What's Left Unsaid

by Emily Bleeker

  She tried the smile again. It was good enough. Just a little of the old, happy Hannah. Just enough to give her hope of a future on her own, but not enough to make her give up all hope of ever seeing Alex’s name show up on her phone again.

  CHAPTER 11

  Hannah sped north on Highway 51 toward Memphis. “Speeding” may have been an exaggeration in Mamaw’s Buick, but she was going faster than she could on her bike, so that counted for something. She was still nervous about making the trip, the anxious side of her mind saying it would be easier to try a different day and kick the can down the road. But after a particularly interesting dinner with Mamaw and Mr. Davenport last night, Hannah had been handed a free Saturday and the keys to the Buick that morning, and the journalist inside her wasn’t going to pass up the opportunity.

  Dinner the night before had been more fun than Hannah ever could’ve guessed dinner with two senior citizens could be. Mr. Davenport had a subtle sense of humor that cracked Hannah up despite her attempts to fade into the background so that Mamaw could enjoy her pseudo date.

  But when Mr. Davenport asked about her work at the Record, Hannah mentioned her need to visit Memphis to do research, and Mamaw’s gentleman caller was brimming with questions and advice.

  After a few basic “getting to know you” questions, Hannah could tell that the retired minister from Arkansas likely had very little firsthand information that could fill in the blanks of Evelyn’s life. Mamaw was less inclined to indulge in any conversation involving Hannah’s research. More clearheaded than when she offered her sleepy reference to the Crippled Children’s Hospital, she’d lost her helpful attitude and kept trying to sway the conversation away from such controversial topics. Hannah cooperated in Mamaw’s attempts to steer the discussion away from her work, but Mr. Davenport didn’t make it easy.

  “I agree that the university library is likely your best option,” Davenport said at one point after a long sip of iced tea. “If you need a vehicle—”

  “She has a car,” Mamaw cut in, slightly rude for her usually tempered demeanor.

  Hannah started at the sharp interruption and watched her grandmother closely. She clearly had tender feelings for Mr. Davenport, but what was she feeling right now? If Hannah were in her shoes, she’d be feeling like Mr. Davenport was overstepping, acting like he had some superior take on the situation because he was a man, but Hannah assumed Mamaw would like these attempts at chivalry.

  “The Buick in the garage? I’m not sure that would get you to Coldwater, much less Memphis.”

  Mamaw stiffened. The Buick had been a gift from Papaw. Mamaw rarely drove anymore, and it was older than any of her grandchildren, but she thought it was the most beautiful car in existence and insisted on keeping her driver’s license up to date.

  “It’s okay. I’m fine. If I need to go to Memphis, I will take an Uber.” It would be expensive, but Hannah had a bit in savings and didn’t have many expenses living with Mamaw.

  “An Uber?” Mr. Davenport questioned, clearly not up on the newest trends.

  Mamaw took the opportunity to show her modernity and, Hannah thought, pay him back a little for the comment about her car.

  “They are the new sort of taxis. You can call one with a service on your computer.”

  “Well, your phone,” Hannah corrected.

  “Do we have those in Senatobia?” Mr. Davenport asked.

  “Of course we do. I’m sure plenty of the college kids at the university use the driving service, don’t you think, Hannah?”

  “Oh yes. I’m sure of it,” Hannah responded emphatically, as though she had long-held opinions on the driving habits of the youth in Tate County. She sat back and let Mamaw and her gentleman caller banter back and forth in a slightly flirtatious repartee as she thought through the logistics of getting to the University of Memphis and finding her way into the Crippled Children’s Hospital without a phone or a car. If her phone didn’t start working soon, she’d have to dip into savings or bulk up the balance on her credit card and buy a new one.

  “Sounds like you are going to Memphis tomorrow,” Mr. Davenport said to Hannah, tapping her elbow with his own. Even if she hadn’t seen him wink, she’d have heard it in the playful way he made his statement.

  “Wait. What?” Hannah asked, nearly speechless with anticipation.

  “Your Mamaw is gonna spend the day with me and my granddaughter, Suzie.”

  “Oh my God. Seriously?” It was far sooner than Hannah had expected, but she wasn’t going to pass up the opportunity. But then she paused, not sure how her grandmother felt about the change in plans. “But I don’t have to, Mamaw. I can go another time.”

  “Oh, hush!” Mamaw waved her hand like she was batting away Hannah’s concerns. “You can take my car, and I need an outing. Besides, I don’t think Mr. Davenport will let me get a word in edgewise until I say yes to his offer. He can be such a persistent man, don’t you think?”

  It should’ve been awkward to see her grandmother use her womanly ways on a man, but it wasn’t. It fascinated Hannah. She wanted to study the push and pull of this old-school dynamic, a kind of dance that was far too complicated for Hannah. Davenport’s well-intentioned but exhausting helpfulness was suffocating, and she wouldn’t even know where to start with the passive and vulnerable role Mamaw had perfected.

  “So it seems,” Hannah said, entertained by their method of flirting.

  Mr. Davenport and Mamaw solidified their plans for the next day, and as soon as could be considered polite, Hannah excused herself to her room under the guise of an early bedtime to leave the two lovebirds alone.

  She’d left at noon. Though the research trip was happening sooner than Hannah had expected, it felt right to be on the path to answers. She’d checked her email incessantly before leaving work Friday.

  In the absence of her phone’s GPS, she’d asked Mr. Davenport for directions. He’d presented Hannah with handwritten directions this morning when he picked up Mamaw. He advised her to go up US 51, a road that took her past Graceland and into the city. She knew from her brief tenure in traffic reporting that she could just as easily take I-55 to the city, but without the voice on her phone telling her every last turn, she was hesitant to make the trip without some guidance. So she decided to lean on Mr. Davenport’s directions.

  Once she was over the Tennessee state line and in the city proper, Hannah turned onto the parkway that was supposed to lead her to her first stop, the University of Memphis. She eyed the pawnshop on the corner and the train tracks parallel to the road. It felt a little like home this close to the city’s center. She missed the neighborhoods of Chicago, the people, the houses, the small markets on every other corner. She even missed seeing bulletproof glass with names and gang signs etched into it.

  A long freight train crept along beside her, graffiti offering a splash of color she was always secretly grateful for no matter where she lived. On the other side of the road were brick houses and shops, and occasionally a few almost-suburban neighborhoods sprouted up in between the patches of older-looking communities. She tried to imagine what the world looked like back when Evelyn might have visited. Were these houses here, or was it just farmland?

  She continued up the parkway and eventually outpaced the train to her right. After crossing the tracks and managing a couple of tricky turns, she found herself in the parking lot on the outskirts of the University of Memphis. Usually, she would’ve looked at the campus online and found exactly where the university library was located, but today she was on more of a Choose Your Own Adventure kind of a trip since she hadn’t had the opportunity to do any advance research.

  She wanted to know what Evelyn’s life felt like, and this was one way to find out. If she’d been alive in 1929, Hannah would have had to explore and discover her surroundings without any online guidance. The idea was a bit frightening but also exhilarating, like she was walking across a tightrope she’d traversed a million times but they’d forgotten to put out the net. She knew
she could make it to the other side, but what if this time she slipped and fell?

  Well, she wasn’t going to turn back now. Hannah grabbed her bag off the passenger-side seat, its metal buckle scratching against the vinyl-coated padded surface. It took an extra-hard shove to get the door open. It creaked, like the joints of an old woman trying to stand for the first time in a long while.

  She slammed the door hard to get it closed and then locked it with one of the tinkling keys Mamaw had handed her that morning. She wasn’t sure who would ever want to steal the brown beauty, but then again, on a college campus, someone might think grandma’s old car was “retro,” so it was better to be safe than face Mamaw’s silent look of disappointment.

  After crossing both lanes of traffic and the train tracks without much difficulty, she reached the concrete path that led to campus. There was an energy there that reminded her of her days at Northwestern. She’d never been one of those exciting college students who had lots of dates or went to all the football games. She had never joined a sorority or had a one-night stand, and in all four years she had participated in only one game of beer pong—which she lost. Most of her time not studying was spent as a reporter and then as an editor for the Daily Northwestern. She’d spent many a late night in the third-floor office of the Norris University Center, researching, writing, and eventually editing the features section of the paper. Those years were the foundation of her career as a journalist, and she still could remember what it felt like to rush across campus to her next class or spend hours researching in the library. Life on campus always felt like it had a purpose.

  Sure, there were stressful times. Once, right before finals, she’d been crossing Lincoln to get on campus. For a brief moment she considered if it would be better to let one of the cars zipping by hit her and remove all the items from her to-do list in one tragic second. But that upsetting moment thankfully passed quickly after scaring her enough to keep her from playing such what-if games again for many, many years.

  “I didn’t realize you have a history of suicidal ideations,” Laura said during therapy when Hannah had, half-jokingly, told the story the week before Mamaw hurt herself and Hannah’s mother gave her the strongly recommended option of moving to Mississippi. Hearing the phrase suicidal ideation made Hannah start. She cocked her head, looking at her therapist like she was the one who had lost her mind.

  “Um, that’s not what I was trying to say. It only happened that one time until everything fell apart with . . . you know,” she explained. Alex caused this. If he hadn’t left, she wouldn’t have broken. If they were together still, she wouldn’t have wanted to end things. That was the only narrative that felt right to Hannah.

  Laura leaned in, only a few years older than Hannah and with a perky nose and styled hair that at first made her wonder if this woman could be of much help. But Hannah had learned that when her therapist got this steady, thoughtful look on her face and put her notepad to the side that insight beyond a certain age was about to be dispensed.

  “Actually, it sounds to me like you’ve likely been dealing with some underlying depression and anxiety for some time now.” She squinted like she was trying to see a picture better. “Stick with me here and I’ll try to explain. Depression can be hereditary, and with your family history, I wouldn’t be surprised if, once you lost the structure of your micromanaged childhood in college, the symptoms became more difficult to bear. And that is why you became so easily and fully enmeshed with Alex.” Hannah flinched, not liking that line of reasoning. It made her feel even more damaged and unlovable, but she sat, speechless, reluctantly letting Laura finish. “You leaned on that relationship to give you that structure and stabilize your self-image. And then when that scaffolding was gone, poof, you were left to carry this preexisting condition without any coping mechanisms.”

  Hannah shook her head and changed the direction in which her legs were defensively crossed. “No. I’ve never felt like this before. This is because of him. Because of what he did.”

  Laura made the annoying hmm sound that always meant she didn’t agree. Hannah braced herself.

  “I know I say this all the time, but there are reasons and there are justifications. Just because you can find the reasoning behind a behavior doesn’t necessarily justify it. Alex”—she said the name that cut like a blade—“and his behavior are reasons for your heartbreak, but not everyone who goes through the trauma you’ve experienced deals with the stumbling blocks you’ve been working through. At some point it isn’t healthy to rehash trauma without working to heal it, to look deeper, Hannah. Beyond Alex. Beyond your breakup.”

  “I’m taking the medicine. I’m going to therapy. That’s all I can do right now,” Hannah had said, folding her arms so that her body was completely closed off.

  Laura sat in that energy, leaning back into her armchair, letting the challenge to look deeper hang heavy for a moment.

  “I understand. It’s very painful, and with the trauma of losing your father so quickly, it can leave anyone feeling unsure, lost. I will gladly listen to you talk about anything that helps lift your grief, Hannah, but the way out of this pain is not inertia, it is forward motion.”

  “‘The best way out is always through.’ I get it,” she snipped. “I’ve read Robert Frost.” But at that time Hannah didn’t want “out”—she wanted to go back. Laura shifted to a new topic, reassuring Hannah they’d explore the idea of moving on again soon. Hannah moved to Senatobia two weeks later and had let their weekly sessions drift away. But on days like today, when she was on a campus again, tracking down a story, she thought about telling Laura. Maybe when she got her new phone.

  It wasn’t difficult to find the Ned R. McWherter Library. The campus was nearly empty. According to Mr. Davenport, today was game day, but since it was an away game, that meant a quiet campus and everyone inside watching from the confines of their home. A few cheers echoed out of random windows as she passed through the part of campus where the student center was located. Then she followed the signage and took a glance at the large map by the clock tower. Hannah found her way to the front of the four-story library in under fifteen minutes.

  After flashing her old ID badge from the Tribune and navigating through the spacious domed four-story entry, Hannah found a way to a resource desk. She said the words reporter and Chicago Tribune and was quickly assigned a petite and slightly nervous student assistant, who escorted her up to the second floor where the microfilm was held.

  Maggie, a first-year graduate student in library studies, showed Hannah to the microfilm copies that could be viewed on large machines in a shadowy corner of the resource room.

  “Let me know if you need any help,” Maggie said with a sweet little twang in a whisper, like she’d grown up in a home full of secrets so that she’d only learned to raise her voice loud enough to be heard inside a library.

  “Thank you. Don’t go too far! I’m sure I’ll have a million more questions,” Hannah said with an overly helpless smile, taking Maggie’s place at the computer. She’d given Maggie Harry’s name and a few details when she offered to help with the search. It was better to keep the grad student close and busy. Hopefully, Maggie wasn’t the suspicious type who would google Hannah’s name as soon as she got back to the research desk.

  Please don’t be nosy, Maggie. Please, Hannah thought as she nodded and said a quick thanks for all her help.

  Finally, alone in her element, Hannah started a familiar research pattern that had served her well as a student and journalist. Thankfully, she knew how to navigate the compact microfilm files far more efficiently than the mess that met her every day in the basement of the Record.

  First, she searched the online database of historical newspapers. Still, without a full name for Evelyn, each search came back with hundreds of random suggestions even when she narrowed the search field to 1929 and only included newspapers from northern Mississippi and southern Tennessee. As the afternoon dragged on, she moved on to searching local papers.
Nothing on the shooting of a girl. The more images that flipped by, the more Hannah felt like she was searching for a needle in a haystack.

  She paused, pen cap between her teeth as she considered her seeming dead end. It was nearly impossible to find a singular fourteen-year-old girl with only a first name. She’d typed all the names she had written in the notebook, one at a time, into the online archive database. But Mrs. Brown, Evelyn, Mr. Brodick, the postman, and even Harry Westbrook brought up random links that led to the same dead ends she’d already met. Then she thought about her next destination—the Pines. The former home of the Memphis Crippled Children’s Hospital and School. That place existed. There was no doubt.

  She typed the name of the facility into the search bar, and four resources popped up. Two looked to be articles about the hospital’s founding in 1919, one was about a lawsuit against the estate of a widow who wanted to retain the charitable donation left to the hospital in her husband’s will, and the top hit was an archived box of materials. Hannah’s ears rang as she focused on the description.

  BOX CONTAINS ANNUAL REPORTS, BYLAWS, MINUTES FROM MEETINGS OF THE CHARITABLE BOARD, AND PHOTOGRAPHS—ITEMS DONATED BY MISS SHELBY DAWSON OF MEMPHIS, TENNESSEE.

  The ringing in her ears turned into a buzz that covered her whole body. It was THE buzz, the one she felt the first time she read one of Evelyn’s letters. It was not a flashing red arrow pointing to all the answers, but it was a solid lead and Hannah was going to follow it.

  With Maggie’s help, Hannah found the resource box. Even in the well-maintained library, there was a thin layer of dust on the top of the brown cardboard lid, and the documents inside smelled old, musty. Her eyes twitched with a familiar itch she had to fight nearly every time she touched the files at the Record.