Chapter 8: What Brandon Said
Hannah sat in the driveway with the engine running and looked at his name on the screen.
Florence said nothing.
She looked straight ahead through the windshield.
Hannah answered.
"Don't hang up," Brandon said immediately.
"Please.
Just — don't hang up."
"I'm listening."
"I need to see you.
Not at the house.
Somewhere neutral.
I need to explain—"
"Gerald said not to contact me."
"I know.
I know what Gerald said.
Hannah, please.
Before the DA gets involved.
Before this becomes something that can't be undone.
I need you to hear me."
Hannah looked at the house through the windshield.
The front porch.
The hanging basket Florence had planted with geraniums in April.
"You have five minutes," she said.
"On the phone.
Right now."
A pause.
Then: "The house.
I know how it sounds.
I know what I did.
But I need you to understand where I was — we were drowning, Hannah.
The mortgage, the credit cards, my mother's medical bills from two years ago that I never told you about — I was under water and I couldn't see a way out and Brenda came to me with this idea and I—" He stopped.
"I should have told you.
I should have come to you instead of—"
"You forged my name, Brandon."
"I know."
"You let someone dr*g my grandmother."
"I didn't know she was going to do it like that.
I swear to you, I didn't know about the tea until it had already happened twice.
By then I was already in it.
I didn't know how to—"
"You knew about the nursing home."
Silence.
"You stood in that room and you heard Brenda say she would put Grandma Florence in a nursing home and tell people she had dementia, and you said nothing."
"I thought—"
"What did you think, Brandon?
What thought goes through a person's mind when they hear that plan and they stay quiet?"
His voice broke slightly.
"I thought it would be temporary.
I thought once the money pressure was off, once the house sold and the debts were gone, I could — I don't know what I thought.
I wasn't thinking.
I was panicking."
"There was already a buyer," Hannah said.
"A development company.
They were going to demolish the house."
Silence.
Longer this time.
"Did you know that?" she asked.
"Brenda handled the buyer.
I didn't know the details."
"Did you know they were going to tear it down?"
Another pause.
"I knew it wasn't going to stay in the family."
Hannah closed her eyes for a moment.
"Your grandfather built that porch," she said.
"Did you know that?"
"Hannah—"
"Florence's husband.
The man she spent fifty years with.
He built it the summer before I was born.
Did you know that when you signed your name on March 14th?"
Brandon didn't answer.
"I want you to do one thing," Hannah said.
"I want you to call Gerald Marsh and tell him everything you just told me.
Everything.
The debts, your mother's medical bills, when you first contacted Vance, what you knew about the tea, what you knew about the nursing home.
All of it." She paused.
"If you do that, it will matter.
Not to me right now.
But it will matter to Lily eventually.
The difference between a father who ran and a father who told the truth."
"And us?" His voice was very quiet.
"There is no us right now, Brandon.
There's Lily.
There's the house.
There's what you did.
That's what there is."
She ended the call.
Florence put her hand over Hannah's on the center console.
Neither of them spoke.
After a moment, Hannah's phone buzzed.
A text from Brandon.
*I'll call Gerald.*
She forwarded it to Gerald without responding.
Then she got out of the car, walked up the porch steps — the ones her grandfather had built — and unlocked the front door.
Inside, the house was quiet and warm and smelled of the geraniums on the windowsill.
Florence came in behind her and went straight to the kitchen.
The sound of the kettle filling.
Cabinet doors.
The particular rhythm of an old woman who knew exactly where everything was.
May you like
Hannah sat down on the bottom stair and pressed her back against the wall and let herself feel, for exactly two minutes, how tired she was.
Then she stood up and went to help with dinner.
