Chapter 6 - The Sister's Voice
The Cedar Ridge Public Library was a red-brick building with tall, arched windows that sat on the corner of Market and Pine, three blocks from the town square. It was the kind of building that hadn't changed since 1950: heavy oak doors, the smell of floor wax and old dust, and ceiling fans that spun with a slow, hypnotic clatter.
Miller parked the government truck in the shade of an ancient live oak across the street.
"You want me to come in?" he asked, keeping the engine idling.
I looked at my reflection in the side mirror. The split lip was swollen now, a dark crust of dried blood clinging to the corner of my mouth. My uniform was dusty, my patrol cap tucked under my left epaulet.
"No," I said. "If she screams, I don't want two soldiers pinning her down. I need to do this alone."
"I’ll be right here," Miller said. "Take your time."
The brass bell above the library door chimed softly as I pushed it open.
The main hall was cool and almost empty. A few elderly men sat in the back reading newspapers under green-shaded lamps. At the circulation desk, a girl sat with her head bent over a stack of paperback books, a barcode scanner in her right hand.
She had my mother’s dark hair, but she had our father’s wide, expressive eyes and the small, stubborn cleft in her chin that I used to tease her about when she was seven years old. She wore an oversized grey cardigan with the sleeves pushed up to her elbows, revealing pale forearms.
She was twenty now. A woman.
The last time I had seen Hannah, she was sixteen, sitting on the end of my bed in her pajamas, crying because I wouldn't tell her why I was packing my duffel bag in the middle of the night.
*“If I tell you, Hannah, they’ll make you lie,”* I had told her then. *“Just remember that I love you. No matter what Mom says tomorrow, remember I love you.”*
I stopped ten feet from the desk.
"Hannah," I said.
The barcode scanner dropped onto the wood with a dull plastic clatter.
Hannah didn't look up immediately. Her shoulders stiffened, her spine locking into a rigid, defensive posture. For five seconds, the only sound in the room was the hum of the fluorescent lights.
Slowly, she raised her head.
Her eyes scanned my boots, the digitized camouflage of my trousers, the black rank insignia stitched into the center of my chest, and finally, my face.
Her breath caught in her throat. The color drained from her cheeks until she looked as pale as the paper in her hands.
"No," she whispered.
"Hannah, it's me."
She stood up so fast her wooden swivel chair rolled backward and slammed into the shelf behind her, knocking two books to the floor. "You're... you're dead."
The words felt like a physical blow to my solar plexus.
"I'm not dead," I said, keeping my hands open, palms forward, taking half a step toward the desk. "I never died, Hannah."
"Daniel said... Mom said you got into a fight at the prison in Wetumpka," Hannah stammered, her voice rising into a terrified, breathless squeak that made an old man at the newspaper rack glance over his spectacles. "They said you were stabbed. They said you died in the infirmary two years ago! We had a memorial service! There’s a stone out at Greenlawn!"
"They bought a stone?" I asked, my voice cracking with absolute disbelief. "They bought a stone to cover up a lie?"
"You stole the money!" Hannah cried out, tears instantly flooding her eyes, spilling over her lower lashes and dropping onto the counter. "You took Dad’s pension! You beat Mom so bad she had to go to the emergency room! That's why you ran! Daniel tried to help you—he offered to pay for your lawyers, but you ran away like a criminal!"
"Hannah, look at me!" I commanded, using the voice I used to stop privates from walking into danger on the live-fire range. It was sharp, clear, and impossible to ignore.
Hannah flinched, but her eyes locked onto mine.
I reached into my left breast pocket, pulled out my military ID, and slid it across the polished oak counter until it stopped against her fingers.
"Read it," I said.
She looked down at the card. Her trembling fingers touched the laminated plastic.
*UNITED STATES ARMED FORCES — ACTIVE DUTY.*
*COLE, REBECCA M.*
*RANK: SERGEANT (E-5).*
*BRANCH: U.S. ARMY.*
"This... this is fake," she whispered, though her voice lacked conviction.
"It’s not fake, Hannah. I was never in prison. I left Cedar Ridge on August twelfth four years ago because Daniel Mercer grabbed my arm in our kitchen and told me that if I didn't marry him, he would ruin Dad’s business. He told me I would belong to him. And when I went to Mom for help, she told me to shut my mouth and put on the wedding dress because the Mercers were going to save us from bankruptcy."
Hannah shook her head violently, covering her ears with her hands. "Stop it! Stop lying! Mom wouldn't do that!"
"Mom called the police seventeen minutes after I arrived at the house this morning," I said, my voice dropping to a steady, quiet whisper. "She told them an escaped convict was in her yard. And when Ben Carter ran my name through the national database and told her I had no criminal record—that I was an active-duty soldier—she hit me across the face in front of half the town."
I leaned forward, pointing to the swollen cut on my lip.
"Look at it, Hannah. Does that look like the work of a mother who thought her daughter was dead? Or does that look like a woman who just realized her four-year lie had run out of time?"
Hannah stared at my lip. Her hands slowly drifted down from her ears.
"Dad..." she choked out. "Where is Dad?"
"Dad is sitting on the front porch with fifty federal agents," I said gently. "Because Daniel and Mayor Mercer were using Dad’s company to steal military aircraft parts from Redstone Arsenal. And they forged my name on the paperwork to take the fall."
Hannah’s legs gave out. She sank to the floor behind the desk, her cardigan catching on the corner of the wood.
I rounded the desk, dropped to my knees beside her, and pulled her into my arms.
For three seconds, she remained stiff, her hands pressed against my chest as if trying to push away a nightmare. Then, with a ragged, soul-tearing sob, she collapsed against my shoulder. Her fingers clutched at the heavy fabric of my uniform, balling the cloth into her fists so hard her knuckles turned white.
"You were gone," she wept into my neck. "You were gone and they were so mean to me, Becca. Daniel was always in the house... he was always watching me... Mom told me if I didn't do what he said, I’d end up rotten like you..."
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"I know, baby," I whispered, burying my face in her hair, letting my own tears fall for the first time since I stepped off that truck. "I know. But I'm here now. And nobody is ever going to touch you again."
***
