Girls of Brackenhill(58)

I heard. They tell me. “You don’t think so?” Hannah sat back in the barstool, wrapping her ankle around the chair leg.

Warren laughed. “You really think I’m gonna tell you what I think? Why, so you can run and tell your little boyfriend?” He still hadn’t looked at her. “Do you know what they did to me when Ellie ran away? Thought I killed her. My own daughter.”

Hannah had been fourteen and back at Plymouth High School when Ellie had supposedly run away. She’d had no idea what “they” had done to Warren, of course.

“But you didn’t?” She said it to get a rise out of him, but the speed he turned his eyes on her made her heart hammer.

“Fuck you.” He spat it at her, violent. White gathered at the corners of his mouth, his lips chapped and cracked. Up close, Warren was ugly, the scar almost pulsing purple. His eyebrows knitted together, his dark hair long and wild, growing down his face into an unruly, patchy beard. His nose was an eagle’s beak, hooked at the end with a crook in the center, broken in too many bar fights.

“I’m sorry,” she said softly. She’d been a fool to think that his anger would help her. Maybe. He kept his gaze on her face, a small smile forming.

“You’re a pretty girl to be digging into such an ugly story,” Warren said quietly, his eyes settling on her lips.

Hannah shifted on her stool, fiddled with her purse strap. “Yeah, well. It’s my sister. I thought you’d have known something. Everyone in Rockwell knows you. I thought maybe you’d know things that no one wants to talk about.”

“What do you want to know about? What happened to Ellie? Or your sister?”

“Both.”

“You don’t get to hear both. Pick one.” Warren held up a single index finger, the nail yellow and jagged, stained with nicotine.

“My aunt, Fae Webster.”

He looked up; his mouth opened. She’d surprised him. “What the fuck you want to know about her?”

“You were married? How long?” Hannah was on thin ice, reckless, her hands shaking.

“Five years. But technically, still married.” He took a long drink.

“Why wouldn’t you give her a divorce?”

“None of your goddamn business.” His anger flashed again, then settled. The bartender glanced up, and Hannah made eye contact with him. He was vaguely familiar. “You wanna hear about that? How she fucked her teacher? She decided to go back to college, and I was stupid enough at the time to be proud of her. She got a scholarship. Something about architecture and history. Wanted to learn about old buildings or some shit like that. Inherited that fucking mansion and told me nothing about it.”

“Who did she inherit it from?”

“Her aunt. Apparently, the woman went crazy, ended up in a sanatorium. Willed everything to Fae, nothing to her sister when she died.” Realization dawned in his eyes. “That’s your mama, in’t it? Things’d turn out a bit differently if your mama had gotten that big old mansion, don’t you think? Don’t it piss you off?” Warren’s face twisted into a grim smile. “Pissed me off for sure. Working like a dog on plumbing, for fuck’s sake. Basically, shit pipes, and she’s sitting on a golden egg, just rotting up there on the hill.”

Hannah felt the full throttle of childhood memories click into place: her mother’s bitterness at her sister, her aversion to Brackenhill overridden only by her desire to send her kids somewhere nice for the summer. Maybe get them away from her awful husband? Hannah didn’t know. It was a lot to take in, and her thoughts spun.

“Is that why she left you? Because of Brackenhill?” Hannah placed her palm flat on the bar top to steady herself.

“She went back to college, met that shithead of a child-molester husband—he got fired for it, you know.” Warren shook the ice in his now-empty glass, his voice conversational, the anger temporarily abated.

“Stuart? A child molester?” Hannah almost laughed, it seemed so ludicrous.

“Sure. He had a problem sleeping with his students.” Warren motioned to the bartender, pointing to his glass. Getting warmed up now.

“Okay, but he was a college professor. His students were all over eighteen. I mean, I’m not saying it’s ethical, but they weren’t children.”

“Well, he was fired for it, so what’s that tell ya. Anyway, she fucked him, and they moved to that goddamn castle, looking down on everybody in Rockwell, and I sat down here like a chump, cleaning shit outa people’s toilets.”

“What about Ruby?” Hannah ventured.

“Not mine.”

Hannah put the timeline together in her head. Took a leap. “Ruby was five when she died in 1996. Fae left you in 1991. Or at least that’s when she changed her name. Which means she had Ruby before she left.”

“She was sleeping with that pervert long before she left.” Warren’s voice was getting louder. “That girl looked just like him. All them freckles and that blonde hair.”

Hannah studied Warren, realizing with a start that she hadn’t seen a picture of Ruby. Warren’s hair was dark, almost black, slicked back and oily. Fae’s had been salt and pepper when Hannah knew her but dark when she’d been younger. Stuart’s had been blond, shining in the sun. It had silvered early, Hannah remembered. She hadn’t looked for pictures, only documents.