“Rink ran away. Took me forever to find him.” Huck was in a foul mood, his jeans and boots muddy.
“At least he didn’t dig up any bodies this time,” Hannah had quipped, and Huck had simply grunted a reply. She’d eaten the pasta alone while Huck had showered.
Brackenhill was getting to him, Hannah thought. It was isolating up here, the woods, the drafty castle. No one had been sleeping well. Rink had had everyone up the night before barking like crazy, running back and forth in the hall, and because of either lack of sleep or circumstance, Hannah had burst into tears at the whole ordeal, and Huck had snapped, “Get it together, Hannah.” It was the first time he’d ever talked to her like that. But Hannah got it: Brackenhill made everyone edgy. Nervous. Hannah had taken to guzzling wine in the evening before bed to knock her out. She’d hoped to sleep deeply enough to ward off sleepwalking episodes.
“I know,” Huck now replied softly. He found her hand under the covers and squeezed her fingertips. “I don’t want to leave you up here alone, though.”
“I won’t be alone; I’ll have Rink.” Hannah knew it wasn’t enough for Huck, but he had clients to appease. He’d been fielding relentless phone calls from his crew: he was the customer Zamboni, the one who solved the problems, smoothed everyone out. Everyone wanted to know where he was—one of his largest clients was an industrial complex on the outskirts of DC, and it was time to strip the beds and install fall plants. It was a job that took almost a week alone, and they had asked for an upgrade to the front entrance and were willing to pay, but Huck had been unavailable. His fiancée’s dying uncle held precious little water.
“Rink found a shed. Do you remember a shed?” Huck asked her.
“Maybe? There were a lot of outbuildings in the woods. It’s over a thousand acres. It was used as a camp of some kind in the fifties, I think.” Uncle Stuart had told her that one day. She’d forgotten all about it.
But now that he mentioned it, she did remember a shed: a wide-plank door with peeling paint, a single bolted window, a steel slanted roof. She had a quick flash of memory, a sour taste in the back of her throat, and it was gone. She wanted to ask Huck if he’d gone inside, what had been in there, where it was. She wanted to go find it again. It was on the tip of her tongue to reach out, bridge the gap. She could almost imagine herself moving into the crook of his arm. Maybe it was what they needed.
Huck interrupted her thoughts. “Did you hear back from that place? Serenity something?”
A quick stab of irritation. Huck always defaulted back to logistics: who was moving when and where. Nitty-gritty, Hannah called it. In this case the nitty-gritty was a cover for When can we leave? He didn’t exactly care what she was doing with her days. He didn’t see how the remains in the woods could be tied in any way to Julia. He liked facts and figures, tangible evidence he could grip. He’d spent his days at Brackenhill reading—thick nonfiction from Uncle Stuart’s library. Biographies of Johnny Cash, Philip Roth, Muhammad. She’d let him take a handful home with him.
“Serenity Acres?” Hannah made a split-second decision. “No.”
She’d never lied to Huck before. She was doing it so he wouldn’t worry, she thought. So he wouldn’t wonder what she was doing up here, wouldn’t wonder if she was slowly losing her mind. She didn’t tell Huck about Warren or Lila or Ellie. She felt her life fracture into yet another piece. She had her normal life, her life in Brackenhill, and now a secret. A mystery to unravel, connections to make. She felt so close to it. It was possible, even likely, that telling Huck would have helped her. It was also just as possible that Huck would be dismissive.
Still, she stayed silent.
They lay like that, Huck gently cupping her fingertips, until she had almost fallen asleep. When he moved over her, his lips on her hair, then her mouth, his hand sliding up to her breast, her body arched to his on instinct. Her mind stayed blank, and she focused on the feel of his body, his skin beneath her fingertips, so familiar, so warm. They knew each other so well that even when everything else felt murky and lost, their bodies knew the way.
He slid inside her and she felt the pressure build, then explode, his sudden cry into her ear, his hand gripping her hip, and then it was over, that fast.
Later, she’d wonder if she dreamed that too.
“Give me a week, okay? Then if you can’t come home, I’ll come back. I just need to get everything back on track.” Huck stood by their car, his duffel bag hanging in his right hand.
“I’ll be home in a week. I will eventually lose my job. I’m using all my vacation time and sick time as it is.” Hannah had communicated to her boss in text only, keeping her answers vague. She could sense the irritation in her boss’s shortened replies. Oh well. She was only pretending to care for Huck’s sake.
She’d started having elaborate fantasies of living at Brackenhill. Gardening like Aunt Fae, canning in the summer and the fall, tending to the grounds like Uncle Stuart, lazing in the pool under the hot August sun, spinning on the pink tube like Julia. Bringing the pool back to glory, sparkling in the sun. The feel of the cool water against freshly shaved legs.
“I’m not comfortable with this; I’m really not.” Huck looked up the driveway to the castle, only the turrets visible over the small stony driveway knoll.
“That’s silly. Rink is here. Alice is in and out. As soon as Stuart is placed, I’ll come back. Just go hold down the fort at home, okay?” Hannah stood on her tiptoes and kissed his cheek. It was a chaste, almost platonic goodbye, and she couldn’t help but remember the Huck and Hannah of a mere two weeks ago. This, if nothing else, underscored the growing distance between them, something their sleepy interlude last night had done nothing to alleviate. She knew their relationship well enough to know that late-night intimacies didn’t always transfer to the light of day.
“You’re going to go look for that shed the second I’m gone, aren’t you?” Huck gave her a small, affectionate smile.
“No!” Hannah laughed, willing to go along with the ruse: he wasn’t frustrated with her for staying, and she wasn’t annoyed at him for not understanding her ties to Brackenhill. Why would he? She’d never explained it. Still, she had expected more. “Okay, maybe. I spent years exploring here. Sometimes alone. I survived. It’s daylight. It’ll be fine. I’ll take Rink and my phone. I’ll call if I fall down the embankment into the river.”
“That’s not even funny.” Huck folded her into a hug. “Just stay safe, okay? Come home as soon as you can. We’ll talk every day.”
She watched his car back down the narrow pebble driveway and onto Valley Road. When he got to the bottom and turned right, she waved both arms above her head. He honked the horn and was gone.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Now
Hannah snapped on Rink’s leash and checked her watch. It was seven o’clock in the morning. She had the whole day ahead of her. Alice would come at nine, and she could talk to her about Serenity Acres, about the process for getting Stuart admitted. She had said she worked closely with the hospice centers in the area and she’d be able to help when the time came.
Hannah needed the walk to clear her head. Make mental lists of all the things she didn’t understand or didn’t know. All the questions that had poured out of her at Uncle Stuart’s bedside the day before came back to her. But the one that nagged at her the most: Was Aunt Fae Ellie’s mother if Warren Turnbull was her father? She tried to remember the curves of Ellie’s face but couldn’t clearly recall anything aside from red lipstick. Red hair. Aunt Fae had been brunette. Wispy. Mild mannered. Ellie was redheaded and sturdy. Brash. Hannah couldn’t imagine it or perhaps didn’t want to. That would make her and Ellie . . . cousins. No.