The Memory Thief (20 page)

“He wasn’t so different from me, Mother. It took us both to make that choice.”

Mother leaned closer, stared hard into Hannah’s eyes. “I know about the promise. Such lies he told you.”

Hannah shook her head. “He never promised me anything.”

“A house. He promised you a house, and with a house comes a life. That’s why you ran to it. That big rotting house. That place
you lived in, filthy and alone, like an animal, for weeks. Father could never understand it, but I know why you ran there.
It was all you had left, wasn’t it? After Sam had taken everything else.”

“He was just a boy,” Hannah whispered. “And he wasn’t raised to believe like I was. I should have been stronger. You’d spent
so many years teaching me to be stronger. But when it really mattered, I wasn’t. I was the same as him. I was as weak as him.”

“No child, you are not the same. You loved him. And he didn’t even want to help us find you. We told him you could be hurt.
We told him you could be dying. But he kept twisting his hands and denying that he even knew you. Father threatened to call
in the police, to name him as a suspect in a missing-person case. That’s when Sam started spilling it all, about boats and
deep water and Cora’s motel. None of it helped, though. None of it returned you to us. Until I interrupted and asked the right
question. ‘What did you promise her?’ He shook his head and swore he’d never even spoke the word
marry
. ‘But you still promised something, didn’t you?’ I demanded. He nodded. ‘Just to fix up a house. An old abandoned house.’
”

“Did he take you there?” Hannah asked. “Did he see me, the way I was?”

Mother shook her head. “I shoved a pen and paper in his hands and made him write directions. He doesn’t even know that we
found you. He never bothered to check. We never spoke again.”

Hannah looked at Mother’s face, and marveled at how easily stone can break. There were deep lines across her forehead, lines
around her narrowed eyes and her tightly set mouth. “My, how you hate him.”

Mother closed her eyes and bowed her head. She sighed. “He hurt you. But
we
were the ones punished.”

“I’m sorry,” Hannah whispered.

“If you really are,” Mother said, “then you’ll stop the punishment. Don’t pass it on to Daniel. Let the hurt Sam gave you
end with us. Discover the difference between Sam and Daniel, between what you once thought love was and what it could be,
what it is.”

Hannah lay back against her pillow. Mother leaned and turned off the lamp by her bed. She stood to leave the room.

“He called me pretty,” Hannah said.

“What?”

“He gave me more than the promise of the house. He called me pretty, too. And it was a gift that I’d always wanted. I was
used to boys laughing at me, chasing me with scissors and trying to cut my hair. Sam was different. He was the only person
in my entire life to ever call me pretty. It doesn’t matter so much now. But for some reason, at sixteen, it meant everything.”

Mother breathed deeply and turned her back to Hannah as she stepped toward the door. She paused with her hand on the doorknob.
“He had that much right, I suppose. You are pretty,” she said, the words catching in her throat and sounding more like a choke
than love.

Hannah closed her eyes and felt the war inside her. Between the pressure to move forward and the desire to savor guilt, and
remember the one perfect moment she’d had long ago.

Everything swirled together, like paint on dry clay.

Tucked away inside a sleeping hotel, Hannah spent the night comparing Sam and Daniel. She paid all the attention to detail
that any true artist would, and began in the most obvious place. With what she saw.

Sam was an island boy, if only for the summer. His skin was browned, his hair was streaked gold by the sun. He was bare-chested
and barefoot as much as not. His body very lean, built of long, thin lines. He wore a hemp-rope necklace. Turquoise beads
were strung across it. He was always smiling, showing his perfect rows of teeth. His eyes, she couldn’t remember the color.
But she remembered their message. He was happy. Easily happy. And she thought him very beautiful.

Daniel was raised on the mountain. He wore hiking boots, even with his work clothes. Unless it was a court day, khakis and
polos in the summer or cords and thermals in the winter were as dressed up as he got. His face wasn’t browned like Sam’s.
But by the time Hannah saw him in the evenings, the shadow of his beard was apparent. His body was grown up—his shoulders
squared, his arms muscular. There was a thickness to his build that a boy would never have. He shaved his dark hair close
to the scalp. A no-frills kind of cut that required no grooming. But it accented the lines of his face. The swift rise of
his cheekbones. The brooding that hovered over his brow. He didn’t smile easily, like Sam. He saved his smiles and gave them
away sparingly. Hannah never thought to call him beautiful. She called him striking. She called him intimidating. She called
him strong.

Hannah reached her hand up to her head, felt the rope of hair beneath her. She thought of all the things she had felt with
Sam. Such beauty, such fear, mixed together. Like the feel of his hand reaching out that first time, grabbing a handful of
her hair. The feel of the deep water pulling away the polyester from her skin for the very first time. The feel of running
and falling through an old cotton field on her way to the mansion that would always belong to them. The feel of his hand reaching
out, pulling her to him underneath that old live oak. The feel of an electric fence. The pain. The numb. The rejoicing.

She
hadn’t
felt with Daniel. Other than the one time he reached for the doorknob when she had. Their hands had touched, and his had lingered
for just a moment over hers before she pulled away in fright. Everything else was a mystery. She had known him now for much
longer than she had ever known Sam. And yet, she knew Sam’s touch but could only wonder about Daniel’s. What his hands might
feel like running through her hair. What that shadowy beard might feel like as he pressed his mouth to hers.

Hannah smiled in the dark, remembering what Daniel had said:
I’ve made it clear that I love your art
. In another time, in another state, love was something to hide. Love was a sloppy heart drawn with a Sharpie across her hand.
Love was a fistful of Spanish moss tucked underneath her pillow, crushed into dusty bits as she waited for a letter. Love
was pledging herself, all of herself, if only Sam would want her just a little bit. Love was a Greyhound bus ticket, a wannabe
teenage bride. Love was a broken heart. A war cry learned one awful night on the dunes of Folly Beach.

Hannah closed her eyes and dared to face the memory of who really pulled her close under a tree on a dead plantation. He was seventeen years old. Just a boy playing dress-up at his favorite playground. A motherless little boy, playing Confederate
hero.

Downstairs the workers were beginning their morning routines. Hannah heard them and went to her wheel. She worked with fresh
energy, one hand dipping in water as the other applied a steady pressure. She was making something new, only she wasn’t sure
what it was yet. She didn’t talk to this piece, never told it to be a plate or a vase. She only felt its rhythm, perfectly
centered within her hands, as she guided it into an unknown form.

She let the wheel stop and continued to pull out the clay. Until before her sat a sloppy rectangle of sorts, with a well in
the center, and low sloped sides. Her mother would have been pleased. Another antique-like dough tray. Perfect for apples
and tea bags.

When it was ready, she filled its empty center with paint, nearly every color she had or could mix to create. Only when she
stared at the finished piece did she finally speak to it. She gave it the message, the one it was supposed to carry in its
center. She spoke of love. No longer satisfied with sloppy hearts, war cries, and fistfuls of moss, she gave love a new name.

“Love is like mud. Only as strong as the shape you give it. Love is like paint. It can color over all the empty places.” She
whispered lowly, “If you drop it, Love will break you.”

When the piece was dry, she placed it in a box. Then she went and dressed herself, found her best yellow blouse. She unbound
her hair from its tight braid. Waves, perfect like the ocean, spilled down her back.

The hotel driver dropped her off at Daniel’s office downtown. And as she walked into the lobby of his office, she couldn’t
avoid her fear. What if he didn’t want her there? Around his friends and his staff and his clients? What if she was wrong,
and he was just like Sam? Wanted to keep their relationship hidden high on the mountain, a new form of deep water?

The receptionist was staring at her hair. She could feel her hands trembling, the tray inside the box she carried began to
shake.

“Can I help you?” the lady behind the desk asked.

“I’m here to see Daniel.”

“Mr. Phillips?”

“Yes.”

“Do you have an appointment?”

“No.”

“Is there some type of emergency?”

“No.”

“Then we don’t accept walk-ins. Mr. Phillips is a very busy man. You’ll have to make an appointment. Let me pull his calendar.
What type of consultation do you need? A will? Criminal? Custodial?”

“No, ma’am. I’m not a client.”

“Well, you still need an appointment.”

“Maybe I could wait?” Hannah asked, looking at the couch behind her. She saw a shelf built into the wall above the couch.
It was filled with her art.

“Listen, honey,” the receptionist said and leaned forward. “I’ve been here ten years for this reason: Everyone,
everyone
, has got to come through
my
desk to get to Daniel. And unless there’s an emergency, like
I just killed somebody and I gotta go tell the cops
, then I don’t let anyone by without an appointment. No matter how long they wait. It’s what gets me the nice Christmas bonus.”

“Oh,” Hannah whispered. She started to turn and go, but hated to leave without seeing him. “Do you think, maybe—,” she said,
and blushed.

“Yes?”

“Can… love be an emergency?”

The receptionist shook her head. “We don’t handle domestic cases.”

Hannah laid the box on the receptionist’s desk. “This is for him.”

Outside, she walked up the street and found a pay phone. She called for the hotel driver’s return. As she waited, she walked
and looked in the windows of the shops. At all the ski gear and hiking tools. At all the sweatshirts and trinkets for tourists
to carry home. She walked to the end of the street, to the famous scenic overlook. She followed the path to the end. And,
as always when she saw the world below, she wondered at how it all kept going.

“Hannah!” she heard someone call out behind her. “Hannah!”

She smiled, but she didn’t answer. She knew he would find her. And this time, with this love, she wanted to be the one sought.

When he took her in his arms she felt his strength surround her. She felt the chill, the one she carried like a trophy inside
her heart, start to thaw. She pulled her tired eyes from the world below her, and looked only at him. For the first time,
she dared to hope on Mother’s promise. Everything,
someday
, might be okay.

“Yes,” Daniel laughed softly before he kissed her. “Love is an emergency.”

Hannah’s pottery brightened. She chose reds and oranges far more than she used to. Green was rarely the center anymore. Blue
was a hazy memory.

She accepted fewer special orders and began creating more things for herself and for Daniel. And even on lonely nights, when
she hadn’t seen Daniel in days because he was locked away working on a heated trial, she resisted the urge to return to old
habits. She did not build clay babies. She did not search the mountain for the crying that sometimes still woke her.

When Daniel asked Father for his blessing to propose, Hannah knew. Even before Daniel had so much as whispered the word
marry
to her. She knew by the joy, the absolute radiance, in Mother’s eyes. She knew by the way Father spent more time in the Great
Room instead of locked away in his study. She knew by the way Bethie raided Mother’s lace collection. She sat gently fingering
it and telling Hannah, “You’d be so lovely in this.”

Hannah had never thought she’d be
golden
again. She never thought she’d be the one to please her family so well. The one on whom they pinned their pride and staked
their hopes. No longer Hannah the Ruined, she was something new. Something altogether lovely. She was Hannah
the Bride
.

Daniel asked her in her workroom. The place where their love first took shape. And when he said it—
Marry me, Hannah
—her past, the ugliness, took on new meaning. Because without the pain of Sam, Hannah wouldn’t have found the love of Daniel.
And in that moment, when he said those words—
Marry me
—the love was worth the pain. The love was
equal
to the pain.

She spent three months making her own wedding dishes, while Mother sewed her gown. In the end, everything matched. The dishes
were simple but perfectly formed. The gown was nearly unadorned but made of the finest white silk and trimmed in handmade
lace.

Hannah winced over the white. An old reflex, a habit of savored guilt. Bethie saw and shook her head. “White is for new love.
White is for miracles. Like you. Like me, too.” Bethie pointed to her own new outfit. A breezy white cotton skirt. A pink
T-shirt and sandals. Bethie had replaced her blacks and grays, after her miracle happened. After her tongue finally grew up
and she began to talk. Bethie wore rainbow colors. Bethie cut her hair to just at her shoulders and got a job at the hospital
downtown. She never wore gray again.

Mother came to her room, just after she had finished dressing for the ceremony. Hannah sat quietly on the bed as Mother kneeled
before her and adjusted the lace of her hem.