26. Hannah
Hannah
Imade coffee in the morning because it was like my father forgot how since I’d moved in.
While it sputtered, I started washing the dishes.
The water ran into the sink as I scrubbed at a plate Dad had left soaking in the sink.
A thin film of grease clung stubbornly to the surface until I worked it loose with the sponge.
I rinsed it clean, set it in the drying rack, then washed out the frying pan he’d used for eggs yesterday morning. Bits of dried yolk clung to the edge.
After that came the casserole dish from the lasagna I’d cooked the night before, the cheese baked hard around the corners. The repetitive motion should have been calming. Instead, it felt like proof that no matter where I went, there was always something waiting for me to take care of.
I dried my hands on the towel hooked through the oven handle and opened the fridge. All the groceries I’d bought were almost gone. I shut the door and pulled the new notepad off the side of the fridge.
“Hannah?” Dad called from the living room.
I closed my eyes for one second.
“Yeah?”
“The remote’s doing that thing again.”
I set the pen down and walked toward the living room. Dad sat in his recliner with the remote held out toward me.
“Did you try the batteries?” I asked.
He gave me a sheepish look. “I figured you’d know.”
I popped the back off the remote and dumped the batteries into my palm. I took two new ones from the junk drawer, slid them in, and clicked the remote at the television. The screen blinked, then came back to life with a man yelling about a used truck sale.
“There,” I said.
Dad took the remote like I had handed him a rescued animal. “Thanks, kiddo.” I started back to the kitchen to finish my list. “Oh. Kyle’s coming by in a few.”
I stopped and turned back around. “Okay.”
“He’s got some school thing he needs help with.” My stomach tightened.
Dad was focused on the television. “I told him you’d probably know what to do.”
I frowned. “Dad, I can’t handle Kyle’s stuff today.”
“It’s just nerves.” He looked over then, uncomfortable already. “You know how he is. You’ve always been good at talking him through things.”
I turned around, went back to the kitchen, and dropped the batteries in the trash. I then picked up the sponge by the sink and wiped down the counters. Everyone wanted something from me.
I really needed to find a short-term rental before my family drove me insane. The thought made my chest tighten. The agency still hadn’t matched me for a single position. Every day that passed made me more certain the Vossics had told the agency I’d had an affair with Brakkus.
If the agency fired me for inappropriate conduct with an employer, I’d have to go back to the hospital and find permanent housing.
It wasn’t the end of the world. Even if I’d had an affair with my boss while doing in-home care, not every hospital would care about that.
It would be highly embarrassing when they found out why I’d left my last position, but it wasn’t the end of my career.
It was all too awful to think about. I didn’t know if the agency had been informed of the lawsuit.
I didn’t know what the Vossics had done.
I was left in an in-between space where I was stuck in my father’s house, washing his laundry and catering to my brother.
I wished I had enough mental space left over to make some decision about what to do next with my life.
Which was hard enough without my bank account constantly being drained.
The front door opened a moment later.
“Kyle?” Dad called.
“Yeah,” Kyle said.
He came into the kitchen with his phone in his hand and a look on his face like the world had personally inconvenienced him. He was wearing the same hoodie he’d had on the last time I’d seen him, the sleeves shoved up to his elbows.
I shut off the sink and reached for the dish towel. “Hi.” He didn’t say hi back. “Did the payment go through?” I asked, incredulous.
“Yeah.” He shoved the phone toward me. “But it says it’s pending.”
I took the phone before I thought better of it. The technical school portal was open. His name was at the top, and beneath it, the balance showed zero. Paid in full. My money, right there in clean little numbers. Below that, a yellow box read: Enrollment Pending.
I tapped the message.
Required pre-start intake call must be completed with program coordinator before enrollment can be finalized. Student must confirm schedule availability, tool list, identification, and orientation date.
I read it and handed the phone back.
“You have to call the program coordinator.”
Kyle stared at me. “Yeah, I know.”
“Okay.”
“So.” He lifted the phone a little. “Can you do it?”
I looked at him across the kitchen, ready to bolt across the table and wring his neck.
“Make the call yourself, Kyle.”
“It’ll take five minutes.”
“Then it will only take you five minutes.”
He made a frustrated sound and looked down at the phone like the portal had betrayed him personally. “You don’t get it. These places make everything so hard. They ask a bunch of questions and put you on hold, and then I get pissed off.”
“So don’t get pissed off.”
His head snapped up. “Wow. Helpful.”
I folded the dish towel and set it on the counter because my hands needed something to do that wasn’t punching my baby brother in the face.
Kyle held the phone out again. “You’re better at talking to offices. You know how to make things sound right.”
“It’s your school and your intake call.”
He looked toward the living room, like Dad might appear and referee this into the version where I gave in.
Kyle lowered his voice. “Can you just do this one thing?”
I stared at him, my blood boiling.
“No,” I said again. “I’m not making your call.”
Kyle laughed. Not because anything was funny. Because I had said no, and he’d never heard it before.
“Are you serious? You want me to go to this school so much you’d pay all that money, but you won’t make one phone call?”
“I paid the tuition because you need to finally do something with your life, but I am not calling the school for you.”
His face changed. The lazy frustration sharpened into something meaner.
From the living room, Dad’s recliner creaked.
“Hannah?” he called. Neither of us answered.
Kyle lifted both hands, phone still in one of them. “I don’t get why you’re being like this.”
Dad appeared in the kitchen doorway. His gaze moved from Kyle’s face to mine. Whatever he saw there made him stop with one hand on the doorframe.
My hands were shaking. I curled my fingers around the back of the kitchen chair, my knuckles going white.
“Kyle,” Dad said carefully.
“No, it’s fine.” Kyle looked at him, then back at me. “Apparently she’s too busy to help anybody now.”
I squeezed the chair harder. I’d paid his tuition. I’d cooked dinner and washed the dishes and fixed the remote and made the coffee and written the grocery list. I’d been helping so long nobody recognized it unless I stopped. Dad backed out of the doorway without another word.
I looked Kyle dead in the face. “Make. Your. Own. Damned. Call. Kyle.”
His face hardened. “Wow.”
He turned on his heel, bashed into a chair and sent it skidding across the floor, then stormed out of the kitchen. The front door slammed hard enough to rattle the glass in the cabinet a moment later.
I flinched like something had hit me.
For a few seconds, I just stood there staring at the empty room. The chair Kyle had clipped sat crooked against the table. I heard the front door open again, and half expected Kyle to return for round two. I wiped both hands down the front of my jeans right as Megan stepped into the kitchen.
“Kyle just about took me out on the porch,” she said. “What the hell happened?”
I opened my mouth, but nothing came out. I shook my head, trying not to cry from the rage bubbling up inside me.
“Oh,” she said, quieter.
“I’m fine,” I said.
Megan stood across the kitchen where Kyle had just been, staring at me. “Yeah. No. You aren’t. What happened with Kyle?”
I reached for the chair and pushed it back under the table. My hand missed the first time. The room tilted a little, not enough to be dramatic, just enough to make me grab the chair harder.
“Hannah?”
“I need to lie down.”
Megan crossed the kitchen fast. “Okay. Come on.”
I let her take my elbow because my knees had gone loose and strange, like the anger had been the only thing holding me upright.
Megan walked me down the hall and opened the door to my old bedroom. It was still cluttered with Dad’s storage because there was nowhere else to put anything. Megan kicked a laundry basket out of my path with her foot and helped me sit down.
I sighed in an uncharacteristically dramatic way and lay down on the bed. All of the energy had just been sapped out of me. The ceiling fan turned slowly above me, wobbling on every rotation.
Megan sat beside me. “Was Kyle being Kyle, or was that about your last nanny job? You usually get housing between gigs. Did something happen? Is that why you’re staying with Dad?”
I covered my eyes with one arm.
“Hannah.”
“It got complicated.”
I stared back at the ceiling. “There was a custody issue. With the child’s orc grandparents. They don’t want their grandson to have a human nanny.” My throat tightened. “I had to leave before it got worse.”
“Oh, shit. That’s terrible.”
Megan was quiet for a few seconds. Then she said, “I thought you’d hit the jackpot when I sent the painting to a Barton Creek address. I guess rich people have just as much drama as everyone else.”
“Oh no,” I said.
Megan looked at me. “What?”
“The painting.” I pushed up on one elbow, then stopped because the room tilted again. “I left it there.” My throat got tighter. “I had it in my room. I packed so fast, I forgot.”
“Hannah, it’s okay. I can paint another one.” Megan’s face softened in a way that made me want to cry.
“I’ll go get it,” I said.
“You don’t have to if it’s too much drama.”
“It’s fine. I’ll just text and ask when I can stop by.”
Megan studied my face like she did not believe me, which was fair because I did not believe me either.
“I have to be at work in half an hour,” she said. “But I can stay until you’re less… like this.”
“I’m okay.”
“You are very obviously not okay.”
“I will be.”
She sat there another second, chewing the inside of her cheek. Then she leaned down and kissed my cheek, quick and awkward. “Take care of yourself, okay?”
“Okay…” I said, breathless.
After she left, I stayed on the bed with one hand pressed flat to my stomach, breathing through the sick, shaky feeling under my ribs.
I was not going back to the estate because I missed Brakkus or because some part of me still wished he’d fought harder to keep me from leaving.
I was going back for my sister’s thoughtful painting.
The one gift I’d received for my twenty-ninth birthday.
It was one of the few times anyone in my family had acknowledged anything I’d done for them.