Chapter 5: What Tom Said When He Saw the Photo
I drove Hannah to our house.
She didn't ask where we were going.
She sat in the passenger seat with her hands in her lap and watched the road and didn't speak, and I didn't push her.
There would be time for talking.
Right now I just needed her inside four walls that were mine.
Tom's car was in the driveway when we pulled up.
He'd come home early.
I'd sent him one more text from the BP lot — just bring her home — and he had understood enough to leave work without asking for more.
He was in the kitchen when we came in.
He looked at Hannah's face and then at mine and he opened his arms and Hannah walked into them the way she used to when she was small, and he held on and didn't say anything.
After a moment he said, over her head, "You hungry?"
She made a sound that was almost a laugh.
"No."
"Sit down anyway."
He made tea.
It was the only thing he knew how to do in a crisis and he did it thoroughly, filling the kettle and getting out the good mugs, and the ordinary sounds of it — the water running, the cupboard closing — made the kitchen feel almost normal.
Hannah sat at the table.
I sat across from her.
Tom put the mugs down and pulled out the chair beside me.
I took the folded paper from my pocket and set it on the table.
Tom looked at it.
He didn't touch it.
"May I?" he said.
Hannah nodded.
He unfolded it.
He looked at it for a long time.
His face did not change in any dramatic way.
His jaw tightened and then released and then tightened again.
He refolded it along the same crease and set it back on the table.
"Hannah," he said.
"I'm going to ask you one question and I only want you to answer if you want to.
Is there more than this?"
She wrapped both hands around her mug.
"Yes."
"Okay." He nodded slowly.
"Okay."
"Dad." She hadn't called him that in years.
She'd moved to Tom somewhere in her twenties, the way adult children sometimes do.
"I don't want you to do anything yet.
I need to figure out—"
"I'm not going to do anything," he said.
"I'm sitting here drinking tea."
"I mean it."
"I know you mean it." He met her eyes.
"I'm not going to do anything that makes it worse for you.
That's a promise.
But I need you to hear something from me."
She waited.
"You don't have to go back to that house," he said.
"Not tonight.
Not any night.
Your room is your room.
It will always be your room.
Whatever you decide and however long it takes — that does not change."
Hannah looked at the table.
Her throat moved.
"He'll come here," she said.
"When he realizes I'm not coming home.
He'll come here and he'll be — he'll seem completely normal.
He's very good at that.
And then when we're alone he'll—"
"He won't be alone with you here," I said.
"Not for one minute."
She looked up at me.
"I mean it, Han.
He will not be alone with you in this house."
Something shifted in her face.
Not relief exactly.
Something more fragile than that.
Like a muscle that had been braced for so long it had forgotten it was allowed to rest.
Tom's phone buzzed on the table.
He glanced at it and turned it face-down.
"Who is it?" I asked.
He looked at me steadily.
"Craig."
The kitchen went quiet.
Hannah's hands tightened around her mug.
"Don't answer it."
"I'm not going to."
The buzzing stopped.
Then, ten seconds later, started again.
Tom picked up the phone and turned it over and looked at the screen.
He set it back down without answering.
"He'll keep calling," Hannah said.
Her voice had gone flat.
"And then he'll come."
She was right.
We all knew she was right.
May you like
The question was what we were going to do when he did.
What none of us knew yet was that Craig wasn't going to arrive alone.
