She holds her arm up to her forehead, blocking out the light. She might not know it’s me, so I make my way over to her quickly to prevent her from panicking … even though I want to let her have it for coming to this place alone, at night. What the hell is she thinking?
“Dad?” she questions when I pull the flashlight away.
“You sound surprised to see me, which I find odd,” I say. “What are you doing here?”
She blinks slowly, looking up at me and reminding me of when she was just a little girl. ng. “Waiting for you,” she replies.
My hand holding the flashlight drops to my side. “What are you talking about?”
“I left the note for you. I knew it was the only way to get you here. I also know you go through my room every morning.”
“What? What are you talking about? I haven’t been in your room—”
“Since this morning?” she finishes my sentence.
“Yeah, I had laundry.”
“Journey was doing the laundry,” she says.
“You tuck my desk chair in every single morning and move my mouse one inch to the right to see if anything pops up on my screen.”
I’m mildly disturbed that she knows this, never realizing I was leaving breadcrumbs behind. “Have you considered majoring in forensics?”
“Yup,” she says with a grin.
I take a seat next to her on the rock, trying to remember why I ever thought this was the most comfortable place in the world. The water smells like dew mixed with rain, and it’s pungent, especially beneath the tower. “Why did you want me to meet you here, without a proper invitation?”
Hannah pulls her knees into her chest, hugging her arms around her ankles. “I’ve been thinking a lot since you took me to the cemetery a few weeks ago.”
I don’t like her statement. It makes my insides ache with numbness.
“What do you mean? What have you been thinking about?”
“You, Dad. You’ve spent my entire life worrying about me when you’ve been carrying around this burden. It took you seventeen years to talk to me about it, and the fact that it’s still in your thoughts means you live with it all the time, right?”
“Some things never leave you, kiddo. Memories become scars, and hard life lessons become repetitive nightmares. It makes us who we are, I guess. The more we survive, the stronger we are, and the stronger we are, the more we can help others around us. It’s how I see things.”
“But no one helped you through this,” she says.
“That’s not true,” I correct her.
“No one talks about it. No one seems to know about it. There are rumors that you were a troublemaker between the ages of twelve and seventeen or something, and I don’t know where those rumors even came from,” Hannah says.
This town is too damn small. “I don’t know where the age of twelve came into play because nothing happened until I was sixteen, but you know how rumors start. Uncle Brett plays along with the rumor to spite me, but he knows the truth, and so do Grandma and Grandpa. Grammy Quinn knows. Journey knows, and you know. I don’t think anyone else needs to know.”
Hannah shrugs as if she’s debating whether she feels the same way. “But, you’re the only one who still suffers.”
“I don’t suffer,” I correct her.
“I know you better than anyone in the entire world, Dad, the same way you know me. You’re able to mask your pain better than me, so most people don't know the truth, but I do.”
I wrap my arm around her, squeezing her into my side. “I don’t know when you became so mature or smart, but I love this side of you, Hannah.”
“You know, when I decided to stop seeing Mom and the dust settled after the court case, I did something that made me feel better. I don’t think anyone will ever understand why it made me feel better, but it worked.”
“What’s that?” I ask, staring out into the stars reflecting over the water.
“I took a picture of Mom pulling out of the driveway when she moved out. I used that bulky polaroid camera I begged for on my eighth birthday. As I got older, I pulled out the photo from time to time and wondered if I was too hard on her, but in the end, it reminded me why I had a right to be angry at her.”
