Alex: You awake?
Hannah’s pulse whooshed in her ears, and a sweaty flush broke out on her neck and chest. Guy’s text came in on top of Alex’s notification, followed in rapid succession by three more, but Hannah couldn’t stop staring at Alex’s simple You awake?
She opened the app and swiped Guy’s name to the right and touched “Hide Alerts” so they weren’t distracting. A little crescent moon appeared, and the notifications for his communications went silent. Then she touched Alex’s name, fear and anticipation a sweet cocktail of emotions that rushed through her veins, halting every other thought process that didn’t have to do with that one sentence: You awake?
Hannah: Yeah.
Hannah responded simply, still not sure how safe it was to open up.
Alex: There you are.
I just got to my hotel. It’s official. I’m in Memphis.
Hotel. In Memphis. This was real. He was actually following through. She’d been counting down in the back of her mind but not letting herself believe he would really come—that she would really see him again.
Hannah: Where are you staying?
Alex: The Peabody. Full of local flair. Did you know they have ducks in here?
Hannah’s lips twitched, wanting to smile but so very afraid of letting it happen.
Hannah: Yeah, I’ve heard.
Alex: I mean, I knew things were backward down here, but poultry in the lobby was surprising, even with all the stories your dad used to tell.
Hannah wasn’t sure what hit her harder—Alex’s casual mention of her father or his snarky comment about a town he’d set foot in just an hour earlier. Part of Hannah wanted to say: Don’t talk about my dad. You didn’t even come to his funeral. Or: If you want to see backward, look at how you started your new relationship—but she didn’t want to fight. Not today, not when she was about to get the one thing she’d been craving since she walked into her apartment and saw an unknown pair of women’s running shoes piled up at the front door. A chance to see him again and maybe find a way to make sense of what went wrong.
Hannah: It’s not so bad here once you get used to it.
Alex: Seriously? I never thought I’d hear you say that.
So—does that mean you’re going to stay here long-term?
Long-term? Three months ago she’d never, ever considered staying longer than it took to get Mamaw back on her feet and for Alex to get married without her around. But now, with her new room nearly finished, and the Evelyn story coming together, even with its bumps in the road, and not to mention how much she’d miss Mamaw and Carla and Rosie and even Guy . . .
Hannah: Undecided.
Alex: Damn. You’re serious.
Hannah: Yeah, pretty serious.
Thinking bubbles started and stopped several times. When his next message came in, the tears that she’d stopped at the end of Evelyn’s last letter came back, wetting her cheeks and sending a little sob through her chest, like she was trying to get air but couldn’t.
Alex: I can’t wait to see you tomorrow.
And then, when she didn’t respond:
Alex: I miss you.
There it was, right in front of her eyes—the words she’d hoped to see every time she picked up her phone and checked the lock screen for messages. Every time she checked her email or direct messages on social media. I miss you.
But now that she saw them, all she could think was: How dare he miss me? He’d chosen to leave and destroy their stable and happy life. She knew she should tell him off, say all the swear words, and then block him everywhere. But she couldn’t go back to the despair, couldn’t douse that place inside her that only lit up when he was in her life. She knew she might regret it; she knew she was being disloyal to the woman he’d hurt without so much as an explanation, but she couldn’t help herself. She typed her next message quickly and hit “Send” before she could change her mind.
Hannah: I miss you too.
CHAPTER 24
Running late, Hannah rushed past Mamaw as she ate her breakfast at the kitchen table like she always did, slowly and in phases that started with coffee and proceeded through toast, bacon, and eventually some variety of eggs. But today, Hannah had helped her out of bed early and gotten her dressed in slacks and a baby-blue blouse before leaving her sitting at her vanity to do her makeup.
Usually, Mamaw’s mornings were slow and assisted by Nancy, but Mr. Davenport was coming for breakfast today, and that changed everything. He now sat at the chair beside her, wearing a sport coat at eight thirty in the morning.
“Good mornin’, darlin’,” Mamaw called cheerfully from the table. Now that Mamaw was more mobile, her sweet, melodic twang, which blurred the sharp edges of life, would seep into her overloaded mind and calm it when she least expected it.
“Hey! Good morning, Mamaw!” Hannah said, kissing Mamaw’s cheek as she chewed her second-to-last bite of her breakfast, pretending that she hadn’t spent the morning helping her prepare for her boyfriend’s visit. “Mr. Davenport, you’re here early.”
“Your grandmother invited me for a good ole southern breakfast, and how could I refuse?” Mr. Davenport was a nice gentleman, as far as Hannah could tell. Most important, he made Mamaw happy and treated her well.
“Mamaw, look what I’ve got for you!” Hannah dug around in her jacket pocket and dangled the keys to the Buick in front of Mamaw.
“Oh! My sweet girl! Thank you so much.” Her eyes lit up in genuine excitement. “Would you be a dear and put them on the hook by the back door? I probably won’t be needing them anytime soon, but I’m such a loon I’ll lose them otherwise.” She pointed an arthritic finger at a row of small hooks screwed into the wall by the door to the garage. Hannah already knew of the key graveyard that existed there and gladly replaced Mamaw’s set on the only available hook.
“Don’t let her fool you, Mr. Davenport. She’ll be taking that monstrosity for a spin once she gets these boots off, won’t you, Mable?” Carla exited the kitchen, faded apron already tied in place, with a giant plate of food in her hands, addressing Hannah. “Why don’t you try eating a real breakfast for once?” she asked, placing enough food to feed three farmhands on the table at Hannah’s usual spot.
“Sorry, Carla, I don’t have time this morning, I’m running hella late,” she said, snatching a piece of bacon and not even taking the time to apologize for swearing. “And Mamaw, you shouldn’t thank me, you should thank Guy. I don’t know how to unclog a toilet, much less install a carburetor and whatever kind of belt he put in there.”
“Yes, of course. Let me know how much I owe him, and I’ll write a check. Carla, can you make sure the check gets to the Franklin child?” she said, sounding very official. Hannah liked seeing glimpses of what Mamaw must’ve been like in her younger years. She’d become so timid in her old age, a sweet old grandmother, but there were times when Hannah could see the spunk that had been there before the years and the grief in her life dragged her down.
“I don’t think he’s gonna let you pay him, Mamaw. I asked him last night, and he said it was ‘on the house.’”
“I knew that boy was sweet on you,” Carla said, shoving the plate toward where Hannah was standing. She took another piece of bacon and then pushed it back.
“Guy? Oh God, no.” Hannah rejected Carla’s suggestion, not because there wasn’t a part of her that also wondered if it was true, but because with Alex coming into town she didn’t have space in her life for another confusing situation with a man.
Carla’s lips smacked at the name of the Lord being used in vain, before taking the plate back into the kitchen.
Hannah still hadn’t figured out what everyone’s problem with swearing was. “I mean, goodness, no.” The sarcasm was so thick that even sweet little Mamaw would be able to pick up on it.
“He is, I’m sure of it,” Carla said.
“Carla! Stop!” Hannah said, not only out of embarrassment at the discussion of her nonexistent love life but because when she fina
lly looked at his messages this morning, she found that she’d missed ten or so texts about the pages she’d sent before getting distracted by Alex.
“His little girl is darling,” Mamaw said to Mr. Davenport.
“She is beautiful and so, so smart,” Hannah said, filling an empty glass with the orange juice. Hannah had always wanted kids of her own one day and loved her rowdy and snuggly nephews, but the experience of getting to know Rosie was entirely different. She was excited to see her and hear her worldview, and found it impossible not to cheer for everything she did. Hannah was starting to wonder if this was what it felt like, in some tiny way, to be a parent.
“I think the feeling is mutual. She thinks you hung the moon and the stars,” Carla agreed, her voice echoing out of the kitchen, where a ceramic scraping made Hannah cringe at how much food she’d just wasted.
“She truly is adorable. She brought me my tea yesterday, and I am always surprised to see how very light-skinned she is. Her daddy is mixed,” she said to Mr. Davenport, “but she must take after her momma. She could almost pass for white if she got her hair straightened.”
Hannah’s hands paused midpour. She knew it wasn’t fair to assume that a woman born in the 1930s in Mississippi would develop without some of the prejudicial brainwashing Hannah’s father had moved north to avoid, but, to be honest, Hannah had never heard Mamaw say a nasty word about anyone, regardless of race. It made her feel like when Brody would jump onto her side of the trampoline, shaking the surface and making her fall down.
“Mamaw, that’s not an appropriate thing to say,” Hannah murmured low, hoping Carla hadn’t heard.
“What, dear?” she said, sipping at her glass of juice, seemingly ignorant of the underlying prejudice in her assessment of Rosie’s whiteness. Mr. Davenport was uncharacteristically mute.
“Guy and Rosie don’t care about looking white. That’s not a thing anymore. And what if Carla hears you?”
“Oh, I’m sorry, hun,” she said, putting down her glass and licking her lips, looking sincerely surprised. “I meant no offense. She’s a lovely girl, either way. And Carla doesn’t mind. She knows who I am.”
“I know, Mamaw,” Hannah said with a touch of compassion. Mamaw was ninety-one years old. She and Papaw had voted for JFK and other pro-integration candidates when segregation was a hot-button and revolutionary topic. Mamaw was the first teacher to volunteer to teach in an integrated classroom at Senatobia High. And Hannah’s father had always said that their quiet stance against the rampant injustices of their time was what sculpted his outlook on life.
But the idea of what looked progressive had changed in the past since she was young, and some things that were revolutionary in her time were outdated nearly three-quarters of a century later. But then Hannah remembered the tree, Guy’s magnolia tree, and that fence that was stuck inside it and his reminder that it wasn’t about her feelings or even Mamaw’s. It was about what was right.
“But he’s my”—she searched for the right word—“he’s my friend. So I want you to get to know him.”
“Oh,” she said passively, chewing suspiciously slowly. She swallowed and spoke unhurriedly, as though she were picking out words one at a time, like weeds. “That’s sweet of you, dear. I’m glad you are making friends, but I think you might be careful about giving him the—the wrong idea.”
“The wrong idea? Mamaw, we are just friends.” Hannah repeated Mamaw’s phrasing, feeling like she was fourteen-year-old Evelyn being scolded for liking a boy and threatened with being sent to a convent. “And you asked him to help me.”
“When I asked him to help you those few times, I didn’t know you two would hit it off. Then again, you are a pretty girl, and he seems to prefer white women, probably because his mother was white, God rest her soul. Good woman. Friends with your father growing up—”
“Mamaw!” Hannah shouted, making the frail woman jump in her seat, hands shaking like she was being held at gunpoint. Carla walked in from the kitchen, her features hardened like when Hannah tracked in mud after riding through a puddle.
“Didn’t you say you needed to get to work?” Carla snapped, and Hannah couldn’t figure out what she’d done wrong. Guy was her friend, and Rosie was a perfect little person if she ever had met one. Wasn’t this the right time for outrage? Hannah checked her watch—it was past 8:30 a.m., which meant Monty had already been in the office half an hour, and Hannah was wasting precious minutes of her last day in the archives. Mamaw had recovered from her shock, and Hannah dipped down to give her another kiss on the cheek.
“I love you, Mamaw,” she said, not knowing what else to say at that moment.
“I love you too, darlin’,” she replied, caressing Hannah’s face and giving her a sideways air-kiss in return.
Hannah rushed out to the garage, pushed the button that opened the automatic door, and was wrestling her bike off the wall when Mr. Davenport peeked his head full of white hair outside.
“I’m supposed to be telling you about dinner tonight, but Hannah”—he stood on the top step of the wooden stairs, grasping the doorknob to steady himself—“be nice to your grandma. She’s a good woman who’s done lots of kind things in her life. She’s sitting in there crying after you scolded her.”
Hannah dropped the bike onto the cement floor, where it bounced back at her, cracking her hip with the handlebars. She winced, annoyed at her misstep with the bike, annoyed that she was running late because she’d let herself stay up past midnight pretending she could still be friends with Alex, annoyed that she never did anything right in anyone’s eyes.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Davenport. I don’t mean her any disrespect, but if it hurts Mamaw’s feelings, how do you think Guy or Carla feel hearing little things like that?”
“She’s an old woman. She has love in her heart, not hate. Carla knows that, don’t you think?”
“Carla does, I agree.” She knew better than anyone that Mamaw was good to the core. “But I’m sorry, I don’t think it’s right for me to say nothing. Guy and Rosie are important to me. Mamaw is important to me. Carla is important to me. I don’t see the issue.” Hannah got on her bike and adjusted her center of gravity until she could balance without wobbling.
“I can see that Mr. Franklin and his girl have found a special place in your life, and often you need to use a stone to quash such situations. But other times a feather is just as useful,” Mr. Davenport professed like he was quoting a proverb.
“Maybe,” Hannah said. Mr. Davenport didn’t move, like he was waiting for Hannah to say more. He was a retired minister and seemed to have a heart that matched Mamaw’s in patience. She straddled her bike, not wanting to have this conversation with this new man in Mamaw’s life. “Goodbye, Mr. Davenport.”
“Oh, Hannah?” Mr. Davenport called after her. Hannah used the hand brakes to slow her descent down the driveway and called back over her shoulder.
“Yeah?”
“Carla told me to ask if your young man will be joining you for Thanksgiving?”
Hannah let go of her brakes and sped away from the house, her only answer to Carla’s question getting lost in the wind.
“He’s not MY young man!”
CHAPTER 25
“Okay, I’ll see what I can find in regard to her last name. Her first is Evelyn,” Hannah said into her phone, keeping her volume to a minimum outside the Record.
“And you’ll get me that information before I head to the Pines tomorrow?” Peter Dawson asked. He’d called to set up the final details of their meetup. She was supposed to see him tomorrow before meeting up with Alex, and she had promised to get him the rest of Evelyn’s information in time for his visit to the Pines that same day.
“I’ll do my best,” Hannah said, whispering now. Monty could pop out from any corner, and if he found out about her ongoing investigation, she’d likely be fired.
“Sounds fun. I can’t wait to see you again,” he said, in a low voice. Hannah cringed at the compliment, not because she
found Peter distasteful so much as she hated how often he attempted to smooth-talk her.
“Talk soon. Goodbye,” was all she could force without feeling like she was accepting his compliments, which would’ve been weird. Then again, everything felt slightly off after her somewhat tense conversation on her way out the door, and getting to work late, where the final nail in the “this is going to be a shitty day” coffin was finally getting ready to dig into the archives for the last time and finding the door to the basement locked.
“Damn it,” she cursed between clamped teeth, pounding a fist on the hollow metal door, resting her forehead against the rough green paint. “Has Monty been in?” Hannah shouted over her shoulder to Dolores, who was sitting dutifully at her desk like a good little secretary.
“No, no. I haven’t heard from him just yet.”
“Do you happen to have the key to the basement?” Hannah asked, without turning around, her shouts reverberating off the door and back into her face.
“No, dear. It’s in his desk.”
“Do you have a key to his office, then?” she called out.
“No, dear,” she said again.
“Figures,” she grumbled, catapulting herself across the room and tossing herself into her desk chair, defeated.
Her mug was empty—again. She’d already had three cups that morning, and even with the slightly metallic aftertaste of Dolores’s best coffee-making efforts, Hannah was ready for another. She’d stayed up far too late texting with Alex last night, and in the light of day she still wasn’t sure if it was entirely a good idea or not.
They’d caught up on the basics of the past several months—his job advancements and new apartment—while skipping the details of his relationship and upcoming marriage. And then covered her move to Mississippi and the loss of her father while leaving out the debilitating depression, job loss, and stint at the psych ward. It had been the filtered Facebook version of her life and his, which left Hannah feeling anxious about meeting him face-to-face. She couldn’t live up to the “normal” person she’d been in the past. It was impossible.
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