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.
Rink stopped walking and spun in a circle, barked at the air. Hannah tugged on his leash, pulled him forward, back onto the path she’d walked a hundred times as a kid. Away from the courtyard in the opposite direction of the river. If she kept walking, she’d eventually meet up with Valley Road, not too far from where Aunt Fae’s car had crashed. Still, that was at least three miles. She had no intention of walking that far.
But Rink would not move. She snapped his leash. “Come on, Rink,” she said firmly. He acquiesced but whined while following her, his head bent low, his ears folded.
The shed came into view, the door slightly ajar. Hannah felt a stab of annoyance at Huck. Why wouldn’t he leave it how he’d found it? Uncle Stuart would have locked it back up; he never left anything unlocked. Too many kids broke into the grounds of Brackenhill, just to explore or drink or party.
Next to her Rink whined.
Hannah pushed the door open all the way. The inside of the shed was illuminated by a swath of tree-dappled sunlight. Dust swirled up, clouding the air and settling. The shed looked unremarkable. A row of gardening tools hung on the left, shovels and trowels and rakes all lined up according to size. The space was large for a shed, fifteen by fifteen, but everything had a place. Uncle Stuart was—had been—a fastidious gardener. So odd to think of him in the past tense, especially as he lay breathing only a few hundred yards away. Hannah still couldn’t reconcile the man she’d seen earlier with the one she’d once known.
A tractor sat in the middle of the shed, small by tractor standards but dwarfing the room. Hannah edged around it, eyeing the shelves along the back, lined with stacked pots in bright cobalt, fiery red, and muted clay colors. Another shelf contained bags of potting soil, fertilizers, gloves, and hats. Hannah found herself picking each item up, examining it, and replacing it.