penance. a love story (The Böhme Series) (36 page)

I kneeled behind the tub to take a photo with the light streaming into the room. Hannah stepped to the side to avoid being in the shot, but I lowered my camera and took a photo without her knowing. The light streaming across her created an ache in my chest. Being in this place with her was life, and I loved her. I was crazy for loving someone in such a short time, but I hadn't experienced it ever in my life, so it
shone brighter to me. I loved her. I knew I did.

“Oh my god,” s
he said as she looked at something she held in her hand. Before she could show it to me, we heard someone come in the main room. 

"Oh shit
.” I mouthed to her as she pulled her lip in to fight laughter. This wasn't my first time to be caught, but it was different, this was my grandparents home and that person on the other side of the door, could have known them.  My declaration was not just from being caught, but from the fear of who this person might be.

“Who’s in here?”
an older man’s voice boomed from around the corner. I looked at Hannah with wide eyes before taking her hand and drawing her back into the main room. I kept her behind me, as she wrapped her hand over my shoulder to peek around.

“I’m sorry, we were just taking photos
,” I said and the old man stopped short and examined me as if he were trying to figure out if I were real or a ghost.

“Wh-who are you?”
he asked as he lowered his hands and gave me sad eyes.

I stepped toward him with my hand outstretched
. “My name is Wynn Hawthorne. I’m Lydia Hawthorne’s son.”

The man fell back against the doorframe and grabbed his chest
. “Lydia has a son?” he asked as he put his hand up to push his thin gray hair out of his eyes. “Well that makes sense. I mean she's fifty now isn’t she.”

“Well, yes if she were still alive. But she died seven years ago
,” I said without emotion and the man looked like I slapped him. “How did you know her?”

He regained his thoughts and stood up straighter as he met my still outstretched hand. “My name is Joseph Monroe, but I go by Joe. I was a friend of your grandparents. We were good friends I guess you cou
ld say, and we built this place.” He let go of my hand and gave me a strange look again. “You look just like your grandfather. He was my best friend.” He turned his head to get a different angle. “It’s uncanny.”

“I can’t believe my mother never told me about this place
,” I said to Joe.

“Well, they never came back here after
they left, so she may not have remembered it. She was six the last time she was here.” His eyes turned away when he spoke of my mother. “Then by the time your grandparents died I tried to get custody of her, but because I wasn’t family, the state wouldn’t let me. Last I heard they took her up north to live with a foster family. They never let me visit. That poor girl spent four long years in the state system experiencing god knows what.” His eyes trailed off again with distant regret.

I couldn’t think of what he was insinuating at the moment and I didn’t want to hear of my mother
. “Do you live in the main house?” I asked, trying to move the topic away from my mother.

“Yes, I do. I know it's not much to look at, but it suits me j
ust fine.” He looked not just toward the door, but to a different time, as he continued. “We were best friends growing up and your grandfather and I were in the military together,” he said, turning back to us. “We dreamed of making this place a commune for love after we got out,” he said with a smile. He pat the doorframe and continued. “Your grandmother designed this place and built it from things she found along the property. We wanted to be self sufficient and not depend on the man,” he said with his hands in the air making quotation marks.

I looked at Hannah and she held a huge smile on her face as she watched Joe speak. I didn’t hear a word he was saying as I watched her. She held my hand with one of hers and her other wrapped around my upper arm. I wanted to remember this for the rest of the day as I was
positive going to her parents later would erase all joy. It was shitty that I was having such a great day, and she wasn’t going to be as lucky.

Hannah squeezed my arm and gave it a light shake to bring my attention back to Joe
. “He asked a question,” she whispered. I turned my eyes back to the older man.

“So do you guys want something to eat? I was just get
ting ready to make something,” he said with a smile.

“It’s up to you Hannah. We still need to get to your parents' house
,” I said as I ran my hand down her back. It was becoming so easy to touch her and to be touched by her. I craved it.

She rolled her eyes
. “I want to prolong the impending doom as long as possible and enjoy lunch with Joe.”

“Okay then
.” I turned toward Joe and waved my hand for him to lead the way, then stopped. I looked at Hannah. “What were you talking about before?” I asked her.

“Oh” she said as she opened her hand that was holding my arm to show me a necklace.
It was made of silver and turquoise stones formed into the shape of a daisy with a smaller brown stone in the center.

Joe looked over at us and smiled
. “It was Evie’s. She made it herself. She used to make jewelry and sell it at the local market. There was an older man from the town over that used to make some too. They were in competition. It was funny watching how serious Evie became about it. Anderson was his last name.”

Hannah laughed
. “That was my great grandfather,” she said with a shocked expression as she looked back at me. “It has to be. He used to make jewelry. My dad spoke of him.” She looked at the necklace again and asked. “Why did she leave it here?” Then she waved her hand as she turned to the rest of the house. “Why did they leave any of this here?”

“That’s something I can’t discuss now. But Wynn, I want y
ou to have everything here.” Joe looked around the room again and brought his eyes back to me. “I want you to have it. I’m an old man and to know that I have someone to leave this to makes me rest easy.”

I laughed
. “You don’t even know me.” I couldn’t believe that he was so quick to give everything to a stranger.

“I can see them in you and I kno
w you are the rightful owner,” he said with a smile and left the house.

I turned toward Hannah and she shrugged a smile at me. She was happy for me and it made a weight lift from my shoulders. I took the necklace from her and placed it around her neck. She smil
ed at me. “I can’t wear this,” she whispered as she lowered her chin, eyeing the flower with awe.

“Yes you can
,” I said. “Besides, it suits you.”

Then I turned to follow Joe to the main house.
 

An hour later we were on our way to Hannah’s parents. Her tension increased as we pulled into the small town where she once lived. It was crazy that our paths were parallel to each other, but never intersecting. I didn’t grow up out here, but our histories interwove with each others. We figured out if my grandparents hadn’t left or died, we would have gone to high school together. Granted, I would have been in her sister’s class, but it was crazy to think of the possibility of it. But a sad part of me realized, had they not died, I wouldn’t be here.

She directed me out to the other side of town and to the farm that belonged to her family. It wasn’t a huge farm, but it had the smell of one. We traveled down a long driveway enclosed with weeping willows. They were beautiful and melded with the sad, intensity coming from Hannah.

At the end of the drive was a farm house with a screened porch. We parked the bike in front of the stairs and a woman stepped onto the porch and lifted her hand to shield her eyes from the sun before she opened the screen door. She didn’t say a word, just nodded at Hannah and I assumed this was her mother as they both shared the same hair color and intense stare. Though, Hannah’s still held a portion of pure abandonment in it, this woman’s held years of pain and regret.

She wore a torn cardigan with a pattern across that looked like it was from years ago. It was one that many outdoor clothing companies tried to mimic now. She pulled a tissue from her pocket and wiped her nose before tucking it into the sleeve of her sweater. She was a frail woman with laugh lines
showing she wasn’t always as sad as she looked now.

“Hannah
,” she said as she stepped toward her daughter to give an awkward hug.

“Mom,” Hannah said
in return and turned toward me, clinging onto my arm. “Meet Wynn. Wynn, meet my mother, Claire.”

I nodded as I put my hand forward to shake and the woman took it in hers, not shaking at all, but grasped my hand then let go. She gave me a small smile and turned to go back into the house. Hannah met my eyes and mouthed “sorry” to me before she followed her mother.

Hannah told me earlier that this was the first time she was to walk into this house in two years. Before she moved to the city, she lived with Maggie and her family. I didn’t ask for details as to what happened with her parents to cause her to leave, but after meeting her mother I got an idea. Her father wanted to throw her out, but even if he didn’t she would have left. This was a sad, sad, home and I wouldn’t want to stay either. Desperation hung on both our shoulders to leave a place like this. I tightened my arm around Hannah’s waist in hopes to remind her that she wasn’t alone anymore.

The porch contained newspaper and rusted out appliances that were waiting to be fixed or parts removed from them. The interior of the house was the same way. It was like an episode of a reality TV show, but not quite to that point. There was still room to move around the house, despite its clutter. My breathing beg
an to catch as the house closed in on me the farther we walked and Hannah must have noticed my unease. She grabbed onto my hand and wrapped her other arm around mine. It was a pose that was beginning to be like home to me. I tried to give her a smile, but it lacked sincerity. By her expression I knew she held onto me not just for my benefit but for hers as well.

“Your father is back here
,” Claire said as she stepped to the side to let us through a door. With the curtains closed, only a sliver of light entered the room. The light streamed through, highlighting the many dust particles floating around the room. A television hummed in the corner and the silhouette of the back of a man’s head sat in a chair watching it.

Hannah stood inside the door, not moving forward, she fought with her urge to turn around and leave. She took a deep breath as we stepped
into the room. As we reached the side of her father's chair, her head tilted to the side in confusion. When his face came fully into my view I found a very thin man hooked up to an oxygen machine and I looked at Hannah in question. The stories she told of him never included illness. He was larger in her stories as well, just as all parents are larger in memories. I imagine when faced after a long absence and you are grown, you see that they are human, with faults just like everyone else. Her father looked very human in this moment.

I brought my attention back to Hannah and her expression was blank, but her eyes held an emotion I didn't expect given her father's predicament. She was angry. She was very angry. “What the fuck is this?”
she yelled. Her mother gasped from the door at Hannah’s word choice.

Her father lifted his eyes to her without turning his head. “I see I taught you well.”

“Yes, I learned from the best,” she said, waving her hand toward him. “What’s with the oxygen?”

“I have cancer. I’ve been fighting it for a year now. I see your mother must have called you
.” He turned his eyes back to the television, and I saw a baseball game playing with the volume muted. “I guess since you and your sister left, I should start eating away at myself instead of letting my two slut children do it to me,” he said. I heaved a deep breath and controlled my own anger.

If he wasn't on his death bed, I would have done just as Maggie had asked me and punched him in the throat. I had been in several fights and none were as much of a righteous vengeance as this one would be. I wanted nothing more than to see this man bleed. He hadn’t seen his daughter, his wonderful, amazing, daughter in over a year and one of the first things he said to her was that? I could
 imagine the depth of the stories she had from her childhood.

“I’m Wynn
,” I said as I made sure the man met my eyes, by blocking the television from his view.

Her father lifted his eyes to look at me and I saw his face for the first time. His eyes sunk into his skull and though he had been speaking in such a manner, it was a front. He was hurting, tired, and his physical pain streamed from his heart and a deep se
ated root of remorse and regret. It was as if he held so much of it, his body began to destroy itself through the cancer.

He looked into my eyes and I held his stare
. “Are you my daughter’s new fling?" he snickered. “Don’t get too attached she tends to love ‘em and leave ‘em if you know what I mean.”

That was it. I stepped toward him in anger and showed him in my glare just what I thought of him before I spoke.
I leaned to his eye level, resting one hand on the back of his chair and pointed at him as I began. “I don't care if you are dying, but I have to say this to you. You are a piece of shit. You said she learned from the best. You’re right. From you she learned that she was worthless. What do you think your chauvinist attitude and degrading words taught her?” I looked at Hannah and she gave me a smile and looked at me with tear filled eyes she refused to blink free. Turning back to her father I continued. “Now again, I’m Wynn and I’m not a fling. I’m her friend. I’m someone that sees the strength inside her. We are helping each other realize that the shit our parents put us through doesn’t have to dictate what happens the rest of our lives. I suggest that with what little life you have left you make amends with your daughter. She’s amazing. You should be thankful that you had the opportunity to be near her during your time here.”