by Erin Wright
Bacon moved from the food bowl over to the wheel and began running in endless circles.
“See? That’s why I bought Brooklyn a hamster. ‘Cause your life is just as pointless as mine.” He shook the almost-empty whiskey bottle at the oversized rat and then changed his mind and cradled it up against his chest. If he weren’t careful, he might spill the last of it, and then where would he be?
His cell phone rang and he perked up, snagging it with fumblin’ fingers off the counter. Maybe it were Hannah, finally callin’ him ba—
Aaron Morland were flashing up on the screen. Elijah dropped the phone back down to the counter with a sigh. He loved his brother, he surely did, but the last thing he wanted in that moment was to listen to a lecture ‘bout how he screwed this all up. He already knew that and didn’t need no know-it-all older brother to rub his face in it.
He took the last swig of the alcohol in the bottle, even tipping it up and running his tongue ‘round the edge, and then hucked it towards the kitchen trash. It clanked and smashed its way into place, finally stopping its noise and leavin’ him in peace.
“You sure is a dumbass,” he said to his all-too-empty kitchen. “Your daddy told you that you was, and you thought you’d prove him wrong, but you didn’t. You proved that no matter how hard you try, you ain’t never gonna be worth nothin’, and don’t you never, ever forget it again.”
He swung his hand down with a satisfying smash onto his piece-of-shit kitchen table he’d rescued off the side of the road years ago, and watched it fall to jagged pieces onto the floor, destroyed forever.
Destroyed, just like his damn life.
Chapter 34
Hannah
“Hey, Daddy,” Hannah said softly, stroking his liver-spotted hand. She used to love his hands – so big and strong, they could take on the world. Now they were gnarled and bony and thin, with dark spots telling the world his age, if they didn’t catch it from his face or stooped shoulders.
He peered up at her for just a moment, and she could tell that he was trying to figure out who she was, and then his attention was caught by the children’s puzzle in front of him and he looked back down at the table. “They sure make these things hard these days,” he announced to the room as he tried to slot a piece into place and failed. “Why, when I was a kid, they was a whole lot easier to put together.”
He’d put this one together dozens of times, each time slower than the last, but Hannah didn’t tell him that. At least he wasn’t giving up on it like he’d given up on door locks.
“Who did you say you are?” he demanded as he pushed on another piece, trying to force it into place.
“I’m Hannah Lambert,” she said, not bothering to explain to him that she was his daughter. Again. They’d done that bit so many times in the past, she could almost recite every line by heart. Just about the time she’d finally get him convinced that she really was his daughter, his mind would slip away and he’d forget it all.
Talking to him was like talking to a black hole – one that made sometimes appropriate, but mostly inappropriate, comments back. Therapists and lawyers and doctors swore oaths that they would never reveal a patient’s information without their consent, but telling Theodore Lambert? It was a rock-solid guarantee.
It was impossible to repeat something you don’t remember hearing, and ten minutes from now, he wouldn’t remember any of this. No chance of information leaking out of him.
She picked up a piece of the puzzle showing orange oak leaves against the fall sky, and tried to push it into place, failing just as badly as her father. She’d never been very good at puzzles. “I met a guy, Daddy. His name is Elijah Morland. He has a daughter named Brooklyn but he calls her Brooksy. She’s his mini-me, and never have I seen a father love a daughter more than Elijah loves Brooklyn. Except you and me – you always loved me so much.”
“I’m your…father?” he asked slowly, his watery blue eyes peering up at her through his bushy eyebrows.
“The one and only,” she said with a painful laugh. She didn’t feel like laughing. She swallowed the lump in her throat. “But Eli and I weren’t supposed to date, Daddy, and we did anyway, and I screwed it all up, and I ruined his life. Now he’s never going to get custody of his daughter – he doesn’t even have a job. How is he supposed to take care of a child? And Brooklyn will grow up without her papa, and…”
The tears were rolling down her cheeks again. A small part of her was shocked to realize that she still had tears left in her. She would’ve thought she was all cried out.
Apparently not.
Her father patted her cheek. “It’ll all work out, dear. Now…” His face clouded up. “What was your name again?”
“I’m Hannah Lambert,” she whispered. “I better go. I’ll see you later.” She pressed a kiss to his wrinkled cheek and hurried out of the room, hearing him mutter, “They sure make these things hard these da—” as the door swung shut behind her.
She swiped at the tears trailing down her cheeks with the backs of her hands as she scurried past the front desk, avoiding eye contact with Ms. Blackburn, the head director of the center. Usually she like chatting with her, but not today. Not while her eyes were doing their best broken-faucet impersonation.
She checked the time on her phone as she slid into her car. Five minutes to get over to the Muffin Man for a meeting of the Early Spinster Club. Michelle had texted her and said that either she showed up at the bakery, or Carla and Michelle would show up on her front doorstep. Hannah had reluctantly agreed to come to the bakery. Since school had ended three days before, she hadn’t left the house until today when she’d gone to visit her father.
Not that a visit to her father cheered her up, of course, although at this point, she wasn’t sure what would cheer her up.
Hmmm…actually, she did. She wanted time to go back 15 days so she could live again in a world where she was happy and Elijah was her boyfriend and…
She was snuffling again, which was ridiculous. She refused to go into the bakery with her eyes all red and puffy. Michelle and Carla had already heard what had gone down through the grapevine that was Sawyer, Idaho, but she didn’t need to confirm their worst suspicions. Bravely, she forced the tears away, wiping her cheeks clean and blowing her nose, and then, with her head held high, she slid into their regular booth.
With one wavery smile to the both of them, she burst into tears again.
Way to keep a stiff upper lip, Hannah. Why, I bet they can hardly even tell you’re upset.
She was hiccuping. She hated hiccuping.
Carla pulled her against her generous chest, stroking Hannah’s tear-soaked hair away from her face, while Michelle railed against the unfairness of it all, waving her arm around in the air like she was directing an orchestra only she could hear.
“You were just taking care of a little girl who needed the attention and love because her alcoholic,” Michelle hissed the dirty word, “mother was too drunk off her ass to do it herself. Did you tell the principal that you’d been taking care of this child for months and months now, and her darling, doting mother just barely noticed? Poor Brooklyn was basically raising herself. At ten years old! How dare you get into trouble for helping her become a beautiful young woman! You shoulda got a medal, not a year’s probation!”
Michelle was thundering with all of the might and power of a Baptist preacher by time she was done, and Carla was right there, cheering her on. “Couldn’t have said it better myself!” she shouted.
Hannah wanted to crawl under the booth and hide. She knew that the entire town of Sawyer had heard what had happened, but there was a difference between knowing that on an intellectual level versus discussing it openly in public.
Just when she didn’t think she could get any more embarrassed, Sugar came around from behind the counter with a huge dog whistle of appreciation for Michelle’s speech.
“You preach it, sister!” she practically hollered. “This town is ridiculous on the best of days, but what
Sarah Morland and that judge,” she sneered the word, “have done is beyond that.”
Sugar. Mylanta, it’s Sugar.
Hannah wasn’t surprised by the fact that Sugar was there. She was, after all, Gage’s primary employee, and had worked at the bakery for years now. She’d waited on their little Early Spinster’s Club meeting dozens of times over the years.
But today, Sugar was standing up for Hannah in a very public way, and honestly, she shouldn’t. She didn’t know she shouldn’t, but Hannah knew, and the guilt of that truth was weighing her down.
Sugar was the wife of the new fire chief in town, but before she’d married him, she’d been married to Dickwad. In fact, she’d been forced into marriage to Dickwad after she’d been caught in the act with him on graduation night.
Hannah looked up at Sugar, her petite form right back to its pre-pregnancy curves like she hadn’t just given birth two months before, and she gulped.
Hard.
Guilt.
So. Much. Guilt.
She’d wanted to apologize for years to Sugar for failing her by not reporting Dickwad to the authorities, or at least warned Sugar against dating him, but somehow, she’d never found a convenient time to do so.
She hadn’t exactly been trying hard, to put it mildly.
“Uhh, Sugar, can you take a break?” Hannah asked her, her voice squeaking a little with nerves. “I need…to talk to you about something.”
Today is already downright awful. Might as well blow it to smithereens, right?
“Sure,” Sugar said with a confused look, but she didn’t ask any questions. “Hey Gage, I’m gonna sit a spell!” she hollered over her shoulder, and then slid into the booth next to Michelle. “What’s up?”
“I’ve never told any of you guys this, but I owe Sugar an apology, so,” she drew in a deep breath, “all of you guys might as well hear it.”
She had three pairs of curious eyes trained on her, which was scary as could be, but luckily it was just Carla, Michelle, and Sugar. They weren’t scary.
Well, not unbearably scary.
She quickly recounted the details of her rape at the hands of Richard, trying not to delve too much into the gory details, mostly because she didn’t want to think about them. She finished the story with the threat made by the then-15-year-old boy that if she told the police, he’d tell them that she’d been trying to seduce him for months and ruin her career before it’d even started.
“If I’d gone to the police anyway,” she said miserably, “then you would’ve known not to date him, and you never would’ve been forced to marry him, and your life would be so much better. I let that happen to you by being a wimp and taking the easy way out. I’m so sorry, Sugar.” She whispered the words that had been choking her throat for years on end.
If she’d been truly brave – as brave as she was supposed to be – she should’ve been able to shout them from the rooftop, but they were just so damn hard to say.
There was dead silence at the table for just a moment, and then Michelle burst out, “Ho-ly shit! I had no…I can’t…I just…listen to me, I can’t even talk! Me!” There was a short burst of laughter at that, because honestly, Michelle lacking for words just wasn’t something that happened every day.
Hannah took a cautious peek up at Sugar, trying to ascertain how much Sugar hated her. Honestly, Hannah’s fears and complete lack of courage in the face of difficulty had made Sugar’s life a living hell for years on end.
So yeah, Sugar had every right to hate her guts and then some.
But instead, Sugar reached out and squeezed Hannah’s hand, her chocolate brown eyes filling up with unshed tears.
“Oh, Hannah,” she said softly. “I had no idea. I thought he’d just pushed his previous girlfriends to go farther than they’d wanted to go. I didn’t know…” She shook her head. “And to think that man is still out wandering the streets, free as a jaybird. It’s hard not to want to meet up with him in a dark alley, truly. I was afraid Jaxson would do just that after I told him what happened to me, but I think he realized that losing his two boys wasn’t worth it.” She shot Hannah a conspiratorial grin, wiping quickly at the tears that’d pooled at the corner of her eyes. “We have great taste, you and I. We picked the two men in Sawyer who’d do anything for their children, and they’re better men for it. So, what are you and Elijah going to do now that he’s been fired from the school?”
What am I going to do? Mylanta, what can I do? It isn’t like I have a choice in this or something.
But they were all staring at her like the obvious truth needed to be spelled out for them, so, spell it out she did.
“Nothing,” she said bluntly. “I can’t keep dating him, obviously. I haven’t even talked to him since the principal pulled me into his office; I’m too much of a wimp to return his phone calls. I just don’t know what to say to him. ‘Sorry I messed up your life. My bad!’ Like…there is no entry in Miss Manner’s book on this topic.” She shot them a wry grin, but found they were just staring back at her, pity practically oozing out of the three of them.
“Hannah, you can’t walk away from him,” Michelle said bluntly, wading in first. No surprise there. “I’ve known you pert near all of our lives, and I’ve never seen you as happy as you were when you were with Elijah. I wouldn’t have put the two of you together – you’re just such opposites, you know?”
“I always thought you’d end up with an English professor or something,” Carla put in, patting Hannah’s hand loyally.
“But the heart is smart, and you two…you belong together,” Michelle continued. “You love that little girl more than her own damn mother does. Elijah might be a little rough around the edges but he’d move heaven and earth for you, and he makes you happy.”
“Cheerful,” Carla added.
“Smiling all the time,” Sugar piped up.
“You can’t let that go,” Michelle announced with a finality of a woman who got what she wanted, when she wanted it. Hannah had figured out long ago that there was no telling Michelle no. It would be like trying to hold back the tides of the ocean armed only with a tablespoon.
Hannah sank down in her seat, biting her lower lip as she stared back at her three friends. They made it seem so easy.
Just date him again, they said. It’ll work out great, they said.
Except it’d put her career in jeopardy, and that was all she had left.
“I can’t,” she whispered. Michelle moved to protest, and Hannah held up her hand to stop her. Michelle subsided back into her seat, staring disbelievingly at Hannah. With every line in her body, it was obvious that she was simply waiting for Hannah to quit talking so she could set her straight. This just spurred Hannah on to talk faster so she could get it all out first.
“The principal…he was angry because Brooklyn was my student and sure, she isn’t anymore, now that we’re on summer break. And he was angry because Elijah was my co-worker and sure, he isn’t anymore, now that the school district fired him. But I barely escaped that office with my job intact. My career intact. If I was fired from the school district, what would I do? Where would I work? I am a teacher. That’s who I am, clear through my soul. I can’t just go get a job down at the city filing paperwork or something. If I were to start dating Elijah again, I’d be thumbing my nose at the leadership of the school district. I’m already on thin ice with them; this would be their breaking point.”
She sat back and realized with a painful bit of pride that she’d managed to shut them up. All three of them – even Michelle. Hannah wasn’t much for arguing so she was a little proud of herself for actually winning an argument. But on the other hand, this was one argument she didn’t want to win. She wanted them to prove her wrong, somehow, some way. Come up with something she’d missed and fix all of her problems.
Sugar stood up first. “I’m sorry, Hannah, I have to go back to work. Gage is probably wondering what in the hell happened to me. I wish I had something better to tell you. But, I will say thi
s: My ex is one manipulative bastard, so don’t feel one moment’s guilt over not telling the world what happened at the city park. There was no way to win with that man – he made sure of it.” She squeezed Hannah’s shoulder consolingly on the way back to the kitchen.
Hannah looked at Michelle and Carla, her two closest friends in the world, and waited for them to say something. To wave a magic wand and fix her broken life.
Instead, Carla leaned over and wrapped her arm around Hannah’s shoulders, pulling her close and stroking her hair. “Sorry, darlin’,” she said into Hannah’s hair. “Some days, life just sucks.”
Truer words had never been spoken.
Chapter 35
Elijah
The buzzing of his cell phone on his nightstand pulled him up through the layers of sleep. Even in that world between asleep and awake, he was hopin’ and wishin’ and prayin’ that it were Hannah callin’ him. Maybe she’d—
He forced one eyelid open and looked at his phone. Aaron Morland, the screen said. 3:22 a.m.
Elijah sat straight up in bed. Why on God’s green earth was Aaron calling him at 3:22 in the morning? Absolutely nothing good could come of this. Not a damn thing.
“Yeah?” he said gruffly, shoving the phone between his cheek and shoulder as he swung his legs outta bed. Whatever were going on, he needed to be dressed for it, and boxers and a t-shirt sure as shit didn’t count.
“It’s Brooksy,” Aaron said briskly. “Sarah was driving home from Boise stinkin’ drunk and got in a car wreck just outside of town. Didn’t make it over the Narrows, and the Escalade ended up at the bottom of the gorge. They’re pulling Sarah out of it now, but the EMTs think they’re gonna need the Jaws of Life to get Brooksy out. You better come quick.”
“Leavin’. Going now. I’m on my way.” He was sputterin’ but his heart was racin’ so fast, he had a hard time breathin’ or thinkin’ or anything else. “Are you out there already?” He could hear sirens in the background, and he was pretty sure they was his brother’s sirens on his police car.
