Page 84 of Soft Flannel Hank

“It was sudden. A heart attack. The old man never really took care of himself. But then it was just my mom. And she got sick.”

“Sick?” Esther asked.

“Cancer.” Another sigh. “Marnie and I had scheduled a trip to go look at houses in the suburbs outside of Philadelphia but had to cancel when my mom was diagnosed. She started treatment immediately, and the prognosis looked good. Then we found out Marnie was pregnant. It wasn’t… planned. She didn’t want to move when she was pregnant and I didn’t want to leave my mom and so we stayed.”

“Your daughter?”

Hank smiled. “Anna. She was so beautiful.Isso beautiful. I was so happy. Mom was in remission. I was getting recognized at work. Marnie seemed okay. And I had this beautiful baby girl who thought that I was the very best person in the world.”

“She sounds smart,” Esther said, and Hank felt himself blush as he looked away.

“We talked about moving, about leaving World’s End, but when Anna started walking in that house, I couldn’t imagine leaving it. I couldn’t imagine taking her away from my mom and the place that I’d grown up. I wanted to show her the woods and beach, and I wanted her to grow up with Jamie’s and Buck’s kids. I wanted her to have a big family.”

He was walking closer and closer to the gaping wound, with its ragged edges that had healed but scarred over badly. But he’d come this far.

“Marnie became less and less herself. She wouldn’t let me touch her. Wouldn’t let me kiss her. Stopped wanting much at all to do with me. As soon as I walked in the door from work, she was walking out of it, handing me the baby and leaving with her camera. Marnie told me it was the postpartum hormones and the winter, and I believed her.”

He swallowed thickly. “Then Mom’s cancer came back.”

Esther put her spoon down, watching him intently. As if she knew how this story ended. Maybe she did.

“I wasn’t around much. I was working long hours at the station, and then I was going over to Mom’s before and after work and on my lunch breaks to help her. Marnie was alone with Anna a lot. One night, we had a huge fight. She’d applied for a big photography gig in New York and hadn’t told me about it. They offered it to her. She wanted us to go. She said this was our chance to do something big. I told her I couldn’t leave my mom as sick as she was and she would never move to New York. Marnie got mad. She told me she wasn’t going to die in this prison I’d made for her and she wasn’t going to let Anna waste away in it either.”

Hank remembered the fight with crystal clarity. After all, it had played in high definition in his brain almost every day for the last seventeen years. Marnie standing across from him in the kitchen, tears streaming down her cheeks as she screamed that he’d trapped her.

Hank’s guts had dropped damn near through his body when she’d said that, as if every memory of them together flashed before his eyes and he was seeing them clearly for the first time. She loved him, but not enough to stay. And he loved her, but not enough to leave.

He swallowed thickly. “When I got home from work the next day, she’d packed her car and had Anna loaded into her car seat. I asked her where she was going, and she said she was leaving. She’d spoken to a divorce attorney, some guy her dad played golf with, and I should expect papers soon.”

“That’s it?” Esther breathed, her face red. “What did you do?”

“I let her go. She was having her pictures published as part of a huge New York City marketing campaign and made a bunch of money. She was going to take Anna all over the world with her. And what the hell did I have to offer? A small-town cop’s salary and a too-small house that creaks too loudly.”

Esther opened her mouth to protest, but Hank cut her off, his voice rough with emotion. “She never really wanted to marry me. She never really wanted to stay here. She was just too nice to say no. And then she got caught in her own trap. So when she got free of it, free of me, I let her go. Let them both go.”

Esther stood and took a step to the left, as if to walk around the table and go to him, but he shook his head. She sat back down.

Hank wanted nothing more than to fall to his knees and rest his head in Esther’s lap. She could rub his back and stroke his hair and let him break himself against her. But he couldn’t do that.

He placed his crossed forearms on the table and rested his face on top of them. He heard Esther stand again, but she didn’t come near him. Hank heard a zipper open and close, and then she was back and shuffling her cards inches from the top of his head. He listened to the ruffling sound as they slid in between one another, the gentle taps as she made the deck neat again before splitting it and repeating the process.

After a while, her soft voice broke through the silence. “What happened next?”

He felt the hollow ache in his chest as he answered.

“I took care of my mom for four more years as she got worse and worse before she finally passed. Cleaned out her house. Sold it. I called Marnie every day and tried to talk to Anna. But they got busy and started answering the phone less and less. I visited a few times, but it was… difficult.”

“So you went through losing your mom alone?” Esther asked, shuffling again, her movement sharper. Angrier.

“No. I wasn’t alone. Magda was Mom’s best friend, and she was there. Jamie and Buck too.”

Magda had been next to him at the end. He’d held one of his mom’s hands, and Magda had held the other. When it was over, she’d shooed him out of the room so she could wash his mom’s body, which was a tradition in her family, she’d told him.

Hank felt his throat thicken, his voice sounded choked as he said, “Then one day, Anna called me and asked if she could come stay with me for her senior year. Marnie was doing a long-term project in Europe, and Anna didn’t want to go. I couldn’t believe it. I was so happy. The first semester was so good. We hung out a lot. I taught her how to drive because she’d never learned in New York. We watched movies and baseball andAntiques Roadshow. It was like making up for sixteen years of lost time.”

“But…”

“But she met a boy—Nat’s cousin, I guess you’d call him—and he… hurt her. Nat saved her and brought her back to me.”