“History is one word for it, yeah. They hated each other, loved each other, then hated each other for the past forty years.”
“Okay, but I’m no detective. Obviously.”
“Obviously. Listen, is that all, or do you want to order something?”
Hannah looked around; the place was starting to empty out. It was ten o’clock on a Tuesday. Summer or not, some of these folks had to work. “Miller Lite,” she said. From a tray on the bar, she picked up a matchbook emblazoned with Pinker’s on the outside and a phone number. She stuck it in her jeans pocket.
Hannah nursed the beer for a half hour. Alternating between checking her phone and watching the door. She didn’t want to be around if Warren stumbled back in—or worse yet, Wyatt.
Pinker made his way back to her end and gestured to her glass. She shook her head.
“What’s your real name?”
“Joel Pinkerton. Pinker’s was my dad’s; I took it over after his stroke.” He had started to clean up, pushing each glass down over the wash spigot and setting them on a clean towel next to the sink.
“Sorry about your dad.” She tapped a credit card on the glass, and he took it from her, ran it through the machine. “I’m Hannah Maloney.”
“I know who you are. Bull’s been ranting and raving about you for a week now.”
“Me? Why?”
“Poking around his life, he says.” Joel stopped washing glasses and put both hands facing down on the bar, leaning toward her. “He’s not a good guy, you know. You’d be wise to stay out of his way. He and your family are entwined, and you don’t live here. He’s a hothead.”
“I know. I can handle myself.” Hannah straightened her spine, felt her jaw square.
“I’m sure. But you’re getting yourself wrapped up in shit you don’t understand. It’s ancient history, but not to Bull.”
“What’s ancient history? His marriage to Fae?” Hannah spun her glass, her fingertips tapping in the condensation puddles on the wood.
He knitted his brows, studied her face. “Is it possible you really have no idea? I thought you were putting on an act.”
“I assure you, I cannot act. Have no idea about what?” Hannah did her best to meet his gaze, opening her own eyes a little wider. Another flirt trick from Julia. She’d forgotten most of them, but somehow lately, she could hear Julia’s voice. Remember her sisterly advice—even the ridiculous kind.
“Ellie. Warren. Fae.” Joel circled his hand around like, You know. She did not know.
“Ellie is Warren’s daughter. Fae was her stepmother until she was ten. Warren and Fae were married. That’s all I know.” Hannah splayed her hands out like, See?
“Damn, you’re not playing me.” Joel ran a hand through his thick hair. “Okay, listen, but you didn’t hear all this from me. The night Ellie ran away—and she truly ran away, she had a bus ticket, the cops have her on camera at the station—Warren swears on his life he saw her up at Brackenhill. He’s been spouting nonsense about it ever since. I mean, he’s been a drunk for twenty years or more; it’s not credible, but . . . he did get McCarran to reopen the investigation.”
“Wait, spouting nonsense about what? What investigation?”
“Into what happened to Ellie. Warren saw Ellie at Brackenhill; he followed her up there after an argument, he says. Then she disappeared into the woods, and he says Fae followed her. He tried to chase them down, but it’s thick back there, and he got turned around. Look, he was probably drunk as a skunk.” Joel’s voice was low, and Hannah had to lean forward to hear him.
“I don’t understand, though. If she ran away, what could he possibly be saying? What are the police investigating?”
“That night he saw them? Warren is convinced that Fae killed Ellie.”
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
Now
Huck had left eight days ago. Hannah spoke to him once briefly on the phone. He hollered in the background to someone else: a worker, perhaps. “Sorry, hon, that’s just Dave.” Like she should have known who Dave was. Hannah played along (“Oh, right, Dave! Tell him I said hello”). When they hung up, she felt no more connected to him than she’d felt before the call. They might as well have not even spoken. The exchange was perfunctory, transactional.
They’d always been a tiny bit transactional. Can you pick up Rink’s meds? Sure. Sushi tonight? Yes, the place on Circle Drive. Hannah assumed most relationships fell into this pattern. She’d always felt a streak of pride in it: Look how functional we are! Trina had done everything; Wes contributed nothing. After Wes left, after Julia disappeared, Trina fell into a state of disrepair, and Hannah filled in the gaps. Her teenage years were benchmarked by dysfunction. There was something satisfying about her and Huck’s partnership—they were a well-oiled machine. No messy emotional glitches, no meltdowns on the bathroom floor, no shattered glasses against the walls. They didn’t even squabble about housework. What she couldn’t get to Huck would do, and vice versa. If she put laundry in, he’d hear the buzzer and deftly switch it. She’d come home from grocery shopping to find him folding her shirts the exact way she liked them—which was slightly different from how he liked them, but he complied.
They would have been perfect parents.
Would have been?
The thought jarred her. The engagement ring still glinting on her finger. The scrying ring on the other hand. The wedding date not set, the wedding itself rarely discussed in detail. The idea of a wedding so attractive to both of them—she assumed, anyway—but perhaps not the actual mess of it. He’d asked her once, “How many people on your side?” And that was all it took. She’d never brought the wedding up again. He had a list. He’d made it one night over wine. Aunts and uncles, cousins and childhood neighbors turned Thanksgiving tablemates. Some of them Hannah had met, but mostly not, and Huck regaled her with stories about drunk uncles at Saint Patrick’s Day parties and an older aunt who wrapped up half-used beauty supplies at Christmas: shampoo and blue clamshell bath soaps with dried bubbles still on them (once even the curl of a black hair, and Huck and his brothers had howled for years at the “pube-soap Christmas”). Hannah sat next to him looking at bouquets on her iPad, something innocently impersonal, and laughed hollowly at Huck’s stories and wondered if she’d feel this kind of joy once his family became her family.
And yet he didn’t ask. He didn’t ask how Stuart was or any details of the investigation. She should have told him the latest: that Wyatt thought that Fae’s accident hadn’t been an accident. It should have come out unprompted. That Warren thought that Aunt Fae had killed Ellie.
He’d talked about his work, how sorry he was that he’d had to leave. How he missed her. How he wished he could have stayed. He asked if there had been any word on the bones. She said no. He asked when she was coming home, and she said she didn’t know.
Then Dave interrupted, and Huck had to go, and that was the end of it.
Hannah snapped the leash on Rink, and he skittered to the back door, impatient. He hadn’t been walked for days. Hannah had let him out once to run, but afraid he would come back with another bone, she’d whistled him back after ten minutes, limp with relief when he’d returned empty mouthed.