Half Past: A Novel

by Victoria Helen Stone

  When an ambitious wave climbed high on the sand and lapped over her bare feet, she shouted out a bark of laughter. No skinny-dipping for her. The water was absolutely freezing. She might lose her nipples to frostbite.

  Still, it felt good to put her feet in the sea, even if her toes went a little numb. What was it about water that drew people to it generation after generation? Was it the mystery of a vast expanse of liquid they couldn’t conquer? Couldn’t survive? Was it compelling just because it was dangerous?

  She stared out over the waves for long minutes, wondering if her mother had ever done the same. On a hotter day, in a gentler surf, maybe her mother had been brave enough to skinny-dip here. Maybe Hannah was brave like her.

  She turned and walked back toward the cliffs, glancing at the ridge above until she could no longer see the guardrail. When all signs of civilization had disappeared, she reached for the hem of her shirt and tugged it up and over her head in one quick motion. Then she shucked her jeans and stripped off her bra and panties.

  Hesitating for a moment, she wondered about the sand flea situation. Was it a bad time of year? Would she have to explain bites all over her bare ass? But then she remembered there’d be no one to see them, no one to explain to. Probably.

  “Right.”

  She carefully eased down onto the warm sand. Stretching out, she closed her eyes and smiled. If this was what it felt like to be a hippie, she had no idea why they’d been searching for religion. What else did you need to find when the sun was covering your whole body like a blanket and lighting your eyelids into red fire? The sea breeze crashed over her and then receded, a different rhythm than the surf. Little tendrils of air licked at her like flames.

  She spread her fingers in the sun-warmed sand, each shift finding coolness just beneath the surface. Lying there, it occurred to her that it didn’t matter who her parents were, what they’d done, how they’d raised her. She got to choose who she was. If she wanted something different, it was up to her.

  But what did she want?

  She’d always denied wanting to be like her sisters, her mother, but if that were true, why couldn’t she find peace with it? Why had she tried to be a loving wife when she’d known she would fail? Why did she feel guilty about not having kids when she’d never wanted them?

  Or had she? Were those things she actually wanted and was afraid to ask for?

  She took a deep breath. Another gust of wind slipped along her nude body. “What do I want?” she whispered into the sky, hoping some sea god or Mother Nature or hippie magic would give her an answer.

  But no. She couldn’t decipher the angry calls of the seagulls or the whisper of the surf. She did, however, detect the crunching sound of footsteps coming down the trail.

  “Crap!” she yelped, and rolled quickly to her knees to brush off the sand. Voices drifted down, and she decided to risk the sand and tug on her panties. “Crap, crap, crap.”

  She slipped on her bra, then struggled to fasten it. Just as the hooks caught, she realized she should have gotten her other clothes on first and dealt with the bra later. Too late, though. She yanked the shirt over her head, then spent precious seconds turning her jeans right-side out.

  “You are the worst—” She shoved one sand-covered foot in. “Hippie—” Hopping, she yanked the jeans up one leg, then balanced on her other foot. “Ever.”

  Two men jogged down the last ten feet of the trail. One of them glanced at her just as her jeans caught on the plumpest part of her butt.

  She tugged hard. Sand scraped her ass cheeks. That was the exact moment it hit her: she was having a midlife crisis. What other explanation was there for a woman her age to try to pitifully recapture the wild, free spirit of youth?

  The other man turned to see what his friend was looking at just as her jeans gave in to the struggle and slid the rest of the way up. Now that her crotch was covered, she smiled wildly and waved. Nothing to see here, gents. Move along.

  Apparently there really was nothing to see, because they each raised a hand in greeting and turned to walk toward the water.

  Thank God. Maybe they’d assumed her black panties were swimsuit bottoms and she’d been out here sunbathing like a normal person.

  Or maybe they didn’t give a shit what she did and she was the only one feeling awkward.

  Lightheaded from the frantic fight with her clothing, she dropped to her butt and stared out at the view.

  Was this whole trip just a midlife crisis? Was she another sad, average sap fighting an unwinnable battle against aging?

  They always said that people who were going mad never suspected madness. That was the insidious magic of insanity. She’d been under a lot of stress. Divorce. Job loss. Moving. Those were all gigantic stressors. Maybe learning her whole life had been a lie had finally broken her, and now she was another pitiable fool flirting with every sexy server who delivered a cocktail.

  “At least he’s not a twenty-five-year-old blond,” she muttered. But she honestly had considered renting a convertible for this adventure.

  The panic had finally worked itself from her system, so she pulled on her shoes and headed back to the trail. She had to stop every hundred feet or so and catch her breath from the steep climb, but that gave her a nice break from the chafing sand, so she didn’t mind. She was getting exfoliated in places she’d never dreamed she even needed it. Maybe it’d be a good time to sleep with Gabriel after all. Or maybe she’d need a salve.

  By the time she got back to her car, clouds were moving in. By the time she reached her cabin, rain was falling. A perfect excuse to get back into her warm little womb.

  She didn’t want to get sand everywhere, so she stripped down in the shower before turning the water up high to blast away all the grit. Remembering the mad scramble with her clothes, she laughed into the steam. Then she laughed harder.

  Screw it. If she was having a midlife crisis, at least it was in a beautiful place with an ocean, a forest, and a hot silver fox. At least she wasn’t sitting in her childhood bedroom weeping and drinking herself into a stupor every night.

  Her afternoon played out exactly as her morning had. She stayed in the shower too long, then climbed back into bed to check her emails. It was as good a place as any, especially with the rain dripping and drizzling along the windows.

  There was no note from Jeff, so she sent him a picture she’d snapped of the Jacob’s Rock notice to push him along. As she was typing, an email arrived from Jasmine. She should have called Jasmine back when she had cell service, but she couldn’t seem to get excited about Chicago gossip at this point. Still, she opened the email.

  I know you’re crazy busy in Iowa (that was sarcasm, in case you don’t have that sort of thing there), but call me back! I’m serious!

  Jasmine ruined the seriousness by ending with several eggplant emojis, but Hannah wrote back immediately.

  On an emergency trip to the boonies. No cell service! Can you give me the news by email?

  Apparently she could, because while Hannah was doing an online search for anyone named Maria Diaz in California, her email chimed. It was a welcome distraction from the pages and pages of online phonebook hits and background-check offers. The name Diaz seemed to be the Smith of California.

  Ok. Delete this and you didn’t hear it from me. But Frank Wells is floating the idea of hiring back some of the layoffs. And your name came up. Ok, I’m the one who brought your name up, but he seemed excited. I think they’re trying to wrest back a little control from the new bosses. YOU COULD COME BAAAAAACK! He might be giving you a call soon, Hannah! Get back to civilization so you can say yes! For meeeeeee!

  “Oh my God,” Hannah whispered.

  Her old job. Her old city. Her old life.

  She didn’t even know what to think. Her fingers were numb. Her face tingled. She could have it all back. The life she’d walked away from. If her old boss called.

  “He might not call,” she cautioned her leaping heart. They’d paid her a big settlemen
t just two months ago. It would be stupid to bring her back right away. But those were sunk costs. And Frank had always liked her. And she was good at her job.

  Then again, she’d also been tired of her job when she’d left. She’d been a little sad to go, but mostly she’d been relieved to be getting out. To escape. Sugarcoating that relief had been the overwhelming rightness of what she was doing: going home to take care of her mom.

  But of course, Dorothy wasn’t her mom. Did her sisters still expect her to stay?

  Hannah groaned aloud. Of course they did. She expected herself to stay. Regardless of this secret past, Dorothy had loved and raised her, and Hannah owed her the same kind of care.

  But Chicago called to her. The familiarity of its streets and people and life. She could change things up with a new neighborhood and a new place. Or she could slip right back into what she knew. Live near her favorite pubs and restaurants and shops. She could even make peace with Jeff.

  Her heart clenched at the thought, and what did that mean? Did she want him back?

  No. Definitely not.

  She glanced at his last email and remembered that lightning strike of emotion when she’d realized he truly still cared.

  So probably not.

  “I can’t do this right now.” Her words sounded angry in the tiny cabin, but they felt like fear.

  She typed a quick reply to Jasmine. OMG! I don’t even know what to think. I’ll call you as soon as I can! Then she slammed her laptop closed and got up to dress.

  There was no reason to even think about any of this crap right now. She didn’t have a job offer yet, and Jeff certainly hadn’t invited her to talk about anything other than her family. She had enough stress without inviting more in.

  She got dressed and pulled her hair up into a damp bun, though she suspected it might never dry here. Worst-case scenario she’d dry it before she went to bed tonight.

  “Yeah, right,” she scoffed. She knew damn well that the worst-case scenario involved her falling into bed with wet hair and dealing with the mess in the morning. But for now she was heading to the roadhouse, so she put on a little makeup and lip gloss and double-checked her look in the mirror. Deciding it was somewhere between “good enough” and “pretty all right,” she grabbed her purse and opened the door.

  And stopped in her tracks.

  The old man was staring right at her. Joe. His ATV was parked directly in front of her cabin, and he stared through the windshield as if he’d been sitting there awhile. Had he knocked and she hadn’t heard? Or was he just . . . waiting?

  She pulled the door closed behind her, then locked it before he could approach and shove her into the cabin.

  It probably didn’t matter. He likely had some sort of master key. But she wanted him to see her locking up.

  When she turned back to him, he was standing next to the ATV, arms crossed. “You wanted something?” he asked.

  “I just had a few questions.” She moved forward so they’d be in view of anyone driving through the grounds or looking out from the other cabins. “I’m checking into the history of this place, and I wondered how long you’d been working around here.”

  He shrugged. “Pretty long time.”

  “Were you here in the 1970s? Maybe ’72?”

  “Off and on,” he acknowledged, clearly not interested in being helpful. The washed-out blue of his eyes studied her warily.

  “Can you tell me about Jacob’s Rock?”

  His hooded eyes widened for a split second, though nothing else on his face gave away his surprise. But that was enough. He knew. She’d seen it.

  Maybe that glimpse of her own knowledge had nudged him into curiosity, because he asked, “What do you want to know?”

  “Were you part of it? A member or a . . . um, congregant?”

  Joe snorted, his cheeks creasing as a bitter smile flashed and then disappeared. “I was never much for religion.”

  “So how did you know them?”

  “Well, back then we all took care of each other. Traveled together. Helped people out. I stayed here off and on at the beginning.”

  “The beginning?” she pressed.

  “It was a place to crash for a while. Me and my woman camped here for a few months. Then shit started to get too religious, and I wasn’t interested.”

  “So you moved on?”

  His mouth flattened until she couldn’t see it through the beard. “I went to crash with some friends up the coast. She stayed.”

  “Oh.” Wait, did that mean . . . ? Was it possible this man’s ex-girlfriend was Hannah’s mother?

  “I was . . . um . . . I was born here in ’72. Would you happen to know who had a baby around then?”

  “Babies are women’s business.”

  “What?” she snapped. Oh, sure. Pregnancy was women’s business, no matter that there was always a penis rather critically involved in the process.

  He seemed to sense that she was about to lose her temper and pushed up from leaning on the hood to shift back toward the driver’s seat of the ATV. “Look, lady, I wasn’t living here in ’72. I came by sometimes, yeah, but there were always big bellies and lots of half-naked kids running around.” Dropping into the seat, he immediately popped the brake.

  “Wait—”

  The engine roared to life, and he backed out. When she held up a hand, he paused just long enough to shift. As he pulled out, he tossed one last revelation over his shoulder, his eyes glinting and hard. “You sure do look like your daddy, though.”

  “Wait!” she yelled, but he didn’t hear or didn’t care, and the ATV tore down the lane and around the curve.

  It was only then that it hit her. She knew she was her father’s child, because she was nearly a clone of him. But her father and grandfather looked exactly the same.

  Could she really be sure of anything at all?

  CHAPTER 13

  No. She wasn’t going to wonder about this bullshit all night. She was already dressed and ready to go, so Hannah jumped in her rental and followed the road toward the inn, unwilling to let that little Rumpelstiltskin scurry away with her past.

  Pulling into the narrow driveway that ran alongside the farmhouse, she spotted Joe shutting up the doors of a shed, closing the ATV inside. He was apparently wrapping up for the night, but she wasn’t done with him yet, and surely she was faster than he was on foot. He wouldn’t escape so easily this time.

  “Did you know my father?” she demanded as she got out of her car.

  His white head jerked up, mouth twisting into a scowl. “Lady, I’m just trying to get my work done.”

  “I know, and I won’t take up much more of your time. Just tell me. Please. You knew . . . ?” She swallowed and decided to hope for the best. “You knew Peter?”

  “Yeah,” he said without hesitation, and the sick, heavy knot in her stomach untangled itself. At least her father was real.

  “My dad,” she rasped, then cleared her throat to try to make it work again. “My dad was a good man.”

  Joe shrugged. “He was all right. Better than the old guy, at any rate.”

  “How so?”

  He locked the shed and grabbed a box of tools from the ground, his eyes sliding over everything but her. “This was all a long time ago. It was none of my business then, and it’s none of my business now.”

  “My mother . . . she was one of those people who came here to crash? A friend of yours, maybe?”

  He stared a long time, his gray eyebrows sinking lower and lower. In the end he shook his head and spun on his heel to head toward the back of the house.

  “Just tell me her name!” Hannah called. “Please! Do you at least know her name?”

  Joe stopped. His shoulders dipped a little lower, and he shook his head again, as if he were reminding himself not to answer. But then his back rose on a deep breath, and he lifted his head to stare toward the trees. “She called herself Rain. That’s all I ever knew about her. She wasn’t part of my group, and I didn’t come over he
re much at the end.”

  He started walking again, but Hannah stumbled after him. “Do you know when she left?”

  “No!” he snapped, waving a hand as if she were a horsefly that needed shooing. “Now leave me the hell alone before you really piss me off.”

  She did. She stopped, locking her knees so she rocked a little as she watched him hurry away. But she wasn’t really seeing him. Instead, she pictured a beautiful, willowy woman named Rain with a gaze that followed Peter Smith too closely. A mouth that smiled easily. Skin dark from the traveling sun.

  “Rain.” The name made her laugh. Of course it was Rain. It had either been that or Butterfly or Clover or something, right? Rain. Short for Rainbow, maybe. Hannah’s real mother.

  It was perfect, aside from the fact that it probably wasn’t her real name. Oh, well. Fake or not, it was a hell of a lot more than she’d had before.

  After a day like today, Hannah needed someone to talk to, so she drove her car back to the cabin and left it there to hike to the roadhouse. Joe was weird and pissy, but he didn’t seem too dangerous, even if his styling choices were a little too close to Charles Manson’s.

  When she walked into the roadhouse, she couldn’t stop her stupid grin at the sight of Gabriel at the bar. It was really, really good to see a friendly face, especially one that smiled back when he spotted her.

  It was just past five thirty, so a few people had gathered at the roadhouse for dinner already. She’d noticed that Big Sur shut down pretty early, probably because the highway’s dips and turns were a menace in the dark. Despite the early dinner crowd, her seat at the bar was open, as if it had been waiting for her. “Hey,” she said as she slid onto the stool.

  “Hey, yourself. Did you find any good clues today?”

  “Maybe. If you buy me a drink, I’ll give you the juicy details.”

  His eyes crinkled with amusement as he reached for a glass. “Old-fashioned?” he asked.

  “Definitely. Thank you.”

  Today the plaid of his button-down was white and pale blue and gray, and the open collar glowed against his skin. She stared at the hollow of his neck for a moment, imagining that she could tuck herself just there in bed. Listen to his heartbeat, the steadiness of it drowning out everything she didn’t want to know about her life.