The Lullaby Sky (5 page)

“Then get it started. I have a good friend and neighbor who would be glad to serve as a bodyguard when there are guests in my house.”

“Thank you, Hannah. This idea could be therapeutic for you and for the women. But even a bodyguard wouldn’t keep the women from being at risk. Let’s give it a few days, and I’ll come over to your place and we’ll talk about it then.”

Hannah sat down on the grass and stared up at the big, round moon, hanging in the sky like a queen surrounded by her subjects. “Twinkle, twinkle little star,” she hummed.

“Everything all right? I got worried about you.” Darcy extended a hand toward Hannah.

Hannah patted the grass beside her. “Sit down and hear me out. I’ve made up my mind what I want to do. I’m offering my place as a safe house for abused women. I’ve talked to the lady at the shelter about it. Not on a long-term basis, but only when Gina’s is full and she needs help, or when she needs to put someone in a secret place for a few days. But first there’s paperwork and interviews and things.”

“Oh, sweet Jesus! Do you realize what you are doing? Bringing those kind of women in here will bring all the ugly right back into your life with every one. You need to forget it, not bring it home for dinner,” Darcy said.

“What are you two fighting about?” Travis sat down beside Hannah.

“We are not fighting,” Hannah said.

“Darcy’s tone says otherwise.”

Darcy shrugged. “She wants to turn this place into a safe house for abused women. Tell her not to do it, Travis.”

“I think it’s a wonderful idea, but when you have women living here, I will be staying in one of the bedrooms as a bodyguard,” he said.

“Thank you.” Hannah smiled. “I kind of volunteered you already.”

“What about Sophie? You know that your guests will have to be snuck inside the house and not leave until someone comes to get them. And Sophie will tell everyone in church that she’s got friends living with her,” Darcy argued.

“Sophie has so many imaginary friends that no one will think twice when she tells them about new ones,” Hannah answered. “Are you with me or against me?”

“With you, all the way.” Darcy nodded with a degree of hesitation. “I don’t think it will help you, but if it’s what you want to do, you’ve got my support. Now, we’ve got work to do.”

Sophie rounded the side of the house and threw herself down in Travis’s lap. “Work? I can help. Nadine had to go home and it’s starting to get dark.” She jumped up and laid a hand on her tummy. “I’m getting hungry, Mama. What’s for supper?”

Travis led the way back into the house. “Aunt Birdie made a pot of potato soup, and she said when y’all got to a stopping place to come on over and help her eat up the leftovers.”

“Let’s get all this stuff that we don’t want anymore out of the house, and then we’ll take a break and eat before we start painting. Think you can wait that long?” Darcy asked.

Sophie nodded. “If you give me a job to do.”

“Could you sort through what I tossed on the sofa and put my socks in one pile, my pajamas in a pile, and . . .”

Sophie held up a hand. “I can do that, Mama. I’ll get three laundry baskets from the ’tility room and put your stuff in them.” Like always, she took off in a dead run from the bedroom, down the foyer, and into the living room.

“We’ll get through this,” Darcy said.

“I’m so grateful that I have y’all to help me,” Hannah whispered. “And Travis, I’m going with you to the shelter. I want to talk to Gina again, even if it’s only for a few minutes. My mind is made up and I really want to do this.”

He hugged her, drawing her close to his side. “Then it’s what you should do.”

C
HAPTER
F
OUR

S
unlight streamed into the room through the sparkling-clean windows, waking Hannah with its warmth. She stretched, working the kinks from lifting and painting out of her back and neck. There was a whole new, empty room waiting for furniture downstairs. It was painted a soft blue, and no doubt the sun was pouring through those windows also.

She’d even taken down the blinds and drapes and taken them to the shelter. While Travis loaded them, she’d popped open another garbage bag and filled it with six sets of king-size satin sheets along with the comforter, the pillows, and the throw pillows. Then at the last minute she decided she didn’t want the pale-gray carpet, either, so Travis yanked it up, rolled it into a long tube and loaded it on the trailer also.

She sat up in bed and drew her knees up so she could wrap her arms around them. “I love the way that paint transformed the room from cold to warm.”

When she redid the rest of the house, she would use a Texas bluebonnet theme in one of the guest rooms and maybe a morning glory theme in another. Her house would have a calm, soft effect on the abused women and kids who visited. Gina would let her do this, she was sure of it. There weren’t many places in a small, secluded town like Crossing that would be as perfect as Hannah’s.

“And I’m going to get out the sewing machine and make valances for the rooms, throw pillows for the beds and for the new living room. Travis can take the bedroom furniture in that room to the shelter, and I’ll buy a small sofa that could be let out into a bed if necessary and put a television in there.” She made plans out loud as they came to mind. “I can see one room in gingham checks,” she murmured. “And another in wildflowers.”

The aroma of coffee wafted across the room, and her chest tightened. It was Saturday. Marty was home, and he’d be furious that she’d slept in. He liked his coffee made with the french press and his breakfast on the table promptly at seven o’clock. She glanced at the clock beside her bed. Seven fifteen. Adrenaline rushed through her body as she threw back the covers. And then she reminded herself that Marty was not in Crossing.

“Good morning!” Travis said. “I brought you a cup of coffee. Figured you might need it after that late night we all put in.”

Her eyes darted around the room and finally settled on him in the landing right outside her open bedroom door. “Thank you. How long have you been here?”

He handed her the mug, his warm skin brushing hers, and sat down on the edge of the bed. “Long enough to locate the extra key under that flowerpot with dead plants on the back porch and make coffee. You really have to start hiding that better.”

His brown hair looked like it had been combed with his fingertips that morning, with one strand resting on the thin metal nosepiece of his wire-rimmed glasses. His grin shone genuine and sweet beneath his summer sky-blue eyes.

“Tell you what. You keep that key, and if I ever lock myself out, I’ll come and find you,” she said.

“Sounds like a solid plan to me.” He nodded. “I’ll put it on my key ring and keep it safe.”

She straightened her legs and scooted to one side so that she could prop her back on the wall. Hannah could hear every movement—from the squeak of the bed across the hall where Darcy was sleeping to the sound of a lonesome cricket singing a solo somewhere in the downstairs bathroom. She’d learned to be very aware of her surroundings and Marty’s body language through the years. Turning it off wasn’t as easy as flipping a light switch. So how in the hell had Travis sneaked into her house, made coffee, come up those stairs—especially the noisy one three up from the bottom—and gotten into her room without her knowing it?

“The whole house smells fresh and new,” Travis said.

That was the answer. The paint smell in the house had thrown off her other senses, including the instinct that told her when someone was near.

“I love it.” She sipped the coffee.

“How’d you sleep last night?” Travis asked. “Sore this morning from all that work?”

“Yes, I am, but I have a pretty new room for all the aches and pains. And I never sleep past six and here it is after seven, if that answers your question. How about you?”

He reached over and touched her on the foot. “I feel better and sleep better knowing this is over for you.”

“Y’all keep telling me it’s over. Why don’t I feel like it is, Travis?” she asked.

“This is your first weekend as a single parent. Ten weekends from now won’t be as tough.”

“Promise?” she asked.

He set his coffee cup on the floor, raised his right hand, and placed the left one on an imaginary book. “I do hereby swear that each week will be easier than the last one. In six months you won’t even remember these tough times. Hallelujah. Amen. Praise the Lord.”

“You better move to the other side of the room, Travis Johnson. When that lightning bolt shoots though the window and zaps you dead for blaspheming, I don’t want to be too close.” She giggled.

“I’ll die a happy man, because I saw a twinkle in your eye for the first time in a long time.” He grinned. “I like the new room a lot, Hannah.”

“I was sitting here thinking that I might paint every room in the house just like it and do all the woodwork in white.”

“It will be like a sky full of fluffy white clouds. Sophie will love it.” His grin widened.

“That’s a phase with her. It’ll fade when something new comes along. At least I’m not painting all the walls like that patchwork quilt she drags around with her. Now that I’ve decided to do this, I’m getting so excited about it.”

Travis chuckled. “I’m so glad to see you happy, Hannah. But you better whisper about that quilt idea, because if she hears you say that in your sleep, she’ll want her room to be done in a patchwork design. And remember, darlin’, this cloud phase has lasted more than a year. She made me lie in the grass last summer when she called them ‘crowds’ instead of clouds. So we might have a few more years of guessing what the clouds are before she outgrows her love for her lullaby sky.” He hesitated, but the silence in the room felt comfortable between them. “I bet when she’s a grown woman with kids of her own, she takes them out to look at the clouds whenever they get a boo-boo. It’s ingrained in her. It’s her safety net.”

Travis, dependable, sweet man that he was, could find good in everyone. Hannah hoped that someday when the right woman came along, she’d realize that she’d found real gold and not fool’s gold.

“You are thinking of the past again.”

“What makes you say that?” Hannah asked.

“It’s the sadness in your eyes. I wish I had a mental ‘Dead End’ sign to put in your mind so that every time that happened, it would make you turn around and forget that there was even a man named Marty in the world,” he said.

“That is so sweet, Travis.” She smiled. “So you agree I should paint the whole house that pretty shade of blue? I could pick up the paint while Darcy and I are shopping for new furniture today.”

“I think it would be beautiful.”

“What if I don’t like it in a week?”

He chuckled. “Then repaint it. This is your house. You can paint the rooms a different color every week if that makes you happy. Darcy never got a chance to tell me what was really horrible last night, you know.”

“Bugs and spider eyes.”

“Want to elaborate just a little?” Travis asked.

“It all started when you let Sophie bounce on the bed. We found nanny cams in three different vents where Marty had been recording and watching us. And listening devices on the phones,” she answered.

Travis squeezed the coffee mug every bit as tight as his chest felt. He’d always known Marty was an egotistical son of a bitch with OCD and a god complex, but this strayed into the area right before a true sociopath came out of the closet. Hannah would be a long time getting over his mental abuse, but hopefully she’d been saved from suffering something worse.

“Did you check your cell phone?” he asked.

Hannah shook her head. “There’s not room for a bug in that phone, is there?” She picked up her phone from the nightstand beside the bed. She removed the cover and then the back and handed it to Travis. “Can you take that thing apart and tell me if there’s a device of any kind in the back?”

“No, I can’t, but we can take it to the phone place tomorrow when we go shopping for new furniture,” he said.

“Take it outside and leave it on the back porch until we can get it seen about.”

Travis handed the phone back to her. “I don’t know how he could have gotten anything into the telephone. It takes a tech person to get inside one of those smartphones. But your car, now that’s a different story. He’s probably got some kind of tracker on it, and we will check it out tomorrow.”

“I bet you are right. That makes more sense, anyway. When Sophie was two, I packed a suitcase, crammed a tote bag full of her favorite toys, and we left. We’d gotten about fifty miles down the road heading east. We were going to Virginia to live with my mother and grandmother until I could find a job and get on my feet.”

“And?” Travis asked.

“And Marty called, told me that I would turn around and go back home, or else.”

“Else?”

“He had lots of money behind him, Travis. I figured someone in town had seen us loading the suitcases and tattled on me. I always blamed Wyatt, because he was the only person in Crossing that Marty even talked to. I waited six months. That time I didn’t take a thing from the house. For anyone looking on, I was going out to do my Thursday evening grocery shopping. I drove straight to the shelter in Gainesville and . . .” She paused.

“And he called you, right?” Travis said.

“He did. He said it was the last chance he would ever give me. That I belonged to him and Sophie belonged to him, but it could be arranged that I wouldn’t be in the picture anymore. If I wanted to raise my daughter, I’d better go home and stay there.”

“Did he come home that weekend?”

Hannah nodded. “Oh, yes, and he brought Sophie a Barbie dollhouse and played with her all weekend. It was probably the most attention he’d ever paid the child, and she wasn’t quite sure how to take it all in. But I knew it was a message to me so I didn’t run again. That along with the threats and the bruises that he put on me. My car”—she paused—“was why I couldn’t leave. If only I’d known, I would have left it at home and gotten someone to drive me.”

“Marty is going to fall over the edge one of these days and do something really bad to someone. I’m just glad he’s out of your life, Hannah, and it won’t be you or Sophie in front of him when he cracks.” He held up his hand. “Dead end! Let’s go get another cup of coffee and imagine your kitchen painted blue with red-checkered curtains on the windows.”

“Not red with this shade of blue,” she said. “I’m going to sew them, so maybe pure white in the living room and kitchen. I want lots of sunshine to pour into the house, especially in the morning. I can pull the shades in the afternoon to ward off the heat.”

Travis’s heart kicked in a little extra beat at her enthusiasm. It might take six months—it might take a couple of years, even—but someday she was again going to be that cute little dark-haired girl with big brown eyes that he’d had a crush on in elementary school. She’d been shy even back then, but there was sparkle in her eyes and a bounce in her step. When he’d come back to Crossing the year before, he’d figured he’d stay in his grandmother’s spare bedroom, but Aunt Birdie had insisted he take a couple of rooms in her house on the second floor. That way he wouldn’t be so cramped. There was already a small sitting room up there and he could have his choice of bedrooms. And he’d have his own bathroom and not have to share.

At first he thought he’d stay three months and finish the latest novel he was working on, but then the time stretched out and now a year had passed.

“And”—her eyes started to twinkle—“when we go pick out furniture, I’m going by the fabric store to buy stuff for all the windows downstairs.” She giggled and it came from all the way down inside her heart. “Calvin would call them window treatments, not valances.” She slung her legs over the side of the bed and stood up with the grace of a ballerina.