“I didn’t kil Sarah Fitzhugh. I never knew her, never met her, never touched her. I would never hurt a woman, or any person. I’ve never even been in a bar fight. I need to know that you believe me, Hannah. I know I don’t have the right to ask a thing of you. But . . .
you’re not going to get into al this with Rob, right? I mean, it’s not relevant.” He looked genuinely worried. Maybe he thought Parekh would kick him to the curb if he knew he was a fraudster.
“I believe you,” she said. Then she laughed, a little bitterly. “But I believed my mother too. For years and years. So what do I know?”
His lips parted and he drew in a shaky breath. “Why did you come here? Did you come here to help me?” His eyes narrowed, suddenly suspicious. Hannah stood.
“I came here to see for myself who you are.” She made for the door, knocked for the guard. He came quickly.
“Are you going to help me? Are you going to talk to Rob?”
Dandridge said, raising his voice to be heard over the unlocking of the door, her quiet conversation with the guard. “Wil I see you again?”
She turned back and looked at him one last time.
“I don’t know. I haven’t decided yet.”
IN THE PRISON PARKING LOT HANNAH GOT INTO SEAN’S CAR
AND set off in the direction of Charlottesvil e. She had nowhere else to go. She drove for ten minutes before pul ing over. She got out of the car, stood at the side of the road, and dialed her mother’s number. Laura answered right away, and her voice was warm, and loving.
“Hannah, baby, I—”
“You fucking lied to me, Mom.”
Laura drew in a breath in a sudden, sharp inhalation.
“You lied to me. Al of it. Al of it was bul shit.”
There were tears. Immediately, there were tears, of course. And despite her fury there was stil a part of Hannah that heard her mother gasp for breath, heard her weep, and wanted to apologize, to comfort. Hannah imagined a steel-toed boot inside her head, stomping down on that feeling and crushing it forever.
“You manipulated me,” she said. “You trained me like a goddamn dog. Every time you clicked your fingers, I jumped.”
Laura sobbed into the phone. But Hannah imagined her mother, standing in the house in Orono, holding her phone, dry eyed, sobbing violently but feeling nothing, just faking it al . It was such an ugly image and for a moment she felt doubt. Memories flooded her.
Laura’s arms around her, a soft hand holding hers, a shared smile, laughter. But the memories were too few and they were drowned out by others. A slap, right across the face, when she was very young.
Days when she was clung to, nights when she was left alone and afraid. Awkward attempts at friendship destroyed by Laura’s interference. Alcohol binges that always seemed to happen at key moments, like school sports days or holiday concerts. A screaming fight in the parking lot with Hannah’s favorite teacher, another relationship fractured. Hannah and Laura were close, so close, because Laura had made damn sure that Hannah never had a chance to have anyone else.
Hannah gripped her phone hard for a moment, and then in one swift motion she threw it away as hard as she could. It flew out of her hand and landed twenty feet away in the dirt of a newly plowed field.
Hannah climbed back into the car. Her hands were shaking. She turned on the engine, gripped the steering wheel, and drove.
Hannah
SEVENTEEN
SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 1, 2019
Hannah went to the apartment in Charlottesvil e. Where else did she have to go? She climbed into bed. Time passed. Hours, perhaps.
She lost track. The buzzer rang, twice, three times. She ignored it.
Ten minutes later there was a loud, insistent knocking on the door.
Slowly, her limbs stiff and uncooperative, Hannah climbed out of bed.
She opened the door. Sean was standing there, one arm holding his side, his face a mass of bruises. Hannah stood and looked at him stupidly for a moment, unable to think or speak, then she stood aside and let him in. He sat on the armchair, lowering himself gingerly, clearly in pain. She sat on the little couch and pul ed a blanket down from the bed and wrapped it around herself. She felt raw and far too vulnerable.
“Are you okay?” Hannah shook her head, tried to clear her jumbled thoughts. “Sorry. Obviously you’re not okay. I didn’t expect to see you. Not for a while at least. Definitely not today.” She looked at the windows. It was dark outside. What time was it anyway?
“Mom’s pretty pissed. She wanted me to stay home.” His voice was gravel y, exhausted.
“I thought you’d be in the hospital.”
He shook his head. “It’s not that bad. Four fractured ribs.
Stitches.” He put his hand to his mouth and then his cheek. He had stitches for his split lit, more just under his left eye. “They gave me painkil ers. It’s not too bad.”
“You should be in bed.”
“No,” he said. His expression was fierce.
“No?”
“They did what they did for a reason, Hannah. To get us away from Sam Fitzhugh, sure, but also to punish us. To shut us up and shut us down. The hearing is tomorrow.”
“How did you know I was here? In Charlottesvil e?” She didn’t want to talk about the hearing. She wasn’t ready.
Sean shook his head. “I have a tracker on my car. But that’s not the point.”
“You have a tracker on your car? Real y?”
“Jesus, Hannah. People track their goddamn iPads. I don’t want to talk about that. I want to talk about Sam. How far did you get with him? Had he told you anything before they jumped me?”
She would have to tel him. Oh God. There was no way around it.
“He told me the truth. He lied about the photo ID because Pierce and his grandfather asked him to.”
“Are you serious? He told you that? At the bar?”
“Afterward. He came to find me at the inn this morning, real y early. God, it feels like that was days ago now. He was upset about what Pierce did to you.”
Sean stared at her. “But wait a minute. You’ve talked to Rob since then, right? He told me you talked to him. You never mentioned this.”
“That was before Sam found me.”
“Hannah, don’t you lie to me. You haven’t told anyone about this, have you? You haven’t cal ed anyone, not Rob, not Jim. No one.”
She thought, briefly, about claiming a lost phone, and abandoned the idea. There was no point to it. She shook her head.
“Why not?”
It felt like minutes before she could speak. Minutes, while they sat in silence and she tried to force herself to meet his gaze and find the words.
“My mother used to know Dandridge when she was young. She told me that he kil ed my father, murdered him, and raped her and that no one ever found out. She told me that her only comfort was that Dandridge was in prison for another murder. That he was being punished for what he had done, even if the truth never came out.”
There was silence for a long moment, then Sean swore quietly.
“Jesus.”
“That’s why I came to Virginia,” Hannah said. “I came because I knew, with al your work, that there was a chance that he would be released. I thought that the knowledge that Michael Dandridge was free again would destroy her. She’s never been strong, you know.
But it wasn’t true. None of it was true.”
“You came to stop us.”