Mary watched until the last of the boats arrived. It was late in the afternoon, and the tours stopped running at four. A small family arrived—a mother and father and two sons. But no one else was with them. Stefan hadn’t come.
Mary stared at the sun feeling it burn her eyes, seeing it blur her vision as the eclipse of its heat made her see only light. She hadn’t realized how much of her believed that he would be there until he wasn’t. She remembered the way the words had felt coming from her lips, the receiver slick in her hand. The Island of Shrouded Trees in the Tammahuskee Swamp.
Mary knew that if Stefan didn’t come, then what she had told him, what she had written down in black and white, what she had spilled on that page like blood, was taken for a lie. And Mary vowed, for the second time, to never speak of it again.
The girls were quiet on the canoe ride back, Hannah from fatigue that was physical, from the hours spent in the sun. And Mary from the exhausting hours of waiting and watching and feeling hope recede further away with each boat.
They rode back from the island in silence, the heavy orange sun beginning to sink in the sky. The canoe docked, and John extended his hand, helping Mary back onto land. Though Mary took it, she couldn’t meet his eyes. And as the Chase girls walked back to the Blazer, Mary opened her mouth to speak, but the words stayed deep. She closed her mouth and tried again. “Just so you know,” she said. “If when you’re older and you wonder, I wanted Stefan to meet us here.”
Hannah looked up. “I know,” she said.
Mary stopped, dust from the dry dirt forming clouds around her feet. “How did you know?”
Hannah looked at her and gave a small shrug, her eyes sad and wise. “I just did.”
Twenty-three
1977
The door was open, the hall light all that breached the darkness of Mary’s room, when Diane’s form appeared at the threshold. “Mary,” she barked, her voice hoarse. She cinched her robe tighter around her waist as she squinted at her daughter. “What are you doing with her?”
On her bed, Mary lay on her stomach. Beside her was Hannah, whose small hand gripped Mary’s finger as her legs kicked excitedly at the air. Mary was looking at Hannah’s tiny fingernails, at her tiny knuckles, marveling at the perfection in miniature. “She woke up,” said Mary, her gaze unmoved.
“No, no, no,” said Diane, shaking her head. “It’s a school night.” She took a steadying breath, her face lined and exhausted, then she stepped into the room. “You shouldn’t be waking up with her,” she said, as she bent down and slid her hands between the shiny bedspread and the baby’s small body. “That’s my job. You have a math test tomorrow.” Diane brought Hannah to her chest, and Mary finally looked at her mother.
“You don’t hear her right away.”
Hannah started to cry and Diane brought her upright, holding the back of her head as she began to bounce and shush. “No baby needs to be picked up the second she wakes up. She’ll be fine if she has to fuss for a bit,” scolded Diane. “She might even go back to sleep.”
Hannah’s cries escalated with the new upright position.
“She doesn’t like to bounce,” said Mary.
Diane’s shoulder slumped, exhausted. “Mary,” she started slowly. “This is just . . .” She stared at Mary for a moment, deciding how much to reveal. “Look, I know that you’ve been skipping out on school to come home, telling the nurse you don’t feel well. Mrs. Pool said you were home before noon yesterday and you went right in to get the baby.”
“I know everything they’re teaching. I don’t need to be in class.”
“But you do need to be a kid,” retorted Diane. “You don’t hang out with your girlfriends. You just come home and hold Hannah!”
“Because I want to,” said Mary, her body tense, her black hair falling over her shoulders.
“Mary, I’m sorry,” she said. “But you don’t get long to be young. God knows, I didn’t. And I swore to myself that Hannah wouldn’t be your responsibility.”
“You wanted me to love her.”
“Yes. I wanted you to love her. I didn’t want you to live for her,” she said. “I didn’t want you to have to.”
Mary and her mother looked at each other until Diane began to nod. “We’re going to have to figure this out,” she said, her hand still on the back of Hannah’s head.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean maybe Mrs. Pool will have to start watching Hannah at her house. Or maybe we could even find a day care. But we need to make sure you’re not neglecting school. You can’t just play baby doll, Mare.”
Mary felt rage surge inside her like a wave, but she revealed none of it. “Fine,” she said. And if Diane hadn’t been so very tired, if she hadn’t been running the motel and raising two daughters, if she hadn’t been working part-time at the casino to help make ends meet, she might have seen a warning in Mary’s easy surrender.
“I’m going to bring Hannah back to my room. And if she wakes up again, just let her be. We can talk more about this tomorrow.” And with that, light from the hall filled the space where Diane had been, then the door closed and Hannah’s cries became muffled.
Mary had already decided what she would do by the time she heard Diane’s door close, though she lay on her bed for another half hour, her muscles stone-still. Hannah’s cries dwindled then ceased, and when only the silence of sleep was in the air did Mary get up and begin her preparations. Many of Hannah’s clothes were already in her room, ferreted away from Diane’s and tucked neatly into drawers. There was a stack of diapers on her dresser, and the stroller was in the office. It had started to rain earlier, and Mary saw the fat drops hit the glass of her window then slide down, leaving their glistening trails.
She turned her backpack upside down and let her schoolbooks fall out of it, let them lay splayed and contorted on the floor. Then she began to fill it with what they would need. She pulled up a corner of the carpet in the closet, lifted out the $263 that she had kept there, and slid it into the back pocket of her jeans. Then she took a coat—the one that had been her grandfather’s—from a hanger and pulled it on. It nearly came to her knees, but it was warm and thick, and water beaded on its heavy canvas fabric and then ran right off. She took a baby blanket from her bed and rolled it tightly, cinching it with a shoelace, and then she hooked it to her belt, where it would stay dry under the jacket. She put on the backpack that was filled with clothes and diapers, leaving enough room for the formula and bottles that she would get in the kitchen.