Hannah's Rainbow: Every Color Beautiful

Chapter Nineteen

In the following week, Harry healed enough to be released from the hospital, but he was taken to the city jail, where he was being held as charges were brought forth. Not a soul spoke of Harry in the open, although Hannah knew her parents stayed up late every night arguing in hushed voices down the hall.

Hannah had read Kat's obituary in the newspaper and had considered going to the funeral. Seeing Will would only bring to surface a mixture of emotions best kept in the past, and she surmised he wouldn't have wanted her there.

Hannah couldn't help but wonder if Harry wouldn't have found another route to alcohol. Pa had dropped a passing comment about his own father having a drinking problem and how those sorts of things ran in families. As Hannah was finding out, however, such dark secrets were seldom discussed. Harry's alcoholism had tainted the rest of the family.

Hannah left her job at the Black Sewing Machine, Kat's empty chair beside her too much. When she obtained a position at Dependable Electric, she transitioned from one job to the next easily.

By mid-summer, Harry's trial was held. Looking back, Hannah didn't wish to remember it. She didn't need to go over the hours spent in a courtroom as evidence was brought against her brother. She didn't want to recall her mother's bitter tears or the grim look that seemed permanently etched on her father's face. She didn't wish to be reminded of her own cowardice for being too afraid to speak to the young man who had once been so close to her. At the end of it all, she would forever remember the verdict: guilty.

Guilty of illegal alcohol consumption and guilty of manslaughter.

Hannah met Harry's eyes across the courtroom. He blinked and turned his gaze away.

Hannah felt herself charged: guilty of failing to be the supportive, loving sister Harry needed, now more than ever. Her family's charge: guilty of hiding Harry away like a stain on the underside of a beaten rug, its only purpose for wiping feet clean and further dirtying itself.

Harry was sentenced to three years in the county jail.

Erik, who had always been so close to Harry while growing up, could have been a perfect stranger to him now. He seemed to be distancing himself from the whole family since the debacle. When the holidays came and went without any visit from him, Ma mourned a second wayward son, questioning where she had gone wrong. He called on Christmas Day and spoke with his family for five minutes.

The year 1932 began with the first good news the Rechthart family had had in a long time - Amy was pregnant again. Nine months later, she delivered another baby girl and named her Bethany Marie.

Hannah saw time's mark on her family as her parents seemed to age ten years in the year that followed Harry's incarceration. Ma's back began to slump, and she shuffed along like someone much older. When Pa broke his leg in a trucking accident, he cursed the whole way to the hospital, and Hannah held back from asking him if maybe it was time he handed the heavier work over to someone younger - that would have meant Harry just a year before.

Overall, the Rechthart house had drifted to a dismal place. Ma's heart wasn't in her cooking and catering to guests any longer, and no one felt compelled to push her when it was evident that she moved slower these days. All the fight had gone out of her, leaving a shell of a woman whose strength and solidarity had always been a cornerstone of the family. Pa's smiles were fewer, and the sparkle in his eyes burned out.

Hannah wondered if she appeared as a ghost to others as she went to work and back daily. She flitted through her days, barely making a mark - her touch on the world a brush stroke, leaving the painting unfinished. If a person could have grown translucent and grey, Hannah's skin would have become see-through and dull, her person partly dead, a walking automaton.