The Story Keeper (24 page)

I was momentarily dumbfounded. This guy didn’t know Hannah, and she didn’t know him. She was about to get in a truck with some middle-aged man she’d never met?

My stomach turned over and my mind raced to at least a dozen places I didn’t want it to go. What did he have in mind in return for this favor?

Even Hannah looked slightly unsure of the situation, but she was still following him like a lost lamb. He had the horse in one hand and her wrist in the other.

“Hannah, what’s going on?”

As soon as I said her name, the truck driver tried to give
her the reins back. In fact, he couldn’t get rid of the horse, or Hannah, fast enough. “Sounds like you know who she is.”

“It’s okay,” Hannah pleaded, focusing on me rather than taking the horse’s reins. “He’s gonna bring me back over by our pasture gate on Sarra Creek, and I can go in that way. He knows where it is.”

Heat and disbelief swirled through me in a dizzy dust devil of emotion. There was no way this great big truck would make it down Sarra Creek Road. Where would he even turn around down there?

I snaked out a hand, snatched the reins to the gray. “That’s okay. I’ll take care of it.”

The driver looked at my car, and me, and the horse and Hannah, probably wondering how I intended to single-handedly get everything off the side of the road at once. Backing away, he lifted his palms in a show of innocence that was just . . . odd. “She don’t need to be on that horse.”

“She’s not getting back on the horse.”

Hannah’s chin lifted. “I can ride him. He’s fine in the woods. I just got on the wrong trail down there, and it came out by the road, and he got spooked from the cars and
 
—”

“Hannah, be quiet.”

“But the guy said he can take me . . .” She cast a glance toward the truck, still searching for any way out that didn’t include her family knowing where she’d been.

“I
said
we’re fine.”

The driver snorted and shook his head, then hooked his thumbs somewhere under his beer belly. “Y’all have at it.” He walked back to his truck. A moment later, the Jake brake released and the rig coughed and wheezed its way onto the road.

“
Now
what’re we s’posed to do?” Hannah was snippy in a desperate sort of way.

I leaned over, met her face-to-irritated-face. “I’ll
tell
you what we’re going to do. You’re going to take these reins, and then you’re going to
lead
this horse the three-quarters of a mile, or however much farther it is, to the cabin. And I’m going to follow along with the car. Then we’re putting this horse in the backyard fence behind the cabin, and I’m driving you home.”
And man-oh-man, am I going to have some words for you on the way there.

Chapter 21

T
he big house was empty when we arrived, not a sign of Evan or Hannah’s great-grandmother or anyone else. Just a huge, shadowy shell that sat dusty and uncomfortably quiet in the afternoon light. It seemed like such a sad place to drop a little girl. I thought of my sisters’ kids and the tiny houses they lived in. Was this home so much better? More rooms, fewer people. More toys, but no one to play with. A stack of what looked like leftover birthday presents sat piled in the corner of the garage. The gifts were still in boxes with bits of tape and paper clinging to them. Hannah had everything, and yet
things
didn’t solve the problem.

I wondered how often Hannah left the property and took trail rides along the roads. She’d mentioned Honey Creek before, and that she had the key code to the ranch gates, but I hadn’t really thought about what that could mean. Did she usually talk to people she ran across as she was out riding? What if,
sooner or later, she met the wrong person when she was alone in a deserted area?

I wanted to tell someone what I’d seen, but there was no one here.

“Can you and Friday stay awhile? We could watch a movie or somethin’.” Her eyes rolled my way, far too trusting, far too invested, considering that she barely knew me. This child was so overwhelmingly lonesome, so fundamentally lost. She missed her mother. I understood that in the most visceral way. When you’re suddenly forced to navigate the world without the person who’s supposed to teach you how to take the spirit of a little girl and fill the body of a woman, it’s so incredibly hard to find your feet.

She needed someone, and I realized more than ever that a long-distance friend wasn’t going to fill the bill. She needed someone to be here and stand in that empty place. Her great-grandmother and Helen were wonderful, but they didn’t have the time and energy a girl like Hannah required.

Hugging one arm around herself, she rubbed away a rash of goose bumps. “I hate being in this place by myself.”

“Hannah, I probably shouldn’t
 
—”

“Oh, hey, I love your necklace. That’s so cool. Is that beach glass?” She changed the subject, examining the hand-strung shell–and–sea glass creation I’d purchased earlier.

“Yes, it is. A girl named Robin at the Warrior Week camp made it. She’s not much older than you, actually.”

“That’s cool. So . . . we’ve got
The Matrix 3
.” Hannah slyly angled toward the
Can you stay?
question again, taking a hopeful sidestep toward the cavernous living room where a giant-screen TV hung above the fireplace.

“I can stay awhile, I guess.” With any luck, the housekeeper or Helen or Violet or Jake or one of the hired hands would show
up before Evan did. I could relate the story of Hannah’s incident today and leave it in their hands.

“Or
Oblivion
. My dad just brought that one home,” she chattered on, her tone artificially bright now.

“Have you got anything happy? Like . . . Disney or something? Friday doesn’t like violent movies. They give him nightmares.”

A playful smirk answered. “We’ve got
The Little Mermaid
somewhere. Does Friday like beach movies?”

“Beach movies are Friday’s favorite.” I so needed to be working, not watching Disney movies, but what was I supposed to do? I couldn’t just leave her here.

Hannah began searching the cabinet beside the towering rock mantel. “I guess it’s downstairs in the theater room. Wanna go down there? I could turn on the popcorn maker and make us some popcorn.”

“Friday loves theater rooms and popcorn.”

Friday recognized one of his favorite words,
popcorn
, and growl-whined in curmudgeonly agreement.

Hannah giggled, and I realized something. It was the first time I’d seen a smile that traveled all the way to her eyes and wasn’t weighed down with twenty pounds of worry. The kind of smile an eleven-year-old kid should have. “’Kay.”

I followed her through Evan Hall’s massive house, past bedrooms that looked as though they’d never been used and artwork that I guessed was Helen’s. At the end of the corridor, we traveled down a staircase lined with press photos, framed newspaper articles, movie posters, and writing awards.

A fully equipped theater room waited below, a semicircle of leather recliner couches giving the area a designer look. On one end, an antique concession counter featured a full-size popcorn
popper, a soda machine, minibar, refrigerator, and all the comforts of home. Along the far wall, a row of glass doors led to a stone patio and a walk-out deck with an outdoor fireplace and an incredible view of the valley below. The area was made for entertaining. Oddly, there were no tables or chairs on the patio
 
—only twigs, pine straw, and fresh fall leaves. The place looked deserted.

Hannah moved to the popcorn popper and grabbed supplies from the cabinet.

“Are you sure it’s okay for you to be turning that thing on by yourself?” The machine was taller than she was.

She measured the oil and corn and stood on her toes to dump them in. “No problem. I do it all the time. The soda machine has tokens up top. Just get what you want outta there, ’kay?”

“Okay.” I set Friday down and he wandered to the popcorn area, sniffing for freebies.

“You can have some in a minute,” Hannah giggled.

“He doesn’t need more than a bite or two. He’s trying to watch his girlish figure.”

“Ummm . . . I’m thinkin’ it’s too late already.” She laughed harder, and it was so good to see her happy that for a minute I was tempted to forget the whole roadside incident. I couldn’t, of course. Her family needed to know, and aside from that, there was a horse in my backyard at the cabin.

Right now, that seemed as far from Hannah’s mind as it could possibly be. Maybe she was trying to distract me, or perhaps she was in denial. I couldn’t tell, but suddenly we were like girlfriends at a sleepover.

“Hey, you wanna watch one of the Time Shifters movies? Uncle Evan
hates
those things, but we’ve got the DVDs upstairs. I only turn them on if he’s not here.”

Temptation nibbled, but I could just imagine the stink if
Evan Hall came home and caught me
 
—the woman he already didn’t like
 
—in his house watching the Time Shifters videos, which he hated. I’d end up on the other end of a lawsuit for sure . . . or in jail.

Hannah clued in to my hesitation. “It’s okay. The alarm dinger goes off if anyone comes in, and I can switch it over to
Little Mermaid
, like, super quick. This thing loads four DVDs at once. You can watch movies till your eyes pop out.”

“Well, that sounds appealing.”

“
Fff
f
!
You’re funny.” Her brows skewed, one up and one down, like she still couldn’t quite decide what to think of me. “I like it in here. Nobody
ever
comes downstairs. It’s
all
mine. I’ll go get the movies.” She bolted for the door and disappeared up the stairs.

“Nice digs,” I muttered, but the truth was that there was something vaguely sad about this room. It had the feeling of a place that was built with great excitement and hope, a place expecting a crowd that never showed.

I wondered about Evan’s actress ex-wife. Was this area her domain? Was that why Evan never used it? For some crazy reason, I wanted to understand the man. Even though I knew I should leave it alone, the questions about him wouldn’t stop nagging me. Who was he really?

The cell rang in my purse as the popcorn popper poofed fluffy white kernels into the glass case. I grabbed the phone and answered, still focused on the view.

Coral Rebecca was on the other end. Before I’d even tuned in, she’d rushed out several sentences of an invitation to a family birthday party for her girls and Marah Diane’s twins. Tomorrow. On the grounds behind the church. “Daddy says it’ll be okay if you come, but . . . not wearin’ pants, okay?”

I let myself out onto the patio and shut the door behind me, allowing a cold blast of air to chill the heat in my cheeks.
Daddy says it’ll be okay . . .
The man I hadn’t seen in twelve years, since my little brother’s funeral . . . that was all he could say? All he cared about was how I dressed? Whether or not I met his parameters and those of the Brethren Saints?

“I don’t know if I can be there.” I closed my eyes to the view of miles and miles of the Blue Ridge, folded in ribbons of autumn yellows and ambers, laced with the green of pines. My heart burned and so did my eyes.

“Don’t be that way, Jennia Beth,” my sister pleaded. “You hadn’t even seen Evie Christine and her kids or Lily Clarette yet. We all want you to be there with us.”

I lumbered through a lame excuse about this being a working trip for me but finally ended with “I’ll try.”

“Please come,” Coral Rebecca added. “My girls been askin’ about you ever since you were here the other day . . . and . . . well . . . I just . . . I been prayin’ for a long time that you’d come back and we’d all be fam’ly again.”

My guts twisted like someone was wringing them dry. “I’ll have to see what tomorrow brings, okay?” I was the answer to my sister’s prayers? How could that be?

“I love you, Jennia Beth. I know you don’t believe that.”

“I do believe it.” But it was so much more convenient for me not to acknowledge the ties
 
—to tear loose the bonds of a shared childhood and move on. Yet the strings were still there, sewn into my skin. They pulled and tugged in a way I couldn’t describe. “I love you too.”

I walked back into the theater room feeling numb, sat down in a recliner as the movie queued up, and tried to zone out as Evan Hall’s fantasy world lit up the big screen. Time Shifters,
if nothing else, was a perfect escape, just as it had been when I’d crouched behind my grandmother’s springhouse to read the books.

Watching the story now, I was conscious of deeper themes I couldn’t have put into words as a teenager
 
—themes that had resonated with me even back then. The Time Shifters, for all their superpowers, were prisoners in a way, just as I was. The small group of elite soldiers who’d arrived here were trapped within Earth’s limited centuries, never able to find peace, ever under threat of the Dark Ones. They had an inconvenient habit of falling in love with mere humans and risking interrupting the proper flow of human events. It was forbidden to transport human love interests through time. Humans were to be stripped of their memories and left behind when a Time Shifter was discovered by the Dark Ones and forced to flee through a portal. Yet Nathaniel found himself inexorably compelled by his love for Anna. He couldn’t strip her of her memories, yet he couldn’t share his immortality with her. All he could do was escape through time with her, breaking the First Law, running from both the Dark Ones and the Guardians in his own troop, joining those who had become mutineers for the sake of love.

Now I found myself, like the people in the Warrior Week camp, vaguely wishing I could step through a rabbit hole and leave everything behind. I wanted to live in a magical world where love mattered above all else. Was such a thing even possible in the real world? My experience with love had always been that it grew like kudzu vine, slowly overtaking the host and choking the life out of it.

It was such a cynical perspective. That wasn’t who I wanted to be. I wanted to be someone who could forgive and trust and reach out, despite the past.

Could accepting Coral Rebecca’s invitation be a first step? Did I have it in me to do that? The gathering was being held on the church grounds, of all places. Brethren Saints and family members I hadn’t seen in years would be there. The men would most likely ignore me. The women would exchange reproachful looks while minding the table and chatting back and forth in their artificially singsong voices, keeping pleasant, as always, each of them aware that failure to do so would bring swift and certain rebuke, first from the family, and potentially from the elders’ council as well.

Could I watch all of that again? Could I stand it? The three hours of Joey’s funeral had been almost more than I could endure without exploding and sending shrapnel in all directions.

The sensor over the movie room door chimed and a notification popped up on the screen:
Garage Entry
.

Hannah switched the movie, then jumped out of her seat and rushed across the room to put the Time Shifters DVD back in its case. She tucked it behind a stack of clutter and plopped down in her seat again, seeming unconcerned. “I can stick it back in the office when he’s outside sometime.”

Reality hit with the quick snap of a rubber band striking skin. “You
stole
that from your uncle’s office?”

“It’s okay.” She wagged her chin, suddenly more teenager than little girl. “No big deal.”

“If you’re not supposed to do that, it is. You said your uncle didn’t
like
the movies. You didn’t say you weren’t allowed to mess with the DVDs.”

Her dark hair fanned over the cushion as she rolled onto her back, lying sideways in the recliner to look at me. “There aren’t really any rules. My daddy doesn’t care.”

“It’s your uncle Evan’s house.” I stood up, paced to the door,
then back, not sure what to do. Was it better to be caught casually watching movies with Hannah or on my way toward the nearest exit?

Hannah drummed her dangling feet against the recliner arm. “Ummm . . . you know what happened today? Uncle Evan doesn’t . . . ummm . . . he doesn’t need anything else to worry about, so we can just not tell him, and I’ll tell my dad when he gets back, and he can go get the horse.” I could almost see her hardening beneath a layer of attitude. This wasn’t the vulnerable, frightened girl who’d asked me not to leave her alone in the house a couple hours ago.

“That’s your
uncle
coming in?” I checked the stairway. Empty so far. How did she know who was here?

“Yeah, my dad never parks in the garage. That’s Uncle Evan and Granny Vi. They’re back from her treatment, I bet.”

Okay, be calm. Calm. Calm. You do have a reason for being here and something you need to tell the man.
“Hannah, I’m not lying to your uncle.”