What was she doing here? Did she want this man back, or was she just afraid of her yearning to be alone? She could return to Chicago without returning to him. They could be friends, maybe. She could watch from a distance as he remarried, had a child, lived the life he wanted.
Pain lanced her heart at the idea, but it wasn’t a mortal wound. It was only a relief of aching pressure. She’d walked away from him. Run away. But maybe she was ready to truly let him go.
She loved him. And they weren’t right together. She’d tried it his way. Now she would try it hers.
Jeff had lapsed into silence, familiar enough with her moods that he knew she wasn’t listening. She smiled in apology. “Sorry. It’s been a long week.”
“I get it.”
“I know I was the one who cut off contact and I shouldn’t have reached out to you, but . . . I’m glad I did. And I’m glad you gave me a chance.”
“I don’t hate you,” he said, and Hannah’s eyes filled with tears.
“I know that too. I do. But thank you for saying it.”
Jeff took her hand, and she held tight for a moment, squeezing hard. She wished she could round the table and curl up in his lap and let him hold her, but when his other hand wrapped around her fingers and cradled her hand, she settled for that. It was comfort, at least.
“I guess this was good,” he finally said. “If you’re coming back to Chicago, we could be seeing each other around. It shouldn’t be so damn awkward.”
No. It shouldn’t. “We should settle things,” she offered, untangling her fingers from his. “So you can move on.”
He didn’t disagree. He was finally ready too.
“I can’t give you half, Jeff. It’s my money. I worked hard for it. I didn’t even get that settlement offer until we’d already split! You have your own money, your own career.”
“Yes. But I worked hard for your career too. The move to Chicago . . .”
“You wanted to be here too.”
“I did, but I gave up a lot.”
“You’re tenured here now. Everything worked out fine!”
“It’s expensive as hell to live here. And I would’ve been tenured five years ago if we hadn’t moved so you could have your dream job. I could have earned a hell of a lot more. Taken time to write another book. We came here for you.”
It wasn’t exactly true. Jeff had fallen in love with Chicago during her interview process. He’d insisted they look at apartments even before she’d gotten her offer. He’d put in his time at his old college, but he’d hated that place.
She could make all those points. A week ago, she would have.
But he was right too. He’d sacrificed. For her.
“Half of the settlement,” she offered. “Fine. But only a quarter of the IRA. None of the 401(k). You have a pension, and I need my retirement money.”
He cocked his head. Watched her for a long time.
“Please,” she added.
Finally, he nodded. “All right. Half the settlement. A quarter of the IRA. I’ll accept that.”
She reached out to shake, and they both pretended her hand wasn’t trembling. It was over. Really over. And despite her resolve, she had a little trouble letting go of him.
“It’s okay,” Jeff said.
Hannah nodded and finally let her hand slide free. “It is.”
“Let me know when you move back.” He was already gathering up his things. He knocked back the last of the espresso and stood.
“I will. And let me know when your brother’s baby is born. I’ll send my usual gift.”
“A bottle of good whisky?”
“You got it.”
Laughing, he laid down a ten and waved goodbye. A few feet from the table, he turned back. “If you decide to track down your mom, drop me a line. I’ll be happy to help if I can.”
She forced a smile, but she was too aware that their life together was ending with a lie, and she looked down before he could see it in her eyes. Once outside, he waved again from the other side of the glass, and she waved back.
He looked relieved as he walked away. He was likely dating already. Maybe he’d met someone as excited about his brother’s baby as he was. Someone softer and sweeter than Hannah could ever be.
She pushed the last of her coffee away, wiped her damp cheeks, and walked out.
She didn’t have anywhere to go, really. She could look at apartments. Stroll through her old neighborhood and see what was there. But Jeff was still in that area. Maybe she could get something closer to the lake. She’d found the truth, and it was time to get on with the rest of her life. But somehow Hannah found herself wandering aimlessly for three hours before she finally knew where to go.
CHAPTER 19
Another rental car. Another highway. But here the sky was a blindingly crisp shade of blue and the clouds had sharp edges that didn’t hint at any danger.
At long last, Hannah finally felt at home.
She’d driven straight through, unable to sit still and wait for a morning flight to Des Moines. She’d needed to move, so she’d rented a car and driven all night to get back to Coswell.
Her own car was still at long-term parking in Des Moines from her original trip. She’d need to drive the ninety minutes down later to return this car and retrieve her own. But she had more important things to do first.
She’d managed to snag five hours of sleep once she’d pulled up to her dark, silent house, but she felt as if she’d had ten.
For the first time in a very long while, she felt sure of who she was and what she was doing. No longer running on pure fear, she didn’t clutch the steering wheel or face the coming meeting with dread. She was ready to take this on.
When she reached the care center, she picked up the book from the passenger seat and walked in. Her mother’s favorite novel. Hannah had already read it aloud to her twice before she’d pretended to lose it, unable to bear the sugar-sweet family saga one more time. She preferred her novels with sex and maybe a few shootings. But this wasn’t about her anymore. It never should have been. Her mother was dying and afraid.
“Hi, Hannah!” the nurse called in surprise as Hannah approached the station.
“Good morning, Tonya!”
“I didn’t expect you today. I thought Becky said she’d be in this afternoon.”
“Well, I’m back from my trip, so you’re stuck with me.” She winked and they both laughed. Hannah waved to another nurse down the hall as she opened her mother’s door.
It was a good day. Hannah could see that right away. Dorothy smiled as she looked up, though her eyes didn’t light in recognition. Still, the smile was good. Hannah smiled back.
“Hi, Mom.”
“Hello, there! What a lovely skirt you’re wearing.”
“Thank you.” She glanced down at the white maxi skirt she’d worn. Weary of jeans and boots after California, today she’d worn a skirt and sandals and a flowy blue top. “You look beautiful today yourself,” she told Dorothy, though her dress was a worn green one that Hannah had seen a hundred times. “I brought a book for us to read.”
She held up the novel, and Dorothy beamed. “Oh my! That’s my favorite! I haven’t read it in years.”
“Yes, a little birdie told me it was your favorite. I thought we could read a couple of chapters today.”
“That would be lovely!”
She pulled a chair close to Dorothy and patted her hand. Instead of pulling away, Dorothy smiled. “What’s your name, dear?” she asked.
Hannah held on to her smile. Tricking her mother wasn’t the point. She didn’t want to be cruel. She didn’t want to indulge some morbid fantasy. But she needed to put an end to this for all of them. To confirm her worst suspicions or lay them to rest.
She took her mother’s hand in both of hers and held her gently. “I’m Rain,” she said, and watched Dorothy’s eyes flutter.
“W-who?” she hooted softly.
“Rain. From Big Sur. From Jacob’s Rock.”
“Oh, but . . .” Dorothy tugged her hand away and cradled it to her chest. “But that can’t be.”
“It is. I heard you’d been ill, and I came to see you.”
“Rain?” her mother whispered, her thin eyelids trembling again as her face drained of color.
“That’s right,” Hannah said in a soothing voice. “It’s been a long time, but I came to help take care of you. We always took care of each other, didn’t we, Dorothy?”
Her mother’s eyes pooled with tears. This time when her eyelids fluttered, two fat drops slid down her cheeks. Her chin trembled. “But, Rain? I thought you were dead.”
“I’m not.”
“They told me you were dead!”
Hannah shook her head. “I was sick for a long while, but I’m fine now. Right as rain.” She realized the joke as soon as she said it and laughed.
A shaky smile crossed Dorothy’s face. “Really? You’re all right?”
“I’m fine. Don’t I look fine?”
“Oh!” Dorothy gasped, and then she reached out to grab Hannah’s hand with a startling quickness. “Oh, I’m so glad! I didn’t mean to hurt you. Not really.”
Hannah took a deep breath. She held her mother’s hand and felt the weight of the truth settle over her like a smothering blanket.
She’d known this. She really had. After all, who was the one person who would have wanted Rain dead? She’d known it, but hearing it still filled her body with iron and tried to pull her down to the floor.
“The poison?” she managed to breathe.
“Oh, Rain.” Dorothy’s hands trembled around Hannah’s. “I’m sorry. It was all so wrong. I knew it was all wrong. You were sinning, and I just had to get you to stop.”
Hannah swallowed hard.
“I didn’t want you to go to hell. I wanted to save you from it! I told Peter that. I explained. He said it was his fault. He shouldn’t have put us in that situation. He said he buried you!”
Hannah twined her fingers into her mother’s. “No. It was all a mistake.”
“Rain, I’m so relieved! I shouldn’t have done it. I just wanted it to stop. That’s all. That man wasn’t God. He was the devil.”
“You’re right. He wasn’t a good man.”
“He wasn’t. Peter said we could leave. That we’d leave all that behind. But he said we could never speak of it again. He said it was his fault for letting us down. Oh, Rain, he was so sorry. So sorry for both of us.”
“Not like his father.”
“No, nothing like his father. Peter saw it then. He saw that it was all sin and evil, and we left. But we left you there. Oh, Rain, I’m so sorry. I’m sorry I hurt you.” She was crying deeply now, hunched over Hannah’s hands.
Hannah pulled free and scooted forward to embrace her. “It’s all right, Dorothy. It’s all right now.”
This woman had killed her real mother. Lashed out in mindless anger and desperation and taken a young girl’s life. But this woman had also raised Hannah. Loved her. Made her who she was.
All this time, Hannah had assumed her parents were perfect, simple souls who’d somehow managed to stumble into having a maelstrom of a child. Then she’d convinced herself that all her wildness had come from the faceless woman who’d given birth to her. But the truth was that Hannah had come from all of them.
They’d all been victims and perpetrators. All contributed something dark and complex to Hannah’s soul. But what they’d passed on had been nothing more dark and complex than what they’d each nurtured in their hearts.
“It’s all right,” she whispered again, stroking the soft wisps of Dorothy’s graying curls. “I’m here now.”
“I’m sorry, Rain,” her mother sobbed. “I’m sorry.”
“Shhhh. I know you are.”
“I just wanted it to stop.”
“I know.”
This was who she was. The daughter of a lost child. The daughter of a deeply flawed man. The daughter of a murderer.
But who she became now was up to her.
She held Dorothy close. Rocked her. Stroked her hair. Dorothy finally calmed, and her red-rimmed eyes traveled the room as if she wasn’t sure what had happened or why she’d been upset.
“Why don’t you lie down for a little while?” Hannah suggested. “I’ll read to you.”
“Yes, I want to lie down.” She shot Hannah a suspicious look, the idea that she was Rain already lost. Maybe she’d lost it on purpose this time. That was fine. Hannah would never bring it up again.
Hannah helped her into bed, propping up her head a little and covering her with a light blanket. She read the first two chapters even though Dorothy fell asleep five pages in. Then she kissed her mom’s papery forehead and took her phone to the garden.
“I’m back,” she said as soon as Becky answered the call.
“Back where?” her sister asked.
“Back in Coswell. So you don’t need to drive down and sit with Mom today. I’m here.”
“What? You’re just back? I thought you were still in California!”
“I flew into Chicago to take care of something last night, but I’m home now.”
“Chicago? What were you doing there?”
“Nothing,” she answered. Nothing at all. She’d turned down the job first thing this morning. Then she’d instructed her lawyer to draw up the divorce settlement. She wasn’t needed in Chicago. She was needed here.
“Well . . .” She could almost hear Becky shaking her head. “What the heck happened?”
My real mother was Dad’s second wife. They were polygamists. We all lived together, one big family in a little room. After I was born, Mom killed my mother, and Dad buried her in the woods behind the toilets. Then we fled before our grandfather could talk us into drinking poison. Pretty standard stuff.
That was what Hannah had to live with for the rest of her life. But she’d finally learned her lesson. Everyone had their burdens. She didn’t have to make her loved ones feel her pain to make it real. It was real even if she never told another soul. It meant something even if she never lashed out or struggled or rebelled.
She didn’t need to share it. And she couldn’t run from it. It was hers forever.
“Hannah?” Becky asked, fear in her voice. “What happened?”
Hannah faked a smile for her sister even though she wasn’t there. “Not much. They had a church there, and Dad must have gotten a little too caught up in trying to save a few souls, that’s all. My real mother was a hippie girl who moved on after I was born. The end.”
Becky sighed. “My God. I guess it must be true, but . . . Dad? I can’t imagine him doing anything that crazy.”
“Yeah, it’s pretty bizarre.”
“And Mom! She just accepted you as her own child? That woman is a saint.”
“She is,” Hannah agreed, keeping her voice as light as possible.
“So are you going to keep looking for your mother? I know Rachel and I discouraged you, but I’ve been thinking about it and—”
“No,” Hannah interrupted. “No, I don’t even know her real name. She could be anywhere. I’m done looking.”
“Wow. Just . . . wow. I mean . . . God, are you okay?”
“I’m fine. Just tired. Will you let Rachel know?”
“Hannah, you should call her yourself. You need to talk.”
They did need to talk. She needed to get to know her oldest sister again. Or maybe get to know her for the first time, with no feelings of inferiority or foreignness. “I’ll call her tomorrow, all right? I need to get settled today.”
“Maybe we should come down this weekend,” Becky suggested. “Have a little sister time.”
Eyes closed, Hannah nodded. “That would be nice. I love you, Becks.”
“I love you too.”
Hannah tucked her phone away and walked back inside. A display sat on this side of the nurses’ station. A handmade sign and a can asking for donations for little Olivia Jensen. Hannah stopped.
“Tonya
? Do you know who Olivia Jensen’s parents are?”
“Willis and Patty. Patty is my second cousin. They think there’s a good chance this treatment will work, but that poor baby is all worn out. They all are.”
“I’m so sorry.” Hannah knew who Willis Jensen was, but he’d been several years behind her in school. Hannah slipped a couple of bills into the can. “I’m not good at many things, but I’m great at accounting. Could you let Patty know I’d be happy to help figure out the reporting and taxes for them when the time comes?”
“That’s so kind! Thank you! I’ll let them know.”
“All right. You know where to find me.”
She returned to her mother’s room. She sat in the chair next to her bed and flipped through her mom’s favorite book. And finally, she wasn’t restless. She wasn’t out of place. She knew who she was. She was a woman taking care of her dying mom. It didn’t feel natural, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t right. And it didn’t mean she couldn’t do it.
Her whole life she’d thought she loved people the wrong way. She’d been the wrong kind of daughter, sister, girlfriend, wife. She didn’t have other women’s gifts. She was just so different. But right now, different felt fine, and she’d take care of her mother in her own way. Dorothy belonged to her the same way she belonged to Dorothy. Not through blood, but through time. Sacrifice. Lies. Pain. And love. Years of love. Maybe it didn’t make up for what had happened in Big Sur all those years before, but it meant something.
Scooting closer, she held Dorothy’s hand and waited for her mother to wake up and need her again. She’d be here every day until her mother died. She’d offer the kind of care she could to Dorothy, not her sisters’ kind of care, but her own, and that would be enough. And after that, there would be time to figure out the rest of her life. She could go anywhere. Be anything. But for now, she’d be a daughter.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Victoria Helen Stone, the author of Evelyn, After, is the nom de plume of USA Today bestselling romance novelist Victoria Dahl. After publishing more than twenty-five books, she has taken a turn toward the darker side of genre fiction. Born and educated in the Midwest, she finished her first manuscript just after college. In 2016, she was the recipient of the American Library Association’s prestigious Reading List Award. Having escaped the plains of her youth, she now resides with her family in a small town high in the Rocky Mountains, where she enjoys hiking, snowshoeing, and not skiing (too dangerous). For more on the author and her work, visit www.VictoriaHelenStone.com and www.VictoriaDahl.com.
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