Girls of Brackenhill(27)
“It just . . . hit me all at once,” she offered lamely, and Wyatt stopped her.
“It’s understandable, honestly. I see people fall apart all the time for less, okay?”
He stood patiently a safe three feet from her and waited for her to collect herself. The back door opened, and Huck appeared, took one look at Hannah’s face, and crossed the large room in four easy steps. He hugged her and asked, “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine. It was just the initial shock,” she explained and met Wyatt’s eyes over Huck’s shoulder. Wyatt looked away, out the window, to watch as his team carried equipment and evidence bags through the courtyard and the garden and past the kitchen window to the gravel driveway, where their dark-blue vans sat waiting, the state police logo embossed on each side.
Huck let her go. “I know it’s been hard. What can I do?” He gazed at her, earnest and concerned, and Hannah felt her nerves bristle.
She waved at both of them, impatient. “Nothing. Nothing! I just want to know how long until we know. If it’s really her.”
“We don’t have a forensic unit in the county. Too small. Our oversight is the state police. So it might take a few days to a few weeks to get a positive ID.” Wyatt cleared his throat, spoke directly to Huck, avoiding eye contact with Hannah. “Unless of course you can get me that dentist. That’ll be faster. I’ll call either of you when I hear anything.”
“What’s your cell phone number?” Hannah asked Wyatt, and he cocked his head, questioning. She explained, “I’ll text you when I have the dentist’s name. It might take some digging, and I’ll call them to see if they still have my records to make sure I’ve got the right one. It’s been over seventeen years.”
“Right.” Wyatt rattled it off, and then, with a small wave and a thin smile, he left, followed his team to the vans.
“Are you sure you’re okay?” Huck asked. “This must be impossible for you.”
“I’m fine. It’s fine.” Hannah thought of her cascade of tears and how all Huck said he wanted from her was her whole self, vulnerable and honest, and she couldn’t help but think of how he would have felt if he had been the one to receive her emotional meltdown. As long as it was temporary, one time, he’d be delighted, she cuttingly thought. What would he do if she suddenly needed him, not just once? Swooping in to save someone once makes you a hero. Saving someone repeatedly is work.
It was a lightning-quick thought: Wyatt was the keeper of her feelings. It was a pathetic realization. She’d been fifteen; had she really not matured? Weren’t emotional intelligence and development supposed to come with age?
She repeated it again, set to convince them both. “I’m fine.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Then
Fall 2001
That initial summer of Wyatt passed in a blur of flirting, kissing, talking. Of feeling like Hannah was taking a first step toward something grown up. Did she have a boyfriend? She longed to ask him. But it felt like pressing a fingertip to an old bruise: it hurt all over again and accomplished nothing. She was fourteen, a number that weirded Wyatt out, even as he kissed her, played with her hair, gently bit her earlobe, a move that made her gasp. She hadn’t known anyone could feel this way about a boy. The boys at home were sweaty and pawing and copped a feel in the movie theater and had no desire to make her gasp. Or at least if they had the desire, they didn’t have the knowledge.
The day Trina came back to get them, that fourth summer, rattling up the driveway in the old Buick, Hannah didn’t think she’d ever eat again. Her stomach felt perpetually twisted, filled up with longing for a boy she wouldn’t see for over nine months—nine months—and in the car when Julia said, “What’s your problem?” Hannah could only wave her away. She’d kept Wyatt a secret all summer, even when she was bursting to talk. Julia and Hannah had both made friends, spent their summer half-apart, half-together. It was amazing how little Julia asked her. If Hannah hadn’t known better, she’d have thought her sister didn’t care. What did she think she’d done all summer?
Hannah wondered if she’d ever feel that kind of love again. She missed Wyatt with every last cell in her body, sometimes felt like she was going to shrivel up, become a husk of herself.
They exchanged emails. Long newsy letters and sometimes just I miss you. It had been on the tip of her tongue to tell Julia, but she didn’t want to let Wyatt down. Couldn’t let him down.
She didn’t tell Tracy and Beth either. Just kept him to herself like her own delicious secret.
She turned fifteen on June 1, and she was counting down the months. Fifteen sounded so much better than fourteen. Surely they’d go public then?
She had a cell phone, a cheap flip phone, and he’d call her late at night.
“I got my license,” he whispered. She’d closed her bedroom door and was curled under the blankets in her bed, listening to his voice. Her mother was working, Wes was passed out on the sofa, and Julia was watching television in her room, the volume turned up loud. Hannah was blessedly alone. She remembered this exact scenario in the spring, before she’d met Wyatt. Everyone had scattered like dandelion seeds, and she’d felt hopelessly lonely. Then, “Let me come see you.” His voice was hoarse.
“Really? Why?”