The minister was cordial and sincere, but Chris wanted the man to leave. He didn’t want the first moments of his reunion with Hannah to be marred by the presence of anyone else. Magnus obviously leaped to the same conclusion that he was a third wheel.
‘Well, I just wanted to make sure you weren’t hurt,’ he told Hannah.
‘Thank you.’
‘I’ll speak to you tomorrow,’ he said. With a smile at Chris, he added, ‘Please let me know if I can be of any help to you or Olivia.’
Chris said nothing, but he smiled back. Hannah closed the door. She turned around, leaned against it, and folded her arms over her small chest. She’d always been able to see through him, and nothing had changed.
‘I’m not sleeping with him,’ she said. ‘That’s what you were wondering, isn’t it?’
‘No,’ he lied.
‘Glenn is a dear friend,’ she went on. ‘We’ve been through a lot these past three years. Life and death.’
Without saying more, she retreated to the kitchen, where she dumped the broken glass into a wastebasket under the sink. She reached for two chipped mugs from a cabinet over the counter and poured coffee for both of them. He sat down at an old Formica table, and she joined him. For several minutes, they did nothing but sip coffee in silence. The small kitchen had fading floral wallpaper and 1980s appliances, but it was impeccably clean. The house smelled of lilac potpourri.
Hannah was small, around five feet two, and even thinner than he remembered. Thin, but not fragile; she still looked strong. She wasn’t wearing makeup, but her face was oval and perfect, like a cameo. Two crescent shadows underneath her vibrant brown eyes betrayed her fatigue. Even so, to him, she didn’t look older. Time hadn’t passed. Only her dark hair was different. It was shorter and lacked the highlights of cherry and gold that he’d always loved.
She watched her watching him. ‘It’s fake.’
‘What?’
‘The hair.’
Reality slapped him in the face. ‘Oh.’
‘I assume Olivia told you?’
‘Yes, she did.’
Hannah drank her coffee and looked away, as if seeing things in the room that weren’t there.
‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ he asked.
She laughed quietly. ‘What could you do, Chris? Did you cure cancer since the last time I saw you?’
‘I could have provided support. I would have done anything to help.’
‘I know that. You’re a fixer. That’s who you are. But some things you can’t fix.’
‘Maybe not, but I wish I would have heard about it from you.’
‘Yes, you’re right,’ she acknowledged. ‘I should have told you, but I was scared. I don’t know why.’
His lips tightened into a thin line. ‘Tell me about it.’
‘It’s ovarian cancer,’ she said.
‘I’m so sorry.’
She held up a hand, stopping him. ‘No pity. Please.’
He searched for something to say. ‘What’s the treatment? What do the doctors say?’
‘I’m undergoing something called neoadjuvant chemotherapy. The idea is to reduce the size of the tumor before they operate. When that’s done, they’ll do the surgery.’
‘When?’
‘Next month.’
He ran his hand across his face. He was sweating. ‘What’s the prognosis?’
‘That depends on whether you believe me or the oncologist. I say my daughter still needs me. So do a lot of other women around here.’ She changed the subject, as if there were nothing more to discuss. ‘How is Olivia, really?’
‘She’s like you,’ he said. ‘Strong and stubborn.’
That elicited a smile. ‘What did she tell you?’
‘She says she didn’t do it. She didn’t shoot Ashlynn.’
‘Do you believe her?’
That was a good question. Did he believe her? Michael Altman was right that clients lied to lawyers and daughter lied to fathers. It was easier to do that than to admit you got drunk and threw away your whole life by putting a bullet in a girl’s brain. He had been away from Olivia for a long time, and he didn’t know how to decide if she was being honest. Even so, as a lawyer, as a father, he could only trust his gut, and his gut believed her.
‘I do.’ He added, ‘Do you?’
Hannah caressed the top of the coffee mug with one finger. ‘I want to.’
‘But?’
She rubbed her moist eyes. He saw more clearly now how tired she was, all the way into her bones. ‘It hasn’t been easy here. The two of us. Her and me.’
He said nothing.
‘She keeps secrets from me. She slips out at night. We’re distant. I know it’s been tough on her these past three years. The divorce, the move, me busy with work at the Center. Now the cancer. When we got here, Glenn’s daughter Kimberly became her soul mate, and Olivia was inconsolable when we lost her. She did what the other teenagers did. She let all that grief and frustration become hatred.’
‘Did you know she had a gun?’ he asked.
‘Of course not. I would never have allowed it. She’s still just a kid, Chris. She’s got all these emotions, but she doesn’t have the maturity to deal with them. That’s what scares me. If she was alone with Ashlynn that night, and she had a gun, I worry about what she might have done.’
‘Hannah, I really don’t think she killed her.’
‘I hope you’re right. I feel like this is all my fault.’
‘Your fault? Why?’
‘I was so caught up with Mondamin. It’s like a chamber of horrors what they’re doing there. They’re cowboys. They don’t have a clue about the real risks, and they don’t care. I begged Rollie Swenson to file the lawsuit. I worked with the parents around here who lost kids. It wasn’t about money. It was about throwing the light of day on that company, exposing what is really going on in there. The trouble is, when the litigation failed, the kids around here refused to accept it. Bad things started happening. Vandalism. Mischief.’
‘Was Olivia involved?’
‘I don’t think so, not directly, but she’s a lightning rod. Like me. Kids in St. Croix listened to her talking about Mondamin and how people in Barron were profiting from the company’s poison. Some of them took their anger too far. It was petty stuff, but then kids in Barron retaliated. The violence escalated. One boy in particular, a thug named Kirk Watson, became a kind of ringleader in Barron. He turned the feud into a war. We all knew it was only a matter of time before someone got killed.’
‘It sounds like street gangs.’
‘That’s exactly what it is.’
‘In farm country?’ he asked.
Hannah frowned. ‘This isn’t Mayberry, Chris. The problems are the same as in the city, and it’s even worse here because we don’t have the resources to deal with it. We’re all in the crossfire.’ She looked into the dining room, where the torn curtains billowed in through the broken window. ‘Literally.’
‘Olivia is going to pay the price for this war. Michael Altman is going to come down hard on her. If she
‘I wish I knew.’
‘Did you see her go out on Friday?’
‘No, she’s become an expert at slipping out without me knowing. It’s worse with the chemo. I go to bed and sleep like the dead.’
It was an unfortunate turn of phrase, but Chris let it go.
‘You said she’s been keeping secrets. Do you have any idea what she’s hiding?’
‘I don’t. She shuts me out. She’s a deep, deep ocean, Chris. She’s not a little girl anymore.’
