ALSO BY EMILY BLEEKER
Wreckage
When I’m Gone
Working Fire
The Waiting Room
What It Seems
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. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Text copyright © 2021 by Emily Bleeker
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: 9781542027205
ISBN-10: 1542027209
Cover design by Rex Bonomelli
For the real Evelyn—
thank you for letting me tell your story.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
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
CHAPTER 18
CHAPTER 19
CHAPTER 20
CHAPTER 21
CHAPTER 22
CHAPTER 23
CHAPTER 24
CHAPTER 25
CHAPTER 26
CHAPTER 27
CHAPTER 28
CHAPTER 29
CHAPTER 30
CHAPTER 31
CHAPTER 32
CHAPTER 33
CHAPTER 34
CHAPTER 35
CHAPTER 36
CHAPTER 37
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
CHAPTER 1
Hannah hit “Send” and closed out of her email inbox, checking her dingy mug for one last stale mouthful of coffee. The empty cup clanked when she plopped it back on her desk. She sighed and then cringed, her breath sour even to herself.
Another article about nearly nothing for a weekly paper in small-town Mississippi. Just what she’d always dreamed about as a journalism student at Northwestern University. She chuckled somberly at her private joke. But if she let herself think about her life too long, it did sound like a joke, even if it was a gloomy one.
One year ago, she was writing for the Chicago Tribune’s community section, delving into things she was passionate about, like the outbreak of heroin usage at affluent suburban high schools and the negotiation tactics used in the hotly debated CPS teacher strike. It wasn’t just the story, but also chasing the story that had been addictive, fulfilling. Hannah sighed again. And now, she was sweating through her T-shirt at the beginning of November, working in a small newsroom in Senatobia, Mississippi, where the two most exciting parts of her day were when Dolores would put on a new pot of coffee in the afternoon and when Hannah got to go home.
But Dolores left for a doctor’s appointment after lunch, and there was still an hour until Monty would even think about locking up, which meant killing time as the sun was finally setting.
The pinks and oranges of the sunset made the dusty, ancient newsroom look nothing like her formerly brilliant real world of assignments and deadlines, of her boyfriend and parties and potential futures and life. She now lived in all the moments in between, in a suffocating monotony that briefly lifted when she could stalk social media for a peek of the fall colors in Millennium Park or the snow flurries crowding the headlights during rush hour on Michigan Avenue. She missed home. And she missed . . . him.
Alex. Hannah clicked on his Facebook profile for the tenth time that day. Thank God no one had cracked the code that would unveil all the amateur stalkers the internet had fostered over the years because she’d certainly be on a watch list by now. But Hannah had woken up next to that face for six years, nine months, and fourteen days. She’d kissed his shoulder when he was still asleep after a late shift and whispered “I love you” before she left for work. She’d held him in her arms when a toddler bled out in his ER after being hit by a stray bullet. And, damn it, she’d taken that photo he was still using as his profile pic nearly a year after he’d moved out of her house and into the arms of a young, perky resident who “gets me like you never did.”
But she couldn’t stop looking, even if every picture reminded her of how Alex smirked when they’d locked eyes in a speech class at Northwestern eight years ago. And the little scar above his lip made her remember what it felt like to kiss him. Even when it hurt to see the engagement ring she’d always longed for sparkling on someone else’s hand. Sure, her work and personal life had fallen apart around her while she obsessed over Alex, but that was the punch line to her not-so-funny-after-all existence, wasn’t it?
“Ms. Williamson.” Mr. Montgomery Martin, round-bellied, silver-haired editor and owner of the Tate County Record, stood in front of Hannah’s desk, glaring at a single page of printer paper.
“Yes, Mr. Martin?” Hannah minimized her browser tab without glancing at her screen like a pro. A pro stalker? Damn it. The joke got less funny every minute.
“Please be sure to call on sources in the future. Ms. Lou Ann Delany is spelled with a space between the Lou and the Ann.” He wiped at the white crust that always seemed to be at the corner of his mouth like he’d just had his way with a glazed donut. But Hannah never saw a donut. Not once. He continued in his thick but dignified southern drawl. “And no e at the end of Ann. She’d have a full-on hissy fit if it went to print this way.”
He dropped the overly reddened page on the keyboard in front of Hannah. It didn’t take that much ink to make a straightforward name correction, but Monty had made it his personal mission to keep his newest and totally overqualified employee humble. She could point out that he’d been the one to take down the initial incident report with the no-space name and the superfluous e, and she could pull out the email and prove it, but what was the use? She wasn’t trying to impress Monty Martin—she was trying to survive him until Mamaw Mable recovered from her fall and Hannah figured out what to do with the rest of her suddenly sidetracked life.
Then again, Mamaw hardly needed her help now with all the supports she had in place even prior to Hannah’s arrival in Senatobia. As soon as her full-time housekeeper, Carla, introduced the night nurse and the day nurse and reviewed the daily schedule of activities that already seemed to be keeping Mamaw’s world afloat, Hannah knew that “helping” her grandmother was really her mother’s attempt to get her off the couch and out of her lingering depression. The first step in her mom’s multistep plan to get old Hannah back after losing her boyfriend, job, father, and sanity all in a matter of a few months.
“Sounds good,” Hannah muttered, glancing mournfully at her empty coffee mug. Caffeine was required to deal with a micromanaging Monty, who was still standing in front of her desk. She rearranged her keyboard and the edited page of writing, but he didn’t seem to get the message.
He was still there—staring.
“Uh—do you . . . do you want to watch me fix it?” she guessed, stuttering, lost on how to relate to the sixty-something walking stereotype.
“No. I think you can apply those corrections on your own time,” Monty said, slinging his thumbs through the belt loops. “I have a mo
re pressing assignment for you.”
So help me, if he says anything about cats—
Mrs. Mulvaney had been in today to tell the story of her miraculous cat being hit by a car eight separate times and still surviving. What was this, the National Enquirer?
Monty pointed to a green door to the right of her desk. The water cooler sat half in front of the opening and half against the wall by the back window.
“Down there is the basement,” he said, like everything suddenly made sense. “Once it’s cleaned out, I’m gonna rent out the space to Tonya Sellers for her weddin’ dress shop. Now, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I’m not much of a computer fella.” Hannah had to hold back a smirk at what Monty’s idea of a “computer fella” must be. “But somebody needs to get all those archives backed up on the internet so I can get that place cleaned out.”
Shit. Hannah’s smugness dropped. That was her new assignment—grunt work. She rushed to interject.
“Monty, don’t you think Dolores could—”
Monty cut her off. “Dolores is sixty-six years old and has two bad knees. She’s not making it up and down those stairs. I can barely get down there, and I’m—”
“How about Terry or Carl or—”
“Miss Williamson.” Monty slammed his massive fist on the corner of the desk, rattling her mug, waking up her computer screen, and startling Hannah into silence. “This is not a debate. You are the most junior member of this staff, and I’ve given you an assignment. You will continue to write the traffic column and start digitizing the archives in the basement. I trust you can manage both responsibilities?”
He said it like he wasn’t sure she could handle any assignments, much less the two completely inane tasks now on her plate.
I should quit, she thought. I should stand up right now, grab my mug, tear up Ms. Lou Ann (with a space and no e) Delany’s fender-bender article, and storm out the door.
She could go home to Chicago and reclaim her spot on her mother’s couch, where she’d been hiding for the past six months since her dad was sent home with hospice care to die in his own bed, her mom echoing that his premature decline was likely “for the best” so he wouldn’t be in pain any longer, and Hannah wanting to scream every time she said it. After he passed away, four months ago, she tried texting Alex for support, but he didn’t reply. That night she ended up telling her mom the tears were because she missed her dad, when they were also for “that asshole Alex,” as her mom liked to call him.
The minimized profile at the bottom of her screen caught her eye. She couldn’t go back to Chicago and live in the same city where she fell in love, continually touring the landmarks of her heartbreak. And there was Mamaw Mable, with two broken ankles and a heart that had suffered the harsh pain of standing at the edge of the deep holes she had to put her husband and two sons inside. So she didn’t need Hannah to wash her hair or change her bedpan or make meals, but Hannah and her brother, Brody, and his two kids were the only living relatives left in Mamaw’s life and the only tie to her children, who had both preceded her in death. Hannah just existing helped her sweet, lonely grandmother make it through each day. She swallowed and wrestled her mouth into a smile.
“Yes, sir,” she muttered, out of options. Just like Chicago reminded Hannah of Alex, Senatobia reminded Mamaw of everyone she’d lost—but unlike Hannah, Mamaw craved the blanket of memories from her life, and kept them gathered around her in this town. And the small Mississippi town provided Hannah with a hideaway from the garbage heap she’d created over the past year. So she wasn’t leaving—not yet. Mamaw could heal, and Hannah could keep herself hidden and her mother semi-satisfied with Hannah’s job at the Record.
“That’s a good girl,” Monty said, like he was praising his golden retriever. She’d seen people written up for less at the Trib, but the Record didn’t exactly have an HR department. “I had Terry bring the PC down there and hook it up to the scanner. I’ll send you an email with all the details.” He looked at his watch and wiped at the corners of his mouth again. “You know what? It’s too late to get started tonight, so why don’t you get on home.”
“Really?” she blurted, straightening her back and clenching her knees together. Monty rarely let anyone go home early without a doctor’s note or docking sick days.
“Yes, ma’am. I mean after you fix those errors, of course, and”—he glanced around the office and slipped his other meaty thumb out of his belt loop, pointing to a stack of boxes by the door to the basement—“carry those boxes over there downstairs, and then you can go. They’ll need to be sorted and scanned along with everything else. Might as well keep it all in one place.”
“Okay,” Hannah squeaked, hoping that was the end of the list, or “going home early” would undoubtedly become “working late.”
“I’ll be on a call with Momma, so you can just slide your revision under the door when you go.” Momma was what Monty called his wife. It creeped Hannah out, but no one else was bothered by the undertones of that nickname.
“I could, uh, email it.” She offered the most apparent solution while fiddling with her mouse to make the screen saver of bouncing lines disappear.
“That’s fine.” He sighed and then asked the question he always brought up whenever there was an awkward moment of silence. “So . . . how’s your grammy?”
“Better each day,” Hannah answered succinctly, practicing some of the shallow pleasantries that veiled most southern interactions. She opened the traffic report as Monty chatted.
“You know your grandmother used to write for the Record back when it was still the Tate County Democrat. She was also teaching at the community college . . .”
“Yes, I think I heard that somewhere,” Hannah said, somehow withholding any touch of sarcasm as she highlighted the errors in Lou Ann’s name. She didn’t mean to be rude, but Monty had told this story three times in the past four weeks, and Hannah still hadn’t figured out how to stop him once he got rolling. Saving the document, she glanced up briefly at the line of analog clocks above the front door, labeled by country as though the Tate County Record dealt in international affairs. Precious seconds ticked away in unison.
“That was back when it was still a girls’ college. My daddy taught there too. Said half the teachers on staff were in love with Miss Mable Patton. Before she married your papaw, of course, and had your daddy . . .”
Hannah’s throat tightened. She dreaded this part of the story, when Monty tried to talk about her dad. Like just because they went to high school together, he could make jokes about his “odd” laugh or how half the school thought he was a “homosexual.” The phone rang in Monty’s office.
“Oh, that’ll be Momma,” he said, waving Hannah off apologetically, as though she’d been an anxious participant in his story time.
Thank God for Momma.
Hannah hit “Send” on her email, tossed the edited page into the recycling bin under her desk, and logged out, seeing her escape window. She clicked off the monitor and looped her worn gray messenger bag over her head, letting it hang listlessly at her side.
Nowadays it was a glorified lunch bag that held little more than snacks, an occasional library book, and a tauntingly empty notebook, but she couldn’t seem to break the habit of taking it wherever she went.
“Oh, Miss Williamson!” Hannah froze midstep.
“Yes, Mr. Martin?” she asked in a sugary way without turning around, using her “southern belle” filter. If Mamaw wouldn’t say it, she shouldn’t say it. She glanced back at Monty, who was pointing with one hand and clenching the receiver to his ear with the other, phone cord stretched to its limit. “Don’t forget those boxes.”
“Why I’d never,” Hannah whispered in an exaggerated Scarlett O’Hara southern accent and pushed in her desk chair, eyeing the stack of dusty brown-and-white file boxes.
“Speak louder, dear,” Monty called.
Hannah flinched at the inappropriate endearment and shouted back, “I’ve got it, Mr. Mar
tin! Thank you!”
She grabbed the first two boxes off the tower, which must’ve been enough to convince him of her cooperation because he muttered something into the receiver and closed the door to his office without any further instructions.
So this is my life, she thought, balancing the boxes on her hip while twisting the cold metal knob to the basement door. It took an extra yank, but when it opened, the ancient, glossy topcoat crackled, hinges screeching in protest. When she turned on the bare light bulb nestled in the ceiling, a set of gray painted wooden stairs with a worn brown trail down the center pointed her in the direction of the archives. The stairs creaked loudly with each step like they were about to crumble beneath her, the musty scent of old books and mildewed plaster growing stronger the farther she descended.
On the other side of the room, there was an additional set of stairs that led to the street, blocked by a row of filing cabinets. As Hannah rounded the shadowy corner of the staircase, she could sense the clutter of tall towers of boxes like the ones in her arms, even in the dimness. When she clicked the light switch with her elbow, a series of hanging bulbs flicked on, swinging ever so slightly on long cords like the electricity had set them in motion.
“Damn it,” Hannah cursed, nearly dropping her cargo as the room came into focus. Virtually the whole fourteen-by-eighteen-foot space was filled with files. The walls were lined with shoulder-high filing cabinets, each with four legal-size drawers. The middle of the room consisted of three rows of the same cabinets, back to back, all with dusty filing boxes stacked on top till they nearly touched the light fixtures. The aisles between them were similarly stuffed, scarcely leaving a footpath of bare cement down each row. Only a small desk in the back corner looked freshly tidied, a computer and printer set neatly on its surface.
This is going to take forever.
Her arms ached, but there were no clear spots in any of the aisles. The desk. Hannah wiggled her way toward the only open spot in the room on her tiptoes, twisting her hips from one side to another. Halfway down the aisle, focused solely on finding a place to step where there were no papers to trample—bam. Her hip caught the corner of a half-closed drawer, and stars flashed in front of her eyes.
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