“Of course. Of course you can, darling,” Laura said.
“I’m not talking about the drinking, Mom. I’m talking about everything else.”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“You’ve told me the truth, right?” Hannah said. She glanced over her shoulder. “Look, I need to ask you something. It’s very important.”
“Al right.”
“Everything you wrote in your diary. It’s al true, right? You didn’t take poetic license with anything?”
“Poetic license? For God’s sake.” Laura was offended. Hannah’s instinct was to rush in, to apologize, to try to make it right. No. Not this time.
“The first time you kissed Tom, you held his hand. You traced a scar on his hand. It’s in the diary.”
“I . . . yes. I remember.” The emotion in Laura’s voice made Hannah hesitate.
“And you’re sure that’s how it happened?”
“I don’t understand. What . . . ?”
“There’s no way you could have mixed things up?” The thought of her mother ever touching Michael Dandridge with affection made Hannah nauseous.
“Hannah, this is crazy. What are you suggesting? You’re talking about my diary? My diary from Bar Harbor?”
Hannah closed her eyes. She knew her mother. If she pushed her what would come next would be tears and angry reproaches and then there would be more drinking and self-destruction and pieces to pick up and nowhere in any of that would she find the truth.
“I have to go, Mom.”
“No. You can’t just go. Not after asking questions like that. What’s this al about? What’s going on?”
“I have to go. I’m sorry. I’l cal you as soon as I can.” Hannah hung up and silenced the phone, pushing it deep into her pocket.
Sean was stil waiting for her farther down the path, looking at his own phone, seemingly ful y absorbed. Could he have overheard her conversation? She didn’t think so.
“Everything okay?” he asked.
She forced a smile. “Al good.”
“Okay if I pick you up tomorrow around ten?”
“Sounds good,” she said. She’d better cal the car rental company and arrange for another car to be delivered to Yorktown. She would go with him that far, stay with him until he’d interviewed, or tried and failed to interview, Sam Fitzhugh, and then she was going to go straight to Greensvil e. Straight to Dandridge. Straight to the truth.
Hannah
FOURTEEN
SATURDAY, AUGUST 31, 2019
The next day Sean picked her up and they drove slowly out of Charlottesvil e. They didn’t talk much and Hannah didn’t mind the silence. She wrapped her arms around herself and suppressed a shiver.
“Cold?” Sean asked. It was warm out, at least eighty degrees.
Hannah unwrapped her arms and took her phone out.
“I’m fine.” Hannah just wanted the next steps over with. She started to review Samuel Fitzhugh’s social media activity. He wasn’t a prolific poster, more of a commenter, but there were some photographs. Enough so that she and Sean would have no trouble picking him out of the crowd. She waited until Sean stopped at a traffic light, then held up her phone so that Sean could see it. “Here,”
she said. Her screen showed a photo of Samuel, sandy blond hair a little grown out, basebal cap on backward and wearing a muscle shirt that he didn’t quite fil out. He was posing goofily with three friends who were dressed much the same.
“Which one is he?” Sean asked.
“On the far left,” Hannah said. “In the blue shirt.” Sean took a closer look, nodded.
“Anything else on there that helps us?” he asked.
“There might be. There’s a lot of chatter about tonight. There’s a house party. Not at Sam’s house, one of his friends. I can’t figure out which one, though. And no one’s giving out the address or anything.”
Sean made a face. “It doesn’t sound too promising.”
“Yeah.” Hannah thought about it for a moment, then put down her phone. She searched around in her bag for her little bag of makeup —then flipped down the passenger mirror and applied a thick layer of mascara and the slickest, reddest lipstick she owned. She pul ed her hair out of its ponytail and flipped her head upside down for a second, tousling it so that it looked messy in that just-got-out-of-bed-wanna-get-me-back-in-it kind of way.
“What are you doing?” Sean said.
“What do you think I’m doing? I’m making a profile.” Hannah unbuttoned the top two buttons on her shirt, then shimmied sideways in the car, holding her phone away so that she could take a selfie, with an exaggerated pout and a peace sign. She took a second one, this time laughing, from a higher angle but making sure she caught some cleavage, then straightened back up and buttoned her shirt.