Magic hour: a novel

by Kristin Hannah

  “Without a crime, they’ll stay away like thieves from a lineup. They’ll want you to do all the hard work. The state might step in, but only to warehouse her. They’ve already told us as much.”

  Ellie had ridden this merry-go-round of worries and outcomes all night. She was no closer to an answer now than when she climbed aboard. “It’s all up to Julia, I guess. If she can get a story out of the girl, we have a starting place.”

  “If the girl can talk, you mean.”

  “That’s Julia’s side of the problem, and if anyone can help that girl, it’s my sister. Right now our job is to find her a place to work.” Ellie tapped her pen on the desk.

  Peanut started coughing again.

  “Put that thing out, Pea. You’re the worst smoker I’ve ever seen.”

  “And I’ve actually gained a pound this week. I’m going back to eating only cabbage soup. Or maybe carrot sticks.” Peanut put out her cigarette. “Hey, how about the old sawmill? No one would look for her there.”

  “Too cold. Too indefensible. Some wily tabloid photographer would find a way in. Four roads lead up to it; at least six doors would need to be guarded. And it’s public property.”

  “County hospital?”

  “Too many employees. Sooner or later someone would sell the story.” Ellie frowned. “What we need is a secret location and a cone of silence.”

  “In Rain Valley? You must be joking. This town lives for gossip. Everyone will want to talk to the press.”

  Of course. The answer was so obvious, she didn’t know how she’d missed it. This was just like that time in high school when they’d stolen the attendance sheet on senior skip day. Ellie had planned the whole thing. “Call Daisy Grimm.”

  Peanut glanced at the clock. “The Bachelor is on.”

  “I don’t care. Call her. I want everybody who is anybody in this town at a six A.M. meeting at the Congregational church.”

  “A town meeting? About what?”

  “It’s top secret.”

  “A secret town meeting, and at dawn. How dramatic.” Peanut pulled a pen out from the ratted coil of her auburn hair. “What’s the agenda?”

  “The Flying Wolf Girl, of course. If this town wants to gossip, we’ll give them something to talk about.”

  “Oo-ee. This is going to be fun.”

  For the next hour Ellie worked on the plan, while Peanut called their friends and neighbors. By ten o’clock they were done.

  Ellie looked down at the contract she’d devised. It was perfect.

  I _____________________ agree to keep any and all information about the wolf girl completely confidential. I swear I won’t tell anyone anything that I learned at the town meeting in October. Rain Valley can count on me.

  ________________________ (signature required)

  “It won’t hold up in court,” Peanut said, coming over to her.

  “Who are you? Perry Mason?”

  “I watch Boston Legal and Law & Order.”

  Ellie rolled her eyes. “It doesn’t need to be legally binding. It just needs to seem like it is. What does this town love more than anything?”

  “A parade?”

  Ellie had to concede that point. “Okay, second most.”

  “A two-for-one sale?”

  “Gossip,” she said, realizing Peanut could make guesses until dawn. “And secrets.” She stood up and reached for her coat. “The only problem will be Julia.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “She’s not going to like the idea of a town meeting.”

  “Why not?”

  “You remember how it was for her in town. No one knew what to make of her. She walked around with her nose in a book. She never talked to anyone but our mom.”

  “That was a long time ago. She won’t care what people think of her now. She’s a doctor, for cripe’s sake.”

  “She’ll care,” Ellie said with a sigh. “She always did.”

  HE IS DEEP IN A GREEN DARKNESS. OVERHEAD, LEAVES RUSTLE IN AN invisible breeze. Clouds mask the silvery moon; there is only the sheen of light. Perhaps it is a memory.

  The girl is crouched on a branch, watching him. She is so still that he wonders how his gaze found her.

  Hey, he whispers, reaching out.

  She drops to the leaf-carpeted floor without a sound. On all fours, she runs away.

  He finds her in a cave, bound and bleeding. Afraid. He thinks he hears her say “Help,” and then she is gone. There is a little boy in her place, blond-haired. He is reaching out, crying—

  Max came awake with a start. For a moment he had no idea where he was. All he saw around him were pale pink walls and ruffles . . . a collection of glass figurines on a shelf . . . elves and wizards . . . there was a vase full of silk roses on the bedside table and two empty wineglasses.

  Trudi.

  She lay beside him, sleeping. In the moonlight her naked back looked almost pure white. He couldn’t help reaching out. At his touch, she rolled over and smiled up at him. “You’re going?” she whispered, her voice throaty and low.

  He nodded.

  She angled up to her elbows, revealing the swell of her bare breasts above the pink blanket. “What is it, Max? All night you were . . . distracted.”

  “The girl,” he said simply.

  She reached out, traced his cheekbone with her long fingernail. “I thought so. I know how much hurt kids get to you.”

  “Picked a hell of a career, didn’t I?”

  “Sometimes a person can care too much.” In the uncertain light, he thought she looked sad, but he couldn’t be sure. “You could talk to me, you know.”

  “Talking isn’t what we do best. That’s why we get along so well.”

  “We get along because I don’t want to be in love.”

  He laughed. “And I do?”

  She smiled knowingly. “See you, Max.”

  He kissed her shoulder, then bent down for his clothes. When he was dressed, he leaned closer to her and whispered, “’Bye,” and then he left.

  Within minutes he was on his motorcycle and racing down the black, empty expanse of road. He almost turned onto the old highway; then he remembered why he’d left Trudi’s house in the first place. The dream he’d had.

  His patient.

  He thought about that poor girl, all alone in her room.

  Kids were afraid of the dark.

  He changed directions and hit the gas. At the hospital, he parked beside Penelope Nutter’s battered red pickup and went inside.

  The hallways were empty and quiet, with only a few nighttime nurses on duty. The usual noises were gone, leaving him nothing to hear save the metronome patter of his footsteps. He stopped by the nurses’ station to get the girl’s chart and check on her progress.

  “Hey, Doctor,” said the nurse on duty. She sounded as tired as he felt.

  Max leaned against the counter and smiled. “Now, Janet, how many times have I asked you to call me Max?”

  She giggled and blushed. “Too many.”

  Max patted her plump hand. Years ago, when he’d first met Janet, all he’d seen was her Tammy Faye fake eyelashes and Marge Simpson hair. Now, when she smiled, he saw the kind of goodness that most people didn’t believe in. “I’ll keep hoping.”

  Listening to her girlish laughter, he headed for the day care center. There, he peered through the window, expecting to see the girl curled up on the mattress on the floor, asleep in the darkness. Instead, the lights were on and Julia was there, sitting on a tiny chair beside a child-sized Formica table. There was a notebook open on her lap and a tape recorder on the table near her elbow. Although he could only see her profile, she appeared utterly calm. Serene, even.

  The girl, on the other hand, was agitated. She darted around the room, making strange, repetitive hand gestures. Then, all at once, she stopped dead and swung to face Julia.

  Julia said something. Max couldn’t hear it through the glass. The words were muffled.

  The girl blew snot from her nose and sho
ok her head. When she started to scratch her own cheeks, gouging the flesh, Julia lunged at her, took her in her arms.

  The girl fought like a cat, but Julia hung on. They stumbled sideways, fell down on the mattress.

  Julia held the girl immobile, ignoring the snot flying and head shaking; then Julia started to sing. He could tell by the cadence of her voice, the way the sounds blended into one another.

  He went to the door and quietly opened it. Just a crack.

  The girl immediately looked at him and stilled, snorting in fear.

  Julia sang, “. . . tale as old as time . . . song as . . . old as rhyme . . .”

  He stood there, mesmerized by the sound of her voice.

  Julia held the girl and stroked her hair and kept singing. Not once did she even glance toward the door.

  Slowly, the minutes ticked by. “Beauty and the Beast” gave way to other songs. First it was “I’m a Lonely Little Petunia in an Onion Patch,” and then “Somewhere Over the Rainbow,” and then “Puff the Magic Dragon.”

  Gradually, the girl’s eyelashes fluttered shut, reopened.

  The poor thing was trying so hard to stay awake.

  Julia kept singing.

  Finally, the girl put her thumb in her mouth, started sucking it, and fell asleep.

  Very gently, Julia tucked her patient into bed and covered her with blankets, then went back to the table to gather her notes.

  Max knew he should back away now, leave before she noticed him, but he couldn’t move. The sound of her voice had captured him somehow, as had the glimmer of pale moonlight on her hair and skin.

  “I guess this means you like watching,” she said without looking at him.

  He would have sworn that she’d never once glanced at the door, but she’d known he was there.

  He stepped into the room. “You don’t miss much, do you?”

  She put the last of the papers in her briefcase and looked up. Her skin appeared ashen beneath the dim lighting; the scratches on her cheeks were dark and angry. A yellow bruise marred her forehead. But it was her eyes that got to him. “I miss plenty.”

  Her voice was so soft, it took him a second to really hear what she’d said.

  I miss plenty.

  She was talking about that patient of hers, the one that killed those children in Silverwood and then committed suicide. He knew about that kind of guilt. “You look like a woman who could use a cup of coffee.”

  “Coffee? At one o’clock in the morning? I don’t think so, but thank you.” She sidled past him, then herded him out of the day care center and shut the door behind him.

  “How about pie?” he said as she headed down the hallway. “Pie is good any time of the day.”

  She stopped, turned around. “Pie?”

  He moved toward her, unable to keep from smiling. “I knew I could tempt you.”

  She laughed at that, and though it was a tired, not-quite-genuine sound, it made his smile broaden. “The pie tempted me.”

  He led her to the cafeteria and flipped on the lights. In this quiet time of night, the place was empty; the cases and buffets were bare. “Take a seat.” Max eased around the sandwich counter and went back into the kitchen, where he found two pieces of marionberry pie, which he covered with vanilla ice cream. Then he made two cups of herb tea and carried a tray out into the dining room and set it down on the table in front of Julia.

  “Chamomile tea. To help you sleep,” he said, sliding into the booth seat opposite her. “And marionberry pie. A local favorite.” He handed her a fork.

  She stared at him, frowning slightly. “Thanks,” she said after a pause.

  “You’re welcome.”

  “So, Dr. Cerrasin,” she said after another long silence, “do you make a habit of luring colleagues down to the cafeteria for early morning pie?”

  He smiled. “Well, if by colleagues you mean doctors, there aren’t exactly a lot of us. To be honest, I haven’t taken old Doc Fischer out for pie in ages.”

  “How about the nurses?”

  He heard a tone in her voice and looked up. She was eyeing him over the beige porcelain of her cup. Assessing him. “It sounds to me like you’re asking about my love life.” He smiled. “Is that it, Julia?”

  “Love life?” She put a slight emphasis on love. “Do you have one of those? I would be surprised.”

  He frowned. “You sure think you know me.”

  She took a bite of pie. “Let’s just say I know your kind.”

  “No. Let’s not say that. Whoever you’re confusing me with is not sitting at this table. You just met me, Julia.”

  “Fair enough. Why don’t you tell me about yourself, then? Are you married?”

  “An interesting first question. No. Are you?”

  “No.”

  “Ever been married?”

  “No.”

  “Ever get close?”

  She glanced down for a second. It was all he needed to know. Someone had broken her heart. He’d bet that it was fairly recent. “Yes.”

  “How about you? Have you ever been married?”

  “Once. A long time ago.”

  That seemed to surprise her. “Kids?”

  “No.”

  She looked at him sharply, as if she’d heard something in his voice. Their gazes held. Finally, she smiled. “So I guess you can have pie with anyone you’d like.”

  “I can.”

  “You’ve probably had pie with every woman in town.”

  “You give me too much credit. Married women make their own pie.”

  “And how about my sister?”

  His smile faded. Suddenly the flirting didn’t seem so harmless. “What about her?”

  “Have you . . . had pie with her?”

  “A gentleman wouldn’t really answer that, now would he?”

  “So you’re a gentleman.”

  “Of course.” He was becoming uncomfortable with the course of their conversation. “How is your face feeling? That bruise is getting uglier.”

  “We shrinks get popped now and then. Hazards of the trade.”

  “You can never quite know what a person will do, can you?”

  Her gaze met his. “Knowing is my job. Although by now the whole world knows I missed something important.”

  There was nothing he could say, no real comfort he could give, so he stayed quiet.

  “No platitudes, Dr. Cerrasin? No ‘God doesn’t give you more than you can bear’ speech?”

  “Call me Max. Please.” He looked at her. “And sometimes God breaks your fucking back.”

  It was a long moment before she said, “How did He break you, Max?”

  He slid out of the booth and stood beside her. “As much as I’d love to keep chatting, I have to be at work at seven. So . . .”

  Julia put the dishes on the tray and slid from the booth.

  Max took the tray to the kitchen and put the dishes in the dishwasher, then they walked side by side through the quiet, empty hallways and out to the parking lot.

  “I’m driving the red truck,” she said, digging through her purse for the keys.

  Max opened the door for her.

  She looked up at him. “Thanks.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  She paused, then said, “No more pie for me. Just so you know. Okay?”

  He frowned. “But—”

  “Thanks again.” She got in the truck, slammed the door shut, and drove away.

  EIGHT

  JULIA REFUSED TO LET HERSELF THINK ABOUT MAX. SHE HAD enough on her mind right now without obsessing over some small-town hunk. So what if he intrigued her? Max was definitely a player, and she had no interest in games or the kind of man who played them. That was a lesson Philip had taught her.

  She turned onto Olympic Drive. This was the oldest part of town, built back in the thirties for the families of mill workers.

  Driving through here was like going back in time. She came to a stop at the T in the road, and there it was, caught in her he
adlights.

  The lumber store. In this middle-of-night hour she couldn’t read the orange banner that hung in the window. Still, she knew the words by heart: This community is supported by timber. Those same banners had been strung throughout town since the spotted owl days.

  This store was the heart of the West End. In the summer it opened as early as three o’clock in the morning. And at that, men like her father were already there and waiting impatiently to get started on their day.

  She eased her foot off the accelerator and coasted through a haze of fog. So often she’d sat in her dad’s pickup outside this store, waiting for him.

  He’d been a cutter, her dad. A cutter was to an ordinary logger what a thoracic surgeon was to a general practitioner. The cream of the crop. He’d gone into the woods early, long before his buddies; alone. Always alone. His friends—other cutters—died so often it stopped being a surprise. But he’d loved strapping spurs onto his ankles, grabbing a rope, and scaling a two-hundred-foot-tall tree. Of course, it was an adventurer’s job. Near death every day and the money to match the risk.

  They’d all known it was only a matter of time before it killed him.

  She hit the gas too hard. The old truck lurched forward, bucked, and died. Julia started it up again, found first gear, and headed out to the old highway.

  No wonder she’d stayed at the hospital so late. She’d told herself it was about the girl, about doing a great job, but that was only part of it. She’d been putting off going back to the house where there were too many memories.

  She parked the truck and went inside. The house was full of shapes and shadows, all of which were familiar. Ellie had left the stairwell light on for her; it was the same thing Mom had always done, and the sight of it—that soft, golden light spilling down the worn oak stairs—filled her heart with longing. Her mother had always waited up for her. Never in this house had she gone to bed without a nighttime kiss. No matter how badly Mom and Dad were fighting, she always got her kiss from Mom. Julia was thirteen years old the first time she’d seen through the veil; at least that was how she now thought of it. In one day she’d gone from believing her family was happy to knowing the truth. Her mother had come in that night with bloodshot eyes and tearstained cheeks. Julia had only asked a few questions before Mom started to talk.