by Ana Barrons
“Yeah.” It came out as a whisper. “How about you?” Christ, she was the one whose mother had been murdered, and she was worrying about him?
“I don’t remember it,” she said simply, and continued to watch him, but he was afraid to say more or to reach across and touch her. He rolled up the window and focused on breathing normally, but the weight on his heart was so oppressive that it was a struggle to fill his lungs. The air simply felt too heavy.
“John?” Her tone left no doubt she knew he was in pain and she was reaching out because she couldn’t do anything else—even for someone as contemptible as he. If he spoke now she would hear the aching in his chest, and he was ashamed to expose himself that way. Besides, the lump in his throat was too large for words to pass through.
He shook his head.
She squeezed his shoulder and began to rub it gently. Up ahead a small white sign read Welcome to Historic Marblehead.
Five minutes later he pulled the car into the parking lot of a diner and cut the engine. The place was mercifully uncrowded at nine in the morning. They ordered coffee and eggs with toast and home fries and a couple of large juices, and then took turns using the restrooms. John splashed cold water on his face and stared at his reflection in the mirror. His eyes were bloodshot, his jaw dark with whiskers, his thick hair lank and dirty. He tried to remember the last time he looked and felt so damn bad, but he couldn’t.
They didn’t talk during breakfast or in the car on the way to the B&B he’d booked, which was actually a lovely Victorian home on Front Street. Mrs. Farnum, the innkeeper, a small woman in her early seventies, looked John over unabashedly when he walked into the foyer, taking in the scruffy face and hair. He hoped he didn’t smell. Then she looked past him to where Hannah still sat in the car.
“You folks been on the road awhile?” she asked, her eyes on Hannah.
“Had a very long night last night. I hope we can check in right away. We both need a shower and a long nap.”
“The room’s ready for you. There’s a foldout couch in the sitting room, like I told you, but I suppose if it’s just you and your wife…”
He didn’t have the energy to correct her misapprehension. “I’m a terrible snorer and it keeps her awake. Is the other bed made up?”
She nodded, squinting at Hannah, who had stepped out of the car and stood there, dazed, looking around the yard. John walked outside and grabbed both bags out of the trunk, and they entered the house together. Mrs. Farnum didn’t take her eyes off Hannah. Hannah offered her hand, and the woman took it and held it.
“We’ve met,” the woman said. “But I can’t remember your name.”
Hannah seemed startled for a moment. “I don’t think so, Mrs…”
“Farnum. Gloria Farnum. Oh, yes, I know we’ve met. I never forget a face.”
“I haven’t been here since I was a child.”
“Can we go to our room now, Mrs. Farnum?” John interjected.
Hannah glared at him. “Room?”
“It’s a suite,” Mrs. Farnum said. “So your husband’s snoring won’t keep you awake.”
Hannah gave him a scathing look.
“There’s only the one suite. Only reason it’s available on a Sunday is it’s off-season. In season I’m beating them off with a stick.” She led them up the stairs slowly, one hand on the oak banister and the other on her hip. The steps, like the floors, were slightly uneven.
The suite featured a roomy bedroom with a queen-size bed covered with a colorful quilt. There were lacy curtains in the windows, fresh flowers on every surface in earthy ceramic pots, and braided rugs covering the wide plank floors. In the sitting room were an overstuffed loveseat, a wooden rocker, oak bookcases on two walls and a window overlooking a garden with a long view of the ocean. A large fieldstone fireplace was laid with logs. A small TV sat on a steamer trunk. The place was cozy and charming.
“Bathroom’s through there.” Mrs. Farnum pointed to a closed door off the bedroom. “Don’t put bubbles in the Jacuzzi, they’ll gunk it up. Breakfast’s served between seven and nine downstairs or up here on a tray if you let me know ahead of time. It’s all written down and there’s a phone next to the TV, only local calls if you please.”
“It’s lovely,” Hannah said. “Thank you.”
The woman lingered a moment, studying Hannah. She looked as though she was about to say something, then seemed to think better of it, turned and left the room.
John locked the door behind her and turned to Hannah. “I’ll take the foldout.” He picked up his bag.
Hannah folded her arms across her chest. “There’s only a glass door separating these two rooms.”
“I know, I know.” He held up his palm. “You don’t have to spell it out. Yes, I was hoping you’d change your mind, okay? I was wrong, just like I was wrong about a lot of other things.” He walked toward the sitting room. “I promise not to touch you. Just pretend I’m not here.”
She snorted. “Right. You’re such a diminutive presence. I’ll barely notice you.” She grabbed her bag and stalked into the sitting room, pushing him aside. “I’ll take this bed. There’s no way you’ll fit on a foldout loveseat.”
“No. I’ll be fine. You take the bed.”
“No, goddamn it! Don’t give me a hard time, Daly. I’m taking the goddamn loveseat and you’re taking the bed, so don’t give me any shit about it.”
“Prickly, aren’t we?”
Through the redness, her eyes shone with anger. She banged her suitcase on the floor. “You can really be a horse’s ass sometimes, you know that?”
“So I’ve been told.” He had no idea why he was engaging her. They were both exhausted and on edge, and if he was smart he’d leave her alone. But it was easier to fight with her than feel the aching emptiness of being shut out. He couldn’t stand that.
“Why didn’t you just do what I asked?” she demanded. “I’m sure there are a million single rooms in this town where I could have had my own bathroom and my own bedroom with a door and everything. But no, you do exactly what you want, don’t you? You figured once you got me in here you’d find a way to get me in bed.”
“True.”
She stared at him in disbelief, then threw up her hands and roared in frustration. If she’d grabbed something and thrown it at him just then, he wouldn’t have been surprised. Instead she stomped past him into the bathroom and slammed the door. A minute later he heard the shower go on.
He set his bag down beside the bed, shucked off his jacket, pried off his shoes and collapsed onto his back. He’d just rest while she showered. That would perk him up, and he wouldn’t feel so down.
Lost and alone.
When he was a kid and his mother had pulled into herself, usually with a bottle of gin for company, he would do some stupid thing to make her mad so she’d yell at him, because it was better than getting no attention. He couldn’t stand it when she ignored him. Couldn’t stand it then, couldn’t stand it now.
Hannah stood in the doorway of the bathroom in a soft terry bathrobe she’d found hanging on the door and a large fluffy towel around her wet hair, watching him sleep. He was snoring softly, his mouth open slightly, one hand over his heart and the other flung out to his side.
She rubbed her eyes, which stung from a combination of exhaustion and heartache. If only things were different. If only he were just a writer, like he’d claimed to be. If only he hadn’t lied to her.
If only she didn’t love him so much.
Before she could give in to the urge to curl up beside him, she crossed the bedroom to the sitting room and sat down on the foldout couch, still facing him. She could close the glass doors, but it wouldn’t really shut him out. He had seen to that. And he hadn’t made any bones about hoping to get her in the sack.
Of all the men in the world she could have fallen for, why did it have to be Sam Daly’s son? That thought was followed by one even more troubling.
What if she had spent her life despising an innocent m
an?
She pulled the towel off her head, ran her fingers through her hair and curled up for a short nap.
At first she didn’t understand what she was hearing. A strange whirring had penetrated her sleep, and she surfaced disoriented and irritable. It took her a moment to remember where she was.
She dragged the extra pillow over her head to drown out the sound. Muffled, it sounded less mechanical and more like a wounded animal. Maybe somebody’s dog wanted to be let inside. She hadn’t seen a dog when they arrived, but—
John.
She yanked the pillow off her head and rose up on her elbow. In the next room, John had rolled onto his stomach and was clenching the quilt with his fists. An anguished, gasping moan escaped from his throat, over and over, the sound of a man on the precipice of hell. Hannah scrambled from her bed and ran to him.
“John,” she said, running her hand over his sweaty face. “Wake up.” She climbed onto the bed beside him and kneaded his shoulders. “Wake up, John. You’re dreaming.”
He seemed to be struggling for breath, his face contorted in pain. Hannah began to panic. She tried to roll him onto his side, but he wouldn’t let go of the quilt.
“John, please, wake up.” She lowered her face to his and could feel the heat pouring off him. It made her shiver. “Please wake up. It’s okay.” She ran her hands over his back, his arms, soothing, reassuring. “It’s okay, John. It’s okay.”
Little by little his fists unclenched and the anguished sounds ceased. She lifted his arm enough to squeeze under it and pull his head to her chest. Immediately he rolled onto his side and pulled her closer, letting out a long sigh of relief. She wrapped her arms around his neck and shoulders and held him to her, knowing full well she needed it as badly as he did.
Chapter Twenty-Three
John rang the bell of the Tall Tale Inn and glanced at the pale, lovely woman standing very still beside him. He wished he could see her eyes, see her reaction to being back at the house she had lived in until she was six years old—the house where her mother was murdered.
This morning Hannah had reached in and pulled him from the nightmare that had haunted his adolescence, and let him cling to her like the devastated, frightened boy he’d been. They had dozed off, wrapped in each other’s arms, and he had allowed himself to believe he hadn’t lost her. But as soon as they woke up, she pulled back into herself. Mrs. Farnum had served them coffee and blueberry muffins in the parlor downstairs and left them alone, but John had caught her watching Hannah from the hallway. If Hannah had been bothered by it, she gave no sign, but she had opted to wear sunglasses when they ventured outside, in spite of the gloomy weather.
Inside the inn, a dog was barking its head off. Seconds later the door was opened by a tall woman, probably in her forties, with salt-and-pepper hair cut short, wire-rimmed glasses and an expression somewhere between reserved and indifferent. She shushed the dog, an old yellow lab that had obviously been overfed and underwalked.
“Afternoon,” John said, flashing her a smile that never failed to get one in return.
It took her a moment, but finally the woman smiled back. “Can I help you folks?”
“Do you have any vacancies?”
“For tonight?”
“Yes.”
“I believe we do,” the woman said, and stepped aside.
John touched Hannah’s arm and gestured for her to go in ahead of him. Head down and still wearing the sunglasses, she made a small sound and nodded at the woman. They stepped into the foyer.
Hannah kept her sunglasses on while John signed the registration book and chatted with the innkeeper, Mrs. Stockton, about the weather, the tourists, the history of Marblehead and how the Stocktons came to be running the inn. When they had first pulled up the driveway to the house, a large nineteenth-century Georgian-style home, Hannah had felt a prickle of recognition. But it was all wrong. This house was painted a soft, buttery yellow. The house she remembered was blue. Wasn’t it?
She turned away from the others before pulling off her sunglasses, and did a slow scan of her surroundings. Her mouth had gone dry, her breathing shallow. It had to be the right house—surely the FBI had accurate background information on her. She took in the oriental rugs, the wide plank floors, the antique desk and tables in the spacious foyer. It was off, all of it. She knew that for certain, but she didn’t know how she knew it.
“You okay?” John had come up behind her and had his hand on her elbow.
She felt self-conscious, knowing the innkeeper would hear everything they said. “It’s not quite right,” she said quietly.
He rubbed a hand down her arm. “Let’s check into our room and then we can look around. I explained to Mrs. Stockton,” he said, nodding at the woman, “that you visited here often as a child and would like to take a peek at the rooms that aren’t occupied.”
Hannah turned to the innkeeper and was grateful for the woman’s unpretentious demeanor. “I’m sorry, I wasn’t paying attention when we first came in. How long have you owned the house?”
“My husband and I took over for my mother about eight years ago, when her arthritis started acting up. She’s eighty-one now, and she doesn’t get around as well as she used to, although she still does all the baking.” She smiled, if one could call the brief and very slight lifting of one corner of her mouth a smile. “My parents bought the house twenty-two years ago this January.”
From my father. “I see. Thank you.”
“Your face is very familiar,” Mrs. Stockton said.
Hannah turned away. “I must have one of those faces.”
John wrapped his arm around her shoulder. “Let’s go on upstairs, honey.”
They were almost to the wide center staircase when Hannah glimpsed an older woman standing in the doorway to the left.
“Good morning,” the woman said.
Hannah turned and smiled. The woman blinked, and then her eyes widened and her hand went to her throat. She took a step back, stricken. Mrs. Stockton cried out in alarm as she rushed to the woman’s side.
“Oh my God, Mom, what happened?”
Hannah knew exactly what had happened, but she just stood there, staring dumbly, barely aware that John had pulled her in closer to his side. “I’m sorry,” she said.
“What did you do?” Mrs. Stockton demanded.
Her mother found her voice, then, but it was shaky. “Good Lord.” She was staring at Hannah. “I thought I’d seen a ghost. Who are you?”
“The ghost’s daughter,” Hannah said.
Mrs. Stockton served them all coffee in a cozy sitting room off the kitchen. Her mother, Eleanor Reed, had recovered quickly from her shock once Hannah identified herself, but from time to time she still turned wide eyes to Hannah, as though she half expected to find Sharon Duncan sitting beside her on the couch rather than Sharon’s daughter.
“I remember seeing you with your mother, Hannah,” Eleanor said as she spooned sugar into her Earl Gray. “She used to take you down to the park by the water. I was taking care of the Clark twins at that time. I don’t know if you remember those two towheads—must have been about the same age as you—Trevor and Colby were their names. Used to throw sand on the big slide and drive the other children crazy.”
Hannah tried to reach back into her memory for blond twins but came up blank. “I don’t remember much from my early childhood,” she said. She had both hands wrapped around the thick mug, trying to chase away the chill in her gut. It was surreal, sitting in this house she had once lived in but could barely remember, drinking tea with a woman who knew more about her early years than she did.
“You were a skinny little thing,” Eleanor said. “Long hair in braids down your back. The picture of your mother, God bless her soul.” She crossed herself quickly, then picked up her tea and settled back against the cushions. “We’d chat sometimes, your mother and I, while we watched you play. I remember how she used to gaze at you, as though she couldn’t believe something so precious belong
ed to her.”
Hannah felt tears prick her eyelids and averted her face to blow on her tea. She had been precious to her mother. She didn’t remember her well, but she remembered feeling loved. A lump was forming in her throat. Would she ever feel loved like that again?
Eleanor patted Hannah’s knee. “The pain never completely goes away, does it, when you lose someone? Especially your mama.”
Hannah couldn’t hold back a sniffle. “No, I guess it doesn’t.”
“Maybe coming back here will give you some closure,” Eleanor said. “Your father moved you out of here in a matter of days after… Didn’t take any of the furniture, and barely anything else.”
Hannah raised her head. “My mother’s things? Did he take those?”
Eleanor shook her head. “Far as I could tell, he left everything of hers just like it was. Clothes left in the closets, makeup, jewelry, even photo albums. Probably couldn’t bear to look at anything that reminded him of—” She stopped short and stared at Hannah.
Hannah saw the shocked comprehension in Eleanor’s eyes, and looked away.
“What did you do with Sharon’s things?” John asked.
“I, uh, well, of course…” Eleanor cleared her throat. “The clothes I boxed up and gave to my sister-in-law, if you want the truth. My brother was out of work, and she was about the same size.”
“It’s okay, Eleanor,” Hannah said, acutely aware of the woman’s embarrassment. “It was the right thing to do. I’m glad someone else was able to use them.”
“Did you save anything?” John persisted.
“I did.” She turned to her daughter. “Are those boxes still up in the attic?”
“Unless Henry did something with them. I didn’t touch them.”
“Would it be all right if we looked through them?”
“Of course,” Eleanor said. “They belong to Hannah, rightfully. You’re welcome to take them with you.”