5
Hannah
Daddy waved at me from his shop when I stepped out of my car. “Hey, honey!”
Sampson ran doing circles around me, barking and wagging his tail so hard he nearly toppled over.
“Hey!”
“Have a good day at work?”
“It’s work.” I sighed and headed up the porch steps with Sampson at my heels. “I’m gonna go start dinner.”
He nodded before he went back to whatever project he was working on.
Just as I grabbed the doorknob, I heard tires roll over the gravel. I glanced around at the unfamiliar black pickup creeping down the drive before parking to the side of Daddy’s shop. Whoever it is, is probably the next “troubled soul” Daddy’s hoping to help. For as long as I could remember, he’d taken in those less fortunate, paying them for odd and ends jobs around the farm. He swore his plot in life was to give those people the second chance no one else would.
Sampson pawed at the screen door, dragging my attention away from the truck. “Okay, okay. Don’t be so needy,” I said, the hinges to the screen door groaning when I finally pulled it open. He shot inside, skidding around the corner. A hazy cloud of smoke crawled through the air, and my nose wrinkled at the smell of burnt pizza.
“What the…Bo!” I shouted up the stairs, even though I knew he most likely had in earbuds which meant there was no hope he’d hear me.
Swatting the smoke away from my face, I headed into the kitchen, grabbed a potholder, and opened the oven. Plumes of smoke billowed out, and there, inside the oven, sat a smoldering, charred pizza. “Dear Lord,” I huffed before I yanked it out. I quickly set it on the counter and cracked the window over the sink, trying to guide some of the smoke out with my hands.
Momma did everything before she started chemo. God knows had Bo and Daddy been left to their own devices, they would have burnt the house down that summer.
After I raised all the windows and got most of the smoke out, I went upstairs to change out of my scrubs, stopping at Bo’s room. “Bo!” I tapped over the Lincoln Park poster tacked to his door.
Nothing.
Bang. Bang. “Bo!”
The door partially opened, and he rested his forehead against the doorframe. “Huh?” His eyes were puffy and barely open.
“Were you asleep?”
“Yeah…”
I rolled my eyes. “So, you put a pizza in the oven and fell asleep?”
“Ohhhhh…. Yeah.” He frowned, brushing his dark hair out of his face. “Sorry.”
“Between you and Daddy this house is going to burn to the ground.” I motioned him out into the hall. “Go downstairs and throw some spaghetti in a pot, would you, while I go check on Momma.”
Tossing his head back, he groaned before shuffling out into the hallway. His dark hair was unruly, similar to Dave Grohl in the way it hung over his eyes. I swatted at the tangled hair covering his neck. “You need to cut this mop.”
“I like it.”
“Bo, you look homeless.”
“Nah, if I were homeless, I’d have a beard.” He begrudgingly headed down the stairs as I walked to Momma’s room. A small twinge tightened my chest. Bo was only sixteen, and while he thought he was a grown-up, he was not. I wasn’t even a grown-up. As hard as everything with Momma had been for me, I knew it had to be harder on Bo.
When I pushed open the door to Momma’s bedroom, she was sitting up in bed, reading. That’s good. She’s sitting up and reading and it doesn’t matter what those tests said because she looks better and— Hope. I understood why so many of my patients’ families had hope when they knew they really shouldn’t: it is the only way you can manage.
“Hey, baby,” she said, smiling as she placed a bookmark between the pages and set the book on the nightstand. “How was work?”
“Good.” I stepped beside the bed and took a seat. Now that I was closer, I saw she didn’t look better, healthier. She looked fragile and tired. That hope was quickly consumed by the panicked question of, “how much longer”? I fought that thought away and I smiled at her, pretending everything was okay.
“That’s good. I’m sure Doctor Murray is happy to have you there.”
“He said I was almost as good a nurse as you were.”
A small smile touched her lips, and I swallowed as heavy guilt perched on my shoulders. I wanted to cry. I wanted to scream. I wanted to do anything but pretend this was okay, that this was normal. “You hungry?” I asked, shoving my anxieties deep down. “I’m gonna fix some spaghetti… Bo put a Totino’s Party Pizza in the oven and incinerated it.”
Momma laughed. “Well, did he at least take it off the cardboard this time?”
“Yes, he at least did that.” A short-lived chuckle slipped through my lips. “Do you feel like dinner?”
I saw in her eyes that she didn’t feel like moving, so I gave her hand a little squeeze. “Why don’t I just bring it up here?”
She patted my cheek. “You’ve always been such a sweet soul, Hannah. Nurturing…”
“Learned from the best.”
She grinned before settling back on her pillow, and I quietly slipped into the hall and down to the kitchen where a pot was boiling over on the stove. The water popped and hissed as it splashed onto the eye. “Seriously?” I grumbled, moving the pot to the side and turning down the heat.
The screen door to the back porch banged shut Seconds later, Daddy and Bo came stomping into the kitchen. Bo glanced at the pot and shot me a toothy grin. “Sorry.”
“Again, you are going to burn the house down!”
“Geez Louise, drama queen!”
Daddy squeezed Bo’s shoulders as he stepped around him. “Be nice to your sister.”
I glared at Bo, nostrils flaring. God, I felt like I was eighteen again and someone was about to get grounded. Daddy grabbed a jar of sauce from the pantry and I took it from him. “Who was in that truck?” I asked.
“Some boy that’s gonna help out this summer—”
“Thank God,” Bo mumbled. “Maybe I won’t get worked like a pack mule.”
Daddy lifted a graying eyebrow at him.
Bo flexed his arm and kissed his baby muscle. “I know I look like I’m made for manual labor, Pops, but this is all for show.”
“Can your head get any bigger?”
Bo shrugged. Daddy just shook his head. “Well, I don’t know how long he’ll be around for. He’s closer to your age, Hannah. Been in some trouble, lost his last job. Seems like a good enough fella.”
Sounds like every boy Daddy’s taken in to help around here.
Some of them changed their ways. Most didn’t.
6
Hannah
Meg stood at the end of the kitchen island, tapping her peach nails on the counter. “Come on, Hannah Banana,” she whined.
I stopped wiping the counter and shot a death glare in her direction. She knew I hated when she called me that.
“Look, I”– she thumbed at her chest—“can call you that.”
“Uh-huh.”
“As the person who punched Billy Coker in the face for pulling your pigtails while singing ‘Hannah Banana is a sissy, prissy girl,’ I inherited rights to the nickname.”
“I swear, you have the maturity of a twelve-year-old.”
“Life’s more fun that way.” She grinned and grabbed the dishtowel from me, tossing it in the sink. “Come on. It’ll be good for you to get out.”
“I’m fine.”
“I’ve been your best friend since second grade, I know when you’re fine and when you’re pretending you’re fine.”
I exhaled. She was right, but I’d be damned if I’d let her know she was. “You know I hate going to bars.”
“Tipsy’s isn’t a bar, it’s a… gathering place.”
I picked up the dishtowel and went back to scrubbing the baked-on cheese from the stovetop. “You’re right, it’s a full-blown honky-tonk.”
“Tomato, tomoto. Whatever. You need something normal. Outside of this house and outside of work.”
“Fine,” I huffed. “We can go to an art class.”
“This is Rockford, Alabama. There are no art classes. Plus, you suck at painting.”
She was right. Again. I kept scouring the cheese, picking at it with my nail. Meg rested her hand over mine. “Hannah.” Her voice was soft, soothing. “Staying here won’t change anything.”
“I know that, Meg!” I wanted to cry, but instead, I sucked in a breath and walked to the sink. How the hell was I supposed to go to a bar when my mother had cancer? I felt bad anytime I laughed at work, anytime I allowed myself to forget for a moment that she was sick. Her world was ending—so why shouldn’t mine?
“Going on with your life doesn’t make you a bad person, Hannah.”
I swallowed.
“You have to take care of yourself to take care of them.”
My chin dropped to my chest.
“It’s just a band. Just an hour out of this house for fresh air.”
“You should go.” My daddy’s voice came from the doorway leading into the hall. When I turned around, he was staring at me with his lips flat across his face. “Go do something for you, baby girl.”