In Room 5A, Jordan and Hannah sit across from each other. Hannah’s on her bed, and Jordan’s on the one that used to belong to Sophie. The mattress is barely softer than a camping pad; he wonders how he never noticed that before. The door is open, and Jordan catches glimpses of Andy shuffling back and forth, up and down the hall.
He rubs his eyes. He’d lain awake all night, haunted and sickened by what he’d read. Turning the awful images over and over in his mind. Debating, all over again, whether it was right to bring Hannah’s dark past into the light.
No matter how Jordan tossed and turned and fought with himself, he always came to the same conclusion. Hannah deserved to know the past she’d been hiding from herself.
But, he decided, no one else did.
That’s why none of the Belman staff knows he’s in here, or has any idea what he’s about to do.
Hannah looks at him quizzically. Her dark eyes seem especially bright today. “Come on, what’s up?” she says. Then she smiles. “Lulu always likes to ask me that, but I never like to answer.”
He waits another minute. If he eases into the subject, he’ll only give her time to run. He’s got to come out and say it, as quickly and gently as possible. He read the whole box. He knows everything.
Reports show that Alana Dougherty had called police about alleged abuse by Brandon Mills on three separate occasions. A restraining order was filed, and Mr. Mills entered inpatient treatment for alcohol abuse.
“Wow, you’re a barrel of laughs today,” Hannah says. “What happened to the terrible jokes? Why aren’t you trying to get me to do a stupid puzzle?”
Mr. Mills allegedly continued to return to the residence after his discharge from Ludlow Treatment Center. Ms. Dougherty informed social workers that he had “turned everything around.”
“I need to talk to you about your family,” Jordan says.
Hannah immediately stiffens. “I don’t have a family. Not in this world, anyway.”
“But you did,” he says. “And I know about them. I know about your mother, and I know about Mary. Not your little sister from the Middle Ages. Your little sister from here. I know she was only four when she died.”
On the night of January 10, Mr. Mills gained entry into Ms. Dougherty’s apartment while she was giving her daughter Mary a bath. Mr. Mills was allegedly yelling and threatening Ms. Dougherty. Ms. Dougherty attempted to hide in the bathroom with her children. It is believed that when Mr. Mills gained entry into the room, he attacked all three with a pair of kitchen scissors and a butcher knife.
Hannah seems to be visibly shrinking. Jordan crosses the room and sits down beside her. “I think that if you can let yourself remember what happened, you can learn how to cope with it. You don’t have to keep running away. You don’t have to keep going to the castle. Do you trust me?”
She blinks at him. Her chin dips. He tells himself it’s a nod.
And so Jordan Hassan begins to tell Hannah Dougherty every dark thing that he’s learned about her past.