In-between Hour (9781460323731) Read online

  Not so long ago, Will had believed that if his apartment were on fire, he would risk everything to save his laptop. But now it contained nothing more than a stalled-out, unnamed manuscript, and his only possession worth saving was Freddie’s drawing.

  Will flopped onto his leather sofa and covered his eyes with his right arm. Storytelling had always been his escape and his shield. His last line of defense against the truth. And for the first time in his life, he was without a story.

  * * *

  Jacob twisted his hands around the phone. Some thought—just out of reach.

  Where you hidin’, thought?

  It were warm in his room, too warm. All summer, it been too cold. Most non-Carolina folk didn’t understand how to live, wanted to be sealed up all nice and tight with air-conditionin’. He and Angeline never had no air-conditionin’. No sir. And now it were too hot. Couldn’t even manage his own goddamn heat. But them dickheads, they couldn’t control him. They could take away his bird call and try to take away his Wild Turkey—if they could find it. But they didn’t know what they was in for, ’cos Jacob Shepard, Jr., eighty years old with a mind shot to shit, were gonna fight.

  “Ha,” he said, liked the way it sounded and repeated it. “Ha!”

  If only he were outside sittin’ by a fire, punchin’ it with a stick. He’d use hickory on that thing, make it nice and toasty. That were his kind of heat.

  Jacob threw the phone on his bed, his narrow only-for-one bed, and heaved open his window. No moonlight tonight, no stars. No owl to call to. No trains. When Angeline disappeared into one of her spells, he would listen for the rumblin’ and the whistlin’ of the trains—sounds as soothin’ as real heavy rain on a tin roof.

  He inhaled the night. Couldn’t see the forest, but it were out there, waitin’. He could smell cedar. Sweetest smell in the world. You burn that stuff and mmm-hmm, fannnntastic. He made a smudge once that were just plum cedar dust. Willie used to love that. Said it were like Christmas all over again.

  A man could suffocate in this shithole of a hotel. Stank of bleach and death. ’Course that could be part of the plan to hurry the inmates along their journey to the spirit world. Death were comin’ faster than it should, thanks to them dickheads.

  Freddie were on his mind. Freddie.

  Freddie loved all them stories about his grave-diggin’ granddaddy. Like the time at the cemetery he’d...what? What had he done? What! He circled his room and concentrated real hard, but that trickster memory kept on hidin’ from him.

  He slapped the table. White, round, new, Will had bought it without permission. Why’d he keep buyin’ furniture and payin’ bills as if his daddy couldn’t afford to?

  He’d been happy in the shack with his memories of Angeline. The good memories, only the good memories. Why couldn’t he stay in the shack? He reached for the pen next to the phone and gouged a nice scar into the tabletop. There. Now the table was all scratched up, like him. Like his shack, like...

  Freddie were travelin’! Lucky little scamp.

  He’d wanted to travel, take Angeline places, but they couldn’t afford the gas to cross the state line. Heck of a woman, his Angeline. Loved a good adventure, yes sir. Best smile in Orange County. Woo-wee! Sweet sixteen and she’d had her pick of the menfolk. Day she stood by his side and spoke her marriage vows, he had to pinch hisself into believin’. But no, he weren’t thinkin’ about his Angeline, his angel...Freddie! That’s right, Freddie.

  Freddie were travelin’, going places his granddaddy couldn’t imagine.

  Jacob grabbed an unopened envelope and scrawled “Ask Will about Freddie’s trip” across the back. Look at that. Goddamn hand had the shakes. Better have another drink to stop them tremors. But first he was gonna stick his note on the fridge. Get to his age and you’d forget half your life if you didn’t write it down.

  C.R.S., can’t remember stuff. But this, this, he wanted to remember.

  He’d write another note, and another and another. Tape one to the phone on his nightstand, so he could see it at sunrise. And he’d buy a map. Heck, a big world map! Take the shuttle to the Walmart and buy a map. Nail it to the wall! That would annoy them dickheads. And he’d label it My Grandson’s Great European Adventure.

  Ha! Take that, Bernie down the hall!

  Maybe he’d follow Willie’s advice and get some sleep. Tomorrow were gonna be a real fine day. He had a project and it didn’t involve sittin’ on his ass in the arts and crafts room with tissue paper and a pair of safety scissors.

  Two

  An owl hooted in the forest, a mournful farewell to the night. Yanking the scrunchie from her wrist, Hannah wrestled her hair into a ponytail. Early-morning air—Saponi Mountain air—expanded her lungs and forced out the pollutants of LAX and the flights. Made her clean. Made her whole. Welcomed her home where everything was familiar and nothing was the same.

  The crispness of fall carried the silent threat of forest fires. All summer, with Orange County cycling through murderous heat and once-in-a-century drought, she’d prepared for brush fires like a general perfecting frontline strategy. Even her contingency plans had backups. But while she was busy figuring out how to rescue her animals, the real threat in her life had built. Silently. Unobserved. Until her firstborn staggered into the nearest E.R. and told the receptionist, “I want to open my veins and bleed out.” Less than ten words that allowed the state of California to lock up her son for seventy-two hours under an involuntary psychiatric hold—section 5150. A number she would never forget.

  Hannah flattened her hands across her chest. Her thoughts would not turn maudlin. For Galen’s sake, she needed to be strong and well rested, a mother at peace with her mind and her body. A mother who could heal herself and her son; a mother who could paste her shattered family back together.

  Top of her list? Good sleep hygiene. In the two and a half weeks she’d been in California, she’d slept only in snatches, jolting awake as anxiety marched through her chest and what-ifs scratched at her brain. Images of Galen strapped to a gurney. Screaming and struggling. He hadn’t been in restraints—at least, she didn’t think he had. It was hardly something she could ask. By the way, honey, did they restrain you during those three and a half days you were in the locked psych ward? And Galen wasn’t sharing.

  Parenthood started with such optimism: your child would achieve his baby milestones, collect gold stars, maintain a good grade point average, hang out with the crowd that didn’t drink and drive. And then, when you weren’t paying attention, it all stripped down to one horrifying truth: you just wanted your son to find the will to live.

  Behind her, a hundred acres of tangled forest waited to reach out and protect her, to pull her back into its bosom. Sunrise over Saponi Mountain with the blended light of day and night always lifted her spirits, but the clocks wouldn’t change for another month. In the meantime, she and the dogs were trapped in dark mornings. Once dawn came, however, they would hike up to the Occaneechi Path, the historic Native American trading route on the crest of the hill. A well-marked trail, nothing grew there. Soft-soled moccasins had packed the soil tightly day after day, month after month, decade after decade, treading memories into the land. Sealing them in forever. And after the leaves were down, the track would remain hidden until spring.

  Jink, the newest member of the household, wheezed her asthmatic cough and wound around Hannah’s ankles. Hannah reached down and combed her fingers through satin fur. If only everything in life were as simple as adopting a stray cat.

  “Go scavenge,” Hannah said. “Catch a vole for breakfast.”

  The voles had inflicted more damage than the drought. Two months earlier the loss of her scarlet ruellias—a gift from an aging client who couldn’t afford her vet bill—would have caused genuine pain. But now she had real context for the themes of life and death.

  Hannah’s right
foot nudged a pile of broken acorn shells—a squirrel’s last supper—and she stared down at the decking. Boards long overdue for pressure washing and weatherproofing, she and the ex had nailed them together fifteen years before with dreams of withstanding hurricanes and ice storms and poundings from little boys and big dogs. Dreams came, dreams left, and she would do what she always did: adapt.

  In the distance, a car spluttered and clonked as it began the torturous journey down her driveway. A predawn pet emergency, no doubt. Containing work between the hours of eight in the morning and ten at night was a pipe dream. Clients knew she was available 24/7, and how could she not be? A holistic vet specializing in peaceful euthanasia could hardly keep office hours. Not that she had an office, other than her duct-taped Ford truck.

  The dogs rose one by one to close around her in a circle. Mush for brains, all five of her rescue babies. Introduce people to their world, and they could flee. An eternity ago she had juggled the demands of work, laundry, motherhood and cooking as if she would never surface for air. These days she was responsible only for herself and a pack of strays. Turn around, and everything changed.

  Rosie, her blind German shepherd, whimpered.

  “It’s okay, baby.” Hannah kneaded Rosie’s head, and the dog trembled against her leg.

  Hannah didn’t mean to have favorites, but she and Rosie were conjoined at the heart. Some woman had found Rosie four years earlier, scavenging for food in the Occoneechee Mountain parking lot and bleeding from a gash on her paw. The woman flew in with kinetic desperation, wanting to adopt Rosie now, wanting Hannah to fix Rosie now. But Rosie had needed stitches and a quiet, warm place to sleep. Hannah insisted on keeping the dog overnight; the woman begrudgingly agreed. Older, but still beautiful, she had a gray pallor and yellow patches around her eyelids that suggested heart disease. Hannah had planned to inquire gently about her health the next day. But the woman hadn’t returned as arranged, and for that, Hannah was grateful. Her mother had encouraged her to believe in fate. And Hannah and Rosie-girl? They were meant to be.

  The car lurched around a bend and stopped, the beam of its lights illuminating a lumbering opossum. Only one person she knew braked for opossum. And thank goodness, because she couldn’t face anyone else’s high-voltage chatter.

  There would be comfort food in the back of that turquoise Honda Civic, too. High in carbs, sickly sweet and much appreciated. Dropping a jean size had been the only welcome side effect of her son’s breakdown; dropping two jean sizes had been a warning.

  Poppy’s car spluttered through a mechanical imitation of Jink’s asthmatic cough. Time to remind her friend, yet again, about the importance of oil changes. Guided by instincts—some good, most not—Poppy’s monkey mind never settled on the mundane, unless it involved sugar or sex, horses or art.

  The Honda chugged around the final curve. Hannah’s ex had insisted on this ridiculous gravel drive despite the acres of pasture that lay between the house and the road. He’d pronounced it authentic and likely to deter bikers from joyriding up to their house after spilling out of the redneck bar opposite. Of course, that could have been Inigo’s secret wish all along, since he’d upped and left six years earlier for a gay ménage à trois in rural Chatham County. A midlife crisis with not one younger lover but two. Both guys.

  Hannah searched the top of her head for her reading glasses and had a flashback to stuffing them into the seat pocket of the airplane. Oh well, another pair lost.

  Poppy parked and flung open the door decorated with a prancing mare. She painted horses on every surface except paper. Take the norm, turn it inside out and flip it backward—that was Poppy’s thought process.

  “Hey, girl.” Poppy emerged, bottom-first. “Thought you might need a sugar fix.”

  “At seven in the morning?” Hannah and the dogs walked down the steps.

  Poppy jiggled a Whole Foods bag, and her silver horse earrings danced a rhumba. Then she took out her gum and dumped it in the car’s trash can. “Never too early for chocolate.”

  “Come here. You’ve earned a hug.” Silly move caused, no doubt, by sleep deprivation. Even drunk, Poppy wasn’t a hugger.

  Poppy stiffened, and Hannah tried to cover her mistake with a pat on the shoulder blade.

  “Thank you. For looking after the animals, the house and—” Hannah pulled back and chewed the corner of her lip. She hadn’t cried in two and a half weeks. Why now? She sniffed. “But you should not be shopping at Whole Foods, not on your budget.”

  “I know, I know, but I figured you needed first-rate treats. Chocolate croissants, still warm.” Poppy sniffed the bag. “Mmm-hmm. And extra chocolate supplies. Had no idea Brits understood chocolate, but this, girlfriend, is the real deal.”

  Poppy reached inside the bag and waved two long, thin sticks of chocolate wrapped in twisted yellow foil. They resembled emaciated Christmas crackers, the kind Inigo had introduced to Christmas dinner when the boys were little. Such a fraud, the ex, flooding their lives with all things British—or rather Celtic—when he’d left Wales as a two-month-old. A Christmas memory snuck out: Inigo, Galen and Liam popping crackers and giggling. Her guys, the three people she thought she’d known best in the world. Turned out she hadn’t known them at all. If her mother were still alive, how would she label this bottomless emotion Hannah refused to name? Was it grief? Was she mourning her before life?

  Think better, Hannah.

  “Cadbury Flakes, they’re called,” Poppy continued. “The Brit section in Whole Foods is opposite the dog food, but don’t let that put you off. What time d’y’all get back last night?”

  “Late. Or early, depending on your definition. And it’s just me.”

  “Our boy?”

  “Couldn’t spring him from the post-hospitalized program. Another twelve days and then he can come home.” Hannah paused. “I need to find him a therapist here. And an A.A. group.”

  “On it, babe. I know a shitload of drunks.”

  “Somehow, I never doubted that.”

  Poppy disappeared into her car, muttering about a lost cell phone. She bobbed back out. “Sleep on the plane?”

  “I rested.”

  “The answer’s no, then.”

  “Welcome to my brave, new world.”

  Poppy took a bite out of one of the chocolate croissants, then shoved it back into the bag. Her eyes flicked toward the house; clearly she was thinking, Coffee. But talking about Galen was easier in the dark surrounded by sounds of the waking forest rather than under the glare and hum of kitchen halogens.

  “I just need to get him home,” Hannah said. “Out of California, away from the ex-girlfriend and the mental hospital. Home to the cottage, so I can help him heal.”

  “Think that’s a good idea—leaving him unsupervised in the cottage?”

  Acorns splattered the cottage porch in a series of pops as if fired from a muzzled BB gun, and the Crayola-colored spinners she’d hung for her father the week before his death swirled in a sudden breeze, whirring softly.

  “He’ll be home,” Hannah said. “And he won’t be unsupervised. I’ll be watching over him, which is better than right now. His therapy ends at four and then he returns to an empty apartment for the rest of the day. He spends every evening and every night alone.”

  Poppy sucked chocolate off her fingers. “And the whole heavy-duty meds thing isn’t freaking out your inner holistic-ness?”

  “Sometimes medication is the cure.”

  “And sometimes it makes things worse. People in pain do painful things, Han.”

  The downside of exposing secrets to a friend: she knew how to hurt you.

  “So.” Poppy rustled the bag closed. “You figure out what happened? I mean, the whole sequence of events?”

  “Not entirely, since Galen didn’t want us in any of the therapy sessions. It still makes no sense
to me. How can you return to grad school, drop out of classes and decide to die in a matter of weeks? I was hoping, when he came home, he might talk to you.”

  Poppy broke eye contact. “Sure.”

  In the forest, a pair of coonhounds bayed, a nasty reminder that at least one of the fancy new homes on the ridge was now occupied.

  “On to happier things. Fill me in on your life,” Hannah said. “What have I missed?”

  “I met this guy.”

  “Poppyyyyy. Not again.”

  “Eighty-year-old guy. You’d approve.”

  Hannah slapped the side of her head. “Argh, sorry. Completely forgot about Hawk’s Ridge. How’s it working out?”

  “You were right about the whole art therapy thing. Love hanging out with the old folks. Don’t think it’s going to turn into a paying gig, but the director and the staff stay clear. Let me do my own thing. There’s this sweet guy, Jacob. You, missy, would love him. Knows a shit-ton about plants and trees. A real woodsman. Such a shame to see him cooped up in that place. Has this grandson who’s on an amazing European adventure. I took Jacob to Walmart the other day and we bought a huge map and colored Sharpies so we could plot the kid’s route. They’re not supposed to tape stuff to the walls.” Poppy grinned. “So we stuck it up with half a roll of packing tape. Bwah-hah-hah.”

  “You think that’s a good idea?”

  “Rules, Han, are for breaking. Especially when you’re eighty. Can I borrow the truck today? I found a kiln for sale. Thought I’d check it out.”

  Poppy already had two kilns but barely used one. The recession was strangling her ceramics business.

  “And where are you going to put another kiln?”

  “Lordy, a girl can never have too many kilns!”

  “Okay, sure.” Hannah meant no. No, it’s horribly inconvenient; no, I need the truck for work. But no was such a difficult word. It always gummed up her mouth like sticky toffee. Still, good to know your greatest weakness, even if, at forty-five, it was more of a fluorescent tattoo inked on your forehead.