He’d gotten up at 6:00 a.m. seven days a week. He’d never once called in sick to his job as manager of the feed store. He’d saved his earnings every year so he could take ownership of the store in 1989 when his old boss retired. He went to church early on Sunday mornings and led Bible study for the men on Sunday afternoons. He’d listened to baseball on the radio, but football and hockey had been too violent for him. His only hobby had been fishing, and not the kind that involved throwing one line into the water and drinking beer all day long.
He wasn’t the kind of man to hook up with a wild traveling woman for a few weeks of passion. Or maybe he’d done it once and learned his lesson? Gotten it out of his system?
Hannah realized she’d been standing in front of the open freezer for a long time. The old motor whirred. Her breath fogged. She shut the door and went to the kitchen table to open her laptop.
She tried a half dozen searches first. “Peter Smith” and “California.” “Peter Smith” and “Big Sur.” Then “Dorothy Smith.” Then “Dorothy Baylor.” But every travelogue and blog post in the world seemed to pop up with those searches. Smith, especially, was far too common a name to track down online.
And that was the first time it occurred to her—that their names might not even be Smith. Smith was the kind of name people chose when they were running from something. Smith was a name for hiding.
We don’t talk about California.
“No,” she murmured. She was losing her grip. The most likely explanation for her existence was an affair, and the illegitimate child of an affair was reason enough for a couple to never speak of the past. Whatever the truth was, they’d done a good job of leaving it behind. They’d tried hard and they’d built a good life for their bastard child.
Giving up her search for some elusive off-the-grid Smith family from the ’70s, Hannah instead pulled up a satellite map and typed in the address of her birthplace. She expected an aerial shot of a small town to appear on the screen, but all she saw were trees. Acres of them.
Frowning, she zoomed in until a tiny group of buildings came into view. Well, view was a strong word. There were glimpses of black roofs through the green canopy of trees and a few small clearings that looked like parking areas.
She zoomed out again until she could see the pale line of a highway snaking through the landscape. A few icons popped up. A gas station. A motel. A roadhouse. And right next to the little circle of her search address, an icon read “Riverfall Inn.” She clicked on it, and there was her address: 47105 Highway 1.
Shit. She’d been born in a motel?
But no, of course not. Her parents hadn’t lived in a motel room for years. She clicked to the Riverfall Inn website and immediately saw that the inn was an old house that had been converted to a B and B. The history it offered was brief.
The Riverfall Inn has been operating as a Big Sur Bed and Breakfast since 1993. Now we are excited to announce the opening of the riverside cabins that were originally built on our property in 1968! Each cabin was lovingly restored using eco-friendly designs and local materials. You’ll find all the comforts of home right here in the redwoods. Please see our accommodations page for more information about our inn rooms and our riverside cabins. We’ll see you in Big Sur soon!
Cabins built in 1968. Was that what her parents had been doing there? Building tourist cabins?
From what she could see on the accommodations page, the cabins were tiny squares outfitted with modern amenities. No useful information there.
She clicked through to the pictures of the inn, which looked like an old farmhouse that had been restored. Surely the inn house was a more likely find. She could imagine a midwife there, helping a woman through labor. A young, long-haired woman who looked like Hannah.
Had it been a private home until 1993? She tried finding an article about the opening of the Riverfall Inn, but thousands of reviews and traveler photos popped up. She couldn’t sift through them fast enough to find any other information. Admitting defeat, she opened an email window and sent a simple query to the inn. Could you please tell me a little about the history of the property? Thank you.
At a loss about how to proceed from there, Hannah turned on the oven to preheat it. It was almost eleven. She’d dig through a few more piles of papers, and then she’d drown her sorrows in cheap pizza and screwdrivers while she waited to hear back from Big Sur.
CHAPTER 4
“Hannah?”
She opened her eyes and saw a dark shape moving through her bedroom moments before she was assaulted by the bright explosion of a flash bomb. She grunted out a cry of horror and threw her hands over her face.
“Are you okay?” her sister asked. Hannah wasn’t sure which one it was. They both had the same sweet warble.
“What time is it?” Hannah groaned.
“Eight. In the morning. Are you drunk?”
“Not anymore, unfortunately.” It had to be Rachel. Becky rarely used that judgmental tone.
“Hannah,” her sister scolded.
“Oh, for God’s sake. Don’t you think I deserved a good, solid night of drinking?” Or a good, solid day. She’d managed to hold off until three after all. She’d lost count of the screwdrivers after that, though. All she remembered was that she’d woken up at four in the morning, thrown up, then dosed herself with water and ibuprofen before stumbling from the couch to her bed.
“Could you close those damn curtains?” she growled.
Rachel sniffed but she tugged the curtains closed.
Thank God for the Advil and water. And probably the vomiting. Aside from the sunlight allergy and a dry mouth, she didn’t feel that bad. She managed to sit up and swing her legs over the side of the bed without even a hint of nausea.
“I need coffee,” she muttered.
“Becky’s making it right now.”
Hannah grunted and pushed up from the bed to shuffle toward the kitchen. All the curtains and blinds were open, of course, but she squinted against the assault and headed toward the smell of drip coffee.
Becky stood at the sink, wearing honest-to-God rubber gloves as she washed the dishes that had been piling up over the past few days. Hannah tried to ignore the guilty anger that burned her gut. She would have cleaned the kitchen last night if her life hadn’t been falling apart.
Becky tugged off the gloves and turned to watch as Hannah grabbed a coffee cup from the cupboard. She almost put it back when she realized the mug was printed with “Have a Blessed Day!” above a smiling sun, but she didn’t have the energy to fight the small battles today.
“Are you all right?” Becky asked.
“I’m sure I look like death warmed over, but I’m fine.”
“I meant . . . the other thing.”
Hannah had only filled the mug halfway, but she set the pot and mug down and spun to glare at Rachel. “You told her?”
“I . . . um.” Rachel shrugged.
“You asked me not to tell her!”
“I know, but we were driving all the way here and . . . I didn’t want her walking in blind.”
“Did it occur to you that maybe I should be the one to tell her I’m not really her sister?”
“Hannah!” Becky gasped. “Of course you’re my sister! Don’t say things like that.”
“Half sister at most, apparently.”
“As if that matters to me.”
“It matters to me!” Hannah countered.
But her nasty, snapping words didn’t make Becky angry. Instead, her mouth tipped down into sadness and she opened her arms and rushed over to give Hannah a hug. “I’m so sorry, baby. Are you sure this is even true? I can’t believe it.”
“At this point all I’m sure of is Mom isn’t my mom. It’s not scientifically possible.” She gave Becky a brief squeeze, then waited to be released. The other women in her family always hung on too long.
Becky finally let her go. “But Dad has to be your dad. You’re a smaller version of him.”
“Slightly smaller,�
� Hannah conceded. “But you know what that means. If I’m his daughter, Dad cheated.”
Becky pressed her lips together and shook her head.
Hannah sympathized with the impulse, but she wasn’t going to deny the obvious. “I know it’s hard to accept, but an affair is the only explanation.”
“Shh!” Becky shook her head again. “The kids will hear!”
“What kids?” When Becky glanced into the living room, Hannah turned to see two blond heads bent close together over an iPad. Becky’s youngest two kids. Probably. They were both gangly tweens now. Or teens.
Rachel slammed a cupboard door, but she kept her voice low. “Maybe you’re a scientific wonder. There’s no way Dad had an affair.”
“How would we know? He was young. It was a different time. And they were sure as hell running from something when they left California.”
“They just wanted a simpler life,” Rachel insisted.
“You know what Mom said to me yesterday? She said, ‘We don’t talk about California.’ Does that sound simple to you?”
Rachel’s brow furrowed in anger. “Don’t tell me you’ve been asking Mom about this?”
“Don’t look at me like I’m crazy! Who else am I supposed to ask?”
“Not a helpless old woman, for heaven’s sake!”
Hannah’s huff of laughter was anything but amused. “Rachel, are you kidding me? I just found out I’ve been lied to my whole life. Mom is the only one who can tell me anything, and you want me to . . . What? Just drop it? Just let it go?”
“She can’t even remember why she’s in that care center, and you expect her to answer questions about something that happened forty-five years ago?”
“Yes, I do.”
“I can’t believe you even brought it up. She must have been so upset.”
“She was,” Hannah said.
“Hannah!” Rachel used the same shocked tone she’d been using since Hannah could walk.
“Yes, she was upset. She got scared and freaked out and yelled that I wasn’t her daughter. Funny, I didn’t realize she’d been telling me the truth this whole time.”
Becky laid a hand on her shoulder. “That’s just the dementia talking.”
“No, I really don’t think it is. I think it’s the dementia destroying her filters. She stopped remembering to lie. Does she ever tell you you’re not her daughter?”
Becky didn’t answer. Neither did Rachel. Hannah fought the urge to give them both the finger. Sure, she’d tried to rationalize some of this to herself, but she didn’t want to hear it from them.
“I’ll make you breakfast,” Becky offered. “You’ll feel better after you’ve had something to eat.”
Ah, the constant refrain of Midwestern life. Illness? Offer food. Funeral? Bring food. New baby? Drop off food. Suddenly discover you’re some sort of illegitimate secret orphan? Food, food, food.
But she was hungry, so she didn’t object.
Becky quickly whipped up some corn fritter batter, and the smell of the pancakes frying made Hannah feel ten years old again. As a teenager, she’d grown scornful of the constant pushing of corn as a vital vegetable. It was a grain, she’d insisted, and not even a healthy one. But her scorn hadn’t stopped the pushing. Corn fritters for breakfast, corn on the cob for lunch, creamed corn for dinner. It was everywhere, boiled and cut off the cob during the summer, packed into boxes and stacked in the deep freeze in the cellar so they wouldn’t run out for the rest of the year. God forbid they ever run out.
She hadn’t eaten corn in years. She’d refused. But as soon as Becky set the plate in front of her, Hannah slathered the fritters with butter and syrup and dug in. Food was comfort after all, and damned if it didn’t work. She felt nearly high with pleasure as she swallowed.
When the memory popped up that she wasn’t truly a Midwesterner and neither were her parents, Hannah chewed that too. She washed it down with a gulp of coffee. By the time Rachel and Becky and the two kids—Ruby and Ethan—sat at the table with their own plates, Hannah was halfway through hers.
It was a subdued breakfast, with none of the normal, pleasant conversations that her sisters had perfected over countless potlucks and fish fries. Hannah was surprised to realize she missed their chatter. The kids’ eyes focused on whatever they were watching on their phones. “How’s it going, guys?” she asked.
“Great,” they both said without looking up.
Hannah nodded. “School’s out in three weeks?”
“Yes.” Another joint reply.
Becky perked up. “Can you believe my baby is graduating high school?”
“Well, he is almost six feet tall now.”
“I know. But he’ll always be my baby. My first baby! Right, Rachel?”
“Heck, Tom is thirty, and he’s still my baby.”
Silence fell into the place where Hannah should have spoken about her own children. Rachel cleared her throat. “I have news, actually.”
“Jesus,” Hannah said. “You’re not pregnant, are you?”
She’d failed to keep the abject horror out of her voice, and they both frowned briefly at her before Rachel shook her head. “No . . . but Mindy is!”
Hannah’s jaw dropped. Mindy was Tom’s wife. That meant Rachel was—
“You’re going to be a grandma!” Becky squealed.
“Oh my God,” Hannah breathed. Her sister was a grandmother. No. Hannah couldn’t possibly be that old.
But of course she was. Hannah could’ve been a grandma already too if she’d started as young as her sisters.
Rachel and Becky were hugging, their blond hair mingling until Hannah couldn’t tell whose head started where.
Becky’s hair was shoulder length and bouncy. Rachel’s was shorter, but the same shade of burnished gold. The practical bob made her look like a younger version of their mother. Their mother.
“She’s only two and a half months along, so they’re not telling everyone yet, but I had to tell someone!”
That someone was obviously Becky. Hannah just happened to be sitting there too.
This discovery that she was only a half sister wasn’t truly a revelation; it was only confirmation. Her sisters’ worlds revolved around children and home and family, just as Dorothy’s always had.
Hannah, on the other hand . . . Well. She remembered the first two nephews’ birthdates. Usually. The rest were just a jumble of ages she couldn’t guess, their birthdays running together into one long series of screaming romper rooms. She’d given up on attending birthday parties years ago, and she’d given up on sending presents not long after that. She did give them each fifty dollars at Christmas, though.
Now there would be more. More babies and cooing and sighs about how children made life worth living. Followed by the awkward silence when they noticed Hannah sitting there, nursing a glass of wine and counting the minutes until she could escape the chaos.
Maybe the discovery that she didn’t belong to this family wasn’t horrifying or hurtful. Maybe it was validation.
“Let me jump in the shower,” she said. “I’ll be ready in fifteen minutes.”
When she returned with her dark hair gathered into a damp bun, her sisters were still discussing babies, though they were both wiping down countertops as they talked. She’d expected nothing less. “Ready?”
She was getting into Rachel’s huge Suburban when she realized what a mistake that was after the way she’d left the center yesterday. And the day before. There was a good chance she’d need an escape hatch. It was her preferred mode of travel.
“Actually,” she said as she stepped back out to the curb, “I’ll take my car and meet you two there.”
Rachel frowned.
“I need to get groceries on the way home.”
“I put a casserole in the fridge for you.”
Of course she had. “I’m out of cereal,” she lied.
Shrugging, Rachel started her car, and Hannah breathed a sigh of relief as she retreated to her own. She’d jus
t bought herself twenty minutes of not feeling like the circus freak sitting with the preacher’s kids.
Yesterday’s storm had blown out all the clouds and humidity, and the day was fresh and bright. She slipped on her sunglasses and rolled down the windows as she followed the Suburban through town. When she turned on the radio, the song made her smile. “Three Times a Lady” by the Commodores. The music brought such a rush of memory of the radio playing during summer drives that she could practically feel her sisters pressed up against her legs.
Being the youngest, she’d always been relegated to the middle seat, while her sisters had hung their arms out the windows and waved at everyone they’d passed. But whenever her dad had glanced into the rearview mirror and smiled at her, Hannah had felt special. Her sisters were too busy looking out the windows to notice his secret winks.
God, she missed him.
She’d missed him for years, but now she needed him. Whatever he’d done, she’d forgive it, if only he could tell her.
After today’s visit, she’d spend every free hour going through his papers. Surely there was a sealed envelope somewhere. Maybe there was a hint she’d missed in his will. He must have left her an answer. She couldn’t just be adrift.
It wasn’t until she was halfway to the care center that she remembered the query she’d sent to the inn. She dug her phone from her purse and opened her email, darting her eyes from the screen to the road and back again, watching for runaway cows or tractors broken down on the shoulder. Her email application chimed, and [email protected] appeared at the top of her inbox. Hannah’s heart tripped.
She opened the email, but when she saw the paragraph, she knew she couldn’t safely read the whole thing while driving.
Under normal circumstances, she would’ve pulled over to read it, but one of her sisters would notice and freak out, and they’d turn around and demand to know what was wrong. Snarling, she put the phone facedown on the passenger seat and made herself drive on.
Half Past: A Novel Page 6