Half Past: A Novel

by Victoria Helen Stone

  Jeff ran a hand over his face, the stubble rasping against his fingers in a way that made her throat a little tight. He took a deep breath. “I think maybe your grandfather was running a cult.”

  “A what?”

  “A cult.”

  “Like Charles Manson?” Her voice rose a little too high. “Jim Jones?”

  “Not on that level, of course. But there were lots of little . . . bubbles of personality back then. And if you find lost people and give them drugs and new ideas . . . it’s not so hard to manipulate them.”

  Hannah had no idea what to think. She shook her head hard. “You’re saying he was giving them drugs?”

  “No, that was just an example. One of the memoirs mentioned a couple of communes in Big Sur, plus a place called Jacob’s Rock. Hold on, I’ll quote it.” He lifted a paper. “‘Jacob’s Rock, run by a crazy old preacher with a wife and two concubines. They fed us well, but we moved on after two days.’”

  “Holy shit,” she breathed. “Two concubines?”

  “Yeah.”

  “But that doesn’t . . . that doesn’t mean it was a cult, does it?”

  Jeff leaned back in his chair, his face soft with sympathy. “I suppose not. But we’re talking about vulnerable young people and an evangelical preacher who could apparently talk them into accepting a little old-fashioned polygamy.”

  “But . . . Good God. Is that all this guy said?”

  “I’m afraid so. Frankly, he didn’t even seem that shocked. We have no idea how many people were running places like that. You’ve only heard of the big ones, and those were because innocent people died. But there was a huge commune of Christians in Tennessee that practiced polygamy without much trouble. Thousands of them. The commune is still there.”

  “Really?”

  “Yep. So a small group that didn’t make much fuss before it faded into oblivion . . .” She watched him raise a shoulder; then her eyes drifted to the office behind him. The stacks of books and pictures of his favorite historic sites. How many times had she been in that office with him? A hundred? A thousand? Last night felt strangely far away now.

  She cleared her throat. “And my father?” she asked, hating to even let the words out of her mouth.

  “I don’t know. Oftentimes it’s only the leader who gets to live with special rules.”

  “But . . .” She closed her eyes. “But maybe his son too.”

  “I’m looking into it,” he promised. “But it’s just as likely it was a friendship or an affair.”

  “God,” she groaned. “I can’t picture any of this. You knew my dad! This is crazy. He was . . . he was boring. Steady.”

  “I know. And regardless of what happened in Big Sur, that’s still who he was, Hannah. He was your dad. A deacon at his church. A member of the Kiwanis Club.”

  “And a guy with a harem.”

  “Come on. I’m sure that’s not how it was.”

  She looked through the window that faced her fire pit, but all she could see were the dark boughs of the redwoods blocking out the sky. “I thought this was a happy place.”

  “Maybe it was. Jacob Smith could have just been an old guy who tried to fit free love into his idea of Jesus.”

  He was only saying what she’d been trying to convince herself of for the past few days. But it didn’t seem quite as possible anymore. “I think I need some coffee,” she murmured.

  “You do. You look tired.”

  She blushed and smoothed her hair down. “I’m sure.”

  “I just meant you look like I rudely woke you up.”

  “You did!”

  “Sorry. And sorry to be the bearer of weird news.”

  “Don’t apologize. You didn’t have to help with any of this. And . . .” She looked up at the ceiling, hoping to gather her thoughts, but she didn’t spot anything except one cobweb in the rafters. “I’m sorry we couldn’t just talk out all that other stuff.”

  “Maybe when this is over,” he suggested.

  “Yeah. That’s a good idea. We’ll figure it out, okay?”

  “That’d be good. I can’t really afford the legal fees.”

  She felt a stab of bitterness that it was all about money, but she shoved that down beneath her feelings of gratitude and hid it there.

  “Watch your email,” he said. “I’ll be in touch if I find out more. And I’ll try not to sic the inn on you again.”

  “It’s all right. I know historical research is sometimes an emergency to you.”

  He winked and signed off with a smile, and that was the image of him frozen on her computer for a few seconds. Amused at one of her jokes. Easy and happy. She hadn’t seen that for so long, not during the whole last year of their marriage. Mostly because she’d been grumpy and starting fights. Or just avoiding him.

  Hannah had come here looking for a way to blame that on her real mother, really. Validate that it was her genetics and not Hannah’s own shortcomings. It had been a relief to imagine her mother as a free spirit who couldn’t be held down by love and commitment. But what if it had nothing to do with a free spirit?

  “Then that would really suck,” she said to the empty cabin.

  She could pack up now and leave these sticky questions behind without ever finding the real answers. She could blame her faults on genetics or fraud or all the lies her family had told and be satisfied with that. The perfect defense.

  Or she could stay and find out the truth.

  Her email dinged like she’d gotten a quiz question right. Damn it.

  She didn’t recognize the name, but she clicked on the email and immediately realized it was from the daycare woman next door.

  My mother-in-law is coming down today if you want to stop in! She should be here by ten, and she loves to gossip. Come on over!

  Okay, the universe was obviously telling her to stay. So she’d stay. Even if it entailed braving the halls of toddler hell.

  She meant to go straight to breakfast, but instead Hannah found herself taking the trail that veered toward the meadow.

  Tucking her hands into her pockets to keep them warm, she looked out over the grass. Condensation had deepened the grass to dark, wet green, so the meadow didn’t seem quite so light and magical. Maybe the garden hadn’t been tended by peaceful hippie girls. Maybe they’d been near servants, bent over in the mud and wet to feed the men of the cult.

  Hannah turned away and trudged toward the inn. She watched for Joe as she walked, rehearsing the questions she’d pepper him with if she found him. He’d clearly left out some very important details during their conversation. Would he call it a cult if she pressed him? He obviously had negative feelings about the place.

  In the end, the questions she practiced didn’t matter. Joe didn’t appear on her walk, and when she got to the inn, Hannah saw the shed locked up tight. He could be off today. Nobody worked seven days a week.

  Disappointed, she went inside and slipped quietly into a chair at the far end of the table. Two new couples were at breakfast today. Hannah offered the barest smile she could manage, and they all smiled back and left her to her breakfast.

  Tucker didn’t make an appearance either. Instead, a young, heavyset woman Hannah had never seen popped in and out of the room and laid dishes on the sideboard. Hannah served herself and ate enough to silence the gnawing worry in her gut.

  Both of the couples were quiet in that way people were after many years of marriage. Hannah had never been sure if it was contentment or boredom. Maybe a mixture of both. Whatever it was, it held no appeal for her.

  She escaped as quickly as she could and walked toward the river, listening for the sound of Joe’s vehicle the whole way. But all she heard was water and birdsong as she moved along the trail and edged around the daycare fence. She’d assumed it was for privacy, but now she saw that it was meant to keep the kids safe. Safe from the river and from the endless march of the woods going up and up into the hills.

  Kids could disappear here. She wondered if they ever did. May
be she’d had more sisters. Or brothers. Maybe some of the kids had never made it out.

  Hannah shook her head as she rounded the fence and stepped onto the dirt road. She was getting dark and maudlin, imagining her past as something sinister when it was just sad.

  This time when she rang Jenny’s doorbell, she was ready for the squeals from inside. She braced herself and pasted on a smile.

  “Hannah!” Jenny said as she opened the door, same braid over her shoulder, same baby attached to her hip. Hannah assumed it was the same baby, at any rate. It was white and plump and bald. Other than that, who could tell?

  “These kids must give you quite a workout,” she said.

  “They definitely keep me moving all day. Come in! Mom’s in the kitchen.”

  “Thank you so much for the invitation.”

  “It’s no problem. The more the merrier. Plus, I might get some good new gossip.”

  Hannah tried not to wince. These women were being generous and had no idea how serious this was to her. And hell, if it was anyone else’s family, Hannah would be just as invested in the entertainment of it. A secret baby? Sex with hippies? A possible cult? It was delicious.

  Speaking of delicious, she smelled baking cookies before she even got to the kitchen. The shy kid peeked around the doorway, then turned and raced away when Hannah tried a smile.

  This was all reminding her of Rachel’s home, populated with nurturing women and so many kids. Her nieces and nephews and various neighborhood children, because why not? The more the merrier!

  She stiffened her spine and tried not to feel inferior. She wasn’t like them. And that was fine.

  It was fine.

  “Did you wash your hands?” she heard a woman asking just before she stepped through the door.

  The little boy who’d stalked Hannah the last time nodded solemnly up at an older lady who was wiping a bowl with a dishcloth.

  “Good boy,” the woman said. “The cookies will be ready in ten minutes.”

  He nodded again, then raced away into another room. The woman, whose silver hair was cropped close to her head, reached to put the bowl away on an open shelf when she noticed Hannah.

  “Hello! You must be Hannah. I’m Ruth Schwartz.” She slid the bowl into place and turned to grasp Hannah’s hand. Her fingers were calloused, as if she spent a lot of time working outdoors. Hannah felt immediately more comfortable.

  “Hannah Smith,” she said. “Nice to meet you.”

  “Let’s grab a cup of tea and sit down for a chat.”

  Tea wasn’t normally her thing, but it sounded perfect today. Cozy, comforting, gentle. Ruth poured water from a pot into three mugs and dropped tea bags into each.

  “I’ll just hover,” Jenny said, rocking back and forth as the baby in her arms began to lose its battle with sleep.

  Ruth set two of the mugs on the kitchen table, and Hannah took a seat. “So your family used to live over there?” Eyebrows raised, she tipped her head slowly toward the Riverfall property.

  “They did. A long time ago. Until 1972.”

  “Well, we didn’t buy this house until ’79, but there were still stories, let me tell you.” She leaned closer, dipping the tea bag slowly up and down in the steaming water. “When we first moved here, my husband traveled quite a bit, so I spent a lot of nights alone. And it was so creepy. I mean, it was creepy enough just being out in the middle of nowhere alone, but we’d heard stories about the scary old man next door.”

  “He still lived there?” she asked in shock.

  “No, he was long gone. Somebody was trying to make it take off as a guesthouse, but he didn’t have money to fix the place up. So everything was normal and fine, but I heard rumors. You know?”

  “Rumors about what?”

  Ruth glanced at Jenny, but Jenny just shrugged.

  “Were they your family?” Ruth asked. “I don’t want to be disrespectful.”

  “Please don’t worry about that. I’m trying to figure out the truth. You won’t hurt my feelings.”

  Jenny brought a plate over for the tea bags and offered honey. Hannah scooped a large teaspoon into her mug and waited.

  “Okay.” Ruth’s voice dropped. “I heard he loved to preach about hell and damnation. He had a big tent and invited everyone, but the services were so dark that people around here stopped going. But the young people who lived there . . . they’d take drugs and moan and wail through the sermons. And then . . .”

  Jenny had stopped rocking, and Ruth’s voice dropped even more as Hannah leaned closer. “Then he started saying God was speaking to him.”

  Despite the warm cup in her hands, Hannah shivered.

  Ruth nodded as if she’d seen. “Like, really speaking to him. People told me the stories like they were funny, but I didn’t think they were funny when I was here alone at night. Some man just a stone’s throw away had been calling up God and the devil, and even though I didn’t believe, I didn’t like it.”

  Hannah didn’t like it either. “I get it.”

  “And then one day he just disappeared. No word to anyone around here. He and his people were just gone, and someone else owned the place. But where did he go?”

  “You don’t know?”

  “No one knows. I’d hear animals scratching around at night and think, what if he’s out living in the woods somewhere?”

  Hannah grimaced. “Oh, God.”

  “I mean, he wasn’t, obviously. But late night isn’t the most rational time of the day. My imagination ran wild. But then I had the kids, and I got too tired and busy for ghost stories.”

  The oven timer dinged, and Ruth got up to check the cookies. Jenny left to put the baby down for its nap, and Hannah was alone with her tea. She closed her eyes and sipped it, but the spicy sweetness couldn’t cut the bitterness on her tongue.

  Suddenly, her idyllic childhood seemed idyllic again. If she’d been taken away from her roots, maybe it had been for a damn good reason. Instead of a free, beautiful hippie, maybe her mother had been more like Squeaky Fromme and the other Manson girls. Screaming about an apocalyptic future. Wild-eyed with madness. Maybe Hannah had inherited that.

  The toddlers ran in, looking for cookies, but Ruth shooed them out so they wouldn’t be tempted near the hot metal sheet. Hannah took another long sip of her tea and looked up to find that her tiny stalker hadn’t been chased far enough away. He stood in the doorway, staring at her. Then he barked.

  Hannah blinked.

  He barked again, then put the ragged stuffed animal he was carrying—a roadkill raccoon, maybe?—between his teeth before he dropped to all fours. Hannah watched in confused horror as he crawled to her feet and dropped the matted animal on her shoes. He barked again. “Ruff, ruff!”

  “He wants you to throw it!” Ruth said with much more cheer than Hannah was feeling.

  “Like . . . he wants to play fetch?”

  “Yep.”

  “Isn’t that a little demeaning?”

  “It’s pretending. It’s good for his brain.”

  Hannah nodded, but she just stared at the boy until he barked again, prompting her to reach for the toy. She picked the furry thing up between two fingers and tossed it into the next room.

  He took off so fast that she jumped in alarm. And sure enough, he retrieved the toy with his teeth and brought it back to her.

  Hannah was almost sure this qualified as child abuse, but she tossed the animal again. And again. As if he were a dog.

  Ten tosses later, he seemed to wear himself out and came to sit at her feet and rest his head against her legs. Hannah patted his hair. He panted and snuggled closer, so she stroked his soft brown hair and murmured, “Good doggie.”

  Maybe she wasn’t so bad with kids after all. Or maybe she just needed a dog. Whatever the reason, she didn’t really mind him wrapping his little arms around her legs and settling in. She didn’t even mind when Ruth brought him a cookie and he rested it on her jeans, though she knew the warm chocolate chips would leave stains. I
nstead of extricating herself, she just ate her own cookie and petted his head.

  Ruth sat back down and dropped her voice to a whisper. “There were rumors he married one of those young girls. Wanted to start his own Eden.” Hannah remembered her mother’s strange words. We left the garden. Is that what she’d meant? The Garden of Eden?

  “He was already married,” Hannah clarified.

  Ruth shrugged. “Maybe it’s just a rumor, then.”

  No, it wasn’t just a rumor. It was a rumor based on him taking concubines. Jesus, this was all insane.

  Jenny returned without the baby and grabbed a cookie.

  “I hope I didn’t say too much,” Ruth said.

  “Nonsense. I’m so grateful to you for telling me. I can’t seem to find many people around here who saw this stuff firsthand. Did all of his followers leave Big Sur?”

  “As far as I know. I mean, none of them were from around here.”

  “I don’t suppose either of you recognize the name Maria Diaz?”

  “No,” Jenny said. “I’m sorry.”

  But Ruth frowned. “Maria Diaz? I think that was Maria Frank’s name! Before she remarried!”

  Hannah sat up straight. “Really? You know her?”

  Ruth nodded. “Does she still run the bakery, Jenny?”

  “As far as I know.”

  “Yes!” Ruth said, lighting up with excitement. “She runs a bakery out of her house! She used to make rolls and bread for most of the restaurants around here, but I think she’s slowed down to only supplying one or two. She makes the most amazing herb rolls with herbs from her own garden. They’re the best.”

  “Was she part of this church?”

  “Maria?” Ruth gasped. “Absolutely not. I can’t even imagine it.”

  “Do you think she might talk to me? I think she may have known my mother. If you have her address . . .”

  “I don’t know the address, but I’ll draw you a map. I’m sure she’d be happy to help. And grab some of those rolls while you’re there. In fact, I think I’ll stop by on my way north tonight and grab some myself.”

  Hannah nodded, but the rest of the chatter flowed right through her. This was it. If this Maria hadn’t been part of Jacob’s Rock, she had at least been called in whenever women gave birth. She’d known the women. She’d seen whatever tide of darkness had eventually swallowed them. She’d known Rain and Dorothy.