Just Like a Man by Elizabeth Bevarly Page B

amber grain waved. It was home to Dorothy, the place she had always insisted there was no place like. Hannah would have loved to have grown up in Kansas and be able to tell people that was where she was from. So that was the lie she'd always chosen to tell other people, too. And now Michael. Because she really didn't see any harm in telling lies like those. Who would be hurt by them? What harm could they do?
    "Is that where your great-aunt and cousin are?"
    "Uh, Chloe is there, yeah," she said. Because that was the history she had chosen for herself and her favorite cousin. After all, in order to be that close, they would have had to grow up together. "But Auntie lives in Minnesota. I used to spend my summers with her." Which was what Hannah had always pretended when she was a child. And that was what she'd told the kids at school on the last day. That the reason she wouldn't be able to see any of them over the summer was because she'd be visiting her great-aunt in Minnesota. That sounded a lot better than telling them it was because her father would be fleecing their families and then leaving town.
    "And Patsy?"
    "Oh, Patsy," she said, warming now to the subject, thanks to the tongue-loosening—and truth-loosening—Chianti. And also thanks to the fact that Michael seemed to be falling for her story hook, line, and sinker. And she tried not to think about how that was probably because, in some ways, as hard as she'd tried to escape her legacy, maybe she really was her father's daughter, after all. "Patsy lives in New Mexico now. But she moves around a lot. She's married to a pilot," Hannah said, having invented a dashing aviator husband for Patsy. She figured it was the least she could do for the imaginary best friend who had stood by her for so many years. "They have four kids," she added. "All blond, like Patsy. They all look exactly like her. It's amazing."
    "What's amazing is that you're still friends with someone from that long ago."
    "Mm," Hannah said, telling herself the response did
not
come out sounding strained, even strangled. "You don't have any friends you've kept since childhood?" she asked, finding it strange that he would be amazed by such a thing. After all, from what she had gathered about him and Alex, they seemed to have had reasonably normal, secure, uneventful lives, both of them.
    His mouth, which only moments ago had been curved into such an amiable smile, flattened into a grim line. "No," he said.
    "Oh." She wondered why he didn't make some up, then. Oh, well. Different strokes and all that.
    "So you don't have any brothers or sisters?" Michael asked.
    She shook her head. "No. My mother always told me that she and my dad were just so enamored of me after I was born that they couldn't imagine creating a second one as good."
    After that, Michael suddenly seemed to grow agitated. "Look," he said, the word coming out clipped and cool, "I really don't want to intrude. We can talk about Alex some other time. I'll call you at school. Tomorrow. During the day."
    "O-okay," Hannah stammered, unprepared for his sudden, but very real this time, withdrawal.
    She was even less prepared for the way he abruptly spun on his heel and made his way back to the front door. Almost as an afterthought, he tossed a quick, indifferent '"Bye" over his shoulder, and then he was gone.
    Almost as if he'd never been there at all.
    Hannah looked at the glass of wine in her hand—her third, granted, but the glass was small, and she'd barely touched it—and set it gingerly on the table. Chianti had never made her hallucinate before, but she had been working harder than usual the past month or so, thanks to it being the beginning of the school year. Yes, of course, that's what Michael Sawyer must have been—a hallucination. Because he'd been so handsome, and so nice, and he'd felt so comfortable here in her home. She must have just conjured him up from thin air. That could be the only explanation.
    It had to be. Because as Hannah