She parked at the cabin, but instead of heading inside, she left her things in the car and returned up the road, back to where she’d been born. She didn’t go inside. She should, she supposed. It was just around check-in time, so some of the rooms must be vacant and awaiting new guests. One of those rooms was the one her family had shared. Her whole family. A father, two mothers, two sisters. And Hannah. The living proof of a terrible betrayal.
But she didn’t want to go in. She stood on the lane next to the shed and looked up at the windows.
She should have asked Maria what her mother had looked like. What she’d been like. Maybe if she called in a few weeks, Maria would be willing to tell her more, but it hurt Hannah’s heart that she’d finally found someone who knew her mother and she’d forgotten to ask.
Had Rain been funny and warm and happy-go-lucky? Smart and serious and dark? Quiet and sad?
Did it even matter?
Now she knew there was plenty of darkness and restlessness on her father’s side to blame for all of Hannah’s shortcomings. Certainly her grandfather had been unreliable and passionate. Restless enough to move from place to place and wife to wife and belief to belief.
Maybe her father would have been like that too, if he hadn’t worked so damn hard for the rest of his life to settle down and never make a mistake again.
Hannah watched the windows for a ghost of her past, but she didn’t see anyone. Not even a maid. Not until she heard footsteps to her left and turned to see Joe.
“Back to ask more questions?” he barked.
“No. I’m just looking around.”
He grunted some sort of response, though there was no indication if it was positive or negative. But as he passed, heading for the shed, Hannah realized she did have a question.
“Actually. If you wouldn’t mind . . . ?”
He didn’t pause. “I’m not stopping work for you.”
Fine. She followed him to the door of the shed. “The woman you came here with. What was her name?”
He shot her a glare before he turned back to hang a wrench on the wall. “Cora,” he answered. “Not that it’s any of your business.”
Hannah squeezed her eyes shut to try to stop the shock of the horror. “Joe?”
“Yeah?”
“Did she leave with Jacob?”
“Yeah.”
“Are you . . . ? Are you waiting for her to come back here? Is that why you stayed?”
His hand paused in the middle of sorting through a bin of loose bolts. “Why would you ask that?”
“It’s just that . . .” Jesus, how should she say this? And did she even have any right? It might not be true. It wasn’t verified. It was just a story that could be a coincidence. But she knew damn well it wasn’t.
“Look, lady,” he said, “I’m not hanging around here waiting for a long-lost love. She’s obviously not coming back.”
“Maybe she would if she could.”
He shrugged. “Maybe. But I’m not dumb enough to think it might happen. Not anymore. It was a damn long time ago, and you’re not going to find anything here either. Unless you’re looking for a latte or gluten-free bread. We got both of those in abundance.”
Right. He wasn’t pining away for Cora. He wasn’t still waiting. And she didn’t have the right to pass on a rumor, did she?
But it was more than a rumor. She knew it was. She’d known it even before he told her Cora’s name.
“Joe.”
He glanced toward her before he crouched down to dig through a box of work gloves. “What?”
“I heard something. About Jacob. A friend was helping me look into the history here, and he found an article from a Mexican newspaper.”
Joe grunted.
“A man calling himself Jacob Christo bought a ranch there in 1973. He lived there with three women, one other man, and a child. They were all found dead a year later.”
Joe seemed to find the gloves he was looking for and stood. He slapped them against his hand.
“The article said one of the women was named Cora.”
Joe nodded. He nodded as if he already knew, but she watched the color drain from his neck and leave ghostly white behind.
“The other women were Violet and Frances.”
The gloves slapped into his palm again, then his head bowed. “Must be them, then.”
“The authorities suspected poison. I just . . . I thought you should know.”
“All right.”
But it wasn’t all right. His head was still bowed, the sides of his neck winged by tight tendons. She didn’t know him well enough to reach out. She couldn’t comfort him. “I’m sorry,” she whispered.
Joe grunted again, and she thought that was all he’d offer, but then he spoke, his voice filled with gravel. “I told her he was dangerous. I told her over and over. But he had some kind of power over her. And she had fire in her eyes. I don’t know why.”
“I’m sorry,” Hannah repeated.
“I hoped she would wise up soon enough.”
“She would have. Given a chance, I’m sure she would have come back.”
“Yeah,” he said, but he didn’t sound convinced.
“I’m not sure if I should have told you, but . . . I know how shitty it feels to be left holding loose ends.”
“Thanks,” he said. Then he slapped the gloves against his hand one last time and looked up to meet her eyes. “Thank you. I appreciate it.”
“You’re welcome.”
“I thought you were nothing but trouble when you showed up here.”
“Ha. No reason to change your mind now.”
“You’re all right. Just brought a lot of memories back, and I didn’t like it.”
“I apologize for that. But I’ve got the truth now. I know about the polygamy. I know who my mother is. I know she ran off after I was born and never came back. So I’ll be out of your hair after today. I can keep looking for her as easily from Iowa as here.”
“So you’re going to keep looking?”
“I don’t know. I shouldn’t. But I’m kind of a restless soul.”
He looked away, the gloves squeezed tight in his hand now, knuckles pale.
“Why?” she pressed. “Do you know something else? Anything will help. I mean, I don’t even know her real name. That’s not a good starting place.”
Instead of answering, he moved toward her, tipping his head so she’d step out of the doorway. He walked to the ancient ATV and got in the driver’s seat. Apparently he’d had enough conversation.
Hannah sighed, but she couldn’t blame the man if he wanted to be alone. He’d just found out a woman he’d loved had been dead for decades.
Joe started the engine. “You coming?” he shouted over the rumble.
Hannah pointed to herself as if he might have been talking to someone else. Joe jerked his head toward the seat, so she scrambled in, trying to hide her nervousness. A few days ago, she wouldn’t have gone anywhere with this man. But hell, if things got wild, she could always jump out of the ATV. There weren’t any doors.
The vehicle leapt forward, so she grabbed the roll bar and held on for dear life. They couldn’t be going over twenty miles per hour, but it felt more like fifty as they bounced over ruts and took curves. Once they got to the main drive that led to the cabins, it wasn’t so bad. A straight shot. She’d probably survive. This really wasn’t the way she wanted to go.
At some point on the short drive, she’d assumed he was giving her a lift back to her cabin to get her out of his hair. But instead of turning toward the cabins, Joe took a left and headed toward the meadow. At a slower pace, thank God.
He stopped at the edge of the grass and shut off the engine, throwing the world into sudden silence. She glanced his way, but he just stared ahead, so Hannah looked toward the meadow too. A crow swooped down and disappeared into the green, leaving only tails of wiggling grass behind to mark his progress.
“Are you going to be okay?” she asked, still hoping she
had no reason to be nervous.
“Yep. I’m fine.” Hopefully Cora had been so far away for so long that the pain was only a dull surprise, not something sharp and bright.
Joe finally hauled himself out of the ATV, rocking the whole thing in the process. Hannah waited for the shaking to stop before getting out.
“Come on,” he said.
“Where are we going?” Not that she even expected an answer from the man. True to form, he just started walking across the meadow.
Hannah glanced around, looking for some sort of witness, but the secluded nature of the cabins worked both ways. You couldn’t have privacy without isolation.
On the off chance that her revelation had snapped his sanity in two, she pulled out her phone and sent a quick text to herself as evidence. Riverfall Inn meadow with Old Joe. Look for my body here.
Then she took off after him, jogging through the grass and hoping she didn’t step on any crows. He headed toward a corner and waited for her to join him there. Panting, Hannah squinted past the trees to the ruins beyond.
“The old bathhouse?” she asked.
“She’s buried just behind it.”
“What? Who is?” Was he talking about Cora? Had he lost his mind? She felt him watching and turned to try to gauge the look in his eyes. She didn’t find any menace there. Only weariness.
“Rain,” he said. “She didn’t run off. She’s been here the whole time.”
“What?” she repeated, snapping the word at him in alarm. “What are you talking about?” Was he saying he’d killed her? Hannah took a step back, but Joe wasn’t even looking at her anymore. He’d turned back to stare into the trees. “She’s dead?” Hannah whispered.
“She is.”
Her heart rate had spiked, and she felt dizzy with the rush of blood and half-deaf from the sound of it. Could she get away from him if he tried to grab her?
“Did you . . . ? Were you there?” She eased a foot back, ready to run as fast as she could. But Joe just stared into the trees.
“Nope. I wasn’t here. I don’t know exactly how it happened. She died two weeks after the baby was born. After you were born, I mean. They tried to say it was childbed fever, but . . . there were rumors.”
“What . . . what kind of rumors?” she stammered.
“Poison.”
Hannah gasped, then covered her mouth as if to hold in her horror. Poison. Just like the others. “No. She ran off. You weren’t living here. You must be wrong.”
“I’m not wrong. Cora told me. They didn’t want to involve the authorities. Didn’t want police sniffing around. So they buried her back here. I snuck back to see the grave myself.”
“But . . . but Maria said . . .”
“They lied to her too, I’m sure. She wasn’t one of them. No reason to trust her.”
Fingers still pressed to her parted lips, Hannah shook her head. It couldn’t be true. But of course it could. She’d disappeared. Death was as likely a reason as any.
“Who said it was poison?” she pressed.
He shrugged. “They were all whispering about it. Cora denied that part, but there was a new hardness in her. Stress. Fear. So I eavesdropped. People said Rain hadn’t been sick at all. Worn out, yes, but fine. One morning she just didn’t wake up. Her lips were blue. Eyes wide open. Hands all curled up into claws. That’s it. They buried her right away.”
Hannah kept shaking her head until Joe finally sighed. “Just thought you should know. Since you let me know about Cora.”
He started to retreat, and Hannah’s hand shot out to stop him before she could even form the thought. “Wait. Will you show me the grave?”
A stupid idea, asking this man to take her farther into the woods when she’d been worried he might kill her just a few moments ago. But she needed to see.
He looked down at her hand on his arm for a moment before nodding. “All right. But watch the poison oak.”
She didn’t know what poison oak looked like, and she didn’t particularly care. Her real mother was dead. Had always been dead. And someone had killed her.
“Do you know who did it?” she asked Joe’s back as he slipped into the bushes. She pushed through, keeping him in sight.
“No. Someone who wanted her dead, I’d guess. Or hell, maybe she did it herself. Plenty of people have taken that route.”
Hannah couldn’t wrap her head around it. Not yet. This beautiful hippie girl she’d been chasing was dead. The end.
She watched her feet, keeping an eye out for debris as they worked their way around the collapsing building. The redwood timbers were tilted this way and that, and the sheet-metal roof had collapsed. An open doorway revealed piles of brown pine needles and a broken toilet bowl.
“The cabins didn’t have plumbing,” Joe tossed over his shoulder.
“They had to come all the way out here for a bathroom?”
“There was already a water source here. Jacob didn’t have the money to move it.” He tapped a hand against the back corner of the building. “I helped build this when everyone first arrived. We were happy to have any kind of shower, frankly. It was nice here for a few months, even if I had to ignore all the Jesus talk.”
“Why did people stay?” she asked.
Joe pressed through a thicket of immature redwoods that were barely eight feet high, their spindly branches easy to push aside. “There were drugs,” he said. “And food. A place to sleep. A shower. Friends would hitch down and stay a few nights. Hell, it was a little like summer camp. The rules came later. And the crazy shit after that.”
He stopped on a little rise. Hannah joined him, feeling the hollow thump of decades of pine needles beneath her feet.
“There,” he said, tipping his head down the rise toward another clump of tiny redwoods. “We started clearing this area for more cabins, but never finished.”
Hannah stepped down, trying not to slide on the top layer of loose detritus. She slipped once but found her balance again. When she reached flat ground, she looked around. “Where?”
“There’s no marker. She’s about three feet in front of you.”
Hannah took one step forward and stopped. We left her there. Dorothy had said that herself. Still, Hannah didn’t want to believe it. “You’re sure?”
“I saw the turned soil. They tried to pack it down and cover it with leaves and such, but . . . I’m sure.”
She winced at the idea of them packing dirt on top of that poor girl. Had her father helped? Had he thrown dirt on top of his eighteen-year-old wife?
Had he killed her? But no. Why would he have?
Hannah wished she had flowers. An offering. Anything. Just a simple wooden cross would have meant something to Rain, even if Hannah herself didn’t believe.
Or maybe she should call the police. Call and tell them a girl was dead and maybe she’d been killed or maybe she’d done it to herself and maybe she had parents still looking and maybe she even had a real name.
Hannah scrubbed her hands over her face. Why the hell had she started this stupid search in the first place? Why had she wanted to know? Her sisters had been right. She should have kept her head down and shut the hell up and gone on with her life like a good Midwestern girl. She didn’t want to know this, and she didn’t want to make this decision.
She didn’t even want to be here. And she didn’t have to be. She could call the police from anywhere, anytime.
Hannah spun around and marched back uphill. “Thank you,” she said as she passed Joe. “Thank you for telling me the truth.”
“You gonna be all right?” Joe called over his shoulder as she scrambled back through trees and bushes and poison.
“Probably not,” she shouted, because she should have stayed where she’d been meant to stay. Do what she’d promised. She should have loved her husband and her job and her life like other people loved theirs. Why the hell hadn’t it been enough for her? She’d wanted something else, but not this.
Once she got to the meadow, she jogged towa
rd the road. When she hit the path, she picked up speed and ran to her cabin. She burst through the door and slammed it behind her, then leaned over, hands on her knees, trying to catch her breath. But she couldn’t get enough air. She was weeping. Sobbing. Her lungs seized up as if they needed to cut off oxygen to end her panic.
And she was panicking. For the first time, she’d done something really wrong. She’d looked at the dirt that covered her mother’s body, and she’d just walked away. Left her there. Something terrible had happened, and Hannah was going to add to all the wrongs like every other person had done.
So many must have known. All the adults in the big house, at least. And they’d all agreed that Rain’s life wasn’t worth stirring up trouble over. Hannah had just made the same decision. Because there was no question trouble would be stirred. And for the first time in her life, Hannah only wanted calm.
She needed someone. She needed her dad. He’d been the only rock in her life, and now even her memories of him had crumbled to dust.
He’d been a good man. Her whole damn life she’d known that one thing. Her father had been a good, decent, hardworking man.
But he couldn’t have been. He hadn’t walked away from a lover who’d run out on him. He’d thrown a girl in the dirt and pretended she’d never existed.
Hands shaking, Hannah lurched into the bathroom and grabbed a towel. Even as she sobbed, she scrubbed the tears from her face. She had to get out of here. Had to get back where she belonged. She didn’t have time to break down yet.
“Stop it,” she ordered herself. “Stop. Stop.”
She held her breath for a moment, then inhaled deeply. The sobs slowed. She got control.
As soon as she could see again, she fired up her laptop and searched for a morning flight home. She’d leave Big Sur at 5:00 a.m. if she had to. She’d run just as her father had forty-five years before. And like him, she’d never, ever come back.
CHAPTER 17
She was on her second jalapeño roll and her third glass of wine when he knocked. She knew it was him immediately. Who else could it be?
If Gabriel had shown up before glass number two, Hannah might have been scared. Instead, she felt only a hollow dread in her stomach as she stared at the door.
Half Past: A Novel Page 21
