The Deadfern Miracles

I could use this shot as a cover photo for the book, lol.

Just a scene, merely to note that while bad things happen and no one blinks, why can't miracles occur similarly....

 

The actual haircut took ten minutes, the chit-chat minimal. Hannah was no-nonsense during her work, one of the reasons Kym had started going to her over fifteen years ago, after Hannah got her ya-ya’s out living in Santa Rosa, first in attending cosmetology school, then meeting who she would marry, then dragging that man back to her hometown because despite losses, nowhere on God’s green earth was more beautiful and peaceful than the King Range. Hannah had been smart enough to know that Deadfern was the closest she and Connor would get in terms of urban living, and Connor had been wise enough not to argue with her. He worked at the post office, and had weathered a few years with Shauna before she had been moved to delivery. Yet Hannah and Connor were years younger than Kym, had three kids, and after Kym admired her newly shorn bangs, and a few long strands along her face also trimmed to both women’s satisfactions, it was those children who lit their mother’s conversational fire. And once Hannah Weldon got to talking about her kids, there was no stopping her.

Unlike Loralye’s travails with Trevor, all that Hannah relayed was love. Occasionally Kym closed her eyes as Hannah sat across from her at the small dining table, gushing about the upcoming baseball season and s’mores roasted over the fire pit Connor had designed a few years back. Hannah’s past wasn’t free from sorrow; Kym had gone to school with Olson, Hannah’s older brother, who like many of the women’s contemporaries had lost a prolonged and nasty battle with drugs. Yet none of Lora or Shauna’s heartaches reverberated through a mother’s cheery voice; when Kym opened her eyes, Hannah’s ringing laughter lessened her crow’s feet and hid the obvious half-inch of grey hair that needed a refresher. Briefly Kym wondered if by coming here today, had Hannah skipped out on doing her own roots, or letting someone at the salon attend to that task. Yet for whatever reason, it had mattered more to Hannah to be here on that afternoon, lessening the load on Kym’s shoulders as well as allowing her to stop shoving her hair from her face every few minutes.

“So I told all three of ʼem if they wanted s’mores tonight wood needed to be brought in,” Hannah chuckled, wiping a few stray tears from her eyes. “They griped,” she continued with a smile, “but didn’t argue with me.”

The children weren’t tiny, Kym knew; the youngest was Brianna, maybe six years old. All were able to collect kindling from the family’s acreage, their house the same one Hannah, Olson, and middle sibling Frasier had grown up in a mile out of town. Frasier lived across the freeway in Ashton, was single, also sober. He’d never left the area, and looked exactly like his late older brother, who had OD’d right after Kym’s surgery a dozen years ago. Literally, Kym permitted, as Hannah then related how her eldest was itching to start Little League. Sailor and Kym had arrived home from her week-long stay in a Santa Rosa hospital finding Rickey sitting in his truck, parked in front of their house. Who was dead, Kym had murmured aloud, still in a painkiller induced haze, as for no other purpose than to announce bad news would Rickey be waiting for them.

That Olson had lived as long as he had was the bigger shock, what Sailor and Kym discussed maybe a day later. How would Frasier handle it, how would Hannah? How would Shauna, they considered after attending Olson’s funeral nearly ten days later, allowing relatives to travel from all over the state because something in Hannah’s family exuded peace, what Kym couldn’t deny or escape as Hannah kept talking and giggling as though Kym and Sailor’s non-existent offspring were just as hilarious.

Kym soaked up all that familial joy, hard to repel what Hannah radiated in gracious waves. This woman was the complete opposite of Shauna, and a good ninety degrees from Loralye. Was it her age or having left Deadfern for a few years? What made Hannah so resilient to sorrow?

As footsteps thumped on the porch, only then did both women realize the time. Glancing at the large smart watch on her left wrist, Hannah clucked, then giggled. “God, look at the time. It always passes fast when talking with good friends.”

Were they friends, Kym wondered, gazing at the less ostentatious smart watch on her own wrist. It was ten after five, a little early for Sailor to be calling it quits, or maybe he wanted to make sure his wife was still breathing. Hannah stood, then leaned over Kym, running her fingers through the front of Kym’s hair. “Looks good even if I say so myself,” she grinned, then she stepped back as Sailor entered the house. “Well,” she said to him, “how’s she look?”

“Beautiful as always,” he smiled.

Kym rolled her eyes as Hannah chortled. “You’re a smart man Sailor Denton. When you gonna change your last name, huh?”

He grumbled, but not all in irritation, a question often posed to him, usually in jest, the very tone Hannah had used. Observing their jovial banter, Kym wondered if Hannah had always been this light-hearted. Kym barely recalled her as a kid, the eight years between them more like eighty. Then Hannah left, and by the time she returned, Olson only lived another year, maybe two? Something surrounded this woman, warding off the lesser evils, or maybe all of them, Kym mused, as Sailor chuckled, his tone another balm on Kym’s soul. She would miss him, but so much around them was cloaked in…. She frowned briefly, then found herself giggling not from whatever Hannah had just said, merely from the jocular vibe extended. Extreme joy was this woman’s signature, and Kym carefully toyed with her bangs, hoping some element of that pleasure could be absorbed into Kym’s entire body. Not as a healing force, she smirked inwardly, merely to ward off the constant agony she now felt as though Lora and Shauna stood at her sides. Kym wasn’t blind to their moods, but suddenly that darkness seemed suffocating. She breathed deeply as Sailor and Hannah continued to laugh, then closed her eyes, still breathing deeply, but the ghosts remained, her best friends’ pain like the endless cramps that told her she’d be bleeding till the friggin’ day she died.

Yet in her home, a sliver of peace bested all that negativity. Opening her eyes, Kym smiled, then stood from her chair, ignoring the agonizing wave ripping through her lower abdomen, and the probable clot she would flush down the toilet as soon as Hannah said Goodbye. None of that mattered as Hannah turned toward her, warm brown eyes the same hue as most of Hannah’s hair. “All right, my cue to go,” Hannah smiled. Again she gently tousled Kym’s hair, then kissed her cheek as if they were lifelong besties. “You take it easy while he’s gone or I’m gonna….”

“What do I owe you?” Kym said, trying to keep joyful tears from spilling down her face.

“The usual,” Hannah’s tone seemed almost embarrassed to charge Kym for this visit. It was more than a haircut, Kym considered, pulling out her phone, tapping the payment app, adding a sweet tip to the small charge that probably wasn’t enough to cover Hannah’s gas for driving here, then heading home.

Hannah didn’t note the ping on her phone. She did pat her leggings’ pocket, then giggled as Sailor noted he was there for a bathroom break. Was that more than Hannah wanted to know, Kym smirked as her husband told Hannah to give Connor his best. Hannah said she would, then she waved at Kym, seeing herself to the front door, closing it behind her. Again Kym inhaled deeply, the fragrance not that of a hair salon but of fresh flowers, of springtime. It was something so precious that if Kym could bottle it, Sailor wouldn’t have to work another day in his life.