Generous of him, but he had always been the generous sort. They were a good Midwestern family. Respectful. Hardworking. God-fearing.

  Then there was Hannah.

  Maybe it was her differentness that made it so hard for their mother to remember her. After all, Rachel and Becky looked like their mom. She could recognize her older two daughters if only because she’d spent a lifetime seeing them in the mirror. Blond hair, blue eyes, plump cheeks. They were corn-fed wholesomeness incarnate.

  Hannah was darker. Black hair, tan skin, eyes a mysterious midnight brown. She looked exactly like her father, which had been consolation for a girl who’d otherwise felt as if fairies might have left her on the Smith doorstep. A changeling to replace their true child.

  Maybe Dorothy Smith’s dementia had taken even the memory of her husband’s face, and that was why Hannah so often looked unfamiliar.

  Whatever it was, she tried not to take it personally. Tried and failed.

  Settling back into the recliner with her book, she ignored her mother’s suspicious glances until they finally faded into placidness. A few minutes later, Dorothy perked up again, her fear of Hannah seemingly forgotten as she leaned close in conspiracy.

  “Someone has stolen my things,” she whispered. Her right hand had begun to shake, jittering rhythmically along the cheap fabric of the chair they’d brought from home. Dorothy’s favorite chair, despite that it stained easily and the places where her hands trembled were getting worn and bare.

  Hannah didn’t reach to comfort her this time. “No one has stolen your things.”

  “They have. I can’t find my husband’s ring anywhere.”

  “It’s at home, Mom. I’m taking care of everything.”

  “Home?” her mother asked.

  “At home. This is Sunrise Village, remember? You’re staying here for a time so the nurses can help you at night.” She was staying here for a good long while, actually. Until she died. Hannah forced another smile, the muscles of her face stretching so tight she thought they’d break. “Your friend Sylvie is here too. You have dinner with her every night.”

  “Sylvie,” she said as if it were a reassurance, but Hannah could tell that the name felt unfamiliar on her tongue. “Sylvie.”

  “That’s right. Dad’s ring is at home, safe and sound. And I’m back in my old room, watching over the house.”

  “He died last month,” she murmured. He’d died six years ago, but what was the point of telling h
er that? In Dorothy’s mind, she’d only just lost her husband, and nothing was going to change that.

  “I’m sorry, Mom. You must miss him so much.”

  Her mother’s shaky right hand went to her wedding band and twisted it around. Hannah glanced down at her own ring finger before she remembered it was bare.

  She was jobless, living in her childhood bedroom, in the middle of a divorce, and taking care of a mother who didn’t seem to even have a daughter named Hannah. Damn, she was really kicking ass and taking names. Living the dream. Killing the blues. Being her best self.

  “Someone,” Hannah murmured, “has stolen my things.” Repeating her mother’s words felt surprisingly good. Someone else must be at fault if she couldn’t figure out what had happened to her own life.

  But it wasn’t any truer for Hannah than it was for her mom. No one had taken anything from her. Hannah was here, in this place at this moment, because she’d chosen to be. She was being her best self, damn it. She was taking care of a mother who’d spent her life taking care of the rest of them. There was no shame in that. Nothing stolen or lost.

  Hannah returned to her novel, realized she had no idea what was going on with the plot, and backed up a few pages. A few minutes later, she backed up again before finally giving up and closing the book with a hard snap.

  Some days her mother enjoyed the various activities organized by the center, and some days she was afraid to leave the room. She’d had two of those days in a row, and Hannah felt a little stir-crazy. When the afternoon aide knocked and opened the door of Dorothy’s room, Hannah nearly gasped with relief. “Cory! How are you?”

  The young woman smiled with a genuine warmth that made Hannah feel less guilty about leaving every day at five. “Wonderful. How is Ms. Dorothy today?”

  “Great,” Hannah lied.

  “Are you ready for your bath, Ms. Dorothy?”

  Her mother’s face screwed up as if she might protest, but after a moment she nodded.

  Hannah stood so quickly that her book dropped to the floor. “All right! You have a lovely bath and a nice dinner, Mom. I’ll be back tomorrow.” As she leaned to pick up the book, she pressed a quick kiss to her mother’s head. Dementia had taken her scent away too. Now, instead of Suave conditioner and Doublemint gum, her mom smelled of Johnson’s baby shampoo and hospital sanitizer.

  “We’ll see you tomorrow!” Cory called as Hannah made her escape. Her mother said nothing. Probably for the best. Some days weren’t so bad. Some days she recognized Hannah, even if she did seem confused about how her youngest daughter had gotten so freakishly old.

  But surely forty-five wasn’t that old. She likely had more than half her life still in front of her. Hell, she had time to turn her two failed marriages into six or seven if she tried hard enough.

  She didn’t bother to hide the bitterness of her smile as she pushed through the front doors of the care center and stepped back into the real world. She existed out here, at least. She was a person, harmless, if still unknown. No one pulled away in horror as she passed.

  Sucking a deep breath of clean, disinfectant-free air into her lungs, she fled to her car. The feeling was terrible on every level. She shouldn’t want to run from her mother. The woman was sick. Dying. And losing everything bit by bit as she did it. That was true suffering. Hannah’s frustration didn’t even qualify as a hangnail in the face of her mom’s slow, steady decline.

  The worst part of callously wanting to escape was that she had nothing to escape to. Where would she go? Back to her old bedroom in her parents’ home? Back to the months-long divorce negotiations with her husband? Back to sorting through the remains of her mom’s passing life?

  She slammed the door of her car and huddled in the surprising heat for a moment. A breeze had cooled the May afternoon, but the sun was bright enough that the interior temperature was probably close to ninety. Her body drank in the heat as if she’d been slowly freezing all day. Maybe she’d fall into bed as soon as she got home. Twelve hours of sleep might recharge her enough to face tomorrow bravely.

  As soon as she started the car, Hannah’s phone rang. She cringed, imagining a call from the care center with a last-minute emergency. She’d have to get out of the car. Return to the memory unit of the center. Calm her mother down. Stay another hour or two.

  Or maybe it was one of her sisters checking to be sure Hannah hadn’t run away screaming yet. Running was kind of her thing. Screaming was too, sometimes.

  The car display finally caught up with the call and flashed Jasmine. Hannah squeaked in surprise at the sight of her former coworker’s name; then she shut off the car and answered the phone. “Jasmine! Hello!”

  “Hey, girl. How’s life in Iowa?”

  Hannah groaned, but it quickly broke into laughter. “It’s life in Iowa.”

  “When are you moving back?”

  She didn’t even bother groaning this time. It was understood. “I’m not. I’ve told you that a hundred times.”

  “Yeah, you keep saying it, but we both know it’s not true. You won’t last a year in that town.”

  “I have to,” she answered.

  Jasmine’s voice dropped. “How’s your mom?”

  “The same.”

  “And how’s Jeff?”

  Hannah waited a few heartbeats for her stomach to settle. She didn’t exactly miss her soon-to-be ex-husband. But she was so used to having him in her life that it felt strange to live without him. “We haven’t spoken. Have you . . . have you seen him?”

  “Just in passing. We don’t run in the same circles now that you’re gone. But I saw him coming out of Wiley’s. He said there’s still no good barbecue in your old neighborhood.”

  “Oh. So he looked okay?”

  “He looked fine.”

  That was good. Hannah didn’t want him suffering. She just wanted him to let go of his grip on their relationship. Leave her and her severance package alone.

  “Why don’t you come back and visit? You can stay at my place. You won’t run into Jeff up here, if that’s why you’re staying away.”

  “I just . . .” She wanted to go. Wanted to start the engine and point her car toward Chicago right now. But she couldn’t. “It’ll be a while. Maybe I can make it in for a quick weekend sometime.” She missed her friends. Missed the restaurants and people and life of Chicago. She missed everything. But if she went back now, she might stay, and she couldn’t do that to her mom and sisters.

  “Well, we all hate you for leaving. The new management is . . . oh, hell, it’s fine, I guess.”

  “Yeah?”

  “No.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said sincerely.

  “Oh, no one blames you for getting out while the getting was good. If I’d been offered a package, I would have taken it in a hot second, believe me. I’m just jealous. Okay, I’m not jealous of Iowa, but I’m jealous of the severance.” A phone trilled in the background, and Jasmine’s chair squeaked. “Crap. I’ve got to take this. Call me this weekend?”

  “Absolutely. I’ll—” But Jasmine had already hung up.

  Hannah realized that her heart was beating hard, just that brush with her old job leaving her breathless. Most people thought there was nothing exciting about accounting, but she hadn’t been the addition-and-subtraction kind of accountant. She’d been more of a . . . how-to-legally-shield-your-billions-from-taxation kind of accountant. Money and flash and legal loopholes. She’d been good at that. Great at it. And she hadn’t even been the front man for the team, so she’d rarely had to deal with rich assholes.

  But as exciting as the work had been, it had eaten away at her soul. She’d stopped taking pride in making more money for people who had too much already. The severance package had been a relief. One year’s salary and a payout of all her stock options. She’d even gotten paid for the four weeks of vacation she’d never bothered taking.

  At her age, with no rent and very few ways of spending money in Coswell, Iowa, it was more like an early ret
irement than a termination. When she’d walked away, she’d felt triumphant. But the triumph had worn off quickly. Now she felt like a bump on a log, to use another of her mother’s favorite expressions.

  Don’t just sit there like a bump on a log. But here she was turning into wood.

  Her hairline began to prickle with sweat, so Hannah restarted the car and headed for home. The care center was two towns over, but it was still only a twenty-minute drive.

  The towns around here were tiny and scattered, but they all shared one overriding need: health care for their rapidly aging populations. The young people who could leave had been leaving for decades. The ones who couldn’t get out stayed home and worked at hospitals and hospices and care centers. Senior care was the new Midwestern crop.

  Surely even that industry would dry up soon. Or maybe it wouldn’t. Maybe the caregivers would be aging by then and the cycle would start over. They’d move into the rooms where they’d once tended patients, and someone young would show up to care for them.

  Still sweating, whether from the heat or anxiety, Hannah rolled down the windows and enjoyed the bright evening drive past acres and acres of turned soil that would soon sprout corn. In late summer, the rustling crops could sound almost like the lapping waves of Lake Michigan on a windy day, but today the breeze moved nothing. It just picked up the dark scent of rich dirt and spring grass. The wind smelled like her childhood.

  Despite her jokes about Iowa, she’d never hated it. It was a beautiful place. A good place. But she’d always felt like a visitor. As if she were observing the people and taking notes on their behavior. She wasn’t blond and bubbly. She wasn’t interested in basketball or wrestling championships. She didn’t want babies. She didn’t even believe in God. Growing up, she’d had no place here, no comfort, but this time she’d returned hoping to find at least a peaceful resting spot for a year or two.