“Not Nature,” she replied, blinking rapidly. “Sophia and Zoe. They are Sophia and Zoe.”
Chapter Six
Boone silently repeated the names. Sophia and Zoe. Girls. Little girls, he’d bet. Ah, Hannah Dupree, you break my heart.
Swiftly deepening twilight cast her face in shadow but failed to hide the anguish in her watery eyes. “Want to tell me about Sophia and Zoe?”
She filled her lungs with air, then blew out a heavy breath. “I don’t know. I haven’t talked about them in three years. I’ll just cry.”
“Cleansing tears can be good.”
“Maybe.” She gave a thready laugh. “Even cleansing tears make a mess. I don’t have any tissues.”
“See, maybe this is meant to be. I’m one of those old-fashioned guys who still carry a handkerchief, and it’s still as pristine as it was when my laundry girls delivered it.”
Hannah gave him a sidelong look. “You have a laundry girl?”
“Girls, plural. Distant cousins of mine—Meg and Cari Callahan. They’re young teens, twins, who are saving their pennies to buy their first cars. I pay them to iron for me. They’re still learning when it comes to my shirts, so we mostly do handkerchiefs. If I don’t go through enough of them in a week, I catch hell.” He reached into his back pocket and then handed her a neatly folded handkerchief. “You’ll be doing me a solid if you’ll mess this up for me.”
She brushed her thumb across the initials embroidered into the cotton square. “I was a sucker for monogramming. They told you for safety’s sake not to put your children’s name on their clothes, but at least once each year I had matching dresses monogrammed with their names for portraits. My favorites were little red polka-dot Minnie Mouse dresses. I don’t know the name of the font, but it shouted Disney. It was the year we took them to Disney World. They wore mouse ears in the photos. They were so proud of them.”
“I’d like to see the portraits.”
Again, her thumb brushed the monogram. When she spoke, her voice was tight. “I kept the albums. They’re about all I kept. I don’t think I can show you. Not yet.”
“That’s okay.” He gave the hand holding his handkerchief a gentle, comforting squeeze. “What can you share with me?”
“Sophia was seven. Zoe, five. Sophia had my red hair. Zoe was blond. They both had their father’s brown eyes. Sophia wanted to be a dolphin trainer when she grew up, and Zoe loved to color. They both adored ice cream and kittens and making leaf forts in autumn. They both thrived being outdoors, especially if it involved anything to do with water. Sophia had learned to water-ski. Zoe was determined to learn that summer.”
Tears ran freely down her face at this point. Boone tugged the handkerchief from her hand and used it to dab at her cheek. She smiled, took it back, and wiped her eyes. Hoping to learn more about Hannah along with her daughters, he asked, “You had a boat?”
She nodded. “Two. A runabout and a sailboat. We had a summer place on a lake in New Hampshire.”
Tidbits. He liked tidbits. But Boone decided a shift in the direction of the conversation was in order, because the haunted look had returned to Hannah’s gaze. “I have an eight-year-old niece who we had to coax into the swimming hole in the Texas Hill Country, where her father lives. She loves to swim, but only had experience in pools. She’ll tell you she’s a girly girl at heart, but she’s learning to get grubby. Leaf forts were a new experience for her, too, this past year. It’s been fun watching her tumble into love with the outdoors.”
Hannah nodded. “That was Sophia. Zoe, on the other hand, loved digging in the dirt almost as much as she loved coloring.”
“I have a friend who is a nut over adult coloring books. I don’t see it myself.”
“Coloring can be therapeutic.”
Boone nodded. “I can see that. Probably the same way origami was for me.”
“You’re a paper folder, are you?”
“I make a mean swan. I can tie balloon animals too.”
“Seriously?” She closed her eyes. “I learned to tie balloon animals for Zoe’s fifth birthday party. We were at a mall, and a store was having a promotion. A girl wearing a cat costume tied balloons and passed them out to the children. It’s all she could talk about afterward. She wanted balloon animals at her party, but the only person I could find dressed like a clown. She was scared of clowns and wanted a cat.”
“So you learned?”
“YouTube is a mother’s friend. I can’t tell you how many bags of balloons I went through before I got the process down.”
Sounded to Boone like she’d been a good, loving mother, and Boone almost said it aloud. Caution held his tongue. He didn’t know how her children had died. It could have been an accident, one for which she was responsible or held herself accountable, and his observation might wound in that case.
So instead, he asked, “Was the party a success?”
She nodded. “It was a big success. I could have started a side business entertaining at children’s birthday parties.”
An opening. “Oh, yeah? What was your main business?”
She didn’t answer right away. When she finally did speak, Boone sensed she was leaving something out.
“I was a mom. After Sophia was born, I was a stay-at-home mom. I loved the job. I was good at it.” Her voice sounded raw, but fierce as she added, “I was a very good mother.”
“Hannah…” Boone hesitated. Indecision rarely plagued him, but he wanted to get this right. “Hannah, do you want to tell me what happened to your girls?”
Silence stretched. A full minute passed. Then two. Boone realized he was holding his breath, so he quietly released it and managed not to gasp when she suddenly said, “They drowned.”
How? He bit back the word as she quietly began to cry. Boone wrapped his arms around her and held her. “Bless your heart.” His voice was thick with emotion as he added, “Ah, Hannah, that’s so hard. Just so hard. I’m sorry.”
She remained stiff at first, but as he gently swayed her back and forth, she relaxed against him and wept. He lost track of how long they stood there, her shoulders quaking, him murmuring comfort and encouragement, but by the time her tears ceased and she took a half step away from him, full darkness had fallen. “I’d thought I was done with tears,” she said.
“These were the cleansing kind,” he replied, confident he was correct. “You needed them.”
“Maybe I did.” A square of white fluttered in the minimal ambient light as she lifted his handkerchief and wiped her eyes. “It’s the first time I’ve talked about them, the first time I’ve wanted to talk about them. I think I needed that, especially today. Thank you for understanding that. Thank you for offering me the opportunity.”
He reached for her, and his fingers brushed her arm just above the elbow. Sliding his hand down the length of her arm until he found her wrist, he clasped her hand and brought it to his lips for a courtly kiss across her knuckles. “It was my pleasure.”
Then he pulled his keys from his pocket, switched on the mini-light he carried on the key ring, and guided Hannah through the darkness, lighting the way toward her new home, her fresh start.