I watched Hannah stroke her sister’s cheek lovingly. She picked up a brush from the bedside table and carefully ran it through Charlotte’s hair. She was doting. So gentle.
“I want a new basketball jersey for my birthday,” Charlotte said.
“Oh yeah, which one?” I asked, forcefully pushing past my reservations.
“Her favorite team is the Washington Wizards. She already has three jerseys,” Mrs. Whelan told me.
“My birthday’s next month,” Charlotte announced.
“Really? What day?” I asked her.
“Her birthday’s May twelfth,” Hannah informed me.
May twelfth.
May twelfth.
05/12.
Not able to sit still any longer, I got up and started to tidy up after dinner. I collapsed the pizza boxes and put the leftovers on an extra plate.
Hannah continued to tend to Charlotte, talking quietly with her, giving her sister all of her attention. She had a good heart. That was apparent.
But was it a dishonest heart?
“She’s always been protective of Charlotte. Even before the accident. They were incredibly close. Sure, they fought like all siblings do, but there was nothing Hannah wouldn’t do for Charlotte and vice versa. Losing her father and almost losing Charlotte nearly destroyed Hannah,” Mrs. Whelan confided quietly, wrapping the plate of pizza in a paper towel. “You said you have a brother?” she prodded.
I nodded. “A younger brother, Dillon. He passed away a year ago,” I answered quietly, wiping the grease off my hands with a napkin.
Mrs. Whelan’s face contorted in a shared pain. She put her hand on my arm. “I’m so sorry, Mason.”
I briefly put my hand on top of hers. She was a kind woman. Just like her daughter. I could see where Hannah got it from. “Thank you.”
“Grief changes a person, doesn’t it?” she murmured, gazing at her oldest daughter with an expression that was a mixture of sadness and worry.
“Hannah told me it was a dark time for her after the accident.” I pulled the trash bag from the bin and tied it shut, putting it on the floor to be taken out when we left.
“She was so angry. Especially after the situation with Ryan Law—”
Alarm bells went off in my head.
“Ryan Law?”
Mrs. Whelan nodded. “The firm Ryan Law represented the city when myself and the other families involved in the accident on the highway brought suit. Hannah wanted to make the city and the contractor employed to put the road down pay. She was so mad when I decided to drop our end of the lawsuit. I just couldn’t put our family through that, not after everything we had already been through. Dominic Ryan used some nasty tactics too. It wasn’t worth it.”
I didn’t know what to say. The coincidence was startling. What were the chances that one of the victims of Freedom Overdrive’s exploits just happened to be the corrupt law firm responsible for screwing over Hannah and her family?
“Hannah has always been a bit of a crusader. Particularly after her father died. She would protest corporations she thought were corrupt. She went on and on about corporate greed. When Stanford Pharmaceuticals upped the cost of Charlotte’s medicine, she wanted to go after them too.”
I barely heard what Mrs. Whelan was saying after that.
My ears buzzed, my brain going a million miles a minute. Ryan Law. Stanford Pharmaceuticals.
I was looking for ghosts. I had to stop seeing them everywhere.
I glanced over at Hannah again. She had gotten up on the bed with Charlotte, cuddling into her side. She must have felt my eyes on her because she looked my way. Her smile was so sweet. So full of affection. All for me.
That was real.
