Chapter Five Hanna
Chapter Five
Hanna
The heavier-than-usual lunch rush ended, and not one second too soon. My head pounded from clenching my teeth and holding
in the loudest primal scream ever uttered. The pulse in the café had been frenetic. Overly excited. People kept piling in,
then they lingered. Aubrey and the rest of the Tanner family dominated the chatter at every table.
If Aubrey thrived on attention now like she did back then, she should feel very satisfied with the response to today’s surprise
antics. The whole town trembled with nonstop questions. I had a few of my own, like what she might say that could ruin us
all . . . and by all I meant me.
“I don’t get it.” Jeremy shook his head as he spun his almost empty coffee mug around on the table.
The two of us sat alone during the break. Well, us and Aubrey. She might be gone but her presence lingered. She might as well
have plunked down between us and munched on a cookie.
I needed a few minutes of non-Aubrey time. “Jeremy, maybe we could—”
“She acted like you two were friends.” He sat back in his chair with his arms resting on the wooden tabletop sourced from
a crumbling barn that once stood a few miles away. “What was that about?”
This conversation topic refused to die. “We are not friends. Not then. Not now.”
Done. End of story.
“But you have to admit her showing up supports my theory.”
So much for moving on. I capitulated. Engaging now might burn through his interest and save me from a full-blown aneurysm
later. “Which is?”
“She killed them. Her family. Mom, Dad, and her brother, Noah. She burned down the family’s bookstore in town to cover her
tracks or buy time. Not sure about that part.”
The bookstore. Her father, Patrick’s, vanity project. A place that specialized in what most people refer to as coffee-table
books and very serious works of nonfiction and prizewinning historical fiction. Mostly, it operated as a vehicle for him to
show off. He’d invite authors into town and host events. He spoke frequently to rapt audiences made up predominantly of what
I’d describe as the PBS crowd. Answered questions. Talked about his writing process.
Lectured. Bloviated. Bored me to death.
The night the Tanners disappeared the bookstore burned down.
The fire started in the kitchenette. The accelerant discovered on the first floor led to whispers about arson.
Xavier insisted it was an electrical fire and the timing was suspicious but unrelated.
Not an easy sell to anyone except the officials in charge of investigating.
No one liked to talk about the fire that killed Xavier’s sister, Stella’s grandmother, decades ago either. That was the first
mysterious Tanner fire. The bookstore was the second.
“Aubrey’s brother was only a kid, which makes this whole thing really sick.” Jeremy’s sour expression fit his haunting words.
For the thousandth time the facts I tried to block came rushing back. Noah. Eight. Old enough to fight back. To scream for
help. “Most people assume it was a murder-suicide. That Patrick and Victoria had a marriage issue or some big secret that
blew up and Patrick killed them all in a rage.”
Come over I need your help
That text from Patrick. I should have ignored it. The fact I didn’t led to so many bad choices and years of panic and shame.
Jeremy frowned. “Did he seem homicidal to you?”
“No.” Patrick didn’t give off a violent vibe at all, but I often wondered if I’d missed a clue.
If I’d gotten to the house faster. If I hadn’t lied to the police. If I hadn’t touched or seen anything. The if onlys stacked up and condemned me.
“If a murder-suicide happened, why weren’t the dead bodies in the house? What did Patrick do with them? You’ve heard the podcasts
and then there was the Dateline episode. That question never gets answered,” Jeremy said.
Oh, damn. That episode would run again with some sort of update attached. This was worse than the rumors about some guy wanting to write a book about the whole disaster. This nightmare would never be over.
“Some people think Patrick moved the bodies and ran. Now we know Aubrey walked away. What about the rest of them?” Jeremy
continued with a pile-on of loose ends. “Was she the only survivor? Is she the one who made everyone disappear? But how did
she clean it up?”
So many questions. I couldn’t blame him since I had them, too.
Jeremy kept going. “Who really knew what was going on in that house?”
I did. I didn’t like to advertise that, of course, but me.
I’d spent a lot of time with the family. First as a wide-eyed, eager college student. I’d taken a part-time job with Patrick,
doing background research and fact-checking his history books when I wasn’t busy running the register at the bookstore. I
hadn’t known “historian” was an actual job until my professor told me about the open position as Patrick’s helpful sidekick.
My pregnancy changed that. I maintained a patchwork quilt of jobs after that to keep food on the table. I helped Patrick out,
which Victoria hated. I also ignored the rumors and continued to work at the bookstore. I watched other people’s kids. Walked
dogs. Whatever it took.
It was my main job, working in the café that I now owned, that saved me.
I served food, washed dishes, and ran the register.
Basically, I did whatever the then owner, Irene, needed done.
In return, she let me bring Jeremy and put him in the office.
We lived in a room in her house until she decided to retire.
We worked out a rent-to-own situation for the café that let me buy the business for a ridiculously low price, including the apartment upstairs, where we lived even now.
During all of that, I was in and out of the Tanner home. Subject to the arguments and stilted dynamic. Victoria and Patrick’s
marriage had been outwardly cheery and loving. Inside? Not as glossy.
Victoria tried to maintain the facade and build the perfect family, fighting Patrick’s ambivalence until her frustration blew.
She would yell about her disappointment. How she’d married him expecting a certain type of life. Stable. Robust. Thrilling.
The kind of partnership she’d always wanted and that his wealth had promised her.
Year by year, he broke Victoria down. Tested her with his enthusiasm for everything and everyone but her. Flirted with every
woman but his wife. Ignored her in favor of his work and his friends as if she were a toy he’d grown tired of. Whatever love
remained between them seemed to shrivel until their discussions, each interaction, operated with an outward sheen of civility
behind forced smiles and sharp words.
The family had dinner together every night. Victoria’s rule. Part of what she thought a family should do. Having been a reluctant
participant more than once meant listening to the standard what did you do today questions followed by grumbling answers and no follow-up because no one seemed to care about the actual responses.
I started the job with Patrick right before I turned nineteen, my work sandwiched in between classes. Five years later they
were all dead . . . or missing . . . or whatever the current thinking was about the end to their existence.
“You said Aubrey was weird and creepy. Not to me, but I’ve heard you say it.” He smiled. “Because I’m not the only one in the house who’s gossiped about the Tanners.”
Not my fault. It was pretty hard to ignore a missing family. And I’d really tried. “It’s the town’s favorite pastime. Next
to ghost stories and Halloween.”
“Two weeks until trick-or-treaters. You can’t walk outside without tripping over a pumpkin.”
We were dealing with enough scary shit, thanks. “Great.”
Even the café showed a few signs of the incoming Halloween trauma. I’d been overruled when I said we should go with zero decoration.
I took a little bit of time off and now it looked like some monster spewed orange vomit all over the shelves and display window.
I did benefit from the season. The whole town did. Even now, tourists gathered on the corner in preparation for some new walking
tour. Dead people and their ghosts were big business. My yearly jump in sales at this time of year proved it.
“Aubrey has to know, right?” Jeremy stopped slouching. He balanced his elbows on the edge of the table as his eyes lit with
excitement. “What happened to the rest of them, I mean.”
“Possibly.” Clipped. Noncommittal. I didn’t have the energy for any other response.
“You worked for her dad. You never talk about it, but I doubt you’d work for a killer.”
This topic couldn’t lead anywhere good. “Let’s talk about something else.”
“We need to be ready. No one is going to whisper about anything else for weeks, maybe months.”
My headache kicked up to big band levels. “That’s my worry.”
“I’m actually excited she came back.”
Sweet Jesus. This day was trying to kill me. “Why?”
“She said she was going to stop by again to see you. That means I’ll get an up-close view and can decide if all those theories
about her being dangerous are right.”
He’d missed the point. Aubrey’s last words weren’t friendly or about catching coffee sometime. She’d issued a threat. A subtle
one but one meant all for me. Jeremy didn’t pick up on the clues because he didn’t know her or that family. I’d spent years
limiting his information and exposure. Not an easy task since no one else shared my let’s not talk about them fervor when it came to the Tanners.
“Do you ever think about what would have happened if you were still working with Patrick Tanner, at that house, when they
vanished?”
Every damn day.
The knife. I could see it when I closed my eyes. But there was so much more. The breakfast dishes on the table despite Victoria’s
clear rules that the kitchen be clean at all times. The front door standing wide open.
Jeremy didn’t show any interest in being diverted from the Tanner mania sweeping across the county, but I tried another deflection
anyway. “Okay, we should—”
“I’ve read up on the case. They found blood in the kitchen and the parents’ bedroom. Specks in Patrick’s office. I’m betting
that’s where you worked. Same room. Maybe the same desk.”
All of that. Yes.
“Man.” He whistled. “I know it sucks that you dropped out of college and all, but you got lucky.”
Not the word I’d pick. “Yeah, I feel lucky.”
“I’m just saying it’s a good thing you moved on or you could have been there on the actual day of the murders.”
That was the problem. I was there that day.
And Aubrey knew it.