“I think I’m going to be sick.”
“That’s al right,” Dandridge said. “If Hannah’s not wel , she’s not wel .” But he was staring at her, real y taking her in. Shit. Hannah turned away, turned her back on him. Dandridge spoke to her one more time as the guard escorted them from the room. “Come back and visit any time, Hannah,” he said. “Any time.”
And then they were walking again down those endless gray corridors while Hannah blinked furiously against tears of confusion and anger, feeling sicker and sicker and then final y, final y, there was the door to the outside and she burst through it, took a few steps, and vomited on the gravel. Sean fol owed her out. She straightened and wiped her mouth. This made no sense. It was Tom who’d cut his hand. Not Michael Dandridge. Not Mike.
“Are you al right?” Sean sounded confused, concerned.
“Fine. I’m fine.” But she stil felt so sick. And hot. And her hands wouldn’t stop shaking. He put a hand on her shoulder, turned her to face him.
“What’s going on with you, Hannah? What was al that about his hand?”
Hannah shook her head. “I’m so sorry. I . . . it was nonsense. I just suddenly felt so dizzy in there. I don’t know what happened. I think I’m sick. Maybe I ate something.”
He knew she was lying. “Talk to me, Hannah. Whatever it is.
Maybe I can help.”
She very, very nearly did. For a moment she teetered on the edge of disaster, and then she pul ed herself back. “I’m so sorry. I feel like an idiot. It was just . . . I think I just panicked in there. I was overwhelmed. A bit claustrophobic. I feel terrible that I ended the meeting early. I’m so sorry, Sean.”
He didn’t believe her. She could see it in his eyes. Oh, he was kind and he was solicitous, but they drove back to Charlottesvil e in near silence. They arrived just after one P.M. and she told him she needed an hour at home, to eat and shower and change before going into the office. He insisted on walking her to her door where they said a stilted goodbye. Hannah let herself into her apartment.
She went straight to her bedside table and took out Laura’s diary, that scrappy little notebook that meant so much. She flipped quickly through the pages until she found the entry from July, the one where her mother and Tom had kissed for the first time, the one where Laura had reached out and traced a thick silvery scar across the palm of Tom’s right hand. Hannah knew every word of the diary by heart, but she had to see it in front of her, to see the words in ink on paper. She knew, for sure, that she had not made an error, that the words would be exactly as she remembered them, but until she saw them some smal part of her could stil hope.
She found the entry and let out an involuntary moan. It was al there. Undeniable. Hannah found her phone and dialed her mother’s number. She let it ring and pressed her phone hard to her ear when it was answered.
“Mom,” she said. There was no sound. “Mom?” she said again.
“Hannah? Is that you? When are you coming home?” Laura’s voice was querulous, and thick with alcohol. Hannah put one shaking hand to her mouth. She tried to speak, and couldn’t. And through the phone she heard the sound of something fal ing, clattering hard against the floor, and then soft weeping. Hannah pul ed the phone away from her ear as if it had burned her. She stared at it for a moment, then switched it off and pushed it so hard across the bed that it fel onto the ground. She climbed ful y clothed under the covers and curled up into a bal , pul ing the duvet up under her chin and closing her eyes tightly against the pain.
Hannah
THIRTEEN
FRIDAY AUGUST 30, 2019
Hannah was stil curled under her blankets an hour later when the apartment buzzer sounded. She climbed out of bed, feeling bruised and delicate, her skin aching as if she had the flu coming on. She pressed the button and heard Camila’s voice.
“It’s me. I have coffee. Can I come up?”
Hannah pressed the button again and sat back on the apartment bed and waited for the knock to come on the door. When Camila arrived she had a smile on her face, two coffee cups in one hand, a paper bag in the other.
“I came to see how you were doing. Sean told me you had a tough time at Greensvil e. I total y get it. I was completely weirded out myself the first few times I went. Are you hungry? I wasn’t sure if you’d want this . . .” She waved the bag in the air. “How are you feeling?”
“Better,” Hannah said. “Come in.”
Camila went to the kitchenette, opened cupboard doors until she found plates. “I brought bagels. Do you feel wel enough to eat?”
They sat at the little table. Hannah picked at her bagel while Camila talked about her latest family drama—one of her sisters had more boyfriends than their mother approved of and it was causing fireworks at home. Hannah let the monologue flow over her. This was what Camila did. She distracted you with chitchat, but her own clever brain never real y stopped watching and analyzing.
“So Sean thinks you might have had a panic attack.”
“Maybe,” Hannah said slowly. “I don’t know. It definitely threw me off balance. The prison. The pressure. The whole environment.”
Camila nodded. “How do you feel now? If you’re feeling better, want to walk with me to the office? If you’re not up to it, that’s okay.
But if you are, I figured it would be nice to go in together.”
They walked along in afternoon sunshine as other students streamed around them, going to class or the gym or coffee with friends. The normalcy of it was jarring. Hannah tried to tel herself that the scar meant nothing, changed nothing. It was just a coincidence, that was al . Maybe both men had had similar scars.
That could happen. It didn’t work. Nothing worked. A crack had opened in her mind and now other thoughts were seeping through.
Questions she’d pushed aside over the years were now demanding her attention. She needed answers. She should make her excuses now, go back to Maine, talk to her mother. But could she be sure that Laura would tel her the truth?
“You know what’s weird?” Camila asked, in her most conversational tone. “I filed some motions last week in a few different cases, just preliminary stuff, you know. Anyway, after the screwup with the Dandridge court filings I went and checked al of mine. Like I said, I figured, if the system glitched with Dandridge, no reason it wouldn’t glitch with everything else, right? But guess what I found?”
“What?” Hannah said, dutiful y. Maybe it was Dandridge she needed to talk to. The thought was frightening. Could she do that?
Go back into the prison and confront him?
“Nothing! Everything’s perfect. Nothing misfiled. Al the document numbers line up perfectly.”
“That’s great.” Hannah wasn’t listening to Camila. She was thinking about how she could approach a conversation with Dandridge. How she could use the secrets she held to provoke him, to get to the truth.
“Mmm. It’s good news for me, sure, but it’s not great news for the Project, is it?”