When She Woke (36 page)

The stranger cocked his head and surveyed her. “He didn’t lay hands on you or hurt you in any way?” Hannah heard it then, a molten, barely checked rage that she knew was not just directed at Farooq, but at all those who victimized Chromes, taking advantage of their vulnerability, secure in the knowledge that they could do so with relative impunity. She felt that same rage rising in herself, imagined the stranger’s yellow fists crashing into the clerk’s face again and again, turning it to pulp. She shook her head, dispelling the grisly image. “No, really, I’m fine.”

“Well then,” he said, raising his voice so Farooq could hear, “I guess it’s his lucky day.” He looked over her shoulder, leveling a flat, deadly gaze at the clerk. Hannah turned and saw him take a step backward. The stranger revved his engine, and Farooq jumped. He seemed to go berserk then, brandishing his fists at them and bouncing frenziedly from foot to foot.

“Fucking Chromes, you are dogshit! You soil the ground you stand on. Get off my property, or I will call the police!”

With a last, grateful look at her rescuer, Hannah hurried to her vehicle, ignoring the fulminating clerk. The stranger waited while she unhooked the cable with clumsy hands. She got in the van and started it, and he pulled up alongside her. She rolled the window down. “You take care, now,” he said.

She searched his yellow face, wondering what crime he’d committed. Whatever it was, she thought, he’d just earned some absolution for it. “You too,” she said, and then surprised herself by adding, “God bless you.”

“Y
OU’RE DRIVING ERRATICALLY,”
the van admonished, adjusting Hannah’s steering for the third time in twenty minutes. It was still an hour from dawn, but she was struggling to stay awake. Mindful that she couldn’t afford to draw attention to herself, she got off the highway in Greensboro and parked in the lot of a twenty-four-hour dollar store. She slept badly, racked with cold and troubled by nightmares, jerking into wakefulness at every slight noise.

That night, as she was squatting behind a bush somewhere in Virginia, she thought how tired she was of feeling weary and afraid; of never being able to let her guard down. She’d avoided public stops since the incident with Farooq, doing her business in the woods or in the weeds behind deserted barns, surrounded by the chirping of insects, the peeping of frogs and the rustling of branches and dead leaves. She was unused to such sounds, but they didn’t frighten her. In fact, they had a calming effect.

She was stirred by the beauty of the increasingly rolling expanses of country—so different from the flat, endless, cookie-cutter suburbs of North Texas—between the cities she traveled through; by the swathes of untamed forest in North Carolina; by the looming grandeur of the Appalachians to the west, dimly and intermittently glimpsed by the light of road signs and the glow of cities. She yearned to see this land by day but knew she never would, now. She imagined the many wild places in Canada, vowing to visit them and perhaps even to settle in one of them. She was sick of people and the stink and noise they made, clustered in large numbers; sick of cement under her feet and the press of buildings with their rows upon rows of windows staring out like blank, lidless eyes; of straight lines and right angles; of starless, yellow-gray nights and sunsets made spectacular by pollution.

When the clock on the dash went from 11:59 to 12:00, she felt a flutter of excitement mingled with nervousness. It was December 31, New Year’s Eve. The day she would see Aidan.

Last year, she’d celebrated at home with her family and some friends from church. She’d smiled and refilled people’s glasses with sparkling cider, and when midnight arrived, she’d lifted her own glass and kissed her parents, Becca and the others, wishing them a joyous New Year. And all the while she’d been picturing Aidan with Alyssa at the annual black-tie fundraiser for Save the Children, knowing that their images would be plastered all over the net the next day, Aidan looking handsome in his tuxedo, Alyssa smiling up at him; knowing that she would be incapable of not searching for them, of not scrutinizing his features for signs that he was truly enjoying himself with his wife.

Today, she had no reason to be jealous. Today, she would see him. And he would see … what? The woman he loved, or a monstrosity? What if he no longer desired her? What if her red skin was a stop sign he simply couldn’t go past? How could she bear to look at him and not touch him, kiss him, hold him one last time? The knowledge had crouched in a dark closet of her mind since the moment she’d decided to come to him, and it burst out now, awful and unassailable, into the light.

After tomorrow, she would never see Aidan again.

He couldn’t join her in Canada; if he did, the Novembrists would certainly find out and kill them both. Simone might delegate the job to someone else, but she’d see to it that they were silenced. She’d have no other choice, especially given Aidan’s celebrity. Even if he and Hannah left North America, there was nowhere in the world they could go where his face wouldn’t be recognized. And she wouldn’t subject him to this danger and perpetual, gnawing dread.

But. For a day and a night, he would be hers, and she wanted it to be perfect, a shining jewel she could carry with her into the blank expanse that was her future.

It wouldn’t be enough. It would have to be enough.

• • •

T
HE COUNTRYSIDE SURRENDERED
to suburban sprawl as she neared the capital. She exited I-66 and headed south, into the residential purlieus of Washington’s elite. The farther she got from the highway, the more immaculate the neighborhoods and the larger and more stately the homes.

At last, she reached Maxon. It was impossibly quaint, more of a village than a town, with a single stoplight. As she waited for it to turn green, a light snow began to fall, lending the scene an even more surreal perfection. Hannah could picture Alyssa here, shopping with a wicker basket on her arm at The Gourmet Pantry, having her hair done at the Ritz Salon, sipping on a latte with a friend at the Muddy Cup. She could see Aidan, browsing for a gift for Alyssa at Swope’s Fine Jewelry—nothing too ostentatious, a string of pearls, perhaps, or some tasteful diamond studs—and then presenting them to her over crème brûlée at Chez Claude. A dream life, one Hannah tried and failed to imagine herself entering into.

Her hands tightened on the steering wheel as she turned onto Chestnut Street. It was as picturesque as everything else, broad and tree-lined, with large wooded lots and gated manors set well back from the road. Number 1105, from what little Hannah could make out, was a white Colonial farmhouse with a big porch and dark shutters. A pine wreath with a cheery red bow hung from the wrought-iron gate. Alyssa would have hung it herself, Hannah thought. She would have stood back about where Hannah was now to be sure it was perfectly centered, adjusted it a little, smiled with quiet pride at her handiwork. Alyssa would have chosen this house and decorated it, furnishing it to Aidan’s taste and her own, adding the feminine touches that made a house a home.

What in the world am I doing here?
Hannah had the sudden urge to turn the van around, head back to the highway and keep driving to the Canadian border. But if she did that, she would break his heart. She was going to break it anyway, she knew, but she didn’t want it to be out of cowardice.

And so she proceeded down the street, crossing a bridge over a small brook, passing more homes, a darkened church, a public park. It was almost midnight, and the train station was deserted except for a handful of unoccupied, snow-dusted vehicles, most of them foreign, all of them expensive. Feeling stiff and creaky after seven hours behind the wheel, she put on her coat and gingerly slid the gun into the right pocket, then grabbed her backpack and opened the door, bracing herself for the cold. It had been in the mid-fifties when she left Mississippi and in the low forties in Greensboro, but a cold front had swept in, and the numbers on the van’s temperature gauge had dropped as she’d gone north. Here, it was seventeen, and within seconds of leaving the van she discovered that there
was
no bracing for this kind of cold. Hastily, with a silent thank-you to Susan and Anthony, she put on the gloves they’d given her and drew her hood up over her head, then set off down the road at the fastest walk she could manage on the slippery pavement. The snow grew heavier, swirling into her face and numbing her cheeks, obscuring her surroundings. Still, she was grateful for it; there was almost no one out braving the storm, and the drivers of the few cars that passed her either couldn’t see her or were too intent on getting home safely themselves to be curious about a lone pedestrian.

Halfway to Aidan’s house, she came to the church she’d noticed before. Now, she was surprised to see, the stained-glass windows were glowing in jewel-toned splendor, and the cast-iron lamps lining the front walkway were lit, illuminating a sign that read: C
HURCH OF THE
N
ATIVITY
, F
OUNDED
1737. Hanging from it, swinging to and fro on its hinges in the wind, was the familiar T
HE
E
PISCOPAL
C
HURCH
W
ELCOMES
Y
OU
sign. She paused at the foot of the walkway, admiring the church’s dramatically peaked roof, its massive bell tower topped by a white clapboard steeple. Hannah had always liked the aesthetics of Episcopal churches, their spareness and grace. Once, driving past the Church of the Incarnation in Dallas with her mother, Hannah had remarked on its beauty.

“Beautiful is as beautiful does,” Samantha Payne had retorted, referring of course to the Episcopal Church’s notorious liberalism: its early opposition to melachroming and the SOL laws, its sanctioning of divorce and women priests, its tolerance of premarital sex, homosexuality and alcohol consumption, and most damning of all, the willingness of some parishes to be presided over by gay priests and bishops.

Hannah arched her neck and followed the line of the bell tower up to the snow-shrouded spire, a finger pointing to God in longing. She wondered whether this church would indeed welcome her, an adulteress who’d had an abortion, lied to the police, run from justice and had a homosexual affair.

“May I help you?” a man’s voice said.

Hannah jumped and dropped her gaze to a strip of golden light on the side of the church. A face stuck out from an open doorway. Hannah knew she should turn away and keep walking, but she was paralyzed, so rattled that all she could do was stare, like a large, red rabbit caught in a pair of headlights.

“You must be freezing,” the man said. “Why don’t you come in and warm yourself for a few minutes?” His voice was clipped and a little brusque, but also kind. It reminded her of something; she couldn’t think what, but the association was a positive one, engendering trust.

Trust no one but yourself.
“Thank you, but I’m fine,” she replied, snapping out of her stupor. She gave a little wave of thanks, ducked her head and turned away, knowing full well that even with the snow, he had to have seen her upturned red face by the light of the lamps.
Please, I’m harmless, I’ll go away. Please don’t call the police.

“There’s no one here but me,” he called after her. “Are you sure you won’t come inside?”

Hannah stopped and looked back at him, and then up at the church’s stained-glass windows, wanting more than anything to step over the threshold into that jeweled luminescence, that possibility of grace. It came to her then, where she’d heard his accent before, that same nasal, aristocratic enunciation, and although she wasn’t conscious of having made a decision, she suddenly felt her legs carrying her up the walk toward the widening strip of light.

And then, just as suddenly, they weren’t, because her feet were slipping on a patch of ice and flying out from beneath her. She landed hard, on her behind. The pain was intense, almost as bad as the time she’d fallen out of a magnolia tree and broken her wrist. Dazedly, she wondered,
Is it possible to break your behind?
She started to laugh and then to cry at the same time, heaving sobs that grew in intensity and volume, building to a near-howl. Though she was aware that she was putting herself in danger—nothing like a hysterical Chrome on your doorstep to make a person call the police—she was helpless to stop herself. The fear, uncertainty and sadness of the last days erupted out of her into the snow-laden air and were absorbed in its whiteness.

A face was bending over her. A hand lightly slapped her cheek, once, twice. Hannah blinked, and her hysteria gradually subsided into hiccups. She registered wrinkles, short gray hair, kind eyes. A black shirt, high-collared, with a white rectangle in the center. A priest. A priest, she realized, who wasn’t a man but a woman, a woman who was brushing the snow and tears from Hannah’s upturned face with brisk tenderness and saying, in a voice almost identical to President John F. Kennedy’s, “Are you all right, dear?”

“I don’t know. I fell on my rear end. Hard.
Hic!
”

Her rescuer—yet another rescuer—laughed. “Well, we all do that, from time to time.”

The priest hoisted Hannah up, grunting with the effort, and for a woozy moment she was back in the motel room, being lifted from the bed by Simone. Only when she was standing did she register how tiny the woman was, and how inadequately dressed. She wasn’t wearing a coat, just a cotton shirt and trousers, and she was trembling from exertion or cold or both. Hannah stood upright, taking all of her own weight, and the priest straightened with a soft grunt.

“Let’s get ourselves inside, shall we?” she said. “It’s colder than Jack Frost’s balls out here.”

R
EVEREND
E
ASTER
— “
ES,
that’s the name I was born with, God’s not the least bit subtle when He really wants you to do something”—led Hannah down a hallway to a small, cluttered office paneled in dark wood, settled her into an armchair and covered her with a hand-knitted blanket before bustling off to get some refreshments. Hannah sat limp in the chair, her mind shuttered to everything but the small realities of this moment: the throbbing of her tailbone, the tingling of warmth returning to her fingers and toes, the smell of books and old wood and furniture polish, the distant shriek of a stove-top kettle. Reverend Easter returned bearing a tray with a plate of cookies and two steaming mugs of tea. She set it down on her desk, shoving aside a pile of papers, then went to the bookcase and pulled a bottle of amber liquor out from behind a large, leather-bound tome—
The Lives of the Saints,
Hannah saw, with amusement. The priest held up the bottle. “This is from Scotland, the land of my forebears. They were coal miners, most of them: dirt-poor, old by thirty and dead by forty, forty-five if they were lucky. My great-great-great-grandfather indentured himself for seven years to get the money to pay for his passage here. Amazing, isn’t it, what people will do in search of a better life.”