What Happened to Hannah
Chapter One
H
e should have called her three years ago. Nowhe had no choice.Opening the center drawer o the old oak desk in his oce,Grady removed a olded piece o yellow notepaper and spreadit out at in ront o him. He rubbed his damp palms on hiskhaki pants and sighed out loud.The creases in the note were pliant and sot rom requentolding, the writing a bit aded. A name and two sets o num-bers, nothing more. But how many times had he slipped themrom the drawer, dialed all but the last digit and hung up?She was twenty years and a phone call away, yet there weremoments when he could eel her standing next to him, catchthe scent o her hair, hear an echo o her voice.How pathetic is that?He blew out another long breath and picked up the receiver,trying to ignore the knot in his stomach.I he thought about her long enough, a amiliar guilt wouldbore holes through the memory; anger would trickle in, pool,and eventually congeal into a sense o hopelessness and ailure.
2 Mary Kay McComas
Mostly he tried not to think about her— but he couldn’t helpbeing curious.Leather creaked as he pushed himsel straighter in the chair.He should make the call beore he remembered too much, be-ore he lost the tenuous hold on his proessionalism. Changinghis mind was no longer an option.He dialed the numbers.He stared at the phone and grappled with his doubts. Whowas she now? Still the strong, brave, serious Hannah, so beauti-ul that a teenage boy would risk his riends and reputation— everything— to be with her? Or was she someone else entirely?He didn’t know i she’d married or i she had children. Bothher business in Baltimore and the private number were listedunder her name, but that didn’t mean anything except that shehad her own lie and her own business.Well, part o a business.Insurance, or crissake.He smiled and let loose a sot private chuckle. Insurance.The night she disappeared he’d eared or her lie, prayed des-perate prayers that she’d run away. He’d worried himsel sick.Then slowly and gradually, as months piled up to years and noword o her returned to Cleareld one way or the other, hestill reused to believe what everyone else assumed to be true.She simply couldn’t be dead. She couldn’t be. Bright summer days were still glorious, snowy nights with ull moons werestill magic, and rainbows still brought her to mind. He hadantasies o her popping up on television or a movie screen or in some magazine showing o her chateau and rich, handsomehusband— Cleareld and Grady Steadman an empty lapse inher memory.But never, not in his wildest imaginings or his simplestdreams, had he pictured her selling lie insurance to MainStreet, America.
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