The Lullaby Sky (3 page)

Darcy kept a running conversation going with Sophie about food and the fact that Sophie would be in kindergarten when school started. Calvin never talked much when good food was in front of him, but several times he caught Hannah’s eye and winked.

“Thank you, Aunt Birdie, for doing this,” Hannah said.

“Wasn’t nothing.” She waved it away with a flick of her bony wrist. “I like to cook, and every now and then it’s fun for me and Rosie to have a big crowd around the table. Besides, Travis helped me get it all ready. He’s every bit as good in the kitchen as he is with a hammer and screwdriver, if you can get his nose out of a book.”

Birdie’s salt-and-pepper hair had once been jet-black. She liked to brag that she was a quarter Native American and descended from the Seminole tribe in central Oklahoma, but Hannah figured it wasn’t one of the Five Civilized Tribes that Aunt Birdie sprang from but one of the warring tribes—maybe Apache or Comanche. Like those fierce Native Americans, she’d always had a fight in her, and getting older hadn’t diminished it one single bit. Hannah had no doubt Aunt Birdie and Miss Rosie would wade into a forest fire with a cup of water and put the damn thing out. Hannah had often wished she’d gotten more of her great-aunt’s and neighbor’s spunk and a lot less of her father’s shy nature.

“So what’s on everyone’s agenda this week?” Hannah asked.

“First week out of school, there’s no school for me. I do have to go in a few hours a day after this week, but my secretary will man the phones for July. This week I’m deep cleaning the house.” Liz glanced at the clock again. “Speaking of that. I hate to eat and run, but Wyatt will be home in about half an hour and I should be there.”

Wyatt Pope was a long-distance truck driver, and most of the time he was on the road a week at a time and then home for a few days. But if he was coming through Dallas, he often made a detour up through Crossing and spent a night at home.

“Take him a plate. There’s lots of leftovers,” Birdie said.

“Thank you.” Liz smiled. “That is so sweet. I’d love to. Mind if I take both kinds of dessert? He does love his sweets.”

“Of course you can have both kinds of pies. That way he can have a night snack, too,” Birdie answered.

“I should be going,” Darcy said. “I promised I’d be back by one thirty so the tellers wouldn’t have to rearrange their lunch schedule. I’ll be back over the weekend, Hannah. Thanks for the dinner. I’m not taking a plate or they’ll all converge upon me like flies on honey.” She planted a kiss on Birdie’s forehead.

“Flies on honey?” Sophie’s little forehead wrinkled.

“Flies like sweet things. I’m surprised you aren’t covered up in them,” Calvin said quickly. “Turn that frown upside down into a smile.”

Sophie looked around the room. “I don’t see any flies. I must not be sweet as you think. Daddy said I was just like my mama. He didn’t think we were sweet.”

Calvin laid his paper towel napkin to the side and pushed back his chair. “Your daddy won’t be coming around anymore, honey.”

“Promise?” Sophie’s dark eyes grew bigger and bigger. “For real. He’s not going to make Mama—” She tapped her finger against her head.

“Jittery?” Darcy asked.

“Crazy.” Travis grinned.

“That’s it. Crazy. Daddy made Mama crazy, and the only thing that I could do to make her happy was take her out on the porch and let her tell me stories about the clouds, and then we would sing ‘Twinkle, Twinkle.’ We call those kind of days ‘lullaby sky,’” Sophie said seriously. “Mama, can we still go see our lullaby sky when I get a boo-boo?”

“Of course we can,” Hannah said. “But maybe you should start telling me stories.”

“I’m a big girl now. I can do that,” Sophie said with a stoic sigh.

Calvin hugged Sophie. “Yes, you are a big girl. And since I’m riding back in the limo with Darcy, I should be going, too. Thanks for dinner, Aunt Birdie. I’ll return from New York City in a couple of weeks, Hannah, but I’ll call you every chance I get. However, before we leave Crossing, the princess here has a ride coming in the limo. Come on, Sophie O’Malley.”

“I’m not Sophie O’Malley. I am Sophie Ellis,” she protested.

“Would you like to be Sophie O’Malley?” Hannah held her breath.

“Your mama has changed her name to Hannah O’Malley,” Aunt Birdie said.

“Well, then I want to be Sophie O’Malley, because I want to be just like my mama. But it does sound funny, Uncle Cal.” Sophie giggled. “I like it, though. Even better than I like Sophie Ellis.”

Hannah followed them all out to the porch. “I cannot thank all y’all enough for today.”

“You’d be there for us in the same situation,” Calvin said. “Let me know if you or Sophie need anything. I mean it. Money, food, a few days away from Crossing, shotgun shells.”

Hannah air-slapped his arm. “You are totally badass.”

“I know.” He laughed. “Wait right here and I’ll send Princess Sophie back to you in about five minutes.”

For the first time since she got into the van with her friends that morning to go to the courthouse, she was alone. She stared at her house across the street. Would she feel different when she walked into it in a few minutes? Would the stress that lurked in every corner be gone? Could it ever return to the happy place that she’d visited as a child when her grandmother O’Malley lived there?

It looked the same as it had that morning when she walked out of it—a rambling old house that had been built decades ago and still had the wallpaper in the six upstairs bedrooms to testify to its age. A big, square house built for a big family, opening up into a huge living room with an archway into a formal dining room and a kitchen beyond that. The other side of the ground floor held the master bedroom and Sophie’s bedroom right beside it.

The master bedroom had the best king-size bed that money could buy, along with furniture Hannah absolutely hated, but she only used the room when Marty was home. Most of the time, Hannah slept in one of the bedrooms upstairs.

She’d paid for her marriage to Marty in nerves, nausea, and migraines. She wrapped her arms around her body and shivered—never again would she have to worry about him arriving unexpectedly and finding things out of order. Never would she have to send Sophie outside to play so she wouldn’t witness his wicked temper.

“It really is over,” she whispered. “So why don’t I feel like it is?”

“Because it’ll take time,” Travis whispered.

Startled, she jumped and shivered. “I’m sorry. I didn’t hear you come out of the house.”

“It’s okay, Hannah. You never have to apologize to me.” He smiled.

The limo came to a slow stop in front of the house, and Sophie shot out the door and jumped into her mother’s arms for the second—or was it the third?—time that day. She wrapped her legs around Hannah’s waist and hugged her, planting dozens of kisses on her face.

“I liked the ’tentious car, Mama, but it’s too big for us. I like our car and Travis’s truck and Aunt Birdie’s van better than the big princess car.” She leaned back and looked Hannah right in the eye. “Did I really get a new name today or was you teasin’ me?”

“You really did. So did I. We are now Hannah and Sophie O’Malley,” Hannah answered.

“Sophie O’Malley,” Sophie whispered. “I like it. Do you like it, Travis?”

“Oh, yes, I do. It sounds just like a princess name.”

“Sophie O’Malley, princess of Aunt Birdie’s castle and queen of Hannah O’Malley’s house.” Sophie’s pecan-colored eyes danced with merriment.

“Oh, no, you don’t, young lady,” Hannah said. “You might be princess of Aunt Birdie’s house and mine, but I’m the queen and don’t you forget it.”

Sophie hopped down and ran into the house, no doubt to tell Aunt Birdie all about the limo. Travis kept his distance, but his eyes locked with Hannah’s.

“What?” She wiped her cheek. “Do I have chocolate pie on my face?”

“No, I was thinkin’ maybe
you
shouldn’t forget it,” Travis said.

“Forget what?”

“Who’s queen of your house,” he said.

“Are you saying that I spoil Sophie too much?” Hannah asked.

“No, I’m saying that you’ve been spoiled too little, Hannah O’Malley.” He grinned.

C
HAPTER
T
HREE

F
riday afternoon Hannah stood in the doorway of Sophie’s bedroom, her eyes instinctively scanning the room to be sure everything was in place. Barbie dolls put away in the old suitcase that had belonged to Hannah’s mother when she was a child. Books arranged from tallest to shortest with all the spines the right way so that the titles were upright. She noticed a wrinkle in the bedspread and a throw pillow that was slightly off kilter and quickly crossed the room to fix both. She’d smoothed out the wrinkle and rearranged the pillows when it dawned on her that Marty would not fly that little airplane of his to Crossing—not ever again.

She sat down on the edge of the bed and remembered the day Marty had taken her to meet his parents. It was a few days after their courthouse marriage, that spring before Sophie was born in July. A disaster from day one. She wasn’t a total country bumpkin, and she’d been taught table manners, but the way their noses twitched when she sat down at the restaurant with them—well, it looked as if they’d stepped in fresh cow crap out in the pasture.

Marty wanted to live in the city. Hannah wanted to move into her grandmother’s house in Crossing, which had been deeded to her when her father died. Marty said he needed to be near his job and his life was in Dallas, but they would compromise—she could live in Crossing and raise the baby in a rural community. He would build a hangar and a small landing strip on the back of the property for his little private plane, and he would fly in and out on weekends and whenever he could get away through the week.

Then he talked her into putting the title to the place in his name. For the baby’s sake, he’d said, and she signed the papers without even thinking about it. Then he had even more than Sophie to hold over her head. He could take her child and her familial home. He could leave her with nothing but the old car that she’d been driving when he married her and what clothing was on her back at the time. Her substitute teaching and waitress gigs had not given her much of a financial foundation.

The front door opened, and Hannah jumped up, straightened the bedspread, and scanned the room for anything that might be out of place. She took a deep breath and tried to remember if there was more than one book on the coffee table and if it was centered properly. She and Sophie had had ice cream for a midafternoon snack, and she’d left the dirty dishes in the sink.

“Hey, where are you? I’ve got a terrific idea for our first weekend project,” Darcy yelled from the living room as she arrived.

Hannah exhaled slowly and braced a hand on the wall for a second before she put a smile on her face and headed for the living room. It was only Darcy, not Marty.
He was not coming back, not ever,
she thought with each step.

Darcy had kicked her shoes off in the middle of the floor, left her suitcase beside the sofa, and thrown herself back in the recliner. “I need sweet tea,” she said as she popped the chair into a sitting position. “I’ll make us both a glass. You got fresh lemons, right?”

“Always.” Hannah’s hands itched to pick up Darcy’s high heels and carry them up to a guest bedroom. “What’s this big idea of yours, anyway?”

Darcy hopped up out of the chair and followed Hannah into the kitchen. She removed a gallon jug of tea from the refrigerator, set it on the cabinet, filled two glasses with ice, and carefully poured them full. Hannah rolled a lemon on the cabinet until it was soft, sliced it into wedges, added two to each glass, and put the rest into a bowl for later use.

“Sophie has ratted you out, girlfriend.” She set them on the table. “I know that you sleep in the guest room and that neither of you go into the master bedroom except when I’m here. So we’re going to clean out that room and paint it tonight. Then tomorrow we’ll go to town and get a new bedroom outfit and whatever else you need to redo it.” She pulled out a chair, sat down, and propped her feet in another one. “Give me time to drink this and we’ll get started. Travis is bringing his truck over to take all that furniture down to the hangar to store until you decide what to do with it.”

“And the paint?”

“It’s pale blue, like your room when you were a teenager. I picked it up after work, and yes, I remembered two rollers and the brushes and the whole nine yards. Travis doesn’t know it, but he’s going to do the part up close to the ceiling.”

“Aunt Darcy!” Sophie ran into the room from the back door. “Travis said he’s moving stuff for Mama today. What is it?”

“We’re going to redo my old bedroom.” Hannah smiled. “Darcy thinks it should be pale blue.”

“Me, too. I wish we had one of them windows in the ceiling but we can ’tend, can’t we?”

Hannah opened her arms, and Sophie walked into them. “Yes, we can pretend. We’ll curl up in my new bed and pretend that there’s a window up there and we can see the clouds. We’ll even sing.”

Her child smelled like a sweaty five-year-old who’d been playing tag with an imaginary friend in the backyard. Another split second of panic set in—Sophie’s face was not clean and her hair not brushed out, plus the tea glasses were sweating onto the tablecloth.
Oh. Sweet. Jesus.
Darcy was there—Marty hated Darcy more than any of her friends.

“What?” Darcy asked. “You went pale as a ghost.”

“How pale is a ghost, Aunt Darcy?”

“They’re white like bedsheets.” Darcy laughed.

“My sheets are pink, but Mama’s are red silky stuff in Father’s room. Upstairs in her other room, they’re white. Aunt Birdie has white sheets and I like the way they smell.” Sophie wiggled free of her mother’s embrace. “I’m going back outside. Nadine is waiting for me.”

“Want to explain all that?” Darcy asked.

“Sophie’s sheets are pink. Those in the master bedroom, the ones I only slept in when Marty was home, are red satin. But I really like plain old white cotton sheets, so that’s what I use in my bedroom, which is upstairs.”

“Now it makes sense. And what happened to Anna Lou? She didn’t quite fill me in,” Darcy said.

“She has the bumps so she can’t come out and play today. Nadine is playing with me,” Sophie said as she ran out the back door, yelling to the imaginary Nadine that she was back and ready to play chase.

“Nadine? Bumps?” Darcy asked Hannah.

“Mumps. She saw something on one of her cartoon shows about the mumps and instantly Anna Lou had them. I had to tell her ten times last night that she’d had shots for mumps when she was just a baby so she probably wouldn’t get them. Nadine was the little girl on the show who was the next-door neighbor,” Hannah explained.

“You’ve done well with her,” Darcy said. “You almost had a panic attack there. Was it because you forgot that Marty was gone and thought since this is Friday he might be flying in?”

Hannah nodded. “Exactly. Please tell me that her imaginary friends aren’t something that will show up later in the form of OCD or temper fits?”

Darcy giggled. “She’s got Marty’s DNA, but honey, she’s also got yours, and environment plays a big part in every person’s life. How have you been these past couple of days? Has it become real that it’s over?”

Hannah slowly shook her head. “Aunt Birdie said this antsy feeling inside me took six years to build and I shouldn’t expect it to leave in three days.”

“I hate him for what he did to you. We all thought it was mental abuse. Was there more? Did he hit you? Please tell me he never laid a hand on Sophie.” Darcy looked as if she could break into tears.

Hannah reached across the table and laid a hand on Darcy’s. “I sent Sophie to the backyard or the porch or even to Aunt Birdie’s when he got mad. He didn’t know much about being a father, because he always had a nanny and his dad was too busy to pay much attention to him.” Hannah’s words came out slowly.

“He did beat you, didn’t he? Just like we think Wyatt slaps Liz around. God, I’m going to rethink ever trusting a man.”

Hannah sipped her tea. “He could get very angry, and he left bruises more than once. If I hadn’t been such a country bumpkin . . .” She hesitated. “It’s in the past. Let’s leave it there. At least there were no broken bones and he never laid a hand on Sophie.”

“Aunt Birdie is right about it taking time, but why didn’t you tell me he was doing more than yelling and threatening?” Darcy frowned.

“It wasn’t your burden to carry. I made the mistake of trusting him, of getting pregnant, and of marrying him. And he wasn’t always physically violent. Most of the time it
was
mental abuse. I couldn’t ever do anything right. But now it’s in the past. Now, tell me more about what you’ve got in mind for my room. Do I get a say-so?” Hannah removed her hand and picked up her glass of tea.

“Of course you do. I picked out the paint, and I’m supplying part of the elbow grease. Liz will be here in about half an hour, and Travis said he’ll be here when you get your underwear drawers cleaned out. He doesn’t want to embarrass you.” Darcy grinned. “Like at thirty-eight, he’s never seen a women’s underbritches!” She giggled. “So let’s take this tea to your room, strip down the bed, and then start packing all your dresser drawers into boxes. We’ll move them into the dining room for tonight, and by tomorrow night, the room won’t look the same.” Darcy squeezed her arm gently. “I’m your friend, Hannah O’Malley—we share burdens as well as joys. And now I’m going to put on my paintin’ clothes and you should do the same.”

“Thank you.” Hannah swallowed hard, but the lump in her throat didn’t budge very much. “I’ll do that after we get the drawers emptied and the room ready to paint. Am I really going to put perfectly good furniture in storage and buy new? It sounds extravagant.”

Darcy moved from kitchen to living room. “Yes, you are. Anything in this house that was Marty’s or reminds you of him, we’ll throw away, give away, sell. It doesn’t matter. You need a fresh start.”

Darcy set her tea on the coffee table, threw her suitcase onto a chair in the corner, and unzipped it. She’d been wearing a cute little jacket, a straight skirt, and a silk shell. It all came off in a blur and landed on the recliner in a pile. She dug around in the messy suitcase and brought out a pair of paint-stained jean shorts and a button-up shirt with ragged arm holes where the sleeves had been cut out.

Hannah followed her from one room to the other and tensed at the mess. “Want me to take your things up to one of the bedrooms while you change?”

“They’re okay here until we get done with cleaning out your room. I’ll tote them up there, then. I’m surprised that you sleep upstairs, as protective as you are,” Darcy answered as she wrapped a stretchy hot-pink headband around her hair.

“I still have a baby monitor in her room. I know when she rolls over in bed,” Hannah answered.

“Well, okay then. Let’s go reclaim your property.”

Hannah led the way across the foyer, took a deep breath, and opened the bedroom door. Flashbacks stopped her right inside the door. This was where Marty had beaten her down with his words and sometimes his fists. Either way, it was always her fault. If she hadn’t folded the napkins wrong, if Sophie’s toy hadn’t been left on the coffee table, if she’d been raised in the right circles, if he’d only known that she was nothing but low-class white trash—then she would understand what he needed in a wife and she wouldn’t be living in the backwoods where he had to train her even to be able to take her to a Christmas party.

Darcy went straight to the shiny black dresser with nine drawers and pulled out the bottom one on the right side. Carrying it to the bed, she gasped. “Sweet Lord! Do they all look this neat?”

Hannah nodded. “I told you that Marty is OCD.”

“This goes beyond OCD, Hannah. Did you iron these socks?” Darcy dumped the whole drawer on the bed.

Hannah blushed and took a deep breath. “What should I do with all of his things?”

“You own them. The judge said everything in this house. What do you think? A bonfire?”

“No!” Hannah said quickly. “If we did that, Sophie would want to roast marshmallows.”

“And I damn sure don’t want her to eat anything that comes from the flames from this stuff,” Darcy said. “It might poison the child. I vote we put all of his stuff in a big black garbage bag and store it with the furniture.”

The idea came to Hannah in the form of a picture of a sign outside a women’s shelter in Gainesville. She’d made it to that shelter once, but Marty had figured out where she was within five minutes of the time she walked through the doors. Why not donate all of this stuff to that shelter that helped abused women? They could sell whatever they couldn’t use and keep the money. She whipped her phone from her hip pocket and clicked on the phone number highlighted on their website.

“Patchwork Home. Gina speaking,” a brisk voice answered.

“This is Hannah O’Malley. I came to your place a while back, but only stayed about five minutes. I live in Crossing, and I’ve got some things I would like to donate.”

“I remember you. You are kin to Birdie Wilson, right?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“And you had a little dark-haired girl with you?”