Hagar's Mother (The Bridge Daughter Cycle Book 2)

by Jim Nelson

  Hanna followed a snaking path of crushed rock and agate through the school’s gardens of rose bushes and bamboo. The school paid well to maintain tidy and pristine grounds, right down to the Japanese rock garden beside the Peace Pool and statue of Sadako Sasaki. Hanna questioned such expenses when the bi-yearly tuition bill arrived. She never questioned those expenses so much to withdraw the girls from classes.

  Hanna rattled the locked gate on the playground fence. The swings and monkey bars hung limply. She glanced down and sucked in a surprised gasp of air.

  Chalked on the gate post barely a foot off the ground was Hagar’s mark, a rotund water urn with handles like elephant ears. It appeared fresh. The lawn was moist from an evening watering. Arriving straight from the courthouse, Hanna was still in her business skirt and hose. Mindful of the wet ground, she bent at the waist to examine the mark. She ran her forefinger over its lines. The dry crumbly chalk left a fine grit on her fingertip.

  A padlock on the gate prevented entry. Curved spikes topping the fence prevented scaling over, although Hanna could not imagine Ruby scaling anything in her condition. Past the chain link, the far corners of the still playground were cobwebbed in shadows.

  Discouragement descended upon Hanna. She was embarrassed to put so much stock in a one-word text message. Coit New Bridge School was a tightly regulated environment. Ruby fleeing to her school would be like an escaped convict running back to prison. Hanna had overthought everything. Now she imagined Ruby at the base of Coit Tower on the other side of the bay, alone and shivering and awaiting her mother’s warm embrace. Meanwhile, Hanna trudged around the school in her heels and hose, doing a poor imitation of Nancy Drew.

  The sound of a pneumatic door hissed. It cut through the quiet evening air. A heavy door creaked open and slammed shut. Hanna turned to locate the source. A woman emerged from the shadows of the main building carrying an armful of papers and books with a ring of keys and key fobs in hand. She headed for the staff parking lot. Her car’s security system beeped twice and its headlamps flashed. The car’s hatchback popped open and gently rose into place.

  Hanna peered to the Audi on the opposite side of the lot. Its interior light was off. Only a silhouette of Cynthia was visible in the front seat, and Hanna needed a moment to make out her form. Cynthia remained still. Hanna prayed she would go unnoticed.

  The woman loaded her books and papers in the rear of the car. She stepped away from car, pressed a keychain fob, and the hatchback gently closed. In a huff, she circled to the driver’s side of the car and opened the door. Hand on the door handle and looking directly at Hanna, the woman froze.

  Hanna now recognized the woman. It was Ms. Ridmore, Cynthia’s teacher.

  With her key ring in hand, one key extended from her fist the way they teach in rape prevention class, Ms. Ridmore left her car and approached the playground. As she came near, Hanna could tell she was squinting through her glasses to make out Hanna’s face in the weak evening light. Hanna, defeated, made her way across the damp lawn to meet Ms. Ridmore halfway.

  Ms. Ridmore’s face was overcome with a puzzled expression. “Ms. Driscoll?” she said. “What are you doing here?”

  After hours, Ms. Ridmore’s usual tidy appearance had dulled and frayed at the edges. She usually kept her hair up and in a bow or a scarf, but crimped strands had worked their way loose and stuck out like twigs. Her cosmetics had faded as well. At some point, she’d simply removed her lipstick, probably to grab a bite to eat after school hours.

  Hanna approached with her hands clasped together expressing an air of contrition. “I know I’m not supposed to be here.”

  Ms. Ridmore’s puzzled expression gently mutated to one of pity. “Are you here to talk to the dean? You really should have called first.”

  Hanna found the tone of Ms. Ridmore’s voice cloying and smug. It came from an educator who took her job slightly too seriously. In the past, Hanna excused Ms. Ridmore’s officiousness with the acknowledgement that, when it came to minding girls who were their parents’ surrogates, it was better to have a stern overseer than a forgiving one. Ms. Ridmore was Coit material, all the way.

  “I hope you understand our position,” Ms. Ridmore said. “The school has to maintain its standards.”

  “Trust me, I read the email several times,” Hanna said.

  The email had been impersonal and somewhat legal in its phrasings. We regret to inform you, it opened. A particularly wordy phrase in the second paragraph impressed Hanna: Coit New Bridge School strives to be mindful of its influence upon all its charges. The stinger was As per Section Four of our Agreement, your tuition will not be refunded in full or in part. And the insincere conclusion: We wish you the best in locating another bridge educational facility.

  “You should’ve called the dean first,” Ms. Ridmore said. “She would tell you what I regretfully would tell you. There is no appeals process.”

  With doleful brown eyes and her chin pitched left, Ms. Ridmore’s sympathy felt as authentic as a mortician’s. Truthfully, the arrival of the email one week earlier had not bowled over Hanna. The termination paled in the shadow of Vaughn’s threat of taking custody.

  Our school sees the plight of the single mother as an area of particular concern, Ms. Ridmore told Hanna at the beginning of the school year. The peculiar way she pronounced single mother, the gull in single emphasizing what Hanna could only describe as disdain. The school’s New England instincts for keeping up appearances was foreign to Hanna and her upbringing. Seven years of tuition payments, dozens of parent-teacher conferences, and the incessant administration reminders of conduct rules and bylaws—she’d granted the Coit New Bridge School the responsibility of raising her daughters, and in return, she’d received a copy-and-pasted email. Cynthia and Ruby deserved better than the likes of Ms. Ridmore and her arched eyebrows and tongue-clucking.

  And so Hanna could not help herself. “I was a little peeved not to have a chance to make my case,” she told Ms. Ridmore. “I’ve been charged with absolutely nothing. Everything the news has implied about me and my daughters, none of it’s true.”

  Ms. Ridmore nodded as Hanna spoke. “We do have our standards—”

  “What about fairness?” Hanna said. “I recall that standard in the Core Values,” a lengthy statement Hanna signed at the start of each school year and mailed back with the tuition check.

  Ms. Ridmore licked her lips, a necessary pause to frame what was next said. “You and your bridge daughters were in the company of—” She dropped her voice. “Those girls had had Blanchard’s done to them.”

  “I would never put Ruby or Cynthia in harm’s way,” Hanna said. “After seven years, your school should know me better than that—”

  “Then what were you and Ruby doing at that meeting?” She said it as though administering a coup de grace. “What kind of mother would even allow her bridge daughter to find herself in that situation?”

  Hanna planned on taking the girls out of the school in a few weeks in any event. Their finalities were approaching. The refund the school denied her was less than two thousand dollars, a nominal refund when bridges leave in preparation for their finalities. Hanna told herself to end the matter, to walk away, but she could not, not after all she’d been through.

  “You emailed everyone, didn’t you?” Hanna said. “You told every other parent of Cynthia and Ruby’s expulsion. Didn’t you?”

  “Nothing we do is kept in the dark,” Ms. Ridmore said. “It sounds like you reached out to the other parents for help?”

  “I’ve spoken to no one,” Hanna said. “I just expected you to do something like that.”

  “Questions were asked,” Ms. Ridmore said. “We have a duty to inform our parents. They need to know their bridges are safe with us.”

  “And I was a threat?” Hanna asked. “Ruby and Cynthia, my two sweet girls are the threats?” When she received no reply, she said, “Well, you’ve made my name mud.”

  “Did we?” Ms. Ridmore said. “
Or did you?”

  The women stared at each other for a moment. A hearty breeze picked up, cool and stiff, sending dead leaves scraping down Hearst Avenue. The streetlamp at the intersection flickered on. Hanna wanted Ms. Ridmore to leave so she could continue looking for Ruby, but the educator held her ground. Hanna would have to leave and return later.

  “I’ve always done what was best for my daughters,” Hanna said. She retreated for her car. “I’m a good mother.” Ms. Ridmore’s cold, withdrawn eyes suggested she did not agree.

  Before Hanna could open the Audi’s door, Ms. Ridmore had started her hatchback, backed out of her space, and pulled onto Hearst Avenue. In a moment, Ms. Ridmore was gone.

  Hanna could keep searching for Ruby, although two cars remained in the parking lot and the office at the far end of the building remained lit. She wished she’d thought to bring a flashlight. Soon it would be dark. Perhaps she should go home, change into more suitable clothes, find a flashlight, and return. That would probably prompt a call to the police by the school’s neighbors. She fell into the driver’s seat and took a deep, needed breath of air.

  “Is everything okay?” Cynthia said.

  Hanna put her forehead on top of the steering wheel. “I’m worried Ruby is at Coit Tower after all.”

  “I don’t think so,” Cynthia said. “She’s not here, either.”

  Hanna closed her eyes. Cynthia’s reassurances sounded hollow.

  “Why do you say that?” she asked Cynthia.

  “Because I know where to find Ruby,” came a familiar voice from the backseat.

  Hanna shot up and twisted around. A lithe, diminutive female had been lying on the backseat floor. She drew herself up and sat on the middle cushion. She offered Hanna a confident, perhaps overconfident, smile.

  “We have to talk first,” Piper said.

  Twenty-seven

  Two weeks earlier, in the fourth-floor offices of the Department of Bridge Protective Services, Hanna signed several legal documents. She’d been in jail for three days, ripe with body odor and suffering from lack of sleep. She’d not seen her bridge daughters in as many days, a mother who’d not spent more than a few hours apart from them since they were born. Exhausted, emotionally depleted, she signed a sworn statement for the police explaining her presence at the Warming Hut. She then signed several standard documents produced by Deborah Jess, the social worker, affirming her biological and legal relationship to Ruby and swearing she had raised her in a safe and healthy environment.

  Ninety minutes later, a plainclothes officer entered the room, identified herself, and explained to Hanna she would be released if she signed another agreement. Without asking for counsel and eager to get Ruby in her arms, Hanna initialed and signed the typed agreement:

  If I, Hanna Madeline Driscoll, learn the whereabouts of Hope Elizabeth Andover, a.k.a. Piper, a.k.a. the Pied Piper of Youngsville, I am to contact San Francisco Police Department (SFPD) immediately.

  If I, Hanna Madeline Driscoll, speak to, receive correspondence from, or engage in any form of communication with Hope Elizabeth Andover, I will cease communication and contact SFPD immediately.

  If Hope Elizabeth Andover is apprehended by SFPD, I, Hanna Madeline Driscoll, will cooperate with any and all investigations, judicial proceedings, and prosecutions, and to the fullest extent the law allows.

  The plainclothes officer separated the triplicate. She kept the top two copies and left on the table Hanna’s, a pale-yellow sheet. Her faded, broken signature on the bottom line was formed by loops of the triplicate’s purple pressure-ink.

  “Do I need to keep this?” Hanna said absently, sleep-deprived.

  “It doesn’t matter.” The officer placed the other two copies in a manila folder. “We’ll always have our copy.”

  —

  “Where’s my daughter?” Hanna said to Piper. She turned to Cynthia. “What’s going on here?”

  “I don’t know,” Cynthia said. “She came up to the car while you were with Ms. Ridmore. I told her she should hide in here.” She pleaded, “I didn’t want us to get caught.”

  Hanna twisted in her seat to face Piper. “Whatever you’re trying to pull—”

  “She knows where Ruby is,” Cynthia said.

  “I should turn you in right now,” Hanna said to Piper.

  Piper’s bold smile faded to a slight yawn. She peered out the side window and made a bored exhalation of air. Hanna found the display overly cute.

  “We both know you’re not going to do that,” Piper said.

  “I could very well do it,” Hanna said. Knowing what Piper wanted to do to Ruby, Hanna at that moment thought her to be a butcher.

  Piper reached to the floor of the backseat. She hauled up a drab-green denim saddle bag, worn and bulging and faded. Frayed holes dotted the corners of the pockets and along the seams. She dug around inside it.

  “Oh, the concerned, loving mother,” Piper said. “You say you think of Ruby first, but you’ll watch her die without even trying to help her. You’ll drive Ruby to the hospital. You’ll watch them cut her open and yank that baby out from inside her.” Piper shook her head. “And the moment you see that baby, you’ll be so excited, you won’t even notice Ruby disappear. Poof. Vanished.” She wiped her hands through the air as a magician would. “The nurses will wheel Ruby into a separate room and shut the door so she can die out of sight.” She paused for effect. “And you’ll go home the concerned, loving mother.”

  Piper leaned forward. She put a gentle hand on Cynthia’s shoulder. “There will be no one there for you,” she said.

  “Get away from her,” Hanna said.

  “I’m thinking of Cynthia,” Piper said. “Someone has to.”

  “I think of my daughters’ well-being every second of every day,” Hanna said.

  Piper retracted from Cynthia. “I’m sure you think that,” she said.

  “Now tell me where Ruby is,” Hanna said.

  “Drive,” Piper said. “I’ll take you to her.”

  “We’re not moving until you tell me where she is,” Hanna said.

  “I have to take you there,” Piper said. “It’s the only way.”

  “Is she safe?”

  “She’s waiting for you,” Piper said.

  Cynthia reached across the front seat to grip Hanna’s arm. Her grip was taut, almost commanding, like Vaughn’s when they were still in love. Vaughn could hold Hanna down in bed, pin her wrists to the mattress, and have his way with her. That hold could make her go limp. Cynthia had her father’s grip, but not his coarse scaly skin. Her skin was buttery and supple from the hormones preparing her for childbirth.

  “There’s no point arguing with her,” Cynthia said to Hanna. “She’ll take us to Ruby. When we find her, all of this will be over.”

  “Honey, I wish that was true,” Hanna said.

  “In a few weeks, I’ll have Barry.” Cynthia released Hanna to hold her own midsection. “A week after that, Ruby will have Ruby Jo. You’ll have two little babies you can hug and squeeze all day long. And all your problems will go away.”

  Hanna looked away. “Oh, honey.”

  “Cynthia,” Piper said, “you have the power to change your fate—”

  “I’ve made my decision.” Cynthia’s voice dropped a register when she said it.

  Piper made a pert, knowing smile. “You’ve been brainwashed.”

  “I’m doing what’s right for my family,” Cynthia said, her voice a brick wall.

  Hanna started the engine and pulled the shifter to Reverse. She could see Piper’s face in the rearview mirror. Cynthia’s stone-cold tone had taken something out of her superior air.

  “Lead the way,” Hanna said.

  As the Audi cruised down sleepy Hearst Avenue, a car passed going the other direction. A hatchback, Hanna noted, and the same color as Ms. Ridmore’s. She did not make out the driver, but that did not mean the driver could not see them.

  —

  Traffic thinned with each mile nort
h they progressed. Only the bluish glow of the dashboard console lit the car interior. No one spoke and Hanna kept the stereo off. Beneath them, the four radials made a sizzling sound on the asphalt.

  Halfway across the Benicia-Martinez Bridge, Piper lay across the floor of the backseat. She covered herself with a blanket and asked Cynthia to verify she could not be seen. She remained hidden until they were well past the toll gates.

  “Secret Agent X,” Hanna murmured.

  “They photograph license plates at toll booths now,” Piper said. “You think that’s the only thing they take photos of?”

  Directions to wineries and tasting rooms began to appear along the highway. Billboards invited wine lovers deeper into Napa County.

  “We’re going to Grandpa’s house,” Cynthia said.

  “I don’t think so,” Hanna said. They’d passed the exit to Lake Berryessa.

  “Ruby is in a safe place,” Piper announced.

  “What does that mean?” Hanna said.

  “It means she’s safe.” Piper murmured, “Chee-sus.”

  —

  After half an hour, Piper spoke up from the backseat. “How long were you at Shur Spring that night?”

  “You mean your meeting at the Warming Hut?”

  “I thought you brought the cops there,” Piper said. “I figured you snitched on us. But then I read they arrested you because they thought you were helping us.” She laughed. “As if.”

  Piper sat upright in the center of the backseat, smirking and legs crossed, like a sultan on a divan. Her fine spaghetti-blond hair forked at her shoulders and fell to each elbow.

  “Tell me about your bridge mother,” Piper said to Hanna.

  “About who?” Hanna said.

  “Ruby told me a great deal,” Piper said. “She told me Hanna could read and write. She was compassionate. How many people do you know who would put others before themselves? Really, how many?”

  “Not many,” Hanna admitted. “Is that how you see yourself?”