Chapter Nine Hanna
Chapter Nine
Hanna
Marni and Stella thrived on drama. That was the only explanation for dragging me back to the coffee shop this long after closing.
I had to get up around four, but they didn’t seem to give a crap about that. Or me.
I didn’t want to see them. I didn’t want to open the door. My inclination was to ignore the panicked text I’d received and
curl up in bed, wrapped in a blanket to shut out reality as long as possible.
For all their tough talk, one sign of trouble and they both caved. They’d made an elaborate list of seemingly unnecessary
rules years ago, outlining how we should stay away from each other and how we should act if that couldn’t be avoided. The
edict? Act like pleasant acquaintances and nothing more. In a town of about ten thousand people that should have been easy,
and it mostly had been, but those carefree times ended in that courtroom.
Aubrey’s parting shot from earlier still haunted me. I’ll see you soon, Hanna.
I could hear her voice. Deep and sure with an edge of gotcha. Adult. Focused. Accusatory. The sound echoed in my head. Buzzed through me at the worst times all day. No amount of business
paperwork or cleaning wiped out her mocking.
Customers chatted and gossiped about her. Jeremy theorized. I’d tried to stay blank . . . and failed miserably.
Aubrey was coming for me, probably for all of us, which was the only reason I waited at the coffee bar after eight with the
shop door unlocked and the inside lights set to low. The bell at the entrance would chime when Stella and Marni walked in.
Until then I could worry and fight the urge to do something even though I had no idea what that something would be.
Marni blew in first. Every time I saw her a vision of her standing in the Tanner house raced through my mind. Fifteen years
later and I could still see the blood on her hands.
Tonight, she wore a raincoat buttoned up to her neck. It likely had been new a decade ago. The dull gray color matched her
haggard appearance. Not unusual for her. She taught third grade now, and that age was no joke. She waged a daily battle in
a classroom filled with kids teetering on the edge between independence and irritability. Marni likely started each day refreshed
and put together, then slid rapidly downhill from there.
I wouldn’t go back and do Jeremy’s exhausting early school years over if someone paid me.
Of course, I didn’t want to relive the angsty high school years either.
Being a really young single mother had sucked.
Nothing I did ever felt like enough. Nearing forty and being long out of the diaper-and-parent-meetings stage did not suck one bit.
“Hi.” That’s it. Marni said the word, then slid onto the counter stool next to mine.
She didn’t make eye contact while she snuck a few peeks around the shop. This was one of the few times she’d ventured inside.
The other occasions had been in groups where she clearly hadn’t been the one to pick the hangout spot and fidgeted until her
party was ready to leave.
She had to be curious about my life. I’d be surprised if she wasn’t. I’d often wondered how Stella and Marni moved on after
the inconceivable happened.
We agree none of us should be here, so we aren’t. That’s the deal. Agreed?
Stella’s words. I could hear her and my meek acquiescence from long ago like it just happened. I was older now and I’d like
to think stronger, possibly wiser, but was I?
“Is Stella coming?” Marni asked.
How the hell should I know? This wasn’t my show. They called for the meeting, not me. “Sure. I guess.”
Marni finally faced me. “I’m not convinced this is a good idea. Meeting, I mean.”
Of course it wasn’t.
“Agreed.” This was a weird game. I only played along because a fresh cup of coffee surged through me, and I needed to burn
that off if I had any hope of sleeping tonight. “It was inevitable we’d get thrown together, though rushing to see each other
the same day Aubrey popped up isn’t exactly subtle.”
Marni slumped against the counter. “What are you talking about?”
I replayed my side of the conversation in my head. No, all the words made sense. Marni’s odd expression didn’t.
I tried again, aiming for straightforward because I was too tired to come up with clever comebacks. “We were in the same courtroom,
right? Aubrey did a big ta-da. We all froze. It ended and we scattered.”
“Yeah, I know. I mean the meeting.” She put her bag on the counter and undid the buttons on her raincoat. “Tonight.”
Good Lord, this was annoying. “What’s happening right now? Why don’t you just say whatever has you confused?”
A noise at the door interrupted the stilted conversation. Stella slipped inside the café and quickly closed the door behind
her, cutting off the warning chime mid-ding. She threw the lock while acting covert and suspect and trapping us all in a space
that tightened by the second.
Stella glanced around the room, not even trying to hide her assessment of the shop. Her gaze would hesitate on some item,
then she’d frown. She repeated the cycle a few times before walking over to us.
So, she hadn’t changed. Still quietly disapproving. I hadn’t missed that trait at all.
She took her role of big-time therapist very seriously. Always rushing around, in demand, sometimes on television news programs
spouting opinions. She’d been anointed an “alienated child” expert. The title struck me as a bit over-the-top, which fit with
the rest of her personality.
I looked up the description after reading it the first time. Apparently, she specialized in doing assessments in contested child custody cases where one party, at some point in the divorce proceedings, blamed the other for bad-mouthing and making the kid hate them.
That sounded like a nightmare career. Give me pastries any day.
“I’m here,” Stella said on a heavy sigh.
“Excellent.” I didn’t mean that at all.
“And?” Stella being Stella, she made her presence sound like something we should all be grateful for and celebrate.
For a therapist the woman had an astounding lack of self-awareness.
When no one responded or explained their nonsense, I jumped in. “I don’t understand the question.”
Stella talked over me. “We should have waited for Aubrey’s first move before meeting.”
I basically said the same words a minute ago, but something about Stella with her perfect clothes, all monochrome and stylish,
and her blunt blond bob brought out my competitive side. The challenge likely stemmed from being almost eight years younger
and having met her when we were not on equal footing.
She’d been finishing her impressive degree and talking about studying for her licensing exam. I’d been working part-time for
anyone who would pay me, including Patrick, and changing diapers. Barely holding it together as the vision I had for my life
careened into a wall.
“I think rising from the dead was Aubrey’s first move.” Seemed obvious to me but I said it anyway.
Stella frowned. She was a very proficient frowner. “That’s not funny.”
I snorted because it felt appropriate under the circumstances. “No kidding.”
“What do you hope to accomplish here? Or are you just winging it?” Stella eyed one of the empty barstools but didn’t sit down.
She stayed on her feet. Hovering.
So annoying. “Maybe we could park the attitude and all your bullshit for a few minutes. It’s been years. We can interact in a more adult
way now.”
Marni picked up her bag and put it on her lap. After a few seconds, she placed it back on the counter. She acted like a jittery
bundle of nerves and did nothing to hide her discomfort. She appeared to perform a mental countdown before her shoulders slumped.
“Aubrey’s appearance doesn’t have to be a bad thing.”
Stella’s eyes bulged. “How do you figure that?”
“It’s good she’s alive,” Marni shot back.
The eye bulging thing didn’t stop. “You can’t be serious.”
I was with Stella on this one. Yay to being alive and all that, but I didn’t exactly cheer Aubrey’s return to Sleepy Hollow. Be alive in another state.
Tension strangled the room. The pressure closed in and ramped up inside me. The headache that had been lingering on the edge
all day exploded into full-blown pain.
“Okay, let’s try this.” I slid off the stool because standing made me feel more in control. “We could be honest with each
other. Share what we know. What we remember.”
Me and that knife. The blood on Marni’s hands. Running into Stella in the driveway. Each piece of the puzzle flipped through
my mind.
“Is that why you texted Marni?” Stella asked me. “You thought we’d come here and unburden ourselves?”
Wait . . . what? “I didn’t text.” I looked at Marni. “You texted me.”
Marni shook her head. “When?”
Oh, shit. This couldn’t be good. “So, neither of you called this meeting?”
“You did. You texted Marni. She sent it to me. I’ve read it.” Stella delivered the words nice and slow, as if she realized
their import as she said them.
I held out my hand. “Let me see your phones. Both of you.”
Stella unlocked hers and showed me the screen without bitching. From her stunned expression, I guessed she sensed the escalation
in danger, too.
The text Marni forwarded to Stella purported to come from me. I took Marni’s phone and checked her contacts. My real number
was in there. We didn’t have a history of texts. It had been years. “The name and number don’t match.”
Stella crowded in to look at the screen. “Is it fake? The text has Hanna’s name but no corresponding phone number.”
“I thought the text sounded weird.” Marni stopped straining to see the screen and plopped back on the stool. “Meet at the coffee place at 8. Place? Why wouldn’t you say the name of your café?”
“Because I didn’t send any texts.” I said it even as my mind raced ahead, plowing right into the abyss.
Jeremy lived on tech. He spent a ridiculous amount of time lecturing me in an exasperated-teen way about how things worked and artificial intelligence and a host of other topics that I tried to tune out.
He also made it his part-time job to warn me about phone scams and the danger of clicking on unknown links, as if I lacked common sense.
This one time I appreciated his tech savvy.
“The texts must have come from some sort of app or email that hides the real sender’s identity.” I knew about that sort of
thing because I kept getting fake messages claiming to be from the IRS.
“This is a setup.” Stella’s big brain had kicked into gear. She said the words we all wanted to ignore. “You’re thinking Aubrey
pulled this off.”
That was the nightmare running through my head, yes. “I’ve thought of little other than her since she did her diva walk into
the courtroom this morning.”
“Oh, God.” Marni rubbed her forehead with a shaky hand.
“Okay, enough.” Stella held up both hands. “We need to get out of here. We’re—”
The knock on the café door cut her off. For some reason the outside motion sensor light hadn’t clicked on. Whoever waited
out there in the dark did so without giving a hint about who they were.
But I knew. We all knew.
My stomach dropped. “Too late.”