Girls of Brackenhill(55)

But today she woke up here, in Uncle Stuart’s room.

“Do you know?” she was asking when she came into consciousness, her voice disconnected, floating, wholly unlike her own. Hannah was sitting next to his bed, her fingertips rubbing the lace trim of her nightgown. On this chair. Seemingly in the middle of a sentence. Now what?

She absently touched her hair, flying away in all directions. A brief panic, a time slip. The sense that she’d been sitting in this room for hours, not minutes, curtains drawn. Like waking up from a nap and looking at a clock in a darkened room: Was it night or day? Had she missed work? Except here, at Brackenhill, there was no work.

Uncle Stuart opened his eyes, blinked furiously, and nodded his head. He was last conscious two weeks ago. Right after she arrived. So she waited here in this impending-death waiting room. The transfer to hospice could kill him, Alice had warned. They had until Monday to decide. The facility had agreed to hold the room for a week. Today was Thursday. Friday, maybe. The days were running together. Would he die first? This was the order of the day. Yesterday Alice said his breathing was becoming labored.

He had an infection now. Probably starting from an abscessed tooth. Seemingly minor inconveniences to healthy people were fast-track death sentences to hospice patients. The day before had doctors in and out. They’d talked about transferring him to a hospital. He was on IV antibiotics, Alice reported later.

Uncle Stuart grunted, his hand lifted, and he pointed toward the closet. What had she asked him? Whatever it was, he knew the answer. He was awake. And not unconscious with his eyes open but actually awake.

Hannah sucked in a breath, her palms slick from nerves. “Hi,” she said.

He blinked at her, the ventilator hissing. His face was white in the early-morning light, with a shock of greasy gray flattened against his crown. The veins in his neck, his hands, twitched with life, even while he appeared skeletal. Hannah resisted the urge to hug him, pepper him with questions, never knowing the day he’d be conscious for the last time.

Hannah made her way to the closet door and opened it. Fae’s clothing, dresses and blouses and slacks. Not many but enough that Hannah wondered where she would have worn all this stuff. She’d never, as far as Hannah knew, held a job.

The bottom of the closet held a lockbox. She picked it up, turned, held it up for Uncle Stuart to see. He wagged his finger, like a nod, in her direction, and she brought the lockbox back to his bed. The lockbox wasn’t, in fact, locked, and a simple twist of the handle resulted in a click as the lid sprang open.

Where did Brackenhill come from?

That had been the question she’d asked him, only half-awake. It came back to her now. The memory of walking into Uncle Stuart’s room, sitting in the chair, and holding his hand came back in full, like she’d been conscious.

The lockbox contained only one document. It was folded in thirds, yellowed on the edges, and protected in a plastic sleeve. She extracted it carefully, pinching the brittle paper between her thumb and forefinger, before unfolding it on the desk, running her thumb along each crease to flatten it.

Title Deed across the top in ornate calligraphy.

This mortgage, made the sixth of May one thousand nine hundred and twenty-two, to Randall Foster Yost in consideration for the sum of five thousand dollars . . .

Yost. Not Webster.

Yost was her mother’s maiden name. And Fae’s. Brackenhill wasn’t Stuart’s; it was Fae’s.

Which could only mean one thing: unless Fae’s will said otherwise, Brackenhill belonged to Hannah.





CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

Now

Get a grip.

Hannah folded the deed and shoved it back in the lockbox. She stored the box back in the closet and turned to see Alice standing in the center of the room. Where had she come from? What time was it?

Hannah said it out loud: “What time is it?”

Alice paused. “Six thirty. I couldn’t sleep, so I thought I’d start PT early,” she said.

Six thirty in the morning, then? Hannah felt the room tilt; her vision swam.

“Are we still doing PT?” Hannah cleared her throat, trying to get her bearings. Did they do physical therapy on a man who had days left to live?

Had Alice seen her rummaging through the closet? Did it even matter? It was Hannah’s house, not Alice’s.

Alice stared at her disapprovingly. “Well, death is unpredictable. Keeping him moving keeps him comfortable, in the long run. If there is a long run.”

Alice set her bag down, smoothed the front of her shirt. She wore scrubs: this time, they were pink with white bunnies. Her nursing clogs were bright white, new looking. Her face pinched, severe. Hannah realized she’d never seen her smile, not once.

Hannah took a deep breath. Then another. She was still in her nightgown. “Why don’t you meet me in the kitchen in ten minutes? I’ll get dressed. Let’s have coffee.”

Alice blanched. Recovered. Gave a quick nod. “Of course, Miss Maloney.”

“Alice, really. Please call me Hannah.”

In the kitchen, in jeans and a T-shirt, Hannah busied herself making coffee. Scoured the refrigerator for fruit and came up with croissants, three days stale. She needed normalcy, a conversation with another adult who wasn’t Jinny, speaking in cryptic riddles, or Uncle Stuart, not speaking at all, Huck, trying to tell her that all her hunches and suspicions weren’t rational or based in fact. Or Wyatt, making her stomach clench and her breathing hitch. Alice was a nice, neutral normal. N-N-N.