Hannah
She and her sister had walked part of the upper path when they went to book club, but Hillary had been leading. Hillary had known the way, didn’t hesitate once, even as it grew dark, and Hannah hadn’t been paying attention. Now, she tried to retrace her steps up the hill, from creek to road to lane, to see the damage from the fire, but she’d clearly turned the wrong way. She stopped, annoyed with herself. You were supposed to get lost in the dark, not the light.
Stands of trees encircled her, their green mixed with a few golden leaves. Just enough coverage still to block her view. To shroud the sounds from the houses, the road. She didn’t remember this spot or this feeling of being deep inside the trees. For a long stretch, she actually couldn’t see anything. Not the creek, not the streets, which had to be there, one above, one below. Not the houses with their blinking cameras and their shrieking alarms and their close-to-the-house landscaping, pointy and sharp, boxwood and holly, that warned you not to get too close to the windows. All that receded, and now, she could be anywhere. Lost in the woods, the vague scent of damp pine and grass in the air.
She couldn’t see the book club’s pool house ahead, the neighboring house, the scorched grass and trees. She couldn’t see Susan’s house, perched below it, either. But as she kept going, she knew she was going in the right direction, because she could smell it slightly, invading the cleanness of the pine. Ash mixed in, duskier now. A bonfire smell. An autumn smell from childhood. Would it really linger that long? Or had there been another fire in a fire pit, something else?
She kept walking up, up, slipping a little on the leaves and wood chips, leaning down with her hands to climb up part of it, scrabbling really, until she stood at the crest of the hill. The trees thinner and less solid there, no oaks or sycamores, thin birches, tall lindens. The evergreens on the edges of properties, planted as a dark green fence, a perimeter, to keep people from wandering off the path. Did it work? Or did living along a path ensure that people wandered in, like architectural tourists, like sneakered anthropologists, wondering how folks in McMansions lived?
There were a series of right and left turns on the path, forks she could have taken and didn’t, and unlike in a park or on a mountain, they weren’t marked. She smiled wryly at this thought and at what the trails would be called—Book Club Pass. Missing Girl Gulch. The wood-chip floor and low branches, the wooden planks set over the muddiest, rootiest parts—these were all known to residents and maintained by someone, but who? The neighborhood association? A team of volunteers with what, machetes and mallets? She shuddered. She realized how little she knew about the neighborhood, let alone the neighbors. My sister is here! It’s a good school district! I can afford it! That was the sum total of her thought process.
Finally, she came around a bend and entered a clearing in the trees, off to the right. She heard a car through the trees. Was it the street where the book club had been? Susan’s house? Above Rose Lane, it was Linden Lane. Linden Lane, which dipped down to Ford Gulch, then the covered bridge over to Tamsen Farm Road. Had to be. She was about to go through the trees to the street, to save time, when she heard a sound ahead.
A small gasp, then a rustle.
She kept walking slowly toward it, as if she knew the sound was too soft to be dangerous.
The path split, and on the right-hand fork, a woman stood, blowing her nose. Petite. Blond. When she looked at Hannah, her eyes were rimmed in red, as if she’d been crying for days. On TV, the Harris girl’s mother looked more composed, as if she’d marshaled her strength. Now, that strength was gone.
“Are you all right?” Hannah asked and immediately wanted to kick herself.
“No.”
“Should I call someone for you?”
“You’re my neighbor,” she said, half questioning.
“Oh,” Hannah said. “Um, yes, I’m new. Just moved here. Hannah.”
“You waved at my house, the camera.”
“Oh, God, how embarra—”
“I liked it,” she said and smiled, a small, tight smile. She slipped her Kleenex in the pocket of her turquoise down jacket and held out her hand. “You’re Hannah Sawyer. I’m Kendra.”
Kendra’s smile didn’t get any bigger as they shook hands. She provided a few awkward pleasantries about the neighborhood. About people being nice, generally, and quiet. As if she was apologizing for the hubbub, the flashing lights, the badges tapping on windows.
Hannah breathed in deeply, trying not to study her but being unable to stop noticing. Her hand was thin, almost weightless. Everything about her was diminutive. Her mouth, her seashell ears. Her feet swallowed by her running shoes. Hannah felt large and ungainly next to her, but also, it had to be said, powerful and healthy in contrast. Had Kendra’s daughter been that small and vulnerable, too?
“I’m so sorry about your daughter,” she said. “I was part of the search party.”
“I know.”
“Oh?”
“I wasn’t there, as you probably know, but the police make a list of volunteers. Then they kind of hover. They love those search parties. I think they enjoy luring people in and watching to see if anyone behaves oddly. Not that anyone did. Or anyone they told me about anyway.”
Hannah hadn’t thought of that. How awful that this woman knew that anyone there to help could be a criminal. Right outside her windows. In the pool house. All over her yard. Had they told her this, or had she surmised?
“So…does hiking help you take your mind off things at all? Not that anything could help.”
“It does, a little. Partly because Liza loved these woods and paths. She was a little explorer. Always wanted to be outside.”
“Free range,” Hannah said.
“Yes. Which is why part of me is grateful she was found so soon. And wasn’t, you know, kidnapped and kept somewhere in a shed or something. I’m awful to think of that and compare, I know. But at least she was running free and happy.”
“I don’t think you’re awful.”
“Well, you haven’t seen me in the middle of the night, freaking out, blaming her father, blaming myself,” she said. That small smile again.
“Your husband is home?”
“Yes, and my son, for now.”
“Oh, I didn’t realize you had a son. I—”
“He’s in college. He took a leave.”
Hannah shouldn’t have been surprised by this, but she was. She should be accustomed to women who looked too young to have grown adult children. The Main Line was full of them. The world was full of them. Moms proud to get asked “What’s your major?” when they dropped their kids off at college.
“The police went all the way up to Colby to interview him, too, can you believe that? As if he could magically, invisibly have flown home and strangled his sister.”
Hannah startled a bit at the words Kendra used: kidnapped, strangled. They flew out of her mouth naturally, as if they were just other verbs. She supposed if you heard them often enough, they could be.
“Are you a runner?”
“Sometimes. But I’m not really exercising per se, just clearing my head. I wanted to see the area where they found her,” Kendra said, “but it’s still cordoned off. I just came back. Is that where you’re headed, too?”
“Um, not rea—”
“It’s okay if you are. Everyone’s curious. I saw your brother-in-law there last week, just staring at it in the middle of his run.”
Hannah opened her mouth in surprise, tried to speak, but could think of nothing to say.
“It doesn’t mean anything. Despite what the cops tell you, it doesn’t. He was watching the fire cleanup like a little boy with a Tonka truck watching construction.”
“That does sound like Ben,” Hannah said.
The wind picked up a bit, and they both reached for their hoods at the same time, which made them both smile. Kendra’s shiny blue hood was rimmed in coral, and it was pretty against her skin and her eyes, even after crying. It made Hannah want to throw away her black jacket and get something brighter, happier.
“I was just walking. Just wandering, really. Thinking about running, but it’s slippery. I got totally turned around for a while.”
“Try it in the dark.”
“I don’t think so.”
“We hung lanterns for a while. Solar ones. The neighborhood association. Then kids started stealing them, throwing rocks.”
“That’s terrible. Kids from somewhere else?”
“Hard to know. Friends of kids, who knows. They were on foot though, so…”
“Lanterns would be pretty.”
“Yes. Now we only have them for the fall festival. They’re still planning on having it, you know. Susan came and asked me if it was okay, and of course I said yes. Just because a killer is roaming free, we shouldn’t stop the kids’ fun. Oh, that sounded terrible, didn’t it?”
“No,” Hannah said. “You shouldn’t have to watch what you say in your own backyard on top of everything else you’re going through.”
They walked for a while in silence, making their way slowly, hands in their pockets, hoods muffling the babble of the creek and the rustle of squirrels, the last calls of the geese overhead.
“Kendra,” Hannah said as they approached her house, “if you need anything, please don’t hesitate. Even if you need someone to…I don’t know, drive you to get a root canal, I’m there.”
Kendra laughed, her mouth finally stretching open. “Well, that’s a first. Usually people offer chopped salad or chicken quesadillas. But thank you. And you know what? I’d rather have a root canal, to be honest.”
“I bet you would,” Hannah said, smiling.
“Maybe we could walk sometime,” Kendra said. “Some morning.”
“I’d like that.”
Kendra looked off into the trees, then closed her eyes briefly, like she was meditating.
Hannah took that as a cue. “I’m going to head back. Cross the street. Hit the computer again.”
“Great. I’ll come over one of these mornings,” Kendra said wistfully. “Perhaps we can keep each other from getting lost.”
“Anytime,” Hannah replied.
Hannah cut through the thin brush to the road, then dusted off her pants. The walk had been mostly downhill, and her shins protested a little. Crossing the street, she saw it coming up the road. One of those conspicuous cars that don’t belong in the neighborhood. The detectives’ car. Heading to her house. Almost as if they’d known who she had been walking with and talking to.