Page 34 of Becoming Family

twelve

Afull week had come and gone without Hobbs’s return to the gym. Tabitha hoped he was okay, despite the fact that her intuition was telling her otherwise. She settled at the kitchen table alone on Sunday morning and realized she hadn’t started her Badass List. She briefly wondered if it was worth it. Surely Hobbs had better things to worry over and wouldn’t give this list they’d discussed a second thought. By the time he returned from Omaha, he would’ve forgotten all about it.

Still, Tabitha opened her Journal of Invincibility to the back, where there were a lot of clean, blank pages, and wrote the title out in bold block letters: THE BADASS LIST.

Then, while sipping a cup of coffee, she gave it a go.

Don’t act like a freak when you have coffee with Thaddeus on Friday.

Learn about motorcycles.

Possibly ride one.

Ace massage quizzes.

Excel at massage.

Run a race with Clementine???

Tabitha stared at the list and wondered how she could achieve any of this. She could study up on motorcycles during her downtime at the shop, and probably even get Delaney to take her on a ride sometime soon. She could double down on her study time for massage, too. As far as running with Clementine, Tabitha wasn’t sure that was even a goal, but if she actually went through with her coffee date with Thaddeus this week, she could get running tips from him, which would also serve to make him feel big and important. The less they focused on her, the better.

As far as becoming better at massage itself, Tabitha was trying hard to push memories of her post-marathon-massage fail from her mind. She hoped the woman who had been carried off on a stretcher had recovered. Tabitha was pinning her hopes on the text she’d received from Red this morning, suggesting Tabitha come out next Saturday to Pittie Place. Red needed her help with something that would benefit her work in massage school.

Of course Tabitha had agreed.

But now she sat, alone with her thoughts, glancing back and forth between her list and Auntie El’s crossword puzzle. Auntie had filled in about a third of it, but was nowhere in sight. The kitchen was quiet and the coffee tepid. She must’ve been up with the dawn, then returned to bed.

Or, a voice in Tabitha’s head suggested,she never went to sleep and only just crashed recently. Tabitha’s eyes closed and that worried feeling gnawed at her gut again. Something was definitely wrong. Auntie El was a notorious early bird. An emergency room nurse in her early days, she’d switched to becoming a foster mother. There were always other kids around the house, ranging in age from toddlers to teens. Auntie El was a solid, safe haven who ran her household with rules, boundaries and a lot of love. At Auntie El’s house, you couldn’t get away with anything, but you always knew someone had your back. Her energy seemed limitless in those days, and only as she grew older and retired did she slow down even a little. Sleeping in the middle of the day and limping around the house was not Auntie El.

Tabitha wondered, as she often did, where she would be without Auntie. Would anyone else have adopted her? She knew full well that Auntie El was one of the rare good ones in this world and that, though she’d been abandoned at a church, Tabitha was one of the lucky ones. Here she’d been so caught up in her own life and her own problems for so long she hadn’t even noticed what was going on with the woman who’d raised her.

She lifted Auntie’s crossword pen from atop the paper and added another task to her Badass List. This one went at the top, above all the others.

Help Auntie El.

Hobbs took more time getting home than he had getting to Omaha. He let Hannah’s moods dictate how much he drove in one spell and texted Rhett when he realized he’d need more coverage for his clients and classes than he’d planned. By the time they made it to Virginia, it was late Thursday night, he’d been gone a week and a half and Hannah was exhausted.

She stood inside the entryway to his rambler and froze there, arms limp at her sides while Hobbs brought in her suitcases. “Hey.” He put a hand on her shoulder as he pushed the door closed. “You all right?”

“Yeah.”

It was a throwaway answer. It meant nothing. It had been a throwaway question, too. Hannah had been far more compliant than Hobbs had expected about giving up the only life she’d ever known to come out here, even if she had been told it was only temporary. But then again, Hannah had always done anything Hobbs told her to do. Victor, twelve years older than Hannah—as opposed to Hobbs’s nine—hadn’t been as involved in her upbringing, and Pops, who’d been out of her life since she was young, seemed to have been viewed as some kind of uncle or grandfather, misunderstood and feared. Other than her initial reaction of shock, Hannah hadn’t seemed to grieve Pops’s death any more than either of her brothers.

“Come home with me for the holidays. We’ll figure things out after that,” Hobbs had told her. It was just after Pops’s body had been collected and the living room scoured by Mom, wielding bleach and a bucket and a huge sponge the likes you’d use to wash a car. There was no memorial service or funeral planned. Mom had donated his body to science. Hobbs had given little thought to how Pops would’ve felt about becoming a cadaver for students to cut up and learn on, and it had been worth the small space in his brain in exchange for the morbid shot of jaded satisfaction he got picturing it.

“How long after that?” Hannah had said, not even arguing, though she kept glancing in Mom’s direction to see if she’d object.

“Just a little while. You come with me, and Victor will watch over Mom.”

Translation: until Victor could ascertain that James Timbley was gone from the picture for good, that he’d forgotten about Hannah and had moved on, hopefully from the area, definitely from her life.

“Vic. You’ll take care of Mom?” Hannah had lowered her voice and peeked in Mom’s direction; she was on her knees, scrubbing stains in the carpet that had been there for decades. The suds under the scrub brush had turned black, matching the circles on the knees of Mom’s gray pants.

“Mom, leave it,” Victor had said, as though to prove his point. “I’ll buy you a new carpet, okay? Trust me. The stains in this house are never coming out.”

Mom had sat back on her heels and just stared at the wet mess in despair.

“Come on in and get a load off,” Hobbs said, once Hannah had stood in the foyer too long, looking sad and lost and ready to cry. She’d feel better once he got her feet up and made her a cup of hot tea, her favorite.

“I’ve been sitting all day, remember?” Hannah’s hand went to her legs, rubbing down her quads. “I need to move a little.”

“Right,” Hobbs agreed. “Let’s go for a walk. It’s warmer here than it is at home. A light jacket will be fine. November is fickle, though. Can’t make up its mind, goes back and forth between cold and warm. A lot more humidity here, though, so it’ll feel warmer than it is.”

“Okay.” Hannah sucked in a deep breath, but didn’t move.

Hobbs reached out and grabbed her by the fingertips, then pulled her in. She didn’t resist. Hannah laid her head on his shoulder and slid her arms around his waist.

“I’m scared, Chris. And I’m mad. And sad.”

“I know.” Hobbs rubbed her back. “It’s gonna be okay. You’re safe now.” Even as he said it, he wondered if that were true. Hobbs just didn’t trust abusers. They always found a way to hurt you. Even now, he wondered if Pops would find some way to haunt him from the grave.

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