Secluded Cabin Sleeps Six(90)

“I hate him,” said Cricket softly. “I was a virgin when we met. He was my first.”

“I know,” said Hannah. “I’m sorry.”

Second time I’ve heard that tonight, she thought but didn’t say.

She wanted to tell Cricket other things about her brother, things she’d carried since they were little, things she’d seen. But she couldn’t. It was all locked up in a box labeled Do Not Tell. Your number one job as siblings is to always protect and take care of each other. One day your father and I will be gone and you’ll be everything to each other. Her mother had said that a hundred, a million times.

“Why do you do it?” asked Cricket. “Why do you cover up for him all the time?”

“He’s my brother,” she said.

“Blood is thicker than water?”

“What does that even mean?” Hannah said, thinking of the blood all over her parents’ bed.

“It means that no matter what he does, you’ll always side with him, like tonight. Clean up after him, cover for him.”

The roads were quiet, dark. It was late, after midnight. The headlights cut the night as they wound up her street.

“You said yourself that she was hitting on him. We don’t know what happened,” said Hannah.

She felt Cricket’s eyes, the weight of her silence. The truth was that they both knew what Mickey was capable of. They both knew that Libby wasn’t lying. Neither one of them said another word.

Back at the house, everyone had left, including Mickey. Hannah and Cricket stood in the foyer and surveyed the damage. Every surface was littered with empties, garbage, cups used as ashtrays. The floor was sticky beneath Hannah’s feet. In the bathroom, Hannah found a used condom floating in the toilet.

“Oh. Wow,” said Cricket.

They exchanged a look and silently got to work cleaning up.

By 3:00 a.m., the house was back to a somewhat recognizable state. There was a stain on the carpet that Hannah treated and hoped she would be able to eradicate in the morning. There was the broken bear. Something had exploded in the microwave. Hannah wasn’t even sure what; it was pink and viscous.

Eventually, Cricket passed out on the living room couch. The sheets from Hannah’s parents’ bed were in the wash, the scent of bleach filling the laundry room. Hannah picked the lock on her bedroom door with a bobby pin she found in her parents’ bathroom, and fell onto her bed still in her clothes, falling immediately to sleep. Maybe an hour later, she was awakened again by voices.

When she went to the top of the stairs to see what was happening, she saw Cricket and Mickey making out in the foyer. How could she? Hannah thought. After what they just saw? Libby crying in the back seat. Why was Cricket so under Mickey’s spell? Why for that matter had Hannah cleaned up his mess?

Hannah watched them for a moment, Cricket’s arms around Mickey’s neck, Mickey pressing her against the wall. She turned and went back to her room, filled with a strange mingling of anger and longing.





37


Hannah





June 2018


Mud, rain, pain.

Hannah woke on the ground, mouth full of dirt, rain coming down hard. The smell of gasoline. A flash of lightning, a distant rumble of thunder. Her head throbbed, pain radiating down her neck, her back, her arm. Hannah drew a ragged breath, stayed still.

Blissful unconsciousness called her back. It was a lake, a deep black lake, that she could sink into and all the pain would go away. The weight of the water pulled her under, and she slipped back into the depths.

Don’t you dare just lie there and give up, Hannah Gale. Sophia. I raised you to be stronger.

But I’m so tired, Mom. I just want to sleep.

Sleep sweet, Mama.

That little voice, so innocent, so in love with her mama. That was the voice that had Hannah clawing back up through the depths of unconsciousness. Her eyes flew open to be greeted by the lightning and the rain.

“Gigi.” She pushed herself up to sitting. “I’m coming.”

A voice.

Hannah! Hannah where are you?

What the fuck had just happened? Who had hit her? What had hit her? A fallen branch? Had she been struck by lightning?

She tried to stand, hands slipping in the mud, the taste of dirt and blood in her mouth. She put tentative fingers to the huge, painful knot on her head.

Pieces came back: The electrical box—main line cut; the generator—out of fuel; tree down—and road blocked. Liza was missing. They were trapped.

Hannah!

“Cricket!” she called out, summoning her voice, her strength. “I’m here.”

When Cricket came around the side of the house, her face was a mask of fear. She dropped down beside Hannah into the mud.

“Oh my god, is that blood?” Cricket asked, putting a hand to Hannah’s head.

Cricket was bleeding, too, from her nose. It ran down the front of her cover-up which was otherwise transparent, soaked through. The rain was coming down around them.

“Are you hurt?” asked Hannah, letting her friend pull her to standing. Her head.

Oh god, the world was spinning.

Words, nonsensical—a strange woman, Joshua in on it, he said she’s dangerous—came tumbling out of Cricket’s mouth. In her hand, Hannah finally noticed, Cricket clutched a huge kitchen knife.