I eyed my sister’s belly. At seventeen weeks, she definitely had a baby bump. The band of her yoga pants hung beneath it and her tank top stretched over it. I wondered if that was good for the baby.
Poor little guy … or girl.
I looked away.
“I’m good, thanks. Maybe when it’s … kicking and stuff.” I laughed nervously. The idea of feeling something moving in my sister’s stomach appealed to me less than touching the bump. Was I lacking normal maternal instincts?
Whatever the case, I planned to support my sister all the way. She didn’t need to know that pregnancy, well, freaked me out.
“Hey, I can’t get over how nice this place is. Seriously, you live in a palace.” I gave Chrissy’s new digs a sweeping look. For the past three and a half weeks, I’d spent all my spare time in moving mode: angsting over the Corral Creek home inspection, boxing up stuff at the condo with Matt, and driving Chrissy and her piles of junk to and from our parents’ house and her swanky new downtown condominium.
“Right? I kind of hit the jackpot.” Chrissy traipsed through the living room, which was filled with stylish furniture, to the wraparound balcony. Denver sprawled below.
“I mean, it’s really … nice that Seth set you up like this.”
“Nice? I guess so. It’s the least he could do, if you think about it.”
I pursed my lips. I didn’t want to get into a fight with Chrissy. Still, I didn’t like her tone: the jackpot, the idea that Seth owed her anything.
It takes two, Sis.
“Have you heard from him much?” I said.
“Sure, we talk all the time.”
“How does he seem?”
“Fine. Busy.” She folded her arms over her stomach and beamed at me. “Can you believe we’re dating brothers?”
“It’s … pretty crazy.” Again, I wanted to snap at her. I wasn’t
dating
Matt. We were engaged to be married. Our love was real and trial-tested, whereas Chrissy’s only hold on Seth, as far as I could tell, was the baby.
But maybe she sensed that, and maybe her attitude grew out of insecurity.
“I’m sure he’ll move in here when he’s not touring so much.” She hummed and fluttered the drapes. “He wants me to get an ultrasound to see about the gender, but I’m waiting for him.”
“Waiting—what do you mean?”
“I think it’s something we should do together. Hey, are you gonna give me that, or what?” She looked at the flat cardboard box in my hand, one of Matt’s old shirt boxes. I had tied a purple ribbon around it.
“Oh, yeah.” I handed it to her. “I just came over to give you that, really. Kind of a housewarming thing, now that you’re settled.”
While she opened the box, I tucked my fingers into my pockets and surveyed the condo again. Matt still wanted nothing to do with helping Chrissy, but at least he “let me” help her. My arms ached from carrying boxes and moving furniture—heavy lifting that my pregnant sister couldn’t do. In a matter of weeks, she’d transformed from carelessly smoking mother-to-be to neurotically terrified of anything that might harm her baby.
More proof, I thought, that she viewed the baby as a means to an end.
That end being Seth Sky.
She’d quit her job at the Dynamite Club, taken up prenatal yoga, and, with a stipend from Seth, started eating organic. But I wasn’t buying it. The baby was a nuisance to Chrissy before Seth stepped into the picture.
“A … lantern?” She lifted the collapsed lantern from the box. The thin paper, turquoise-colored with circling koi, opened into an orb. Tears pricked at my eyes. This was the lantern I’d hung in my basement bedroom last year when I moved back home. It was a spot of color in my haze of depression. The first time Matt had visited my bedroom, he’d noticed the lantern.
He wrote about it in
Night Owl.
Damn, the room was small, made smaller by Hannah’s queen-size bed and piles of boxes. The only window was high and narrow.
She’d hung a paper lantern from the ceiling. The sight of it tugged at my heart.
Now, the sight of the lantern tugged at
my
heart. What a long way Matt and I had come … full circle, it seemed. Writing together, living together. I blinked back emotion.
“For good luck,” I said. “I better get going.”
“I hope I don’t need luck.” Chrissy laughed and tossed the box onto a couch. “Thanks, Han. It’s adorable. Are you going to call your mystery man?”
I froze.
“What?”
“Ha! You look guilty. I’ve seen you from the balcony, always out there on your cell.”
“I’m … planning wedding stuff,” I said. “And house stuff. Yeesh. And soon I’ll be calling you for dinner dates with Mom and Dad, so don’t be dodging me.”
I scuttled out.
Whoa, Chrissy had noticed me making calls? Good thing she and Matt weren’t on speaking terms. That day, I waited until I was safe in my Civic to take out my cell and make a call.
“Hannah,” Nate answered. “Hi.”
“Hey. How is everything?”
“Fine, thank you. Congratulations on the house closing. Shouldn’t you be knee deep in boxes, or maybe learning to drive a tractor?”
“Pfft.” I laughed. “We’ll hire people to help with the land. And thank you. We’re so excited. We’ve been moving stuff slowly. It’s a process. I don’t know why Matt won’t get a company for the move; something about the
experience
…”
I rambled awhile, giving Nate details on the Corral Creek house and closing. It had happened quickly, inside of a month. The owners had moved to California and were eager to sell. We offered, they countered, and because Matt was impatient, we paid just shy of the asking price, five and a quarter million. Whew.
“And he’s been elated. It’s worth it just to see him this way, he’s…”
“Like a boy, I know.” Nate chuckled. “His happiness is something else. He’s been sending pictures. That is quite the piece of property. I eagerly await my invitation.”
“Don’t be silly. Come any time.” My big smile started to fade. “Anyway, I’m calling—”
“To ask about Seth. I know.” A pause. “Should I be worried?”
“Huh? I don’t know. You tell me.”
“Not about Seth.” He sighed. “About the degree of your concern, Hannah.”
The degree of my…?
I almost dropped my iPhone.
“Uh, no. Er … it’s nothing … nothing like that, I—”
“I don’t mean to put you on the spot, but you can see why I worry. Your concern is very touching. Of course, Seth is involved, and I know there’s some history.” Nate sounded effortlessly blas
é
, while I wanted to disappear beneath my car. “The fact is, I feel a little guilty, and I wonder if Matt shouldn’t know how often you—”
“No! Nate, you can’t tell him. I’ll call less. Or not at all.” I pressed my forehead against the steering wheel.
Stupid!
Of course all this Seth-worry sounded suspicious, but … “Who else can I talk to? Chrissy doesn’t think anything is wrong, Matt doesn’t care, and I can’t be calling Seth and asking
him
how he is. That leaves you.”
“As far as I can tell, he’s fine. Touring on the West Coast. His discharge papers from last month cite exhaustion as the cause of the collapse.”
“Okay…”
“I worry, too.” Nate sighed in my ear. “But there’s only so much I can do.”
Untrue
, I thought. Nate had done much more when Matt was in trouble. And sure, Seth wasn’t drinking himself to death, but couldn’t it get there?
We said good-bye and I ended the call.
My face slowly resumed a normal temperature as I drove home.
Maybe I couldn’t see straight about this Seth issue. Maybe there
was
no problem, just a tired, hardworking lead singer, and maybe I felt extra guilty for fooling around with him and for the faked death fiasco … which must have hurt him so terribly.
If only I could talk to him. I could call him. I should.
“God, just let it go,” I said aloud to myself.
Matt was moving boxes in our barren living room. Laurence shuffled and stamped. The chaos frightened him.
Matt smiled when he saw me.
Oh, that sight dispelled my cares—shirtless Matt, every muscle in his torso defined as he lowered a box.
BIRD’S BOOKS
, he’d written on the cardboard. I smiled softly back at him.
“Hi,” I said.
He came to me and kissed me full on the mouth. “Hi…”
We did our dopey-grinning routine, which had only gotten worse since we’d acquired a house, and packed quickly for our first weekend at the new place.
* * *
Our first weekend at the new place.
We hadn’t even moved our bed.
We slept on an air mattress on Friday night and in the tent, in the meadow, on Saturday. As I watched Matt, I remembered what Nate had said:
His happiness is something else
. It was.
He stormed around the house, dragging me with him.
“Look at this room.” Ducking in and out of bedrooms. “Look at this window! This view!” And then he had to go out, onto our land.
“Hannah, we
own
this,” he kept telling me. “Look at it. Look!”
I would look with him and see the field, the trees and layers of hillside … beautiful, magnificent, no doubt about it … but I never saw quite what he saw. Whatever he saw drove him a little crazy. “It provokes me,” he tried to explain, charging toward this or that glen. “It’s the same thing I feel when I look at you. I want to have an experience of you, possess you … in a way that I don’t understand.”
I didn’t ask for clarification. He was deliriously excited, and his excitement passed into me like a current. All day he was a boy—all night, some kind of animal, making love to me as if his life depended on it.
On Sunday evening, we built a fire in the great room—a fire, in August!—and sat on the cool stone floor. A wall of windows gave view to Mount Evans. Night came down cinematically, and I realized I hadn’t been online, watched a TV show, or even listened to music all weekend. I hadn’t wanted to. Matt and this place absorbed me.
I smiled and nestled against him.
The phone rang—the single phone we’d plugged in—and I jumped. Matt smoothed a hand across my brow. “Nate,” he said. “Or Ella or Rick. I wanted to test the landline.” He kissed my temple and jogged out of the room.
I grinned and admired the view.
“It’s Nate,” he called a moment later, his voice echoing down the hall. He sounded so pleased with himself. I laughed and flopped onto a pile of pillows.
Several minutes passed.
The fire started to die and I let it.
Shadows and light flickered on the wall.
Gosh, this place would be a little creepy if I were alone.
I sat up and hugged myself. Well, Matt didn’t really go places without me … plus, we’d get a dog or two.
I stood and stretched.
I thought I heard the front door, which made me laugh.
Crazy boy
. He kept going outside! He could barely stand to look out the window without vibrating like an excited dog—and then,
whoosh
, he’d go stalking out the door.
I padded down the hall.
“Matt?”
A faint, angry digital pulse grew louder as I walked. I turned into the kitchen. The cordless phone lay on the counter, the off-hook tone blaring.
“Damn it,” I muttered, slamming it into the cradle.
I hate that sound.
The phone began to ring and I yelped. I checked the caller, my heart hiccuping.
TRENTON, NJ.
I picked up quickly.
“Nate, I am so spooked! I just—”
“Hannah, where’s Matt?”
“Um, I think he’s”—I drifted toward the front of the house—“out in the yard?” I laughed. “But there’s a lot of yard—”
“Listen. Can you find him? Can you see him?”
The first rising note of panic sounded in my brain.
Something is not right. Nate’s voice is wrong … different.
“It’s dark … it’s getting dark.” I cupped a hand against a window and peered out at blackness and my reflection. “I can’t—”
“Go out and call for him. Keep the phone. Stay on the line.”
“Nate, what’s—”
“Hannah, go.”
I’d never heard Nate speak like that—with that kind of anger and urgency. I ran to the front door, which hung open. Looking at it, and the panel of night beyond, I wanted to cry.
“I’m scared,” I said, stepping outside. “What’s happening?”
“It’s okay. Just call for him.”
I lowered the phone and called Matt’s name. Somehow, I knew he wasn’t there, but I strained to see. Maybe if he heard me …
“Matt!” I screamed. “Matt!”
The evening swallowed my voice and sent back no echo.
MATT
“I tried your cell,” Nate said, “and Hannah’s.”
“Oh, I don’t even know where they are.” I laughed and leaned against the island, smiling indulgently at my new kitchen.
Our
new kitchen. “We’re living like hippies. This place—”
“Could you sit down? Is Hannah around?”
“She’s nearby.” My smile fell. “What’s up?”
“I’d like it if she were—”
“Tell me what the hell is going on.” My heart began to pulse palpably, audibly in my chest. My mind went to the baby. Yes, the baby—Chrissy and Seth’s child—which Hannah seemed to think I didn’t care about, but which was never far from my thoughts.
“Okay. All right, I’m sorry.” Nate’s voice broke. “It’s Seth. Please, go get Hannah.” He started to cry—guttural, shivery sounds. Horrible sounds. He apologized and begged me to call Hannah. He said that he would come to see me.
I began shaking like a frightened animal.
“God, please,” I said. “What’s happening?”
This is the big breath before you go under.
* * *
I ran barefoot down the dirt road.
Stones and burrs tore at my soles.
Get on the grass
, I thought, and I did, but the grass was dry, full of points and toothy vines. Nothing is kind.
I searched for the creek. I don’t know why. Everywhere, I thought I heard its whisper.
I fell and lay in the road.
Headlights came bouncing toward me. I crawled into the grass.