After Dark (8 page)

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.

“It’s not ridiculous. It’s true.”

She let it go, but I could feel her disapproval rumbling—her dislike of my deeply held belief that the price of pleasure is pain.

“We’ll be different,” I said. “I see no point in disguising our wealth from our children.” I glanced at her. She stuttered out a few “um”s and “well”s
.
“Bird, I know…”

“You do?” Her eyes widened.

“Of course. I know you want to live simply. And we will, somehow. But it would be a farce, to force a small home and public schooling on our children. Not that we’ll spoil them, but we’ll give them the best possible footing for a good future…” I rambled about my plans, expecting Hannah to interrupt. She didn’t, though, and I wondered again if she was keeping something from me. Maybe she knew she couldn’t have kids. Maybe she was afraid to tell me.

But if that was the case, why the IUD?

I smirked and shook my head, dismissing my heavy thoughts.

I drove to the Fudge Shoppe, a chocolate store owned by an old family friend. I had fond memories of the place—the smell of cocoa, Easter rabbits taller than my nine-year-old body, dipping strawberries in deep silvery vats.

A boyhood friend ran the shop now. He’d bulked up, got a sleeve of tattoos and shaved his head, but we recognized one another immediately.

We embraced, and I introduced Hannah as my fianc
é
e.

“Nothing’s changed,” I said, looking into the glass cases.

“Well, we’re making chocolate from bean to bar now.” Stephen took us to the back room and showed us around. Hannah dipped a strawberry, giggling as she did, and I dipped another and fed it to her. I kissed the warm chocolate from her lips.

“Is your dad around?” I was hoping to see Stephen’s father, a white-haired man even when I’d known him, who used to show up for church with chocolate stains on his suit. He was a good friend to my father.

“Not today. He’s out with Lisa and the kids.”

“Your kids?”

“Yup. I got married, oh, seven years ago now. Got two little girls.”

“Well, hey, congratulations.” I flashed a smile at Hannah. She looked pointedly at the ground. “How is all that?”

“It’s good, man. Really good.” Stephen folded his arms and nodded. The bells on the front door jingled, announcing a shopper. “I better get out there. Help yourself to anything.”

“I was actually hoping you had a key to the church,” I said. “Wanted to show Hannah.”

“Oh, yeah, of course.” Stephen dashed upstairs, his feet thumping overhead, and returned with a key chain. “Front door and back. That’s just the shed.”

I promised to return the key before five and I drove Hannah over to Three Bridges Reformed Church. I parked in the side lot and led her to the front of the building. We held hands and admired the classic clapboard steeple, the whitewash and red door.

Large trees shaded us.

“I remember playing on this lawn between services,” I said. Hannah pressed against my side. “Nate would sit in the church, up near the pulpit, and like some wizard”—I laughed—“order Seth and I to find random things for him. A dry leaf. A broken stick. We’d run down the aisle and come out here to search. We sort of worshiped him.”

Inside, the church smelled musty. Cool air lay still on my skin.

We sat on a pew and I closed my eyes and remembered for a while.

Hannah held my hand in both of hers.

When I was ready, I told her the rest of my story. I told her how Mom and Dad traveled to South America with a mission group once a year and provided free medical care to people living in the favelas—the slums of Brazil. I breezed over the accident: a bus crash on a winding mountain road. My parents instantly killed.

Aunt Ella and Uncle Rick came into our lives then. Childless, they happily spirited Nate and Seth and me to their grand colonial-style home in Chatham, and we stopped going to church and playing in muddy creeks, and we learned instead how to play tennis and ride horses.

“‘My little gentlemen,’ Ella used to call us.” I chuckled, my eyes drifting open. “Only Nate really took to that.”

“Will we see Nate this weekend?”

Hannah had been so silent while I spoke, her hands so still, that I flinched at her voice.

“If you want. I’m sure he’d love to see you. Would you like that?”

“I think so, yeah.” She wiped her eyes quickly and stared toward the front of the church. Shafts of light came in through the single remaining stained-glass window. “I think they hate me, your aunt and uncle. It’ll be nice to have someone on my side.”

“Hate isn’t in their repertoire. And they have no reason to believe you knew I was alive last year. They’ll believe what we told the papers—that I masterminded my fake death, that you had no knowledge. No one knows you were visiting the cabin regularly except Kevin, Nate, and Seth. They’ve all agreed to keep quiet, and I believe them.”

I did believe them. Kevin, who owned the cabin, was my first and best friend in Colorado. Nate’s loyalty was unquestionable. As for Seth, little though I liked him, I trusted his word. I also knew he had no desire to drag Hannah deeper into my mess.

Hannah squinted at the podium, then at her feet. After a while, she said, “I just want your aunt and uncle to like me. The way they looked at me, at your memorial…”

“That was different. Everyone thought you wrote
Night Owl
then. Hannah—” I took her hand and led her out of the church. It struck me as strange that I’d shared my story with her and all she wanted to know was if we might see Nate tomorrow. “I’m marrying you. We’re only here to tell them, not to get their approval.”

“But you wanted my dad’s approval.”

“These people aren’t my parents.” I pulled her toward the car.

“How can you say that?” She dawdled, gazing over her shoulder at the church. I felt myself freezing up inside. Chilling toward her. “It’s so … ungrateful, Matt.”

“Am I supposed to be grateful that my parents died? My
parents
would have loved you, and you’re what I want. A simple girl—” The words tumbled out without a thought, and I gaped.

Hannah’s hand stiffened in mine.

“What?”

“Nothing,” I said, but I couldn’t take it back.

The dull impact of my words receded. Hannah swallowed and trailed me to the car.

I’d turned to ice inside. No meaningful emotion could pass from me to her. We drove back to the Fudge Shoppe in silence. I ran the church key in to Stephen and bought a little bag of toffee and chocolate brittle. I plopped the candy on Hannah’s lap; she mumbled a thank-you.

Fuck
. I could see her pulling away from me—wondering who the hell I was, to call her “a simple girl.” But I’d meant something different … something better.

We returned to Morristown.

I’d envisioned a day spent in Flemington, and me opening up to Hannah completely. So much for that. We got back to the hotel by two. Hannah went straight up to the room for a nap, insisting she wasn’t hungry. I sat alone in Rod’s, the hotel restaurant, and ordered a cup of crab bisque and a glass of Coke.

I stirred the soup and broke the crab cake into tiny pieces with my spoon.

Hell, I wasn’t hungry either.

A simple girl
 … what I wanted. Couldn’t Hannah understand? I didn’t want the affectation surrounding my aunt and uncle. I also didn’t want the middle-class life on which my parents insisted; I didn’t share their humble values. I wanted something uniquely ours—something natural for us.

I shoved away my soup. It had been a mistake to go to Flemington—to see that old sunlight and remember.
Stupid.

I drank my Coke, paid the bill, and stalked out across the hotel lawn.

God, I despised this blanket of humidity.

I gave Nate a call and asked if it wouldn’t be too much trouble for him to drive to Ella and Rick’s tomorrow. “Hannah asked for you,” I said. “Moral support or something.”