A Wicked Snow

her.

“Hannah, can you hear me?”

She shuddered. She was far away. Long ago.

It was a scene in black and white, first snow, then the dark of smoke. The triggers of the strobbing images were the sweet smell of the Wild Turkey, her father’s favorite drink. Hannah could hear ice cubes tinkle in cut glass tumblers. Icy. Clear. Feeling his presence just then brought a rush of emotion. How she missed him. How Amber would have loved him. Hannah gasped for air and the face of her father faded. Suddenly, her mother’s image came into view. It was clear. It was her. Cold eyes, a tight, bitter mouth. Hannah tried to shake it away. Something else took her back to the farm to the night that changed everything; that ruined everything. Teacups. It was a set of Belleek, creamy white with a chain of shamrocks around the rim. They sat in a semicircle around a teapot on the dinning room sideboard. They had been her mother’s prized possession, the first thing she’d bought when she’d made a little money off the farm. She had always loved fine things. She’d always told Hannah that exceptional belongings were the payoff for hard work and sacrifice. Her teacup collection was her first treasure, greater than the love of her children, her husband, even Marcus Wheaton. Sitting in the gazebo, wrestling for memories—for truth—the shattered cup of the same design and the way Louise Wallace’s eyes flashed disappointment, not fear. It took her to a dark place.

“Hannah, can you hear me?”

It was Jeff Bauer’s voice, bringing her back. Slowly. The room continued to spin. The Wild Turkey. The cup. The faces of her brothers, her mother, her father, Marcus Wheaton. All spun around her, mouths moving, explaining, crying, demanding.

Only one asked for forgiveness. It was Hannah’s own voice.

The room came into focus. Jeff Bauer’s penetrating eyes looked at her with even deeper compassion. “Are you sick?”

She shook her head and swallowed hard. The Wild Turkey. The shattered cup. The memory was no longer buried. Tears rolled, but she did not make the sounds that come with crying. She was too scared, too full of resolve.

“It wasn’t the smoke that woke me up the second time,” she said, the memories now crystallized. “Oh, Jeff, it was Marcus Wheaton who woke me.” Her body shivered and her vocal cords constricted, but she didn’t stop. The dam had been broken. “He stood over my bed and put his hand over my mouth. I didn’t know what was happening. I thought he was going to hurt me.”

Bauer touched her knee. Hannah didn’t recoil, but allowed him to comfort her. “What did the son of a bitch do to you?”

She shook her head and steadied her drink. “It wasn’t like that,” she said. “Marcus told me to be quiet, very quiet.”

“Dear God,” Bauer said. He put his arm around her. “I’m sorry,” he said gently.

“Jeff,” she said, “that isn’t it. That isn’t it at all. Something happened today. Now I remember. I know she killed my brothers. I knew it, and I didn’t do anything about it.”

The words didn’t compute. In twenty years Jeff Bauer hadn’t imagined that Hannah had any real knowledge of what had really happened that night. She’d never said so. She’d held it together so damn well that everyone back in the Portland field office thought Claire Logan’s daughter escaped the horror of Rock Point by not seeing anything at all. They all thought she was lucky. Some of the younger ones said she was better off. Clean slate. Living with really knowing would be too much for any of them.

“What are you saying?” He hated himself for pushing her. Bauer hadn’t pressed her hard enough when she was twelve, and that thought also made him sick. She was just a girl, for crying out loud. How hard should he have pushed?

“Marcus led me out of the house. I didn’t… I didn’t get out of the house alone—I was with Marcus. I didn’t call for my mom because he told me to be quiet. He said that I’d die if I said a word. There was flocking everywhere and he poured kerosene as we walked past Mom’s and the boys’ rooms.

Hannah brushed her dark blond hair from her eyes. Bauer could see that her brown eyes had welled with tears, but she had kept herself from crying.

“She flat out killed the boys with her bare hands,” she said. “Marcus was supposed to handle me because I was a girl and… get this…”

Her voice trailed off, and she found herself back on the tree farm. The white of the snow. The sick smell of the kerosene. All was there. A tear fell, and she moved to wipe it away. She wouldn’t allow her mother to get the best of her.

“What?” the FBI agent asked. “What?”

Hannah nodded. “It would be easier to suffocate me than Erik and Danny. But my mom, yeah, she could multitask like nobody’s business.”

But there was something else.

“I’m sure she killed Didi, too. I saw her mother on one of those shows on cable. It was long after it happened. But I know that after my mother questioned me and my brothers about some jar of teeth she’d kept, and Didi took the blame.”

“Teeth?”

“You heard me.”

Hannah’s eyes, dry by then, got huge.

“These were from the days before DNA was even really thought about. I think my mother bashed out her victims’ teeth with a hammer. And she saved them like a ghoul. Like what she was.”

“Those were Didi’s teeth?”

Hannah sipped her drink and shook her head.

“No, I don’t think so. I mean, no. It was after my mother confronted me with the jar that Didi disappeared. I heard my mother talking on the phone, and I knew she was lying when she said Didi had left the farm ‘weeks ago.’ She boxed up some of her things and gave them to Rock Point St. Vincent de Paul. She burned the rest. Didi’s mom kept calling… she was sure my mom had done something to her. She just didn’t know that Didi was one of many. I guess I knew. Marcus knew.”

Hannah Griffin tightened like a potato bug, all into herself, on the edge of the bed. The light from the window slashed at her glistening face.

“I just sat there,” she said. “I just fucking sat there while the house, the buildings burned up. I sat there until the firemen came. I just sat while everything was burning. I knew what was happening. I didn’t know all of it. But I knew enough. I’ve known enough for my whole life.”

Bauer’s arms enveloped Hannah’s shoulders and she closed her eyes. He could feel her shaking. And as he held her he thought of the shoes that had been introduced in court so long ago, and a question that no one had asked. There was no need for it. It wasn’t a murder trial. Marcus Wheaton wasn’t being charged with their murder, and Veronica Paine didn’t see the relevance of two boys dressed at midnight on Christmas Eve. But Bauer had always wondered why the boys’ little corpses had been found fully dressed all the way to their shoes.

Hannah provided the answer.

“The boys thought they were going somewhere. They thought they were going to go with Mom. But they didn’t. They went to heaven.”

Not wanting to move her, Bauer took the hideous orange and green bedspread from the other bed and covered her. She opened her eyes and looked into his.

“Don’t,” he said. “You need rest. Sleep here.”

She closed her eyes. “Stay with me?”

“I’ll be right here.”