After Dark(11)

I savored the vision of sunlight in his golden hair and on his toned, bare torso.

Until he saw me.

His eyes flickered to mine and he snapped the notebook shut.

“Bird, you’re up.”

“Yeah.” I smiled hesitantly. What was that expression on his face? Alarm?

“I didn’t hear you. How do you feel?” He came to me and half-hugged me, kissing the top of my head.

“Little headache. Thanks for the Tylenol. How long have you been awake?”

“Not long. Watched you sleep for a while.”

I ran my fingers through his hair—he smiled—and flattened my palms on his chest. Sometimes, touching Matt made me feel so shy—especially when he watched me.

I swallowed and trailed my fingers down his abs.

Okay … okay. Too early to get him turned on.

My hands swerved away from his waist. I tapped the notebook he held.

“Working on Last Light?”

He yanked the book from my touch.

“Yeah. Last Light.” He turned to the desk and slipped the notebook into his laptop case, zipped the case, and clicked a tiny padlock through the zippers. I frowned and jiggled the lock. He ruffled my hair. “Old habits, little bird.”

We drank coffee together at the kitchenette. Matt said it was our day and he scooted his chair close to mine.

In the shower, he pressed me against the tiles and slid into me. His cock was rigid, insistent. “I’ve wanted you all morning,” he hissed. “I got hard just watching you sleep.”

Tender Matt was gone, demanding Matt taking his place.

I moaned long and low as he enjoyed me. He asked me how I liked it, and how much harder I thought I could take it, and then he gave it to me. When I was on the cusp of release, he pinched my clit and twisted. I came in a shaking rush.

He refused to give me our itinerary that day. Each time I asked, he flashed a smile at me. “Places. We’re going places.”

He plugged in his iPhone and let me pick music. I played “From Finner” and patted my thigh to the beat. Far from home … so happy.

Matt barely looked at the GPS as he drove.

He skirted the interstate highways, choosing winding country roads instead. We cruised through one small town after another. I lowered the window and smelled sweet grass and summer, and he held my hand.

What I’d seen of New Jersey—Newark and the area around Trenton where Nate lived—looked nothing like this. “So many trees,” I said. “It’s beautiful here.”

“Isn’t it? A well-kept secret, this state.”

Something stole over Matt as he drove. He released my hand and gripped the wheel. The levity faded from his expression. He grew quiet.

I monitored his mood without comment. Were we going to see his aunt and uncle? Doubtful, with Matt in a T-shirt and jeans. Maybe a cousin? Some unsavory relative?

We entered another town.

A roadside plaque read, WELCOME TO HUNTERDON COUNTY.

“This is Flemington,” he said. He stared ahead, eyes dark, arms braced. We swung around a circle and passed a large white barn with a gray roof, and a sign: DVOOR BROS. STOCK FARM, DAIRY COWS, HORSES.

He slowed the car almost to a stop as we crossed an old stone bridge.

MINE STREET.

I blinked rapidly, trying to take in everything.

“It’s really … cute here,” I whispered. Then I clamped my mouth shut. He glanced at the creek below the bridge—flashing water, flat brown rock. He swallowed and I watched the powerful play of emotion on his face.

Half a block from the bridge, he turned into a neighborhood across from a sprawling sandstone church.

“Saint Magdalene’s,” he said.

We passed several small homes and stopped at the curb beside a blue house with a red door. An oak loomed in the backyard, a flowering tree on the small front lawn. The grass looked neatly kept, as did the shrubs around the stairs, but a pile of trash clustered near the garage door: crates, beams, a garbage can, a sack of cement.

Despite the sunlight, I felt sad and unmoored. Why were we here?

I looked at Matt.

Pale-faced, he stared intently at the house.

“I grew up here,” he said.

My lips parted; I sucked in a thread of air.

Jesus. How hadn’t I considered this possibility? Matt … showing me the home where he grew up. Matt letting me into his life.

I gulped down my instinctive response to the house—it’s tiny!—and took his hand. He flinched, but his fingers tightened around mine.

Here. He grew up here. Before his parents died, presumably.

I pictured a towheaded boy on the front lawn. Little Matt …

Tears shimmered in my eyes.

“I—I want to…” I dug through my purse. Get a fucking grip! “Take a picture…”

He said nothing.

Was this tasteless? Cruel? Weird? My thoughts flashed around wildly as I snapped pictures on my phone, framed by the car window. Little blue house. Lost blue boy.

“Y-you grew up here,” I stammered.

“Mm. For the first nine years of my life, at least.”

Nine years. Sure enough. When Matt was nine, his parents died in a bus accident in Brazil, and his uncle and aunt whisked him into a different life. Maybe a better life, by the look of this house. I swallowed the questions I wanted to ask. So much I burned to know. Matt was showing me this—giving me something, the edge of the map—and I sensed that I needed to be patient. Time, not wild curiosity, would illuminate his life.

“Do you want to knock? Go in?”

He shook his head.

“Okay.” I rubbed my thumb over the top of his hand. We sat in silence, watching the house. He sneered subtly, pulled forward, and nodded.

“That’s an addition.” He pointed to the extruding back half of the home. “All that. And they cut down the pine tree. There was a big tree—right there by the window. I climbed up one time, looked into my parents’ bathroom, and saw Nate doing push-ups, like, against the sink. Admiring himself in the mirror. He was big into his looks.”

I pictured boy Matt in the missing tree, and boy Nate with his dark hair. My thoughts strayed to Seth and I grimaced.

Finally, we pulled away from the house and drove through the neighborhood, which was small and T-shaped with two cul-de-sacs. Matt made a few comments. My friend lived here. These people had a dog that bit Nate. Everyone used to say a Mafia family lived there.

I saw the place through his wondering child eyes. The menacing dog. The alleged crime family. Cracked streets where Matt maybe rode his bike or trailed his big brothers.

“I’d like to see pictures of you as a kid. I’ve only seen a few.” Online, I thought guiltily.

“I’m sure Aunt Ella and Rick can help with that.”

I stroked his thigh as we turned out of the neighborhood. Tense muscle under denim. My heart pulled strangely as the blue house vanished from view. Leaving the past behind—there’s no such thing. I wrapped my thoughts around each question I wanted to ask my future husband, and my desire to know him—to know him to the marrow—turned to steely intention inside me.





Chapter 10

MATT

I cruised around Flemington—down the main street with its quaint Victorian architecture and pastel-colored homes, through the winding lanes of St. Magdalene’s, past Mine Brook Park—and Hannah peered out her window like a child.

“Mine Brook,” she said. “The title of your book.”

“That’s right. There used to be copper mines around here. Dad—” I stumbled over the word. Hannah’s curiosity shone in her eyes, and I wanted to give her the answers she deserved, but how could I do that if I could barely talk about my parents without my voice catching?

Ridiculous, these old rags of emotion. I scowled.

“Dad wouldn’t let us play in certain woods. Every once in a while, an old mine shaft collapsed. Of course that made it all very exciting. We used to play by that creek you saw.”

“Yeah? I like that. It sounds … happy.”

“I was very happy here. Unconditionally happy.” I glanced at Hannah. Her wide, bright eyes locked on me. “Am I boring you?”

“Not at all. I want to hear everything.” She looked painfully earnest.

“We had money, you know. Plenty of it. We could have lived anywhere, in any way, but my parents insisted on living humbly. And they worked hard. Real saints, you know?” We drove past a stretch of outlets. “Like the prophets. ‘They were too good for this world.’”

Her eyebrows bunched together and I frowned.

Right, she won’t catch your biblical allusions. Stop that.

“Anyway.” I turned onto Highway 202 and stepped on the gas. “Mine Brook and The Silver Cord are my love songs to this place. I don’t know exactly what my parents were trying to accomplish with the small home and public schooling, but I—” Emotion weighed on my chest.

“Go on.”

I yanked a hand through my hair.

“I loved my life here. I remember.” Thick, dumb tears gathered in my eyes. “The creek, the parks, everything. We were happy … with this happiness so cosmically unfair … I was nine and I remember thinking, ‘My life is perfect.’ And Hannah, I knew it couldn’t last … that somehow I would have to pay for it, that happiness.”

I blinked the tears from my eyes. Not one fell.

“Matt, that’s—”

I heard shock in her voice and I raised a hand to silence her.