Forbidden (24 page)

Middleton, Oklahoma – Friday, June 30, 1995

T
his can't possibly be the
place
, Rae thought, stunned to her very core, her eyes ranging over the dilapidated trailers, the patchy, scraggly yellow lawns, the dented, rimless, occasionally tireless cars scattered like a broken-down herd of some kind of metal creature. Weeds grew thick in the cracks along the stained concrete; a single lawn chair with a sagging left side, reminscent of a stroke victim, huddled in the strip of shade offered against the trailer's near side from the hammer of the 3:00 p.m. sun.
My God, this is where Bryce grew up. This is where the bulk of her childhood memories take place. Shelly, Shelly…what is this? How did this happen to you?

Rae parked and climbed out of her rental car, and her heels clicked absurdly over the pitted sidewalk, surely the most civilized sound in the vicinity. She heard music drifting out from somewhere near, smelled pot, and grease and frying onions, heard the faint rise and fall of a fight between female voices. She climbed the steps and tapped three times on the tin frame of the screen door, tipped her face a few inches closer to the dim interior of the space, hoping to catch any signs of life within. Nothing. She made out a sink piled with cans, a yellow table, and farther inside, the shape of a couch. She knocked again, with more force.

“Michelle?” she ventured, and her voice surprised her, squeaking out in the pitch of a much younger version of herself. She squared her shoulders and tried again. “Michelle, are you in there?”

There was a small thump from the recesses of the trailer, followed by the unmistakable sound of running water. Rae turned and swept her skirt around her thighs, reluctant to perch on the steps but unable to conceive of any other option; if Michelle was showering, Rae would wait. Dammit, she had waited almost 21 years to see her best friend again, to hear even the most remote of explanations. It turned out, though, that she waited no more than a minute before Michelle came creeping around the edge of wall separating the living room from the kitchen, moving silently, wraithlike, wrapped in a faded pink bathrobe that hung loosely around her thin frame. She stared wordlessly at the back of a seated woman on the uppermost concrete step, observed the fancy clothes and shiny upswept hair, the taut line of her small shoulders.

Shit
, Michelle thought. She was not in the mood for a pep talk about Jesus, not today, not ever.

She was about to sneak back to bed, but the air between their bodies somehow alerted the woman, made her chin tip up and around, and the next thing Michelle knew she was staring into the eyes of Raellen Taylor, with nothing more substantial between their gaze than a sagging screen door.

Rae rose to her feet, slowly, as though she were facing an animal that may at any second bolt. Wordless, she moved to put her hand on the latch, her eyes taking in this hardened stranger's face, searching for any glimpse of the young woman she had known and loved in another life. Another life far from this desolate prairie place and wasteland of a trailer court.

It was her hand on the latch, the threat of entry, that made a small cry burst from Michelle's throat and pop into existence. She put both hands out as though to ward off physical assault of some kind, and the sight of her wild eyes forced Rae's feet into action; without thinking about it, she hurried into the trailer, moved to Michelle and wrapped the pathetic form in both arms, holding her tight.

Michelle tried to pull away, shaking her head, but something within her snapped like a dry twig and she sagged against the woman who had once been so familiar to her, sobs thrashing her entire body with their force. Rae held her tight, stroking one hand lightly on her stringy hair the way a mother would, trying not to think about what was happening here, what this might mean. Michelle wept like a child, a dam inside of her crumbling under the murderous force of her anguish. Minutes passed and Rae offered no words, just held her, and at last the shaking sobs subsided enough for Michelle to gather her pride and pull away. Without meeting Rae's eyes, she collapsed on a chair at the table and buried her head in her arms.

“Go away,” she said then, her words muffled and faint from behind the barrier of her forearms and drooping blond hair. “Please, just go away.”

“Michelle, Jesus Christ,” Rae said, and her words seemed too hard-edged, too loud in this bleak, stuffy, dirty place.

Michelle lifted her head then, displaying a puffy red face, eyes rimmed in dark purple, bruise-like. She seemed to have retreated into a coldness, and although she wouldn't meet Rae's eyes, she no longer felt compelled to hide her own. She said, “Hand me that, will you?” and Rae, who was bent forward over the table, hands braced like a kindly teacher delivering a lesson, lifted her eyebrows, too surprised to do anything but obey. She turned to where Michelle was indicating with a listless hand and retreived a denim purse from the countertop near the sink.

Michelle reached into its depths and extraced her smokes and lighter, got one burning. She asked, “You want one?”

Rae pursed her lips to say no, but thought better and replied, “Yes, actually I would.” She accepted the cigarette and green plastic lighter, inhaled deeply, remembering a time when she smoked frequently, had enjoyed it very much. She blew smoke casually out her nose, wondering if maybe she had misjudged atrociously and should perhaps just thank Michelle for the smoke and make her hurried exit. But she stayed, smoked in silence with her oldest friend for few moments. They both leveled their gazes on the orange ceramic ashtray acting as a centerpiece on the shitty table, let it collect their thoughts for a few.

“You're far from home,” Michelle said eventually, swiping at her eyes with her free hand, then extracted a second cigarette and lit it with the tail of the last.

“Yeah, I was just thinking the same thing about you,” Rae returned, thinking,
I can play this too, Michelle.

Michelle asked, “Where's Bryce?”

Rae ground out her butt and braced her forearms on the table. She said, “She's still in Rose Lake. Shelly,” and her voice softened a touch, “There's been some things going on…things you should know about.”

Michelle studied her from behind a smoke screen of the palest silver. She didn't know what to make of Rae's comments, could have killed herself for crying like that, for letting her guard down. Rae, whose face she hadn't seen since she was 17, looked utterly, heart-wrenchingly beautiful and sophisticated, her golden-hazel eyes perfectly lined, shadowed and mascaraed in coordinating bronze tones. Michelle blew smoke and finally asked, “What things?”

Rae looked away then, down at the tabletop as though collecting her thoughts. When she looked back up she said, “Do you remember the night you told me about Matthew's father being John Ryan?”

Michelle nodded, appearing nonchalant, but something in her posture was suddenly wary. “Yes, of course. But Rae, the bastard is dead anyway. You can't tell me it matters anymore.”

“Well, actually…it does matter. It matters to your daughter.”

Michelle frowned at her. “Why the hell would it matter to her?”

Rae looked her directly into the eyes, mentally cringing at how terribly old Michelle looked, wrinkly and wizened, so unhealthy, uncared for. But there was no time for worrying about that now, and she let the bomb drop. “Bryce and Matthew are in love with each other, Shell.”

Michelle hee-hawed a disbelieving laugh. “You're full of shit.”

“I'm not, Michelle, not at all.”

The hand holding the cigarette sank a little. Michelle squinted at her, as though gauging the accuracy of Rae's assessment of the situation. At last she said, “You're wrong. Bryce has a boyfriend. And Matty…” She struggled to picture the sweet little boy she'd known in another life as a grown man. The image refused to gel in her mind. “They think they're related for Christ's sake. And you're telling me they're
in love?
”

“Michelle, goddamn it! You owe her this. She needs to know that Matthew is not really her uncle but an entirely unrelated person who she can be free to love. And,” getting truly angry now, trying to subdue the desire to clench Michelle's shoulders and shake her until her head flopped, “I came all the way down here to this Godforsaken shithole you call a home to ask you in person if you would grant me permission to do that!” Rae's voice grew more shrill with every word, her eyes gleaming with angry, unshed tears. Michelle stared at her in open-mouthed shock.

And suddenly the last of the dam swept away, and tears came back into her own sore, swollen eyes. Her hands began trembling and the cigarette dropped to the floor, still burning. Michelle didn't move, but Rae squeaked and bent down to grab it, and as she did, Michelle closed her eyes and whispered, “Your father, Rae.”

Under the table, Rae clutched the butt between forefinger and thumb, sat back up and ground it distastefully into the ashtray. Michelle's words reached her and she responded with an inarticulate, “Huh?”

Michelle spoke through a choking throat. She pressed her fingertips to her eyes and willed away the vision in her mind, would that she was able to will it away forever. She whispered, “It was your father,” and Rae froze, an icy splash of water dousing her at the tone of Michelle's broken voice. A moment in which everything held still, a moment in which Rae's heart and lungs constricted as something like understanding dawned.

She lifted one cold hand and gripped the bottom half of her face, squeezed her own cheeks and whispered, even though she feared what she would hear next, “What?”

Michelle kept her hands over her eyes. She whispered, her words broken with shallow gasps, “He…raped me, Rae. He is Bryce's father. I never told a living soul…until this moment.”

Rae sat unmoving, unblinking, as the words sank into her. Her knees stared to tremble. Surely the tightness in her chest was a part of her own heart breaking away, never to reattach. She whispered, “Oh, no, no.”

Michelle dropped her hands away from her eyes, impaled Rae with them. “It was Thanksgiving night, Rae. He drove me home that night, remember?”

“Oh God, oh God,” was all Rae could manage. Michelle continued, an onslaught of words at last given air. She pleaded, “I wish I didn't have to tell you this, Rae. I know…” and she drew her own deep breath. When she spoke again, her voice was slighlty more composed. “I know you loved him a lot, Rae, you and Bar, both. He was very drunk that night, and so was I…and he…” She started to cry. “He thought I wouldn't remember.”

Rae spoke from behind her right fist. “Shelly, oh God…oh, God, I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry.” And then she moved around the table and wrapped her arms around Michelle again, both of them weeping and trembling. Rae spoke against Michelle's damp hair. “Oh God, why didn't you tell us then? We would have helped you, Bar would have killed him, that bastard, that perverted son of a bitch…”

Michelle whispered, “That's exactly why I couldn't, Rae, don't you understand?”

“No, no, no,” Rae sobbed. She thought after Tony left she was done with tears, that surely nothing else was worth so many…but this she could never have imagined had she lived to be a thousand. This meant that Bryce was her and Bar, Jr.'s baby sister. All this time, she had never even suspected. So many things made sense, all at once, like puzzle pieces locking gently into place after so long. Her father's strange retreat into himself that winter, after Michelle left Rose Lake. The way he bought Bar, Jr. a beautiful, expensive Cadillac for Christmas that year, as though such a thing could even begin to make up for his personal atrocity.

Michelle calmed herself and eased back, and between them now there was no coldness, no pretense. She looked something like herself again, at least in the expression in her sky-blue eyes. She said, “I had to tell you. I couldn't live with it anymore, Rae. It was eating me alive.” Without malice, she laid her skinny arms on the table, wrist up, and pushed back her sleeves. Rae gasped to see the furrows of cranberry-colored scars running parallel to the slate-blue veins beneath. Michelle said, “I wanted to forget. I hated myself for destroying Bryce the way I did, for hating her, because she was the reason I couldn't get over it. I saw him in her eyes, in the way she moved, in the way she would tilt her head. I hated her for it, Rae, and I could kill myself right now for feeling that way. I've done her so wrong. Far more wrong than Lydia ever did me. I deserve to be dead for how I've treated her.”

Rae shook her head, her eyes still gushing with tears. She folded her own hands over the horrible marks on Michelle's pale skin, found the skin there eerily cold and tight. She said, “Don't say that, Shelly. And your daughter is a wonderful girl. She's a beautiful, wonderful girl.”

“She's your little sister,” Michelle said, with a small hint of an actual smile. “You and Bar, Jr. I'm glad you finally know.”

“I already love her,” Rae said then, and sighed, scrubbed at her cheeks. “I love her very much. Something inside of me must have known anyway.”

“How…how is your brother?” Michelle asked, and her voice was very soft. “I can't forget how he looked the last time I saw him. It haunts my dreams, Rae. His eyes. It's useless to say now, but I've never stopped loving him.”

It was probably unfair to a number of people, including her brother's wife and four children, but it was a gift she could give, and Rae said, truthfully enough, “Shelly, he never stopped loving you, either.”

Michelle closed her eyes and after a moment whispered, “Thank you for that, Rae.”
I know it's not true
, she thought. But she said, “Thank you so much.”

Oklahoma City, Oklahoma – Saturday, July 1, 1995

B
ryce had never been on
a plane in her life, and had once figured that such an occurrence would be something relatively exciting, perhaps when she and Wade headed to Vegas to get married, for example. Or she and the girls would have somehow saved up enough cash to take a cruise in the Carribbean. On this flight she had a window seat, which gave her an amazing view of the night sky, vast and black as the huge machine skimmed south in the wee hours of Saturday morning.

She pressed her forehead to the cool glass, unable to sleep even a moment. Her head ached, her eyes were raw and sore, and in her throat perched a jagged lump of despair. She couldn't begin to imagine explaining the past two weeks to Michelle. The long, long car ride to Minneapolis had been torture enough; Wilder had sat in stony silence, which Bryce was too afraid to break. He'd dropped her by the curb at one of the many terminals ringing the huge Minneapolis airport, had relented just a fraction as she moved for the door handle, said in a raspy voice, “Bryce, I'm sorry. I don't know what else to do.”

She'd replied, “Don't bother,” unable to meet his eyes, and pulled her bag from the backseat. It was all she could do not to slam the door with every ounce of strength; instead she'd settled for a quick, silent walk away, leaving the car door gaping, not glancing back once. If he'd sat there a moment in indecision, what did it even matter? He'd driven away eventually.

Fucking asshole
, she thought ungraciously.

What happens now?

***

The plane
landed at just past 9:00 in the morning, descending through a thick and cloying bank of gray clouds to the flat, dusty earth of her childhood. Bryce climbed from the plane with gritty teeth and what she swore was a low-grade fever, judging from the way her temples were aching and her forehead was pulsing. She figured that Wilder or Erica or someone had called Michelle, had given her the gory details. Would anyone be waiting at the terminal for her? If not she would call Trish. Even if her best friend weren't home, Trish's sister would drive the 60 miles south from Middleton to get her.

She emerged carrying her duffle bag, dressed in her old flip-flops, jean skirt and Erica's blouse, tattered blue hoodie knotted tightly around her waist, hair hanging over her shoulders in a messy tangle. Her eyes were red-rimmed, with deep plum shadows beneath, and she kept them cast mostly downward as she stumbled along with the crowd, hoping a payphone might materialize before her. She found one minutes later, across from a fast-food counter where the scent of greasy breakfast fare made her stomach seize. Taking a deep breath, she lifted the receiver, her hand hovering for a moment in terrified indecision; should she dial the Sternhagens' on the chance that Matthew might answer? Her heart spiked with an intense longing at the thought that she might be able to hear his voice right now, no matter what his note had said. She was almost dizzy with it and her fingers shook as she dialed the 218 number she'd memorized.

Over a thousand miles away the phone rang and rang. Bryce pictured the phone in the guest room where she'd slept for the past two weeks, felt as though she might be having a heart attack as she waited, motionless, but after the fifth ring she replaced the phone in its cradle and let out a shuddering breath. Because another person was waiting to use the booth she dialed again quickly, but this time Trish's sleepy voice came over the line after two rings.

“'Lo?”

And before a word could find its way out the jagged lump shattered apart, and she began to cry.

***

As Bryce's
plane touched down in Oklahoma, Matthew, totally unaware of her sudden depature from Rose Lake, watched the morning sky around him lighten by minute degrees, luminous gray becoming a clear pale peach, which softened into the pink of seashells. Because their private dock faced west, the first rays lit the trees behind him, spearing through the tall limbs and breaking over the flat, silky surface of the lake, tinting its indigo depths with sunny flickers of morning.

Bryce. Oh God, Bryce
. Just the thought of her made his arms clench with the fierce need to hold her close, bury his face against the sweetness of her soft dark hair, breathe the scent of her warm skin. He wrapped his arms around his torso, feeling empty and aching, furious at himself for letting her run away after he'd proposed, too stunned to understand what she'd been trying for his own good to do. Yesterday he'd stayed away from the house, from the Pull Inn, anyplace he might run into her; if he did, he would fall apart, be destroyed by his need for her.

Perspective, Sternhagen
, he'd told himself yesterday, with great effort.
You need to step back for a day
. But the thought of not seeing her, the thought that she might indeed be leaving for Oklahoma in the morning, absolutely killed him. It took every bit of strength he had not to find her, and he'd visited his father's grave instead, in the late morning. He sat where the earth still appeared sharp-edged, the strips of sod so new they didn't match the paler weedy grass that sighed all around the rest of the cemetery. His mother's grave, with its pink marble headstone, was more familiar; Daniel did not yet have a marker, and Matthew stayed for a time between his parents, near their heads.

It had been early enough in the day that the cemetery was empty of all but himself and the silent inhabitants beneath him. Matthew sat with his forehead braced against his right hand, his eyes on the ground but seeing again and again the events of the past two weeks that had led him here. It was unimaginable that such a relatively short time had passed since then and now; he was not the same person he'd been the morning of June 17th, driving north on I-35. What crazy fluke had caused the semi to break down right there, outside of the town where his older half-sister and her child made their home? Fate? Destiny? Things he'd never put much store in before the past month.

He remembered a time when he was still in high school, admitting to Erica that he wanted to break up with Angie, his girlfriend of four years, the girl he'd been crazy for in junior high, been so afraid to talk to that his voice broke whenever she came near, the girl he'd lost his virginity to in the 10th grade, on the couch in her parents' basement, both of them so nervous and clumsy he had only ended up inside of her for maybe a minute and a half. Angie had been mad, expecting more.

“Matty, trust your heart,” Erica told him then, as they worked together at the sink after supper. She'd finally added, “Honey, when you find the right girl, you'll know. And she'll make you come alive.”

Matthew knew, had always known, Erica had that with his older brother. He'd witnessed it since he was a boy of 10 and they had all lived together in the big yellow house. Daniel had been so happy for them, had loved Erica and the way that Wilder lit up around her, teased her and kissed her, made her blush 10 shades of red. Matthew had been bathed with a contentment he couldn't quite understand, being around that kind of love. It wasn't until he was older that the contentment eased off and something inside himself ached instead. He would have given anything to feel that way; had tried with Angie for a long time before finally conceding defeat for good when a pregnancy scare the summer after high school had brought him to his senses.

Yes, they'd had sex since then. No one believed how lonely he was; he only joked and even Erica thought he was being flippant. Surely someone as beautiful, inside and out, as Matthew could not be truly lonely. Erica tried repeatedly to fix him up, but he'd always walked away feeling half empty; Angie, who had come and gone since the year they graduated, always seemed to show up single, and he'd always give in. She was familiar at least, though he knew she wanted more by then.

But now. Now was so starkly, fiercely different. Now he knew what Erica had meant years ago as they'd washed and dried the supper dishes together on a cold December night. His heart thudded against his chest and he pressed hard with his free hand there, holding back the sobs that wanted so badly to rip from his throat.
Bryce, Bryce, Bryce. Please don't tell me I can't have you. Not that. I would face anything for you but that.

Again he pictured her as he'd seen her that first day, on the steps, eyes fixed on his, her bare limbs outlined in gold by the afternoon sun, her breasts full and soft beneath a tiny white tank top, expression on her lovely face that went straight into the center of him. He crushed his eyes closed, imagining them once again in room 214 in Middleton and the taste of her skin, her hair in his hands, the way she moved beneath him, holding him so close as though she too could not possibly get enough, giving over to each other with no restraints whatever. How she'd told him she loved him on the end of the dock, terrified too, but unable to stop herself from admitting it, how they'd made love every second they had been able since. He opened his eyes, vision swimming with tears as he wished crazy, desperate things. That he'd somehow gotten her pregnant, that tonight at Erica and Wilder's party he would make a toast and enlighten the entire town that he was in love and had no business hiding it anymore.

But Erica…and his brother. Bryce was right on that count; they loved him unequivocally, but could they possibly accept such news? If he was honest with himself, he knew it would mean, at the very least, alienation from his family, probably from Rose Lake and even his home state altogether. And he would go, would take Bryce anywhere in the world they could be together…but it would hurt. It would hurt them both, bad. It was so goddamn unfair, reducing all of them, Erica and Wilder and the kids, his friends, to collateral damage. It was of course why Bryce had told him she couldn't marry him, wouldn't do that to him. But in the end he would leave everyone else behind, because the other alternative was to be without her. And that, Matthew knew in the depths of his sensitive soul, was not an option he could live with.

After a time he'd slept, unexpectedly, curled between the quiet graves of Lydia and Daniel, waking in the early evening with his body cramped but his heart full of purpose. He paused for a moment to touch the earth over both his folks, whispered, “See ya, Dad,” and then rose and loped through the cemetery, headed for home.

Wilder, behind the wheel of his truck, met Matthew in the driveway 10 minutes later, and both brothers leaned toward their open windows. Wilder was dressed in a suit and tie, his fair hair gleaming down his back, the way Erica liked it best.

“Hey, there, little bro,” Wilder greeted, giving him a fond grin, just slightly tinged with confusion. “Where in the heck you been all day?”

Matthew shrugged, said, “Hey, I'll see you in just a few. You need anything else brought over to the Lodge?”

“Yeah, the champagne I ordered,” Wilder said, and Matthew grimaced.

“Shit, I'm sorry.”

“No big deal. I'm headed over. You wanna ride along?”

“I'll be there quick, I promise,” Matthew said, and then, trying in vain for nonchalance, “Is everyone else already there?”

“Yeah, Erica took Bryce and the kids just a few minutes ago.”

Matthew's shoulders relaxed just slightly.

Wilder continued suddenly, “Matty, I am so happy tonight. Even with Dad gone. I know how much Erica meant to him. I couldn't love her, or all of you guys, any more than I do.” Wilder shifted, his eyes a little teary while Matthew sat motionless, watching him and feeling kicked in the gut. “I love you, little bro. I really do.”

Matthew could hardly speak past the ice slivers in his throat, but he breathed hard through his nose and replied, “I love you, too, Wi.”

***

Hours passed,
the big living room clock ticking the minutes into twilight, then eventual darkness. Matthew sat in silence on the couch, hardly moved a muscle for three hours, staring into the middle distance as he'd been so compelled to do of late, sensing the familiar room around him as it lost texture and was leached of color. He played out every version of what could happen if he made his move tonight, if he broke the news to his brother and Erica, let them know his intentions. He was haunted by the imagined sight of Erica's pale face, Wilder's faltering smile, the look of horror on Bryce as she understood what he was doing, how he was casting aside what she'd put them both through out of sheer necessity.Riley, Debbie, the kids. Everyone he cared about.

The moon had arched above the house when he finally made up his mind. “Wilder, Erica, I'm sorry,” he whispered to the empty room, pre-emptively. But he knew they would understand in time.

The road to the Lodge was dark, his the lone vehicle on it. He saw the lights glinting like beacons from a quarter-mile out, the balloons and banner as his truck bounced slowly up the slight hill into the parking lot. It was crammed with cars and trucks, just as he had expected, but also with about three-quarters of the guests, which he had not.

“What the hell?” he muttered, shouldering open the door. He stepped down and a buzz of excited chatter met his ears. Seconds later, above the din, a man yelled out, “Bryce,
goddamn it!
”

Matthew winced slightly now in the morning light, eyeing the matching casts swathing his hands from the tips of his fingers to three inches above each wrist. Definitely not the first he'd worn, but certainly the most inhibiting. He didn't regret what he'd done; the image of Bryce being thrown to the pavement by that son of a bitch made his jaw clench tight yet again. He knew he would never get that sight from his mind, the way she'd crumpled to the ground, hunched around herself in pain. He realized his breathing was getting faster so he studied the glimmering lake with determination; fury would not help him. He needed to talk to Randy, see what had to be done to settle things with the Thompson guy. And then he had to see Bryce.