That thought finally gave him the strength to get up from the dock where he had so many memories of her already, to head through the woods to the house where Erica and Wilder waited. He would force himself to go to the police station first, then the hospital, if they'd allow it. Where had Bryce spent the night? The hospital, probably. Not here, he was sure of that. As he cleared the woods and came upon the familiar clearing, climbing the porch steps, his heart was going like a trip hammer.
Inside, the phone was ringing, but he answered just a second too late. Something about the buzzing of the dial tone seemed ominous in his ear and he hung up quickly, biting his lower lip as the movement sang along the nerves in his fractured hands.
Shit, Sternhagen. Level, buddy, level. You've got to get a grip here. First things first
.
He hit the bathroom he always used â the one off of his lower-level bedroom â and attempted to splash his face but the effort was too painful. The nurse who'd fixed up his hands last night before they'd carted him to the county jail had been sour-faced and told him he couldn't get his casts wet. He squared his jaw and used a damp towel on his face instead, acknowledging that shaving was out of the question, at least at the moment. He studied himself in the mirror for a second. His jaw was thick with a day's growth of black whiskers, his eyes hard and dark above the purple smears of a sleepless night on the dock. He looked inappropriate for anything other than maybe a junkyard brawl, but he couldn't think about that right now.
In his room he gingerly shucked his clothes and carefully dressed in clean jeans and managed a mostly-clean t-shirt. He rounded the corner purposefully and almost smacked directly into his sister-in-law, who looked small and peaked, far from her usual self. Her hair was hanging loose over her shoulders, her own eyes tight and ringed with shadows.
“Wilder closed the Pull Inn for the day,” Erica informed him, her voice hoarse.
Matthew wanted to hug her close, beg her forgiveness for how he'd treated her yesterday, but his arms felt heavy, immobile. He cleared his throat and whispered, “Can I see her?”
Erica's eyes filled with tears and Matthew was instantaneously flooded with dread. His low voice shook as he demanded, “Erica, tell me what's wrong.”
She stared up at him and drew a deep breath, pressed her crossed forearms against her chest as she answered, almost as though expecting a blow. “Matty, Bryce is in Oklahoma. Wilder took her to the airport last night and put her on a plane for homeâ” The expression in his eyes was destroying her. She rushed on, “It's just for now, Mattyâ” His chest constricted. “Matty, please understand,” she begged, reaching for him, but he moved fast around her, heading for the front door.
Erica chased him, angry now, too. “
Matthew, stop it!
” she railed, and sounded more like the half-mother she'd always been to him. “Stop right there! You won't solve a fucking thing if you go anywhere!” He was out the door now, and she banged out on his heels. She reached him and fisted a handful of his shirt. He froze, his body as tense as though a firing squad was positioned in the woods 20 paces away. Erica was breathing hard and let the fury of what he'd put them all through in the past 12 hours invigorate her. “Damn it, Matthew. You listen to me. You will not solve anything chasing after her. You are out on bail,
may I remind you?
That means if you so much as leave the county
you will be arrested
. Do you hear me? I can't begin to imagine what you believeyou're feeling, but you will not get carted to jail for this. This is fucking crazy and it's not worth it!”
She had been delivering her words to his motionless back, and jumped when he spun around and pinned her with his gorgeous dark eyes flashing fire. Erica bit back her next statement as Matthew repeated her words through clenched teeth, “
Not worth it?
”
Erica would not be intimidated by the man she considered her eldest child for all practical purposes. Neither of them noticed Wilder's truck coming up the drive. She planted her hands on her hips and yelled back, “No, it's not goddamn worth this, Matthew! You cannot allow yourself to feel things like this for⦔ and here she gulped slightly at the both the notion and the untamed expression on his face, “For your own niece! Jesus Christ in heaven, Matthew!”
He was gripping her upper arms in the next instant, hard despite his casts and the pain it was causing him, and her heart pounded against her ribs. But someone came striding up the porch steps right then, moving Erica unceremoniously to the side and with a rage that had been slowly coming to a boil all night. Wilder delivered a punch to Matthew's iron jaw that sent the younger man reeling backward and into a crouch.
He stood above his little brother like Zeus outraged, his blond hair tangled and breath coming short. He said, “If you ever so much as lay a hand on her again, you will not be welcome in this house another second.”
“Wilder,” Erica amended, but Matthew shook hair from his eyes, rose quietly, looked deep into Erica's eyes.
“I would never hurt you,” he told her, low and intense. “You know that.”
She caved, felt tears fill her eyes for the hundreth time since yesterday, whispered, “Matty, sweetheart, I know.”
He turned to Wilder. “You're right, of course.”
And then he turned and walked back into the house. They heard his bedroom door close with a quiet, decisive click.
Middleton, Oklahoma â Saturday, July 1, 1995
“D
o you want to come
over, honey?” Trish asked again, hoping that the answer would change this time.
Bryce, huddled on the black vinyl passenger seat of the car that had carried her around for years, could hardly even nod. Trish, sick with worry, not understanding any of thisâBryce told her it had to do with a guy, inexplicably, but nothing moreâreached and squeezed her best friend's knee.
“Okay, then,” she replied. Once she'd determined that Bryce had not been raped or otherwise harmed, she'd refrained from any additional questions, driving them home at a breakneck pace, wondering who to call first when they got there. Bryce had rolled her knees up to her chest and clung to them for most of the 60-plus miles home from Oklahoma City, had kept her face tipped against the bare, bent points of her legs, had wept quietly and heartbreakingly.
Trish had never heard her best friend cry in all the years they'd known one another. Not when Michelle had been in the hospital for slitting her wrists on three separate occasions, not when she'd been left alone or screamed at, called names, been slapped or shaken or had her head slammed against the table by her mother, not when Peter, the worst of Michelle's many horrible boyfriends, had grabbed her crotch back when they'd been juniors in high school. To hear her do so now was one of the worst moments of Trish's life.
“Bryce, sweetie,” she said, over and over, heart quaking against her ribs. She exited the interstate and turned left onto Highway 51 for two miles, made her way down the main street of Middleton and at last to the turnoff for the Wagon Box Court. She wound the car slowly around the lazy road. To Bryce she said softly, “Hey, we're here.”
And then she saw cop cars. An ambulance. Bryce's head was still tipped down, her face hidden. Trish clenched the wheel with her right hand, covered her mouth with the other. She braked too hard, lurching both of them forward. She said, from behind her left hand, “Oh my god. Oh, Bryce. Oh my god.”
Bryce lifted her head like someone underwater. She looked through the windshield at the scene happening in her driveway, blinked once in slow motion. Without a word she opened the passenger door and climbed out. Trish, eyes huge, was right behind her.
And Rae Taylor met them halfway down the sidewalk.
Bryce stared in confusion at this sight, first at the incongruity of someone from Rose Lake here in Middleton, second at Rae, who was always polished and picture-perfect, with her make-up streaking down her crumpled face.
Rae said, “Bryce, oh, Bryce, honey,” and reached for her, but Bryce moved around the woman, shaking her head, knowing without a doubt what Michelle had finally succeeded in doing. The ambulance was silent, its twin back doors gaping wide open. In its depths was a gurney and on top of that was a figure beneath a pale-blue blanket. As though hovering slightly above the scene, she noticed Gayle hunched on the front steps, tears streaming over her hardened face as she smoked.
From beside her, Trish wrapped both arms protectively around Bryce's waist. Rae was on her other side and she was sobbing. She said, the words pouring out of her, “I came this morningâ¦and she wasâ¦she wasâ¦on the kitchen floor. She was on the kitchen floor.”
It was barely 11:00 in the morning. A cop in a navy uniform asked, “You the daughter?”
Bryce nodded woodenly. She felt numb down every channel in her body. He added, “I'm sorry, but you'll need to answer a few questions.”
She nodded again. She whispered, “Can I see her?”
The cop looked up at the EMTs, a man and a woman, in the back of the ambulance. One said, “If she wants.”
Bryce climbed slowly up, letting herself be helped by cop. At the last second she didn't want him to, but it was too late and the EMT, clad in dark green scrubs, lifted the cover over her mother's head. Bryce wanted to look away, but couldn't. Michelle's eyeliner was too dark, as usual. She smelled of cigarettes, face ashen, her jaw slack. Because the blanket covered the lower part of Michelle's body, Bryce heard herself asking in a voice she would never have known as her own, “How did she do it?”
The EMT looking at Bryce with somber eyes. “Sleeping pills, best we can tell right now. I'm so sorry.” Then he replaced the cover softly.
***
Night fell
and found Rae and Bryce together in a small, stuffy room at the Fremont Motel. The day had been exhausting; Bryce had talked with cops, a coroner, and a funeral director. Through it all she remained dry-eyed, her face and heart like stone. At last the most pressing tasks were done, and she was alone with Rae in the room as darkness crept in to erase the day, unable to relax even a fraction until Rae came to sit beside her and smooth her hair softly. Bryce pressed her face into the pillow, craving Matthew with every inch of her being. Rae's gentle ministrations made her throat close off, and tears came pouring, no sobs yet, just rivers of tears from each eye.
“Bryce, sweetheart, I have to tell you something,” Rae said then, and her voice was low and almost nervous. “Can I?”
Bryce nodded. She knew that Rae had tried to call Wilder and Erica today, but hadn't reached them, or left a message. Rae considered this the type of news to be delivered in direct conversation. She went on, “Michelle and I had a long talk on Friday, Bryce, about something she told me once a long time ago.” Bryce kept her face hidden, but Rae knew she was listening. She continued to stroke the girl's gorgeous long hair. Rae drew a breath. “God, this is so difficult, Bryce.” Bryce rolled over then and studied her mother's best friend through her tears, a woman whose make-up was ruined, who was wearing yesterday's clothing, whose hair was unwashed and uncombed; she realized that in the shock of her mother's death, she had no real idea why Rae Taylor was here in Middleton at all.
Rae locked her eyes on Bryce's and then took her left hand in both of her own, holding tight to still the trembling there. “Bryce, my fatherâ¦long ago, my father did a terrible thing.” She was determined to do this, no matter what it cost her to speak the words. “He raped your mom, Bryce, he raped Michelle, and in doing that, he made her pregnant with you.”
Bryce could only stare in bewilderment. Rae looked at the wall above the bed now, and continued, “He did that to her on Thanksgiving night of our senior year. I remember that night, he drove her home since my brother had been drinking. I don't know all the details, Bryce, but Michelle told me that he thought she wouldn't remember. And all these years she kept that horrible secret.”
Bryce remained silent; her hand in Rae's was like ice. Rae squeezed her hands gently around Bryce's. She continued, softly, “I came down here to find your mom, and we had a good talk, Bryce. If I thought for one second when I left on Friday that she wouldâthat she wouldâ”
Her voice sounded like sandpaper rubbing against ragged wood, but she must not let Rae carry that burden. “No, noâ¦you can't blame yourself,” Bryce managed to whisper. “She has triedâ¦several times over the years.” Tears were spilling over Rae's face and despite her earlier stillness, Bryce moved swiftly, sliding her arms around Rae's neck and crumpling against her. Rae held her tightly, cupping the back of her head as they both wept. A long time passed before Bryce pulled back, her face blotched and aching, her eyes looking as though she'd been beaten. The purple bruise on her face stood out like a plum. She whispered, with a tone of slight awe, “You're my sister, then.”
Rae nodded, managing a small smile at her. “Yes.”
“Thank you for telling me this,” Bryce whispered. “Michelle⦔
“She's at peace now,” Rae said, and believed with all of her heart that it was true. “The only thing left for you to do is find that, too, little one.”
Bryce felt her heart harden despite Rae's sincerity. She said, “Please don't call Wilder or Erica back. I don't want them to know anything.” She turned away then, an aching tiredness claiming her limbs, and curled back into a defensive ball on the bed.
Rae watched, hurting for her, but instead of trying to convince her otherwise, simply said, “I'm going to take a shower, ok?”
She meant to tell Bryce about Matthew as soon as that was accomplished, but the girl was sleeping when she stepped out of the bathroom, and Rae smoothed Bryce's hair, pulled the sheet over her shoulders and decided morning was soon enough. In the meantime, she knew she must call the Sternhagens, no matter what Bryce had said.