When She Woke (14 page)

The women were so riveted that when the Henleys made their usual majestic entrance, no one except Hannah noticed. Ponder Henley had the flummoxed look of a leading man who’d come onstage to discover the entire audience facing the other way. Mrs. Henley, however, was unmistakably irked, especially when she discerned the focus of the women’s attention. The look she flashed Hannah was venomous.

Hannah lifted her chin and calmly returned Mrs. Henley’s gaze. She would not be cowed by her again.

Later, after the evening service, Hannah sought out Kayla. They went to the sewing room, which Hannah knew would be empty this time of night. When the door closed behind them, Kayla gestured at Hannah’s doll and said, “Just a seamstress, huh? Like Jesus was just a carpenter.”

Hannah shrugged, a little abashed. Her defiance had drained away, leaving only fatigue and anxiety about her meeting with Mrs. Henley tomorrow.

“I thought the Mrs. was going to have a hissy fit,” Kayla went on. “And did you see Fridget’s face? Looked like she’d swallowed a gallon of sour milk.”

Hannah made an unpleasant face of her own, and Kayla said, “How’s it going with her, anyway?”

“Not well. We had an argument the other night, and I lost my temper. Afterward she told Mrs. Henley I’d touched her on purpose.”

“Did you?”

“All I did was grab hold of her hand. I didn’t know it was against the rules.”

“Let me guess, she didn’t tell you.”

“No. Why’s it forbidden, anyway?”

“They say it’s to keep us focused on the spiritual as opposed to the physical, but I think they do it to make us feel as much like pariahs as possible. That, and they’re probably afraid of winding up with a center full of baby dykes.”

Hannah stared at Kayla. Surely she didn’t mean …

“You know, budding lesbians.”

Flustered, Hannah said, “I’m sure no one here would do anything like that.”

“You say that now, but talk to me in five weeks. Sometimes I miss TJ so bad, even Fridget starts to look sexy.” Hannah’s unease must have shown, because Kayla laughed and said, “Relax, you’re not my type.”

Hannah changed the subject. “Mrs. Henley told me Bridget killed a child. Do you know how it happened?

“Drunk driving. She hit a pregnant woman who was crossing the street. The woman survived, but she was paralyzed from the waist down, and she lost the baby. It was all over the vids.”

“Mercy. How could you live with that every day?” The response was reflexive. As soon as Hannah had said it she thought,
But I live with it, somehow.

“Oh, Fridget manages just fine,” Kayla said. “We’re in enlightenment together, you know. She acts all humble and sorry, but that’s all it is, an act. The woman’s an iceberg.”

But Hannah knew that Kayla was wrong, that it was the iceberg that was the act, a barricade Bridget had built against the horrific truth of what she’d done. Because if she let herself fully acknowledge it, it would destroy her. This wasn’t intuition on Hannah’s part, but something surer than that, something she knew in her bones, just as she’d known that Mrs. Henley had taken pleasure in her distress. She’d always been a fairly good judge of character, but never to this extent. Where was this newfound insight of hers coming from? Hannah shook her head as a second, more unsettling question occurred to her: What did it mean that she, unlike Bridget, could live with what she’d done? Perhaps Bridget was actually a better person than she was.

“Anyway,” Kayla said, “you should be rid of her in a few days. Usually they turn you loose after a week, though not always. It’s up to the Mrs.”

“Why her and not Reverend Henley?”

A snort of laughter. “He may have the title of director, but make no mistake, she’s the ruler of this roost. Man hardly ever comes out of his study except to eat and preach. Just holes up in there all day long, working on his interminable sermons. I think Mrs. Henley likes having him out of the way.”

“I’m supposed to have tea with her tomorrow. I wanted to ask you about that.”

Kayla stiffened, and her eyes slid away from Hannah’s. “What about it?”

“What should I expect? What did she talk to you about?”

“We’re not supposed to discuss it.”

“I won’t say anything, I promise,” Hannah said.

“Look, I can’t. If she found out …”

“How would she find out? I’m certainly not going to tell her.”

“I can’t, Hannah,” Kayla said curtly. “I’m sorry. We’d better get back.”

They walked to the dormitory in awkward silence. When they passed the door to Mrs. Henley’s parlor, Hannah sensed rather than saw Kayla flinch.

H
ANNAH WAS RESTLESS AND
unable to concentrate during Bible study the next morning. After lunch, she went to the reading room and browsed through the material there to pass the time until three o’clock. In addition to titles like
Darwin the Deceiver
and
A Crown to Her Husband: 365 Devotions for the Virtuous Wife,
she found an old book of Aidan’s,
A Life of Purpose, A Life in Christ,
published when he was still a junior pastor at Ignited Word. The photo on the back was of him on the day he graduated from seminary, his face alight with happiness and hope. Hannah stared at it, seared by the image, thinking of the few times she’d seen him look like that. Most all of them, he’d been among the children at the shelter. Only once had he ever been so wholly joyous and abandoned with her.

He’d asked her to meet him on a Saturday at one of their usual hotels, but at the unprecedented hour of seven in the morning. It was late October. A rare cool front had come through the night before, and the temperature had dropped to the mid-seventies. Hannah rode her bike to the hotel. When she arrived, she found Aidan waiting for her in his car.

“Get in,” he said, surprising her; they’d never gone anywhere together, just the two of them.

“Where are we going?”

“It’s a secret.”

They headed downtown and then took I–20 east. Aidan held her hand and stroked the back of it with his thumb, and after half an hour, Hannah began to drowse off. Her last thought before she surrendered to sleep was how delicious it felt, and how paradoxically liberating, to give herself over so completely to his will.

She woke sometime later, when the road changed from asphalt to rutted dirt, and found herself in the middle of a forest of towering pines. The sharp, heady scent of them filled the car. She inhaled deeply, thinking that she’d never smelled air so wondrously fresh in all her life. “Where are we?”

“In the enchanted forest,” Aidan said. “You forgot to drop your bread crumbs, so you’re doomed to wander here until a prince comes along and breaks the spell with a kiss.”

Surprised by his mood—Aidan was many things, but whimsical had never been one of them—Hannah said, “What if I don’t want him to break it? Will he wander here with me forever?”

“Yes, but then he could never kiss you. You’d be stuck with a frustrated grouch for all eternity.”

She smiled. “And the poor prince would be stuck with a foul-tempered shrew.”

They pulled up in front of a rustic wooden cabin. Beyond it, through the trees, Hannah could see a tantalizing shimmer of blue. “And that,” Aidan said, “is the magic lake. They say if you dive into it at the exact instant the setting sun touches the horizon, you’ll be granted your heart’s desire.”

He’d brought everything they needed: a cooler of food, swim-suits, sunscreen, inner tubes. Hannah wasn’t a practiced swimmer— they’d closed all the pools when she was a child because of the drought, and she’d been to the beach only a handful of times since— but it came back to her quickly. They spent the day like teenagers, splashing around, lazing on the porch, feeding each other pickles and orange slices, laughing, kissing. Aidan stroked her hair and face, but his caresses never strayed lower, and when Hannah’s hand started to slip under the waistband of his bathing trunks, he took hold of it and shook his head. “Let’s not,” he said.

She didn’t question him. She didn’t ask what time they would have to leave, or whose cabin it was, or what excuse Aidan had given his wife to explain his absence. She lived with him in the fugitive joy of each moment. As the sun got low in the sky, he took hold of her hand and led her to the dock. The sun was a molten red orb, like a great burning heart. They stood and watched it sink until it was almost touching the horizon.

“Now!” Aidan cried, and started to run. Hannah ran beside him, bare feet pounding the boards of the dock, and hurtled her body off the end of it into the air. They hung suspended together above the water for an eyeblink before their hands separated and they plunged in. She came up before he did. Breathless, she treaded water, waiting for him to appear. Just when she was beginning to worry, he erupted from the lake right in front of her, making her shriek. He laughed, his own face incandescent with happiness, and she glimpsed what he must have looked like as a little boy. His beauty and innocence snatched her heart and squeezed it like an implacable fist.

Thirteen months ago,
she thought now.
A lifetime ago.
She shoved the book back into its place on the shelf.

A
T PRECISELY THREE
o’clock, she rapped on Mrs. Henley’s door.

“Come in,” Mrs. Henley called. Hannah opened the door and stepped into the parlor. It was an intimate, feminine space, decorated in cheerful shades of yellow and blue. Unlike every other room Hannah had seen at the center, the parlor had two eye-level windows, covered by embroidered white curtains sheer enough to let light in but too opaque to see through. She longed to reach out her hand and part them, to get a glimpse of the world beyond these walls.

“Do you like my new curtains?” Mrs. Henley asked. “I made them myself.” She was sitting in a comfortable armchair facing away from the windows. On a table in front of her was a tray with a teapot, two china cups and a plate of cookies.

“They’re lovely.”

“Thank you. That’s quite a compliment, coming from a seamstress of your talents.” Mrs. Henley’s forehead crinkled. “But where is your beautiful doll? You know you’re supposed to carry it with you at all times.”

A spike of alarm shot through Hannah; in her distracted state, she’d left the doll in the reading room. “I forgot it. I can go back and fetch it if you like.”

Mrs. Henley considered her for a moment, and then her face relaxed. “Well,” she said, “I suppose we can overlook it this once.”

Hannah’s breath left her with an audible
whoosh,
and Mrs. Henley smiled. “Goodness, where are my manners!” She gestured at the sofa opposite her. “Please, sit down. Would you like a cup of tea?”

“Yes, thank you.”

The wall opposite Hannah was covered with a large collection of mostly amateurish art. In addition to needlepointed, stitched, carved, painted and quilted versions of the ubiquitous P
ENITENCE, ATONEMENT, TRUTH AND HUMILITY,
there were several sketches of Jesus, watercolors of Bible scenes, wreaths made out of twigs and dried roses, carved wooden crosses and other homespun efforts.

“Aren’t they sweet?” Mrs. Henley said. “They’re all gifts the girls have given me and Reverend Henley over the years. It never fails to humble us, to know we’ve touched a walker’s life so deeply.”

She poured the tea. Hannah’s hand trembled as she took her cup, and it made a little rattling noise against the saucer. “There’s no need to be nervous, Hannah,” Mrs. Henley said. “This is just an informal chat, so we can get to know one another better. Would you like a cookie? I baked them this morning.”

Hannah took one. Her mouth was so dry she choked on it and started coughing. She washed it down with tea.

When she’d recovered, Mrs. Henley asked, “So, were you a professional seamstress?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“What kind of work did you do?”

“Bridal clothes, mostly. I sewed for a salon in Plano.”

“Ah, pity. I don’t suppose they’ll want you back now. After all, what bride would want her wedding dress handled by …” Mrs. Henley stopped, as if suddenly aware she’d been impolitic, then said, with artificial brightness, “Well, perhaps you can get work at a factory or some other place where they won’t care.”

“Yes, perhaps I can.” Hannah gave the other woman a bland, polite half-smile and stilled her mind, marshaling her defenses.

Mrs. Henley set her teacup down and leaned forward, crossing her legs at the ankles.
Here we go,
Hannah thought.

“When was it you had the abortion?”

“June.”

“And how far along were you?

“Three months.”

“So, that would mean you got pregnant sometime in March. Were you able to pinpoint the exact … occasion when it occurred?”

Hannah closed her eyes, remembering: the hotel in Grand Prairie. They hadn’t been together in six weeks, and they’d been frantic, desperate.

“Hannah? You haven’t answered my question.”

“Yes.”

“Did he know you were going to have an abortion?”

“No.”

“Did he even know you were pregnant?”

“No.”

“That’s quite a violation of his paternal rights. You’re lucky he didn’t file charges against you.”

Hannah nodded, not trusting herself to speak. She could feel her pulse quickening, becoming erratic.

“Of course,” Mrs. Henley said, “if he had, his identity would have been made public. And if you’d had the baby, you would have been compelled to name him.” She squinted a little, studying Hannah’s face like a particularly intriguing museum exhibit. “I understand you also refused to name the abortionist.”

“I never knew his name,” Hannah said.

With a little wave of her hand, Mrs. Henley said, “Well, I won’t ask you to reveal that, nor will I ask the name of the baby’s father. Their identities are none of my concern. But I
will
need to know the details of your transgression, as unpleasant as it might be for you to recount them and for me to hear them. Let’s begin with the moment you got undressed and lay down on the table—was it a table?”

Hannah stared at her, uncomprehending.

“Truth is the third thing the path demands of us,” Mrs. Henley said, in a voice like honey poured thinly over granite. “As the reverend and I told you when you came to us, truth is not optional here, and a lie of omission is still a lie. So I ask you again, was it a table?”