She opened her fist and looked at the pills, a new idea forming in her mind, when the door to Mamaw’s bedroom swung open. Hannah froze as her mother stormed into the room, clearly prepared for a fight.
“Hannah! Where have you been? I’ve been worried sick. Please tell me you didn’t go to the courthouse and . . .” Pam’s slate-gray eyes landed on the collection of pills in Hannah’s hand, and she gasped. Hannah could read the terror on her mother’s face and became aware of what the scene must look like to her.
“I just wanted to hold them,” Hannah insisted, staring up at her mother. “I swear. I’m putting them away.”
“Hannah!” Pam said mournfully, carefully crossing the room, treating the handful of pills like Hannah was holding a loaded gun and any sudden movement would make her daughter pull the trigger. She spoke in a higher-pitched voice, like she was comforting a child scared of the dark. “Honey, listen. I found an attorney in Memphis who thinks he can help you and Guy. And . . . and . . . I called up Larry, and he said that job is still available if you are interested. I know it’s not the same as a newspaper, but . . .”
“Mom, stop,” Hannah said, pleadingly, but Pam didn’t stop her rambling solutions to Hannah’s mess of a life, getting closer to the bed with every suggestion.
“And . . . I know you feel bad about Mamaw, but she is an old woman, sweetheart. She fell. It’s not your fault,” she crooned, hand outstretched like she was asking for the medicine.
“No, it is my fault,” she insisted. “Mamaw is my fault. And Guy, that’s my fault too. If I hadn’t been so focused on Alex—”
“Alex?” Pam said his name, and even though she was just repeating what Hannah had spoken, hearing it made her wince. “What does Alex have to do with this, honey? I thought we’d moved past Alex.”
Hannah blinked, and tears fell into the brown pills in her hand. No use in keeping secrets now.
“I saw him the night before Thanksgiving. Um.” She licked her painfully dry lips, tasting the salt from her tears. “He wanted to get back together. That’s why . . .” She swallowed again, bringing the pills closer to her body. “That’s why I wasn’t here when Mamaw . . .”
“Oh.” Her mother had more to say on that matter, Hannah could tell, but she held back, still focused on the deadly pile of prescription medicine her daughter was holding.
“Don’t worry. It’s not happening,” she said, knowing what a fool she must sound like.
Pam shook her head, like Hannah had finished a sentence she’d started in her mind. “I’m sorry, sweetheart. That’s so hard, but I’m proud of you. I know it hurts, but it’s probably for the—”
“Don’t say it’s for the best,” Hannah snapped. “You always say that. Like when dad died a whole year before the doctors said he should, you said, Well, it’s probably for the best. At least he’s not in pain anymore. Screw ‘the best,’ Mom. None of what has happened in the past year is ‘for the best.’”
Pam crossed the last few feet of mauve carpet and sat gingerly on the edge of Mamaw’s hospital bed.
“You’re right. Not very much that’s happened to you has been fair.” She reached out to touch her daughter. Hannah flinched at first, but then let her mother run her fingers through her unkempt, greasy hair. “But I can’t lose you, Hannah. You’re my little girl. I used to be able to give you an ice pack or a Band-Aid and feel like I’d done my job as your mother, but as you got older, it got harder. I knew you and your father were close, and I thought, Well, she has Patrick. Why does she need me? But then he had to leave us.” Pam’s voice caught, and she sniffled herself into her state of maximum control. “And you’re right, that wasn’t for the best. But baby, your daddy didn’t choose to leave you. You weren’t old enough to see it, but when your uncle . . .” She stumbled, wiping at her eyes. “When Samuel took his own life, it nearly broke your father. And Mamaw . . . all dressed in black walking behind the coffin of her baby . . . oh God.” Pam sobbed at the memory. “Hannah, please don’t make me bury you.”
Pam Williamson rarely showed true emotion, at least not that Hannah saw, but she’d been through a lot—widowed, living alone, dealing with a daughter who had fallen to pieces. Just like with Guy, sometimes Hannah forgot that her mother was human.
“Oh, Mom.” Hannah held her arms out to her mother, dropping the pills onto the bedspread. Pam held her daughter tighter than Hannah could ever remember being held. And they both cried at their helplessness as Hannah explained everything that had happened that day.
Pam kissed her daughter’s forehead and stayed close, like she wasn’t ready to trust that Hannah’s moment of crisis had passed. “First of all, let me help you.”
It wasn’t easy for Hannah to accept help, especially from her mother and especially when she’d caused so many of these problems herself, but she clearly wasn’t able to do it all by herself right now.
“I’ll try,” she said, leaning into Pam’s warm side.
Her mom, tonight with the pills, had been the safe place she needed to find when she was falling. Hannah was willing to attempt to trust her.
“I think I know how to get Guy’s charges dropped,” she said, snuggling into her mother’s embrace.
“Wait, what?” Pam sat up as straight as the soft mattress would let her, checking her daughter’s features to see if she was being sarcastic.
“I just need to check one thing first.” Hannah sat up straight, collected the pills off the bed, passed the bottle to her mother willingly, and then slipped off the mattress. “Come with me?” she asked, reaching out for Pam’s hand.
She took it.
CHAPTER 34
The unopened envelope she’d gotten from Pete two weeks ago sat on the desk in front of Hannah. After showing it to her mother, she’d asked to be alone for a few minutes as she examined the contents. It seemed only right that it happen this way, that Hannah’s final moments with Evelyn should be one-on-one.
She opened the flap and slid a hefty stack of copy paper out and onto the oak surface. In these pages she hoped to find the leverage she was looking for, the weight that would tip the scales of justice in the right direction. But even if the file led to more dead ends or tempting leads, it was worth looking, and either way, this was Hannah’s necessary farewell to the woman whose life she’d come to care about so deeply.
On the top of the stack was a small envelope, sealed and addressed to the Record. Unsent. Hannah opened it eagerly.
April 3, 1936
Mr. Martin,
Every good story must come to an end. I hope that you have found some interest in my tale of woe. If you can find it in your heart to publish it in any form, whether fiction or non, I would feel my pain has been for some important reason. I will let my readers be the judge of that.
I returned from Paducah with more than just a stomachache. Mrs. Strong, the lady who had gone with us and had been speaking to Harry’s mother so ferociously, came to talk to Mother and Daddy. She told them everything about Harry being sixteen and about me running away. She talked about Harry and me something terrible, like we’d done something wrong.
But Harry and I had never done anything wrong, and the accusation made my blood boil. Mother said I could no longer see Harry. She said that she never trusted me and that I was a waste of money and space in her house. She said she couldn’t see why I was complaining all the time and why I would do this, and I shouldn’t have done that, or I took too many baths, or always something.
She hated me just as much as she had the day she left scars on my back with that horsewhip. Or the day she tried to poison me to death. I knew it. I knew the only way out was with my name on a marriage certificate, but Harry was too young and had been cruel to me. And as desperate as I was, I couldn’t stomach the thought of marrying Mr. Fred after what had happened between us. I told Mother how he’d taken advantage of me, but she seemed nearly pleased, saying, “He’ll have to marry you now.”
But I didn’t want to marry that disgusting Mr. Fre
d, who was twice my age and talked of boring things like taxes and elections, and who hurt me and didn’t stop even when I screamed.
I got worse in both spirits and health. Daddy was getting worse too. Mother kept nagging and was becoming frantic at my condition. I did not have clothes like other girls, nor could I go places I wanted to. I felt terrible, always sick, though nobody thought I was really ill. But I was.
I started to think it would be so much easier to die than to go on living, making such a mess of things. In my mind, I thought, if there weren’t any Evelyn, there wouldn’t be any reason for Mother and Daddy not to get along. And I decided Myrtle could have my clothes and Harry could find himself a girl who wasn’t sick like I was.
So, on July 17, 1929, at about 2:30 p.m., I took the gun that was in my own mother’s room, and I shot myself in the right breast.
The bullet hit my spine and paralyzed me from the waist down. And that, my dear public, is the reason I am in this chair. It wasn’t because of my love for Harry, and no intruder had come to shoot me, and Mother, who hated me enough to want me dead, had not pulled the trigger.
I shot myself.
Hannah gasped and reread the line again. Evelyn . . . Evelyn had been her own assailant. Hannah’s hero had—shot herself. Mr. Fred and Mother and Harry were the ones who loaded that weapon. Hannah understood Evelyn’s seductive reasoning for pulling that trigger. She knew all too well. She also knew the shame of—after.
When I woke, I tried to explain why I tried to end my life, but no one wanted to listen. Everyone had their own idea of who shot me, and after months of speculating, no one wanted to believe a young woman would feel so desperate to end her suffering that she’d turn a gun on herself. But it was true.
It’s been almost seven years since that day in July. Nobody thought I would live this long, but I guess I’m just stubborn. My little sister came home in May of 1932, and she didn’t even know I had been shot, but she soon learned about it and was rather sweet.
Daddy was sick most of the time, and in December 1932 he died, carrying a part of my heart with him. Nobody expected me to live through that, but I did. The brother with whom Vivian had lived took her back with him and offered to take Myrtle too, but she didn’t go. Vivian would marry in January of ’33 to Jimmy Shackelford. She ended up with everything she wanted, and it didn’t bring her happiness. I’m still not entirely sure what does bring happiness after all.
Sincerely,
Evelyn
Hannah reread the last few sentences, feeling them more deeply than any words of literature she had ever experienced: Vivian had everything she wanted, and it didn’t bring her happiness. I’m still not entirely sure what does bring happiness after all.
Hannah still wasn’t sure what brought happiness either, but she was starting to see what didn’t. Pills, guns, hiding—didn’t bring happiness. It didn’t even bring peace. For both Hannah and Evelyn, it brought paralysis. For Samuel, the end of a bright and lovely life. And it spread the pain like an infection. The only way out is through. She’d hated Laura the first time she suggested letting herself experience the deep and unending pain of her experiences, but maybe that really was the only way out—facing the pain head-on. Doing instead of experiencing. Choosing instead of submitting.
Fourteen-year-old Evelyn Kensley, abused, used, and battered for many years, had thought to escape this world with a bullet to her heart. And in all the terrible irony that could only come from real life, she hadn’t found a way out at the end of a gun’s muzzle—she’d found herself more trapped than ever. And even more ironic—more than once in Hannah’s life, Evelyn’s words could’ve been her own. She folded the letter and replaced it in the envelope, wondering why it’d never made it to the Record when all the others had.
She turned her focus to the remaining pages. These were not letters and, other than the article she’d found in Monty’s office, were the only real evidence she’d uncovered that proved Evelyn’s existence. The first looked like an official hospital intake form, the blanks filled in with handwriting. Evelyn’s name was at the top.
Name: Evelyn Kensley
Date: July 17, 1929
A few more lines with what must’ve been her home address and next of kin. Hannah didn’t see anything new here, other than the interesting coincidence that the home she’d shot herself in was less than a mile from Mamaw’s house. She continued to the handwritten portion that described her injury as a self-inflicted gunshot wound to her right breast and the details about her surgery and damage to her spinal column.
Then, at the bottom—
Complications: Pregnant
“What the . . . ?” Hannah squinted and then brought the page closer. There, in perfect cursive letters, it was easy enough to decipher.
Evelyn was pregnant when she shot herself. Hannah thought back to all the times she’d mentioned being ill and what she seemed to imply happened with Mr. Fred on the shore of that pond in the middle of nowhere. And how Harry, despite telling his mother and the whole world in a newspaper article that he was ready to marry Evelyn, disappeared from her story faster than he’d plunged into it.
Hannah flipped to the next page. The three sheets all seemed to be part of one document. An adoption record. Evelyn and her far-too-young age were listed at the top of the report. The baby was a girl, born March 23, 1930, somehow surviving not only Evelyn’s spinal cord injury but also all the interventions that took place after that incident. It was a scandal that even Evelyn didn’t want published in the newspaper, a family secret that had to be protected, an ugly truth that needed to be covered up by a beautiful fiction.
A baby.
This had to be it—the cover-up. Harry could potentially be the father of the child, but if that were true, why didn’t the lovebirds just get married? In Hannah’s mind the father had to be the boarder who had sexually assaulted Evelyn at the young age of fourteen. Hannah searched for the other handwritten insertions on the document when she ran into one that stood out.
Father: Fred Dawson
Hannah’s heart was thrumming in her chest, exhaustion replaced with anticipation. She read the name again. Fred . . . Dawson.
Everything immediately made sense. She skimmed the rest of the pages, most of which contained standard language on the form, until she reached the signatures approving the adoption of the child. Evelyn’s pretty signature on one line. Fred Dawson’s on the other. There was no mistaking it, Fred was a Dawson. As in Jack, Pete, and Shelby Dawson.
“Mom!” Hannah yelled at the top of her lungs. “I need you!”
A crashing sound from the living room was followed by pounding footsteps, then Pam burst through Papaw’s office door, phone in her hand, ready to call in some emergency.
“Oh my God, you nearly killed me,” she said, out of breath. “What in heaven’s name is the matter?”
“I found it. Look.” She pointed to Fred’s signature on the last page of the document. “Dawson, see? These are adoption papers. Google ‘Fred Dawson.’ He has to be related.”
Pam typed the name into the phone as Hannah worked through the scenario in her mind. Fred Dawson got a fourteen-year-old girl, Evelyn, pregnant, and didn’t marry her, and then she shot herself out of desperation. So the Dawsons hushed up the family by caring for the girl. She wrote to her hometown newspaper, and the family bought them off. The newspaper then kept the letters as insurance against the Dawsons to keep them paying and . . . boom.
“Hannah,” Pam said, awe in her voice, holding up the device to her daughter’s face. It was a Wikipedia page with a black-and-white headshot in the right-hand corner and the name Fredrick Dawson at the top of the page. “He was the governor of Tennessee.”
“What?” Hannah snatched the phone and speed-read past his origin story and schooling to his political career. After a swift rise through local government in his thirties, at fifty-one he became the governor of Tennessee.
“Holy shit, Ma. Governor? His son, Jack Dawson, is running for pre
sident. You know what this means, right?”
Pam’s eyes were alight with the possibilities. “You found that modern-day hook you were looking for. You should call Tom at the Tribune.”
It really was everything she’d been looking for, and during an election season there was little doubt this story would run. Hannah gave the phone back to her mother, put the pages down, and then arranged them into a neat stack, knowing what had to happen now.
“Yeah,” she said, deadpan as she slid the pages back into the manila envelope, “but I have to kill it.”
“Wait, what?” Pam asked, cocking her head and staring at Hannah like she’d lost her mind. “Hannah, this is what you were looking for.”
“I want to write this story more than just about anything, but I can’t, Ma. Did you really think the leverage I was looking for would lead to a tell-all in a two-page spread? The only way this information gives me any power to help Guy is if I . . .” She struggled to say what she knew was true. “I have to promise to make it disappear.”
Hannah expected Pam Williamson, who normally had a plan for every moment of Hannah’s life whether she listened or not, to rush in with an opinion. Likely it would be the opposite of what Hannah wanted to do, but now she just gave Hannah’s shoulder a gentle squeeze and said, “I respect that.”
She glanced up at Pam, almost expecting to see her father standing there in her place. But looking back was still her tight-lipped, straitlaced, nearly perfect mother. Hannah pretended to examine the brass fasteners on the envelope, but really she was blinking back tears. After taking a moment to collect herself, she cleared her throat and said, simply and quietly, “Thank you.”
“I know I can’t fill in all the cracks your dad left behind, but I’m here for you. And I love you.” She kissed her daughter on the top of her head, and for once it didn’t feel forced.
Hannah returned the gesture by pressing her lips to her mother’s smooth knuckles, whispering something she felt but very rarely said, “I love you too, Ma. I love you too.”
What's Left Unsaid Page 31