What's Left Unsaid

by Emily Bleeker

  “I’m fine,” she protested, holding her head.

  “I think you should stop speaking for her.” Alex then spoke to Hannah as though Pete didn’t exist. “Hannah, please. Can I talk to you for five minutes? Alone.”

  Pete started talking again, and then Alex, but Hannah couldn’t focus on any one train of thought, all the words and arguments swirling around her already spinning head.

  One. Two. Three. Four. Five. She counted, but no clarity came bounding into her clouded mind. One. Two. Three. Four. Five. She tried again, but still nothing. When Pete stood up and the volume of Pete and Alex’s discussion grew loud enough to attract attention from bystanders, Hannah spoke.

  “Pete, I’m fine. You should go,” she said, her voice barely audible over the rush of the fountain.

  “What?” he said, turning his back on the angry Alex, and still acting as a bodyguard. He leaned over to hear what she said more clearly.

  “You should go. I can take care of myself,” she said, looking up at him with still-damp eyes but at least some lucidity. “Before someone calls the cops or realizes who you are and gets a video.”

  Pete looked around the crowded lobby, more than a few eyes focused on the altercation he was now a part of. He straightened his blazer, wiped his hands on the tops of his pants legs, and straightened his already perfect hair.

  “Come with me,” he said, below what could even be considered a whisper. Hannah looked past Pete and focused intently on Alex, arms folded, biceps bulging like they used to after he’d worked out.

  “You go—I’m okay,” she said, using her head to gesture toward the exit. Pete gave her a pleading look that almost convinced Hannah to change her mind, but she didn’t. She needed to have this talk with Alex, even if it was a mistake. But it was her mistake to make.

  “I’m going to be at the bar. If you need me . . .” He held up his phone.

  “Yeah. I got it. I’ll call if I need to. Now, get out of here,” Hannah said, touched by his sincerity but unwilling to be at the center of a scandal that could ruin his political reputation, or hers as a journalist. When he disappeared into the crowd, Hannah could breathe a little easier.

  Alex took Pete’s spot on the bench next to her and laced his fingers in between hers. She knew she should pull away as she had with Pete at the bar, but she didn’t.

  “I’m so sorry,” he said, the lines around his eyes more profound than she remembered them, a new scar on his right cheek, making her wonder how he’d hurt himself. But he smelled the same, that was for sure, and his touch was still the one thing that could calm her in an instant.

  “Alex, why did you come here?” she asked quickly before his scent and his smile and his touch worked their magic and made her forgive him. He’d ignored her for ten months now—she needed to remember that.

  “For work . . .”

  “No, don’t give me that BS,” she said. “You never go to this conference. You came because you knew I lived here, didn’t you?”

  “Yes,” he admitted, his arm around her shoulders feeling so different from Pete’s, less like comfort and more like the cocktail she’d been drinking—a sweet, intoxicating burning. “I needed to see you before . . .”

  “Before you get married,” she finished the sentence, already knowing it was true.

  “Yeah, at first, that’s why I wanted to come, but then . . .” He let go of her hand momentarily and ran his thumb up the curve of her neck and across her collarbone, like he was strolling down a path that he knew well, making her shiver. “Janie and I broke up two weeks ago.”

  The words took a few seconds to sink in. During those fleeting moments, Hannah’s heartbeat seemed to pause for more beats than were humanly possible, and she blinked, blood rushing to her head.

  “And the wedding?” she asked when she remembered what words were and how to say them.

  “It’s canceled.” He removed his arm from her shoulders and touched her earlobe and jawline, making it harder to think than it already was when hearing such unexpected news.

  “What . . . what happened?” she asked, shifting away from his heady touch so she could make sure she understood everything clearly.

  “You happened, Hannah.” Alex picked at a spot on his jeans. “I never stopped loving you, and Janie knew it. And I know you’ve built a new life here with your grandmother and a new job and, apparently, senators, and I know I don’t deserve it, but—would you ever consider giving things another try?”

  It was like the dream she used to have when she’d take Ambien, the same one every night. Alex would come home from work one day and tell her he’d made a colossal mistake. All he wanted was to be with her, and in the dream they’d get married and have babies and live nearly a whole lifetime in one night of dreaming, and the best part of it was that every second felt real, almost more real than her daily life.

  Then she’d wake up the next morning, and in the few moments it took to transition between dreamland and real life, she’d experience the profound, gut-wrenching loss of the breakup all over again. That dream was why she started to prefer sleep over real life. It’s why she ultimately thought she wanted to fall asleep and never wake up. But this wasn’t a dream. This was real life, and Alex was sitting next to Hannah, offering her the one thing she thought she’d literally die for. She turned her hand over so their palms were touching and filled the space between his fingers with hers.

  “You broke my heart,” she said, the definition of brokenhearted not even close to efficient to describe what happened after he left.

  “I know. I’ve regretted it every day since.” His voice was thick with emotion and regret. Temptation. So much temptation. Hannah took in every angle of his face and slightly different twist of his features. His eyes. His nose. The crinkle around his eyes. The scar above his lip . . . the scar above his lip. That was the same scar she’d stared at in a Facebook picture while he ignored her. The one she’d obsessed over when her father was dying, when she ran away to another state to escape the pain of his abandonment. That scar didn’t remind her of good times anymore, and she definitely didn’t want to kiss it.

  “Alex, why didn’t you answer my text when my dad died?” she asked, that scar reminding her of how empty she felt, worthless when he discarded her. Dumped her. Ignored her. Looking at him live and in person didn’t bring peace—it made her angry.

  “I . . . I was confused. Janie was jealous of you. She told me I couldn’t . . .”

  Hannah snatched her hand back. “Janie was jealous of me?”

  “Yes. She’s crazy. I made such a huge mistake, Hannah. Please.” He was begging, now.

  She’d begged. She’d cried. And he’d ignored her.

  “You used to call me crazy, Alex. You made me feel crazy.” The same cloudy, heavy, gaslighty feeling was moving in like a low fog. Hannah stood up, wobbling ever so slightly. “I can’t do this.”

  Alex grabbed her arm. “Don’t. Please.”

  She yanked it away. Alex no longer looked like the antidote to pain. He was pain. And that was all he would ever be.

  “Go to hell, Alex,” she said, grabbing her things and forcing one foot after the other, heading toward the women’s bathroom fifteen feet away. She’d be safe there. He couldn’t come in and spin his stories of love and missing her. She was crying even harder now. She had to proactively block out Alex’s voice by focusing on the echo of her footsteps instead.

  When she shoved her way through the restroom door, she let it go and fell into a stall, yanking out long strips of toilet paper. Hannah’s phone buzzed in her bag. Over and over, ringing and ringing. She reached in and pressed and held the button on the side without looking, avoiding temptation. The phone went quiet and the relief was instant. She’d stay in the bathroom stall all night if she had to, but she wouldn’t face him again. She leaned her cheek against the cool aluminum of the stall and let herself feel. The pain was intense, and it was old but fresh at the same time. But as it burned through her and poured out of her
, as she sat doubled over on the edge of the toilet in the stall, she could feel a lightening at the loss of her fantasy.

  CHAPTER 29

  Exiting the bathroom after a few staff members had knocked on her stall because of complaints from another visitor about her crying, she’d been worried she’d find Alex. But instead, Pete was waiting on a couch in the lobby.

  “There you are. I was worried you’d found an escape hatch in there,” he said, concern etched in the fine lines on his face.

  Why does this guy give two shits about me? Hannah thought, baffled.

  “I’m all right,” she said, covering her puffy eyes with her palms for a second. “I need to get home. Could you . . .” She hated asking for help, but she didn’t want to turn her phone back on and risk talking to Alex. Not while he was still in Memphis. “Could you get me a car? I just need to get home.”

  “For sure,” he said, guiding her to a spot on the bench where he’d been waiting. He took out his phone and began to type.

  “Thank you,” she said meekly and sniffled in what turned out to be a very unladylike fashion, then used the edge of her sleeve to wipe up the snot and tear residue from her upper lip. She was empty of tears but full in a different way. She rejected Alex. She rejected Alex. It all still seemed only half-real.

  “Okay, your car will be here in fifteen minutes. You really feel up to it? I mean, my place is around the corner. You could sleep this off, and I’d be on my best scout behavior,” he said, holding up three fingers like he was saying the scout motto.

  She gave him a skeptical look and rolled her swollen eyes, almost able to laugh. Almost. “No, but thanks for the offer.”

  “I like you, Hannah Williamson, crack reporter. There is just something about you that I can’t put my finger on, but I like it a lot. You don’t let me get away with my shit. I don’t run into a lot of women like you.”

  Hannah rubbed her nose with her sleeve again, past caring if she was disgusting. “I’ve been told I’m one of a kind,” she said, attempting humor, but her voice cracked and she sounded nearly as broken.

  “That’s for damn sure,” he said, resting an arm on the back of the bench behind Hannah, but not actually touching her. They sat in silence until his phone announced the arrival of her ride.

  He escorted her to the car and helped her settle into the back seat and then went to talk to the driver. She swore she saw him pass a cash tip of some kind, but she chose to turn a blind eye, already owing Pete Dawson far more than money. He leaned in through the back window.

  “It was quite the night, Miss Williamson. You stay safe now, you hear?”

  She semi-chuckled through her snuffly nose. “You too,” she said, growing shy, perhaps sobering up a touch.

  “And call me if you need anything, okay? I mean it. Anything.”

  “We’ll see,” she pushed back, unable to resist challenging him one more time. He waved and the car drove away. Hannah settled into the back seat, half-awake, but her brain was too active to cooperate with her tired body. As she drove away from Memphis, two things hit her: First, she didn’t miss Alex, and she didn’t regret telling him off. Walking away felt powerful; it felt like the opposite of being discarded. It felt like strength, like it was something Evelyn might do.

  And second, Alex had chosen not to be in her life for the past ten months, and had been pulling away for months prior to Hannah’s discovery of his affair. But tonight, two men who were not Alex put themselves on the line to help Hannah. Alex, on the other hand, only wanted to take. It was starting to look like her future didn’t end the moment Alex walked out that door—maybe that’s when it really started. Her chin rested on her chest, and Hannah let herself doze off in the pine-scented hired car, looking forward to climbing into her pullout bed and falling asleep alone.

  “Miss, we are almost there.” The driver tapped Hannah’s knee and she jumped. They were about five minutes from home, and after her nap, Hannah’s mind was somewhat clear. Hannah took out her phone and turned it on, thinking that she’d better warn Mamaw that she was headed in through the front door. But her screen was filled to the brim with notifications. Hannah didn’t take the time to read them—the first few were clearly from Alex. She dialed Mamaw’s number, but the phone rang and rang and rang, Mamaw the one person on the planet without a cell phone or an answering machine. Huh.

  Hannah tried texting Guy and was surprised to find she hadn’t had a message from him since she’d left for Memphis that afternoon. Hannah called his number, and it went straight to voice mail. Shoot.

  First she checked her texts. There were three from Pete, asking her to send a message when she’d made it home okay. She responded to those right away with a gracious thank-you and assurance of her well-being.

  Then there was one from her mom, sending Hannah her flight times for Friday, asking her to FaceTime with her nephews the next evening. She wouldn’t tell her mom about Alex just yet, she’d decided.

  She switched to voice mail, remembering a notification for it on her touch screen, which . . . was full?

  Three messages from Mamaw, one from Guy, one from an unknown number, and one from the Record. Hannah started in chronological order.

  Hey, Hannah. Guy here. So, I’m here with a police officer. He said there was an alarm going off at the Record, and he found me locking up when he came to check on it. I told him that you work here and asked me to come out and help you with a project. He said he’d need to talk to you in person. Could you give me a call ASAP, please? Thanks.

  The police? Oh no. Oh no. Oh no. Oh no. Hannah touched the next message.

  Miss Williamson, this is Officer Allen from the Senatobia Police Department. I have a Mr. Guy Franklin here. He claims to be doing some work for you down here at the Tate County Record. A break-in was reported here this afternoon when a silent alarm was tripped, and I need confirmation that he had permission to be inside of the building at this time. Thank you for any information; my number is . . .

  How had she been so wrapped up in her reunion bubble and subsequent fight with Alex that she hadn’t heard any of these messages? She felt ill, and it wasn’t just from her alcohol intake. She knew who the next one had to be. Monty.

  Miss Williamson, I would like to meet with you as soon as possible. It seems that there has been a break-in here at the Record, and I’ve been told you might have some information. The perpetrator was caught in the act and has been arrested, but he insists that you will be able to shed some light on this situation. This crisis on top of the emergency with my dear wife has left me deeply saddened. I will be spending the holiday with my family but will be back in the office for a few hours on Friday. I hope to hear from you soon.

  Arrested. Guy had been arrested. Guilt flooded in, demolishing any positivity from the night. No. Monty knew Guy—knew his parents. Why would Monty let the police stop Guy when he was using a key? Hannah knew the answer. If this had been one of Monty’s friend’s kids jimmying a lock and helping out a pal, the officer or Monty would’ve taken him at his word. But because it was Guy . . .

  She slammed her bag with a closed fist, furious at her thoughtless, selfish nature. She’d basically forced Guy to help her break into Monty’s office, not even considering that he was taking on ten times more risk than she had. White woman who works at the Record gets caught tripping an alarm on a day off—straightforward explanation, laughed off as an accident. But when a young Black male is found with a giant toolbox, setting off an alarm in a place where he’s never worked and doesn’t have any reason to be—arrested.

  The next two messages were from Mamaw: wondering where Hannah was, asking if she needed a ride, pleading for her to check in. The third was from 10:34 p.m. and made Hannah wish she could teleport home in the blink of an eye:

  Hannah, darling. I’m so anxious about you. I called the Franklins to see if Guy knew where you were, and they told me that Guy had been arrested for breaking into your newspaper office. I was speechless. He seemed like such a nice youn
g man. I was worried you might be all wrapped up in that situation, but when I called the police department, they said you weren’t with him when he was arrested and that no one knows where you are. If I don’t hear from you soon, I’m going to drive on over to the police department to fill out a report. I can’t stop imagining you dead on the side of the road somewhere. I don’t want to bother your dear mother with more worries, but I’ll be forced to call her if I don’t hear from you soon. I love you, my little Hannah girl. I don’t know how I’ll live with myself if something has happened to you.

  Her fear, panic, and self-hatred were so entirely out of control that Hannah was sure the car would explode if the emotions were made solid. The only way to manage was to make plans. She’d go home and check in on Mamaw first, let her know she was okay, and then go directly to the police department to give her statement, clear things up, and make sure Guy was no longer sitting in the county jail. If anyone should be there, she should. And if at all possible, she was going to fix this.

  Hannah was halfway out of the car before it’d even come to a full stop. She ran up the front steps of the house, twisting the doorknob and finding it still locked. Mamaw had given Hannah a key when she’d moved in, but she’d never once had to use it, either because the door was open with someone at home or because she entered through the garage door each evening. But the door in from the garage would also be locked, so Hannah searched for the key. She fished it out of the interior zipper pocket of her bag and let herself inside, walking into a pitch-black house, the only light on in the kitchen and all the blinds drawn like Mamaw liked them in the evenings.

  “Mamaw?” Hannah called out, taking off her shoes by the front door like Mamaw would want her to. All the worst thoughts went through Hannah’s mind, and for a moment she wished that she had a lousy imagination, because with every call into the house that had no echoed response, Hannah created a new and even more terrible reason that the house was so quiet. Her heart pounded and her head swam. Hannah fought the explosion of worry in her midsection that felt like an alarm. With intense trepidation, she forced herself to walk down the hallway that led to Mamaw’s bedroom, her head still woozy from the alcohol but also from the deafening whoosh of blood in her ears. Reaching Mamaw’s bedroom, Hannah tapped lightly on the slightly ajar door that opened fully under her light touch.