Hannah sat in Aunt Fae’s Volkswagen on Main Street, debating where to go next. On one hand, if she went back up to Brackenhill, she had the whole night ahead of her. She could go sit at Pinker’s. She could go to Wyatt’s.
Her thoughts zinged around like Ping-Pong balls. She cruised Main Street twice. The teenagers would start coming out, walking up and down the main drag. Visiting Jinny just to say hi.
Buck, who owned the hardware store, and Bo, who lived upstairs, had already set up lawn chairs on the front stoop, and Buck flipped the store sign to closed, as they’d done every summer night since Hannah was a kid. Hannah could hear the hiss-pop of a Bud Light from across the street. She turned off Main Street and headed down toward West.
Hannah rubbed the letter between her index finger and thumb. She felt drawn to the little brown house, to Warren. To see where Ellie had grown up, the misery she’d lived in. What had compelled her to push a child? Hannah felt sick.
Warren would probably be at Pinker’s, and she knew she had to stay far away from there. Three visits in a week might get her killed. She edged the Volkswagen down Henley Avenue, which ran perpendicular to West Street, and could see Warren’s truck parked in front of the house. What was he doing home? Hannah’s pulse picked up, a staccato beat.
Hannah cut back and came up to the left of the house, past Lila’s, up the alley. She pulled behind the small shed in back of Lila’s and threw the car in park.
It was reckless. And probably stupid. If he found her, who knew what he’d do. She thought, briefly, about showing him the letter. What would he say? What would he think? Did he know it existed? It seemed unlikely.
Hannah eased out of the Volkswagen, shutting the door quietly behind her. She looked around—it was probable that someone was watching her from behind parted curtains. In Rockwell, watching the street was a pastime.
In back of Warren’s, on the corner of the property, sat an old outhouse. Hannah stood behind it, catching her breath, trying to organize her thoughts.
What exactly did she hope to find here? She wasn’t sure, but it felt safer, more comforting, to be standing behind an old shit house in Warren’s backyard than to go back to Brackenhill, alone, again.
The back screen door creaked open and shut. Hannah’s throat constricted, and she squeezed her eyes shut, willing herself to become invisible. She pressed her back flush against the splintered wood. A woman’s voice. And Warren.
Not yelling, but not friendly either.
She couldn’t be sure, but it sounded like “fucked too.”
If Lila came outside, even to simply take out the trash, she’d be screwed. If whoever was on Warren’s back step took ten steps to the left or right, she’d see Hannah immediately.
Instead, the woman beelined straight for the alley, and instead of turning right, toward the outhouse, she turned left, toward the street. Hannah breathed a sigh of relief, counted to ten, and leaned forward to get a clear look at who it was.
Alice.
The nurse paused and looked left, then right, before darting across West Street and turning right on Henley. From half a block away in the Rockwell quiet, Hannah could just make out the sound of a truck engine turning over.
Hannah’s heart thrummed in her throat, and she doubled back to Fae’s car, hopped in the driver’s seat, and threw the gearshift into drive. She followed the truck back up the winding road to Brackenhill, too late in the day to be tending to Stuart, staying far enough back that she dropped out of sight of the truck’s rearview around every turn.
Alice’s truck eased into the driveway before she cut the headlights. Hannah parked on the edge of the property and made the reckless decision to follow her on foot. Why had Alice come back? She never came back at night. Maybe she’d forgotten a med? But then why cut her headlights?
Midway up the driveway stood a little tower. As a child Hannah had always played in it, throwing notes and pebbles up and down with Julia. The tower contained nothing but a winding concrete staircase and a small, empty room on the second floor.
Alice glided the truck behind the tower and slowly crept out of the driver’s seat. Hannah watched her from behind a thick oak as she switched on