“You wrote that diary for me, to keep me in line. I’d started high school, I was getting older, I was beginning to see through you, wasn’t I? But I was stil sad, stil lonely. So you gave me a fairy tale.
A story I could cling to. Something that would explain you and excuse you. And my God, it worked, didn’t it? I just ate it up.”
Suddenly, Laura was fighting back tears. She held up a hand to Hannah and wheezed as she tried to take a breath. Her face tightened again in fear as she tried and failed to draw another breath.
“Hannah . . .” It was a gasp more than it was a word.
“Stop it, Mom,” Hannah said flatly.
It took a minute for Laura to realize that this time Hannah wasn’t going to run to the rescue. She dropped the outstretched hand, straightened up, and her expression changed to one of injured innocence. “How could you ever think that of me? That I could do that to you? How could you accuse me, after everything I’ve been through . . .”
Hannah saw the calculation in her mother’s eyes and wondered how she could ever have been blind to it.
“It’s not true,” Laura continued. “Not true. Whoever told you al of this is lying to you. Manipulating you.”
“You told me that my father was a murderer and a rapist. You let me go to Virginia to do everything I could to keep him in prison.
That’s sick. You’re a sick person.”
“I never lied to you. Michael Dandridge is not your father.”
“Jesus, Mom. Give it up. He’s a free man. You must know that by now. A DNA test would take a few weeks. What are you going to do when I come to you with the results?”
Laura shook her head in seeming distress. “If you did do a test it would only prove that I’ve been tel ing the truth. But . . . if by the smal est chance . . . I mean . . . I don’t think so, but the rape . . .”
Hannah felt sick. “Jesus, Mom.”
Laura looked back at her, mutinous.
“Why do you hate him so much? Because he left you? Or because he wasn’t as rich as you thought he was when you hooked up with him?”
Laura just shook her head.
“How much punishment would have been enough? You sent him to prison for eleven years. You almost got him kil ed.”
“I had nothing to do with him going to prison!” Laura flared up.
“What happened in Virginia had nothing to do with me.”
“Bul shit. I checked the files. The cops were looking for a scapegoat, sure, but they chose Michael for a reason. Those anonymous calls. Michael’s lawyers thought the cops made them up.
But I’ve checked. Those cal s came from Orono. They came from here. They came from you.”
For the longest moment Laura said nothing. Then she straightened up, and al the distress fel out of her expression. She smoothed her hair back from her face. “You can’t prove any of this,”
she said.
Al the breath went out of Hannah’s lungs. She stood stil for a moment, then forced herself to move, to walk toward her bedroom.
She pul ed a suitcase out from under her bed and started packing, throwing in clothes and books as fast as she could. Laura stood in the door and watched.
“I’m going to tel the Spencers the truth,” Hannah said. “I’l take that DNA test and prove that you lied to them. They’l come after you with their expensive lawyers.”
Laura’s expression didn’t change. “If they come after me, they’l come after your precious father too. He’s the one who betrayed their trust. Don’t you think he’s suffered enough?”
Hannah ground her teeth and kept packing.
“Where wil you go?” Laura asked.
“None of your business.”
Laura smiled. “I wouldn’t be quite so confident, if I were you. You forget that I control the money. You walk out of that door and I cut you off.”
Hannah closed the suitcase. There was an empty backpack at the bottom of her closet. She took her col ege folders from her desk, put them in the backpack, and fil ed up the rest of the space with pajamas and underwear. That would have to do. She put the backpack on her back.
“I did terrible things, Mom, but I can’t blame you for that. That’s on me. I’m not a child. I have to take responsibility for my own decisions, for my mistakes. I’m not going to be like you, see?
Blaming everyone else, hating everyone else. But I’m done. I’m done with you.” As she spoke Hannah felt the last connection between them, a tight cord of pain, snap. She took a breath, and the air felt cleaner.