Girls of Brackenhill(57)
“I’ve been avoiding Brackenhill for so long. I feel like I have one chance to get to the truth. One chance to get closure, and justice for Julia. And I’m squandering it because I’m tired and falling apart.” It was the truth, and the frustration of it felt like a basketball in her gut. The coffee mug slipped from Hannah’s hands, shattered on the slate kitchen floor. Hannah jumped, let out a little scream, and then felt ridiculous. Alice immediately bent down to clean up the mess.
Hannah bent to help her, sighing.
“You know, there is always more than one chance. Always,” Alice said softly, slices of porcelain cupped in her hands. She held Hannah’s gaze, steady and intense, and Hannah had no idea if that was true. She’d certainly never been given second, third, fourth chances. Not from Julia, who’d run away the moment their bond had irreparably fractured. Or from Trina, who’d fumbled through her days, bleary eyed, with barely an air-kiss to the top of her head as they’d passed in the hallway on Hannah’s way to school. Or from Fae, who’d never reached out. Never tried to call, write, contact Hannah in any way after Julia had left. Or even now, from Huck, who’d left for home when things had gotten tough. Hannah felt steeped in self-pity and pathetic.
She almost said as much to Alice but stopped herself. Alice stood, her palm resting on Hannah’s head, her face unreadable. She gazed out the window to the garden, or perhaps the trail beyond that led to the rushing Beaverkill. Finally, she said, “I think you should go home.”
“What?”
“You have to take care of yourself, you know. I can call when Stuart passes.” When she turned and met Hannah’s gaze, her eyes seemed black, obsidian like Julia’s stone. “I think you know this. But it’s just no good for you here.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
Now
The idea that she was leaving had wormed its way into Hannah’s brain since yesterday, and suddenly she was clearheaded. She could sleep, think, plan.
It was Saturday. She’d take the day, pack and clean. Wrap up loose ends, say goodbye to Jinny. Maybe Wyatt. Leave tomorrow and be home in time for Labor Day. Picnics and barbecues with their friends.
She tried to call Huck a few times. Sent a text: I’m coming home tomorrow. Can we do something fun? Maybe call the Wallers? The Wallers were their neighbors, slightly older than them and a bit further in life: They’d married. Patty Waller was pregnant. Nice, normal people to spend the last weekend of summer with.
But by noon, Hannah found herself standing in front of Pinker’s Bar, the Beaverkill a rushing echo far behind it. She hadn’t made the choice to come; it seemed to have happened subconsciously. An instinct. She had nothing left to lose here, now that she’d decided to leave. Why had she come? What did she hope to gain? A lone Bud Light sign buzzed and flickered in one window, the other blacked out with a taut shade.
The answer was complicated. On one hand, if she left everything open, without trying to connect all the dots, she’d return to the same half-hearted life in Virginia that she’d left behind. The lies in her past still lies. The secrets untold. But if she did all she could, if she put forth the effort, she could return with a clear conscience, a feeling she’d done all she could but sometimes the truth stayed buried. That was that. Lies and secrets would still exist, but she’d have done her part to ferret out the truth. She could proceed with Huck, free. Nothing tethering her here to Rockwell. And besides, no one would expect her to stay on with Stuart indefinitely. No one expected anything of her at all.
Inside, the bar smelled like wood and liquor. A haze of smoke sat heavy in the air, making it hard to see and breathe. Two men hovered against the wood, faces drawn, nearly identical. One had an angry red scar that switchbacked across his cheek. He’d been cut with something blunt—the scar was jagged. This, Hannah suspected, was Warren.
She bellied up to the bar next to him, leaned half-sitting, half-standing, against the chair to his right. She folded in on herself, scrunching her shoulders, careful not to touch him.
“I know who you are,” he said without looking up at her. “Everyone does.”
His voice had surprising clarity. No garble, no drunken slur. Hannah noticed his drink, brown and thin, the ice cubes the size of pebbles. He’d been there awhile, nursing the same bourbon.
“I heard you came round my house,” Warren said.
“I did.” Hannah felt stupid. She’d come without a plan. Again. She’d expected him to be drunk and therefore easy to talk to. She was good at selling herself and could be disarming. She’d relied too much on her charm this time. Hannah cleared her throat. “I just wanted to talk to you. I’m trying to figure out what happened to my sister. And maybe my aunt.” Hannah almost added, and your daughter, but held her tongue.
“Why would I know anything about that?”
“I don’t know. I can’t ask Fae or Stuart. I’ve already talked to Jinny. Everyone else I know in Rockwell was a kid at the time. You’re Ellie’s father. Fae’s husband. What do you remember?”
If Warren was surprised by what Hannah knew, he didn’t show it. “Maybe she ran away, same as Ellie.” He shrugged, and Hannah noticed a tremor in his wrist.
“Did they run away together?” Hannah asked.
“No. A year apart, they tell me.”