penance. a love story (The Böhme Series) (37 page)

He stared at me with a dumbfounded expression. The sorrow in his eyes remained until he gave his attention to his daughter. I heard her mother step all the way into the room in anxious anticipation of what was going to happen next. I continued to hold his eyes and then something happened that caused Hannah and her mother to gasp—his eyes filled with tears.

His shoulders shook as he curled into himself and rested his head in his hands. His elbows dropped to his knees and his back rose and fell as his sobs grew. He started to groan and wail, and created sounds I never heard a human make. The remorse reached a boiling point, and he was drowning in it. His wails sounded as if his insides crumbled in on themselves. He ached for the years he lost.

Claire stepped forward and ran her hand across her husband’s back, kneeling next to him. He leaned into her shoulder and clung to her like a child who scraped their knee and needed the comfort of their mom. I tightened my grip on Hannah’s hand and pulled her into my shoulder. She was in shock. I think seeing her father weep like that was more shocking to her than the news of his cancer. I put my hand under her chin to make her meet my eyes. I shifted my hands to either side of her face and then ran them across her neck and lifted her chin with my thumbs. I touched our foreheads together before I pulled her into a tight hug. She clung to my back and in silence her own tears fell. She didn’t try to approach her father for a hug or to comfort him and nor did he her.

Her father was the first to leave the room several minutes later. He stood and her mother helped him pull his oxygen tank and walk toward what must have been their bedroom across the hallway. Hannah and I remained where we were and she pulled away from me and looked into my eyes. I wiped away her tears with the sleeve of my hoodie and kissed her nose after I ran my finger down the crook of it.

She gave me a weak smile
. “I’ve never seen him shed a tear in my life, not even when Lily died. That was so strange,” she whispered as she looked toward the door he left through and I could tell she was far away in her thoughts—looking for a memory to compare to this one.

“Unfortunately it sometimes takes being faced with your own death to change things. At least your father has been given the opportunity to change things with you
,” I said as I held her to me.

She pulled away and gave me a pointed glance
. “Nothing has changed. He cried that was all—he didn’t say anything to me. He just fucking cried.”

I nodded at her with tight lips. She was right with that statement, but she was also wrong. I didn’t want her to continue living with regret and if she didn’t resolve things with her father before he passed, she would continue decaying inside as if she too had cancer.

Her mother hesitated as she came back into the room and looked at Hannah. She was ringing her hands before she put them into the pockets of her sweater. Her mother wore her hair in a bun at the back of her neck and it reminded me of Hannah.

Claire looked older than she was. I imagine she was in her early forties, but she looked as if she could be in her mid
dle to late fifties. Her tired eyes held dark circles under them and I didn't know if it came from years of depression or her husband's illness, but life wore on her. She looked at Hannah and me for several seconds before she stepped to pull her daughter in for a hug.

Hannah wouldn’t let go of my hand and it was awkward as she held her mother with one arm and kept her other hand wrapped in mine. Her mother ran her hand through Hannah’s hair and squeezed the back of her neck, then kissed her
forehead. “My beautiful girl,” she said as she held Hannah’s face in her hands. “I’m so sorry for the horrible choices I have made with you. I turned my head for far too long and now the last two years have changed each of us.”

Without another word she let go of Hannah and left the room. Her family owned few words. “I need to get outdoors.
Now
,” Hannah said as she pulled me to the back of the house and stepped onto another porch. It lacked the screen the front one did, it also lacked the trash.

We stopped before leaving the porch and took in the landscape behind the house. There was a huge field of flowers surrounded by peach and cherry trees. “They’re for the bees. Isn’t it beautiful?”
she asked, keeping her eyes on the horizon in front of her.

“Yes it is
,” I said as I stepped down the stairs and looked up at her, pulling her with me. I walked her toward the field of flowers and it came up to my waist and just above hers. I kept walking until we were well into the field and could see only the top of the house from the dip in the hill we descended. I sat and she gave a slight laugh as I pulled her to the ground with me.

I laid her on her side and touched her cheek. I pushed her hair behind her ear and she watched me with expectant eyes. “Are you going to kiss me now, Wynn Hawthorne?”
she asked in a hushed tone.

“You tell me, Hannah Anderson.”

“Yes, you are going to kiss me now. We are going to have our first kiss, right here in this field that I ran through as a child. I loved this field and it brought me joy, so it is the perfect place for it and I’m ready. I still feel guilt for Lily’s death, but I don’t feel guilty being with you. You are important to me. I want to be with you.” She smiled as another stray tear fell from her eye.

She pulled her bottom lip in expectation and I wiped the tear away. “I meant what I
said to your father.” I turned her onto her back and hovered above her. “You are amazing. You have a strength and heart that was deep enough to awaken me from my own sorrow. Do you know that?” She nodded. “I mean it, Hannah. It's not because I want anything from you physically. This kiss that I want from you is because I feel you. I understand you and you understand me. We can’t fix each other, but we can care for each other enough to help each other fix ourselves.” I looked into her eyes and traced my finger down her nose and cheek. “I see
you
.”

I leaned toward her and brushed her lips with mine. I settled my knee between hers as I lowered myself on top of her and I was at peace for the first time in my life. The years of abuse by my mother left me with anxiety and
a fear of others. A constant gnawing inside me ate away at every calm part of me. I missed this peace I never knew was absent.

I experienced a constant struggle for understanding myself and who I was as a man in a world filled with fears. She took from me my purity and she did it in a way that left me with thoughts of insignificance. But when I looked into Hannah’s eyes as she pulled away from our kiss she said something that shattered my walls
. “I see
you
, too.”

That was my breaking point. Everything before this point was vague memories. The only importance and reality in this world was the kiss with her. She opened her legs, and I sunk deeper into the kiss and rested myself on my forearm as I pulled her knee up farther to wrap her around me. I brought my hands to her face, and as her lips were on mine, I guided them open. I lacked hesitancy as I let my tongue explore her mouth and taste her for the first time. My eyes closed, but in that moment I still saw her. I saw her in every one of her touches and movements. I saw her spirit as we found each other. To an outsider it may have looked like a simple kiss shared between a new love, but it was much more than that. We were two whole people broken inside, but together we were putting the pieces of ourselves back in place, one moment at a time.

I don’t know how long we were in that field, but after a time, I rolled to my back and pulled her in close. We looked up at the sky and the world was vacant except for us as we lay in the tall flowers. A cocoon of them surrounded us. “This doesn’t bother you?” she asked.

“What do you mean?” I said as I pulled her into my shoulder.

“I mean, I thought closed in spaces bothered you,” she said as she put her hand palm down under mine and pulled my fingers over hers.

“We’re outside, so it doesn’t bother me. Plus we’re surrounded by flowers, not people. I have a hard time with crowds
,” I said as I traced my finger up her arm.

“I understand that. I had a panic attack in line at an amusement park one time. I hate big crowds and making small talk
,” she said, and I kissed her temple and smiled at her confession.

“Me neither. I prefer sitting in silence with someone than take part in small talk or worse
discuss sports
,” I said with an annoyed expression.

“Really? I thought you were a sports fan, Wynn Hawthorne
.” She laughed as she backhanded my stomach.

“Sure
,” I said with sarcasm.

She sighed as she looked up at the sky
. “What do we do now?” she asked, pulling her lip into her mouth. “I can’t leave knowing he’s going to die and I can’t stay for my own sanity.”

“We could stay at my grandparents’ old place
,” I said without hesitation. She sat up in a rush and tilted her head at me in question. “Joe asked me about it, when you were off playing with his dogs. At the time I dismissed it, but now it makes sense.” I smiled and pushed her hair behind her ear.

“Are you serious? We only just met a month ago
.” She waved her hand back and forth between us. “And this has only been for a couple days. We just had our first real kiss. Isn’t it too soon?”

“Do you really believe any of that? Where’s the Hannah that throws caution to the wind?” I said with a wink. “You can have your own room if you want
.” I raised an eyebrow at her and smiled as she rolled her eyes. “Think about it, it's perfect, Hannah. You could be near your parents and I would be near you,” I said as I pulled her back to me. “Sometimes you just know things Hannah. I never believed that, but I believe I know something with you, without any explanation of it.”

“What about your job, your loft, school, my job, my apartment, our friends?”
she asked in a whisper. She believed it's what we should do, but she couldn’t accept it yet.

“Those are just things and our friends will understand. Your father is
dying
, and I just found a history I never knew I had.” I smiled at her as she gave me sad eyes. “It makes perfect sense,” I said.

“Yes, it does
,” she said as she leaned to kiss me. She smiled with her lips still pressed to mine. “But I don’t want my own room.” 

After we made our calls to work, our friends, and Joe we decided it was time to leave the field. As much as we didn’t want to stand from this spot, we needed to talk to her parents. With her head resting on my shoulder, I picked her hand up and wove our fingers together. We lay there for several minutes in silence, enjoying each other’s presence.

“I suppose we should get up from here, huh?”
she asked with a sigh. She then made a groan in her disappointment at my letting go of her hand and standing. I looked at her disheveled, windblown hair and her now grass stained white tank top.

“You look perfect right now
,” I said with a smile. “And I hate having to leave here too, but we need to get going so we can spend more time here tomorrow.” She got a big grin on her face. “And by more time here, I meant with your parents, not in this particular field,” I said as I looked around at how huge the field was.

She put her hand up for me to take and I pulled hard enough that she bounced up onto her feet. She wrapped her arms around my waist and inhaled a deep breath against my chest. "If I look perfect, you smell perfect
,” she said as she laughed and scrunched her nose at my armpit. "You smell like the sun wrapped in the grass."

I put my arm around her shoulder and kissed her forehead as we started to walk back toward the house. Hannah looked in the other direction, toward the tree line. She broke away from me and started to walk toward the cherry trees and I followed in silence. She stopped where the flowers ended and didn’t take the last step into the grass that separated the space between the flowers and the trees. She fell to her knees just at that edge and stared at one tree in particular with a rope hanging from it.

“We used to use that to climb up the tree,” she said as she took a deep breath. “It was
our
tree. That’s where I found her.” She pointed toward the ground to the side of the tree. “She was lying there looking up at the sky as if she were looking for falling stars like we used to when we were kids. This was our place. It was peaceful and loving and free. We came out here to get away from him or to just imagine the possibilities of what life had for us when we grew older,” she said as she watched that spot, she was no longer here, but back when the two of them were little girls running free. “She always wanted to have a family and from a young age she wanted to share her life with Two. I ruined it for her.” She stared at the spot of ground she kept referring to with a soft expression. It was as if she stared long enough, she could will her sister back with the force of her own determination.

I sat behind her and put my legs on either side as I pulled her back to rest against my chest. I wrapped her in my arms as we both stared at their tree. “Do you really believe she took her life because of what you did?” I asked.

“I was the trigger, I know that much,” she said with a nod.

“How do you know that? He could have cheated with other girls too.” I took a deep breath as I rested my chin on her head.