Читать книгу When She Woke - Hillary Jordan - Страница 10

SHE MADE IT TO THE NINTH day before she asked. She hated to do it, but it was either that or become one of the screamers.

“I’d like a Bible,” she said, addressing the wall with the food compartment. Then she waited. Lunch came: two nutribars, one pill. No Bible. “Hey,” she said to the wall, not quite shouting. “Is anybody listening? I want a Bible. The warden said I could have one if I asked.” Reluctantly, she added, “Please.”

It arrived with dinner. It was the original King James Version, not the New International Version that Hannah had grown up with. The leather cover was cracked, the pages dog-eared. The New Testament was more worn than the Old, except for Psalms, the pages of which were so tattered and smudged she could barely make out some of the passages. But the verse she sought was all too legible. “But I am a worm, and no man,” she whispered. “A reproach of men, and despised of the people. All they that see me laugh me to scorn.”

Her mother despised her now, she’d made that plain the one time she visited Hannah in jail, shortly before the trial began. By then Hannah had been incarcerated for three months. Her father had come every Saturday, and Becca whenever she could get away, but Hannah hadn’t laid eyes on her mother since the day of her arrest. So when she walked into the visiting room and saw the familiar figure sitting on the other side of the grimy barrier, she started to cry, wrenching sobs of anguish and relief.

“Stop your sniveling,” her mother said. “Stop it this instant or I’m walking right back out that door, do you hear?”

The words fell on Hannah like stones. She pushed back her tears and drew herself up, returning her mother’s wintry gaze—the eyes, the face so like her own—without flinching. It struck her that if an artist were to sketch their two silhouettes just then, they’d be mirror images of each other.

Even at fifty and even in a plain beige dress, Samantha Payne was a striking woman. She was tall and full-figured, with a dignified carriage that had led some to call her proud. Her large eyes were black, accented by bold slashes of brow, and her dark hair was no less luxuriant for being threaded with white. Hannah had inherited every bit of this bounty and then some. Over the years, she’d endured many a lecture from her mother on the folly of earthly vanity. She and Becca had sat through them together, but it had been apparent to them both that Hannah was the primary object of these admonishments.

“I’m not here to comfort you,” Hannah’s mother said now. “I have no more sympathy for you than you had for that innocent baby.”

Hannah could hardly breathe against the weight of her mother’s words. “Then why did you come?”

“I want to know his name. The name of the man who dishonored you and then sent you off to abort your child.”

Hannah shook her head involuntarily, remembering the feel of Aidan’s lips on her skin, kissing the inside of her elbow, the tender instep of her foot; of his hands lifting her hair off her neck, raising her arms, pushing her legs open so his mouth could claim every hidden part of her. It hadn’t felt like dishonor. It had felt like worship.

“He didn’t send me,” she said. “It was my decision.”

“But he gave you the money.”

“No. I paid for it myself.”

Her mother frowned. “Where would you get that kind of money?”

“I’ve been saving it for a while. I … I thought I might use it to start my own dress shop someday.”

“Dress shop! A store for Jezebels and harlots is more like it. Oh yes, I found all the sinful things you made. I cut them to pieces, every last one of them.”

Another brutal, unexpected hail of stones. They hit Hannah hard, rocking her back in her chair. All her creations, destroyed. Though she’d known she could never wear them openly, the mere fact of their existence, of their prodigal beauty, had buoyed her during the long, dreary days of her imprisonment. Now, she would leave nothing that mattered of herself behind.

“Did you make them for him?” her mother demanded.

“No. For myself.”

“Why do you protect him? He doesn’t love you, that much is plain. If he did, he would have married you.”

Her mother must have seen something in her face, an unconscious flicker of pain. “He’s already married, isn’t he.”

It wasn’t a question, and Hannah made no answer to it.

Her mother held up a forefinger. “You shall not commit adultery.” A second finger. “You shall not covet your neighbor’s husband.” A third. “You shall not murder.” The little finger. “Honor your father and mother, so that you may—”

Her anger woke Hannah’s own. “Careful, Mama,” she said, “you’ll run out of fingers.” The remark shocked them both. Hannah had never spoken so derisively to her parents, or to anyone for that matter, and for a few seconds she felt better for having done so, stronger and less afraid. But then her mother’s shoulders buckled and the flesh of her face seemed to wither, shrinking inward against the bones, and Hannah understood that her sarcasm had broken something in her mother, some fragile hope she’d clung to that the daughter she once knew and loved was not wholly lost to her.

“Sweet Jesus,” her mother said, wrapping her arms around herself and rocking back and forth in her chair with her eyes closed. “Sweet Lord, help me now.”

“I’m sorry, Mama,” Hannah cried. She felt like she was breaking herself, into fragments so small they could never be found, much less pieced together again. “I’m so sorry.”

Her mother looked up, her eyes bewildered. “Why did you do this thing, Hannah? Your father and I would have stood by you and the baby. Did you not know that?”

“I knew,” Hannah said. Her mother would have stormed, and her father would have brooded. They would have rebuked and sermonized and interrogated and wept and prayed, but in the end, they would have accepted the child. Would have loved it.

“Then I don’t understand. Help me to understand, Hannah.”

“Because—” Because I would have been compelled to name Aidan as the father or go to prison for contempt until I did. Because they would have notified the state paternity board, subpoenaed him, had him tested, ordered Ignited Word to garnish his wages for child support. Destroyed his life and his ministry. Because I loved him, more even than our child. And still do.

Hannah would have done anything at that moment to erase the grief from her mother’s face, but she knew that to tell the truth, to speak the syllables of his name, would only hurt her more, by stripping her of her faith in a man she revered. And if she blamed him and decided to reveal their secret … No. Hannah had aborted their child to protect him. She would not betray him now.

She shook her head, once. “I can’t tell you. I’m sorry.” Stones of her own, falling hard and heavy into the space between them. The wall rose in seconds. She watched it happen, watched her mother’s face close against her. “Please, Mama—”

Samantha Payne stood. “I don’t know you.” She turned and walked to the door. Stopped. Looked back at Hannah. “I have one daughter, and her name is Rebecca.”