Half Past: A Novel

by Victoria Helen Stone

  Hannah reached down to pet the little boy’s head as she swallowed hard against the gritty dryness suddenly coating her mouth. Maria was the key. An eyewitness to the “women’s business” part of Jacob’s Rock.

  She’d finally have the truth whether she wanted it or not.

  CHAPTER 16

  The little house was the opposite of the inn. The opposite of Jacob’s Rock. As if the owner had decided she could bear no more trees and darkness and shade in her life.

  Far north of the tourist haunts of Big Sur, the house sat above the road in a rocky meadow that angled down past the highway until it ended in stark cliffs. It was tiny. Just a cinderblock square with a faded, hand-painted sign that read MARIA’S BAKERY, but it was surrounded by tufts of green and gold plants. An herb garden instead of a lawn.

  Did Maria live here alone, a hundred yards above the highway, watching the world and the waves from her kitchen window? Was Jacob’s Rock one of the things that had driven her here? Or had the bright peace of this spot washed away all that darkness? What if she barely remembered it at all?

  Hannah got out of her car and climbed a long path that wound through the miniature garden toward the front door. The entry had an air of disuse about it; a few pebbles littered the steps, and a spider had woven an elaborate web on the porch light. The driveway had led around the side of the house, and she imagined that was the entrance that Maria used. This door was probably rarely opened. There were no neighbors to come knocking for an afternoon chat.

  But Hannah knocked.

  She hadn’t realized there’d been singing until it stopped. A soft, low sound from inside the house that had blended into the distant surf. Hannah clutched her purse and waited.

  The door stayed closed for so long that Hannah finally decided it wouldn’t be opened. If Maria was inside, she didn’t want to talk. Maybe it was wise to be afraid of strangers off a highway like this. Or maybe she’d heard Hannah was poking around in the ashes of the past and wanted to avoid her.

  Given any other circumstance, she’d respect the woman’s obvious desire for solitude. Hannah understood that need deep in her bones. But this was the end of her journey in Big Sur. She might move on to trying to find her mother elsewhere, but Rain wasn’t here. That much was clear.

  She knocked again, a faint panic beginning to fizz through her veins. What if Maria wouldn’t talk to her? Hannah couldn’t just move on knowing the answers were here. But what else could she do? Break in and demand a conversation?

  Just as she’d decided to give up and try knocking at the side door, the lock clicked. The knob turned.

  She wasn’t sure who she’d expected Maria Diaz to be, but it certainly wasn’t this cherubic grandmother. She only came up to Hannah’s shoulder, and her round face was free of wrinkles aside from the deep smile lines around her eyes. Her short wavy hair was generously shot through with silver. “Can I help you?” she asked.

  “Mrs. Frank? I’m Hannah Smith.”

  At first it seemed as though the name meant nothing to her. She stared at Hannah, her head cocked, eyes steady. But then Maria dipped her chin and opened the door wider. “Come in, Hannah.”

  Hannah hesitated. “Do you know me?” she asked. Her voice sounded pleading and weak, but she didn’t care. She needed to know.

  Maria’s smile was faint, but even that small acknowledgment creased her eyes into happy crescents. “I do. Though you look a little different from the last time I saw you.”

  “When I was born?”

  “Yes. You were strong. And loud.”

  “I still am. Loud, at least.” Her throat closed, and she didn’t want to frighten this woman with unexpected sobbing, so Hannah swallowed hard and stepped into the house. It was no surprise that the air was infused with the smell of baking bread, but it still settled over her like a warm embrace. The scent was the embodiment of comfort, and there were framed pictures of small children on every surface of the living room she stood in.

  This woman had lied about something very important all those years ago, but Hannah couldn’t summon an ounce of fear now. Naive, maybe, but surely Maria wasn’t a threat. Hadn’t ever been a threat.

  “Would you like a cup of coffee? I’m afraid I don’t have any treats to offer. My blood sugar . . . The doctor says my dessert days are over.”

  “No, I’m good, thank you. I just had a cookie, in fact. Another might be overkill.”

  “Please,” Maria said, gesturing toward a delicate floral couch. Hannah wondered if it had once been covered with plastic to keep it safe from sticky hands.

  “This is a beautiful place,” she said as she took a seat.

  “Thank you. It’s getting too cold for me these days, but I can’t seem to leave it.” Maria settled herself in a chair and smoothed her simple brown skirt down.

  Hannah wasn’t sure where to start, so she withdrew the birth certificate from her purse and took her time unfolding it, trying to figure out what to say. After a dozen thumps of her heart, she still couldn’t find the right words, so she held the paper out to Maria without comment.

  Maria sighed. “I knew it was a mistake when I did it.”

  “Why did you sign it? What happened? I just . . . I just need to know.”

  Maria smoothed a finger over the names. First Hannah’s. Then her father’s. Then Dorothy’s. “They asked me to sign it. Begged me, actually. They said it would be better for you, and I believed that. Your mother was gone. Your father loved you. And I knew Dorothy would love you too. I’m sorry if I was wrong.”

  “No. You weren’t wrong. She did love me.”

  Maria’s mouth went flat. “Has she passed?”

  “No. My father died six years ago. My mother—Dorothy—has dementia. And I didn’t know about any of this until a few days ago. The medical records . . . There was a discrepancy.”

  “I’m sorry,” Maria said.

  “Do you know where my mother went? My real mother?”

  She was shaking her head before Hannah even finished the question. “The last time I saw her was at your delivery. A month later, they said she’d run away. I wasn’t surprised, really.”

  “Why not?”

  Maria pressed her lips tight together, her eyes darkening with sadness.

  “I . . .” The syllable emerged as a sick croak, so Hannah cleared her throat and tried again. “Please. I know it wasn’t a good place. Will you tell me what happened? What happened to all of them? No one else seems to know.”

  The stiffness in Maria’s shoulders didn’t promise much, so Hannah tried again. “I know I’m a stranger. You don’t know anything about me. But I promise I’m not here to get you in trouble. I just need the truth, whatever it is. Please.”

  Maria sighed and seemed to shrink even smaller. “Every child deserves to know where she comes from,” she said, but then she crossed herself, as if even saying it was a curse. “Someone owes you that.”

  Hannah had to refrain from reaching out to the woman in gratitude. “Thank you.”

  “It wasn’t a bad place at first,” Maria said. “I tried out a few of the sermons. I was raised Catholic, but even I felt a little lost back then. The world was changing so fast. But I only attended a dozen times, if that. Your father was a good man, and his sermons were interesting, but I didn’t like Jacob Smith’s preaching.”

  “I’ve heard he was . . . harsh.”

  “He was indeed. And I didn’t see any sign of the devil in Big Sur. It felt like fearmongering to me. Manipulation. Regardless, Jacob asked for my help, and I gave it. Your mother was almost ready to give birth to Rachel, and someone told them I used to assist my mother with women.”

  Her mouth tipped up in a faint smile. “There weren’t so many laws then, or at least no one around to see they were followed. My mother was a midwife for women who needed help. I learned a little from her. Nowadays I’d be in prison, of course. No formal training. No license.”

  “So you delivered Rachel and Becky?”

  “I did. Do
rothy was healthy. Things seemed fine. But then she didn’t get pregnant again.”

  “Oh. Was that a big deal?”

  Maria’s mouth twisted. “It was. Jacob had started preaching a new kind of Christianity. Telling people they should live like the holy men of the Bible. Be fruitful and multiply. Populate the earth with God-fearing Christians.”

  That wasn’t as much of a shock to Hannah as it might have been when she’d first started this quest. “I heard he’d taken a, um, concubine.”

  “He did that. But then he married her. And then another. Not legally, of course, but there were ceremonies.”

  “He married two more girls? What did his wife think?”

  “To be honest, I think she liked being in charge of these new wives. Maybe it kept Jacob out of her bed too.”

  Hannah winced, and the wince turned into a grimace as she squeezed her eyes shut. “And my father?”

  “Your father disagreed with it, to be honest.”

  Her eyes popped open. “Oh, thank God.”

  “I saw the tension when I was over there delivering babies. There were a few other married couples, part of the flock, and someone was always pregnant. Your father seemed uncomfortable. Unhappy. But then his daddy turned him.”

  “Turned him how?”

  “Jacob said he’d had a vision from God that Rain was ready to marry and she was meant for Peter. Just like in the Bible when Abraham’s wife could bear no children. Peter had to marry to keep the flock growing. It was his duty to God.”

  “And my father bought that?”

  Maria shook her head. “I don’t know. But Jacob said he’d give Rain to one of the other men, and maybe Peter thought he’d at least be a kind husband. He was.”

  “But what about Dorothy? And Rain? They went along with this?”

  “I’m not sure they were given a choice. Jacob moved Rain up to the big house, and he conducted the marriage ceremony, and Rain moved into a room with Peter and Dorothy.”

  “Jesus! They all lived together?”

  “There wasn’t much space. There were lots of children and only so many beds.”

  Hannah’s mind reeled. Her parents, her Midwestern, conservative, modest parents had moved another woman into their bedroom. Another wife. “This is insane,” she whispered.

  “I know.”

  “You don’t understand. I grew up in Iowa. In a small town. My parents were . . . they were just so average. Kind. Quiet. Never any trouble.”

  Maria reached out to squeeze her hand. “If you live with a madman long enough, I guess anything starts to sound sane. He had them so mixed up they didn’t know right from wrong.”

  She squeezed Maria’s hand so hard she made herself let go to stop from hurting the older woman. “Well, I guess I know what happened next.”

  “Yes. Nine months later, you were born.”

  “My God.” She clasped her hands together to pretend they weren’t shaking. “I thought I was a love child. I thought I was coming here to find a wild, sweet story.”

  “I’m sure Rain loved you.”

  “But she left.”

  “She was probably scared. Confused.”

  “Do you know where she went?”

  “No. I’m sorry. I came by a month later to check on one of the pregnant women, and Peter said she’d run off.”

  “Just like that.”

  “Hannah,” Maria said softly. “She didn’t run away to leave you. I’m sure of that. She was living in a harsh, strange situation, and she was too young to deal with any of that. Especially with all those hormones shaking through her body. She got scared and she ran. That’s all.”

  “How old was she?”

  “She was eighteen when you were born.”

  The blood left Hannah’s head in one fell swoop. One minute she was seeing and hearing, and the next her ears were full of static, her vision a wash of red, the top of her head buzzing, angry at the lack of oxygen. “When I was born?” she whispered.

  “Seventeen when they married.”

  Her father . . . her married, adult father had moved a teenager into his house. His room. His bed. He’d had sex with a damaged teenage girl in the same room with his wife.

  Rain had been a lost child. She must have been. Perhaps discarded by one family, then manipulated and dominated by another. Rain hadn’t been a free spirit at all. She’d been abused.

  “You’ve got to understand,” Maria said. “All those girls were young. The boys too. Oh, they had beards and drugs and guitars, but they were seventeen, eighteen, nineteen. Living on the streets. Finding their way. Seventeen was a lot older than most of the girls who hitchhiked their way through here.”

  “But my father. How could he have done that?”

  “He thought it was right. Reading about all those men in the Bible with wives and handmaidens . . . He let himself believe it. And she was a pretty girl. Sweet. Alone. I’m sure he thought she was better off with him than going back to the streets of San Francisco.”

  “Well, she didn’t think that, obviously. She left him. Left me.”

  “She did.”

  “Good,” Hannah spat. “Good for her. She deserved better than that. She deserved a life of being a lover and a friend and a person, and not some young whore he could order into his bed!”

  “Hannah.” Maria took her hand again, and this time Hannah held tight.

  “I can’t believe my father did that. How could he have . . . ?”

  But how could Hannah? She’d so desperately wanted to be more than she’d thought she was that she’d been excited by the thought of her father falling in love with another woman. Of betraying Dorothy in some fantastically romantic way just so Hannah could know that her origins were more magical than the cornfields of Iowa.

  But Dorothy hadn’t only been cheated on. She’d been forced to witness it. To watch. To sanction. One day she’d had a marriage and two beautiful daughters, and the next she’d been forced to share her love and pretend it was God’s will.

  Maria shifted to the couch, sitting beside Hannah. “Shhhh,” she murmured, her hand rubbing warm circles into Hannah’s back. Hannah was crying and she couldn’t stop. She couldn’t imagine being seventeen and surrounded by grown men telling her what the rest of her life would be.

  Poor Rain. No wonder she hadn’t wanted Hannah. A baby born as a reminder of something awful.

  “I’m sorry,” Maria said. “I shouldn’t have told you.”

  “No.” She sucked in a deep breath and immediately lost it to a sob. “No. I . . . I needed to know.”

  “They made mistakes. All of them. But they thought they were doing it for the glory of God.”

  “Or the glory of a madman!”

  “Your father had a good heart. I promise. Even through all of this.”

  She shook her head, but she couldn’t reconcile her denial with the man she’d loved. He’d always been her rock, through all those years of her fighting with her mother, fighting with everyone. He’d always been calm and steady and good.

  And Dorothy had loved her too, in her own quiet way. She’d loved Hannah even though just looking at this other woman’s child must have hurt.

  She finally managed to take a breath that didn’t end in a sob. “And the birth certificate?”

  “Once your mother was gone for a month, they convinced me she wasn’t coming back. And that you needed your family. It would be simpler, they said. No questions. No complications. Dorothy meant to raise you, and she was a great mom, and I let myself be talked into it. But I shouldn’t have. I’m sorry.”

  For some reason, her apology made Hannah cry again. Maybe because she sounded as if she meant it, and Hannah just wanted someone to feel bad about what had happened to her. She shook her head and wrapped her arms around Maria. “You don’t have to be sorry.”

  “I do. She might have come back.”

  Hannah made herself let the poor woman go. “But she didn’t.”

  “No. Not as far as I know. It wasn’t long
after I signed your birth certificate that your family left. Your father had finally seen that it was all so wrong. I’m not sure what set him off, but he took all of you and walked away. Others started leaving then too.”

  “Really? That’s good, right?”

  “Yes. Your father’s defection seemed to fracture Jacob’s control of his flock. By September, only a few were left. His wife and two of his young women, one of whom had had a son. One young man remained too, but his brain was pretty burned out on LSD. That was it.”

  “Where did they go?”

  “I have no idea. South, I heard. Could have been Los Angeles. Or the desert. That’s all I know.”

  Hannah nodded. “Did you know Rain’s name? Her last name?”

  “No. I’m sorry.”

  “I can’t imagine how I’d ever find her. Her real name couldn’t have been Rain.”

  Maria didn’t answer, but she didn’t need to. This was the end of it. Hannah didn’t get a prize of a new mother or a new family, but she had some sort of explanation, albeit a damned heartbreaking one.

  “Thank you so much for telling me the truth,” she said. “And don’t worry. I won’t tell anyone else about your role. You did what you thought was best.”

  “Perhaps everyone did,” Maria said.

  But that wasn’t true. If her grandfather had been a madman, her father hadn’t done his best. He should’ve known better. Should have done better.

  “I’d never have gotten answers without you. I can’t thank you enough. But I’ll let you get back to your day.” Hannah stood. “You’re a bit of a legend around here. I heard your herb rolls are amazing.”

  Maria smiled and rose easily to her feet despite her age. “Let me get some for you.”

  “Oh, I didn’t mean—”

  “Not another word. The least I can do is offer you a bit of bread. Just give me a moment.” She bustled into a kitchen that was visible through a narrow doorway. Hannah let her eyes wander, allowing the end of her journey sink in. But it wouldn’t. Already her mind was wondering about those DNA tests. Even if she didn’t have a name, she might be able to make a connection to a family. She might eventually even find her mother. But would Rain want to remember such an awful time of her life? Would Hannah be hurting her if she reappeared?