by Chant, Zoe
"The what?" Matthew asked. As Barlow's eyebrows went up, he clarified, "You just started to say 'the' something about her, and I wondered what you were going to say after that."
"The old woman of the woods," Barlow said after a moment.
Matthew tilted his head very slightly, staring at the other man. "That's not what you were going to say."
"No," Barlow agreed coolly, "but it's as much as you're getting."
Matthew scowled, and Sarah said, "Thank you for the papers," a little too loudly. "We'll read them, and let you know if we've found anything when we return them."
Barlow broke his gaze from Matt and nodded at Sarah. "Be careful with them, please. They're old."
"That's my job," Matthew said, sounding faintly annoyed. Barlow smirked and departed, leaving Sarah looking bemusedly at Matthew.
"You don't like him very much, do you?"
"I don't." Matthew sounded a little confused, now. "I usually get along with people, but he gets under my skin for some reason."
"Because he's dangerous? A predator, maybe? But so are you," Sarah said dubiously.
"Well, bears are, but spectacled bears are...not, in bear terms. We'll fight in self defense or if we have cubs to defend, but we're pretty mellow, as a species. I don't know," Matthew said, shaking his head. "I want to know what he was going to say about Hazel. I...I just don't like him."
"You have to read his papers anyway."
A crooked smile pulled at the corner of Matthew's mouth. "Yeah, well, since he brought me all this primary source material to read I might have to reconsider my opinion of him. I hate that."
Sarah stepped close and stole a kiss. "I have to get back to the front before Noah takes over the entire statewide library system. Let me know if you find anything juicy?"
"Of course." Matthew's voice followed her, vaguely concerned: "Can he do that?"
"With his combination of charm and ruthless destructive tendencies, I wouldn't put anything past him!" Sarah called back, and went to see if the other librarians had survived her absence.
They had, of course, and Noah was actually orchestrating a pretend wedding in the kids' section, not wreaking havoc, so the afternoon passed without incident. Sarah went back to the archives room after she'd locked up, and Matt glanced at her with a lazy smile. "Oh no, are we locked in again?"
"We are, but not for sexytime purposes. Or at least, that wasn't my plan. Did you find anything good?"
Matthew pushed a notepad filled with his neat handwriting toward her. "This is what I've copied out of the letters so far."
Sarah sat beside him, leaning in as she read through the notes. "You know, in movies people are always running around chasing things to find clues, not holing up in libraries for days on end."
"You haven't watched enough Supernatural," Matt said. "They sat around researching all the time."
Sarah said, "Mnnf," absently. "That's true. I don't really watch much TV. I'm always busy doing other things. Oh, so this is dated—when is this from? She'd seen the charter? The original one?"
"1802," Matthew agreed, tapping the corner of his note page. "She hadn't just seen it. She'd watched it be 'safely stored away in the halls of law and order.'"
"Well, it can't possibly be in the courthouse," Sarah said, almost offended. "We'd know about it."
"Would we? Have you been over every inch of the courthouse?"
"Well, no, although I think I have been over every inch of the sheriff's office. I really was kind of obsessed when I was a kid," she said sheepishly.
"Think Judge Owens would let us in to snoop around tonight?"
"Totally." Sarah pulled out her phone and called the judge, whose amused agreement echoed over the speaker.
"After dinner," she said. "I'll meet you there around seven thirty?"
Sarah said, "Perfect," and hung up. "Want to go grab something to eat?"
Matthew, with a sly smile, grabbed her. Sarah shrieked in surprised, batted at his hands, and gave him a lingering kiss before sighing mournfully. "I really need dinner, though."
"All right, but I think it's my turn to buy."
"You cooked at least three times in the past week."
"And?" Matthew smiled at her and they went to dinner at the Italian place again, finishing early enough to get to the courthouse before Judge Owens did.
She was timely, though, jogging up the steps at exactly seven thirty and asking, "What are we doing here?" as she unlocked the doors.
"We're looking for secret rooms or other places where a 250 year old document could be hidden," Sarah said brightly.
Karen Owens eyed her for a moment. "Good luck with that. I know this building pretty well, and its insides all match up to its outsides."
"We could knock on all the wall panels," Matthew said a few seconds later, after glancing around the courthouse. It had the charm of an old courtroom, with a wood-paneled interior and high windows with small panes in them. "See if there are any hollow ones."
"It's been taken apart and insulated since it was built," Karen said skeptically. "But I suppose we can try."
"Oh." Sarah blinked at her. "I didn't mean you had to help."
"Are you kidding? And miss out on the moment of discovery? You're lucky I didn't bring Robin!"
The next couple of hours were spent knocking on every panel, every floor slat, and every old wooden bench in the entire courthouse, but none of them gave a tell-tale hollow-compartment sound. Sarah was exhausted by the end of it anyway and threw herself into a chair, wheezing, "Who knew knocking on walls could be so tiring?"
"Probably Jake Rowly," Judge Owens said, amused, as she, too sat. "I don't know where else to look, though. I'm now intimately acquainted with every nail and knot in this place."
"So are we all," Matthew said with a groan. He'd just lain down on the floor, and was scowling tiredly at the ceiling. "Although we didn't try up there. Is there an attic?"
Judge Owens turned her gaze upward. "I suppose there must be, although I've never been in it."
Sarah sat up, her heart accelerating. "I'll go get the ladder from the historical society."
Matt climbed to his feet, groaning some more. "I'll help."
"I," Judge Owens announced, "will sit here like a lump and wait for you."
Sarah and Matthew both laughed. "Sounds fair."
They returned a few minutes later with the ladder and found that Karen had actually gone into her chambers to locate the entrance to the attic. Matt, setting the ladder up against it, muttered, "It's going to be really anticlimactic if there's nothing up there but dust and spiders."
"It's going to be a mystery!" Sarah corrected. "The 'halls of law and order' haven't gone anywhere since Virtue was built, so if it's not there, where the heck is it?"
"If I knew that," Matthew said, halfway up the ladder, "we wouldn't have to be doing all of this." He disappeared into the attic, using his phone as a flashlight. Sarah and the judge both stood beneath the entryway, peering upward, until Matthew's dusty face appeared again, his mouth pulled in a wry smile. "Congratulations," he said to Sarah, "there's nothing here. You've got yourself a full-blown mystery."
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
There was absolutely no time in the next ten or twelve days to solve the mystery. Matthew spent as much time as he could processing the archival papers he'd been hired for, all too aware that he was badly failing his own expectations of how much work he should have gotten done. He knew that, in his defense, he'd ended up doing a lot of unexpected extracurricular activities instead—and that didn't even include night-time antics with Sarah—but he was painfully aware that he'd accomplished far less than he'd meant to.
He couldn't regret it, though. He knew he could spend evenings at the library, catching up, but joining Sarah for pre-wedding activities, making friends with her friends, enjoying her company...those things were more important to him, for the short time he had in Virtue, than filing a few extra papers, or organizing a few more boxes of the collection. And
a few nights before Mabs's wedding, when Sarah shyly asked if he'd be her date, Matthew said, "I'd be honored," and meant it deeply.
The pre-wedding dinner was one of the most boisterous, laughing, loving meals he'd ever attended. Jake's parents had flown in from Colorado and Mabs's had come up from the city. They all seemed nice, but any possible friction was obliterated by Noah's five-year-old charm as he realized he had two sets of grandparents available to spoil him rotten. He ruled them all with an iron fist long before the evening was over.
Although the dinner was technically just the wedding party and families, it seemed to Matthew that half of Virtue was there. He couldn't help remembering Sarah mentioning that Mabs had only lived in Virtue for a year, and yet she had clearly been welcomed and made a part of their community. It was as if Virtue wanted to be a home for people, and drew them in, just as it was trying to draw Matthew in. Unlike Mabs, though, he'd resisted; his plans were for elsewhere.
So much 'for elsewhere' that he was definitely coming back every weekend as long as he possibly could. He chuckled, enjoying the irony, and made sure Sarah got home and to bed reasonably early. "You have a big day tomorrow," he reminded her.
"Not as big as Mabs's!"
"Mabs only has to show up, be beautiful, and say 'I do.' You're going to be putting any possible fires out, and," he said, "I have every confidence you'll do it without her even knowing anything was ever wrong. But you should get some sleep first." He tucked himself in beside her, acknowledged Doc McStuffins as the rightful queen beast of the household, and slept through Sarah getting up the next morning.
Her kiss on his cheek awakened him as she murmured, "I have to go put out fires. I'll see you there?"
"Good luck." He smiled as she scurried away in sweat pants and a t-shirt, with her hair tied in a knot. Then, like a terrible boyfriend, he went back to sleep for two hours because he could.
He was still up in time to bring an entire tray of coffees to the hairdresser's shop on the green at eleven, which was the time Sarah had told him they'd all be there to get beautified. To his delight, his offerings were met with a rousing cheer. Mabs's purple hair was being swept up in a glorious style he had no name for, and the other women were in equal stages of preparation, although none of them were wearing their dresses yet. The hairdresser was saying, "I will cut that shirt off you if the neck of it isn't loose enough to not mess with your hair," as he left.
The gazebo in the town green had become a wedding pavilion, full of brilliantly purple and blue blooms threaded with white. Someone was setting up chairs, and Matthew went to help, then helped lay out the tables under a massive tent that was the back-up plan in case it rained. It looked like there was no danger of rain, though, so the tent's job today was mostly to keep the sun off the food. After that he went home to change into his suit, and was back on the green well before one, when the wedding was meant to start.
In the time he was gone, the green transformed further, until it looked like a summer fairyland. People in lovely outfits were standing around chatting or taking their seats, and Matthew idled, uncertain as to where he should sit until someone appeared and said, "Bride's side, place of honor! Come this way, Mr. Rojas!" He ended up in the third row on the end, where he could turn and watch the procession approach, and just in case, got his phone ready to take pictures.
As the church bells struck one, Jake Rowly climbed the steps to the gazebo. Jake, who was undeniably handsome, looked as good as expected in a tuxedo, and his expression was one of nervous hope. A few moments later, the bridal party swept out of the hairdresser's shop, Mabs hidden in their midst and her parents at the head of the group, managing to block most of the bridesmaids from easy view.
To Matthew's astonishment, though, Mabs's father was carrying the ring bearer's cushion, and her mother, in a wonderfully frilly purple dress, carried a flower girl's basket. They walked down the aisle together, her mother tossing petals with childish delight and abandon, and her father looking every bit as serious as any child tasked with the important job of carrying the rings. A murmur of pleased confusion went through the crowd as they approached the gazebo and took their places on the stage.
Seventeen-year-old Robin Owens was the first bridesmaid to walk down the aisle, her expression absolutely giddy as she clung to a groomsman's arm. Jenny Minor came next with two groomsmen, which Matthew thought was a change from the rehearsal, but then Sarah came walking toward him alone and his heart contracted so hard he could barely breathe.
He'd known she would be beautiful, of course, but he hadn't been prepared for the glorious way her gown clung to her figure, or the makeup that made her look somehow even more like herself. She smiled at him so brightly he thought he saw tears in her eyes. He knew there were tears in his own, as she walked by, and he couldn't take his gaze from her as she climbed the steps to the gazebo pavilion. She was the most perfectly beautiful, ethereal creature he had ever seen.
There was no way he could leave her.
The thought struck him with the power of a shot, almost knocking him back.
He was an idiot, imagining he could leave this woman and the town she loved. Nothing in his life could ever matter as much as staying with Sarah. No job was as important as she was. No old assumption that he'd be happier in a city could stand up to being where Sarah was. No ambition meant as much to him as she did. Sarah was everything he wanted. She was excitement and laughter and determination. His oso had been right all along. Sarah was love itself.
Matthew would never leave her, not unless she told him to, and even then he would do his best to become the man she loved all over again, before giving up on the life they might have together.
Music and a gasp of soft, emotional delight finally dragged Matthew's thoughts away from Sarah as he belatedly remembered this was someone else's wedding, and that it was traditional to admire the bride, not the maid of honor. He turned, overwhelmed, and caught his breath as he understood why everyone around him seemed to suddenly be crying.
Mary Anne Brannigan was staggeringly beautiful, of course. Her dress flowed with lace and lilac, and the purple of her hair glowed through her veil, making her unworldly and elfin. She, like Sarah, could not have been more perfect if she had tried.
And Noah Brannigan walked with her, his little face joyously solemn as he took on the traditional role of giving the bride away at the altar.
They walked together, hand in hand, up to the gazebo, where Noah very carefully took Jake's hand and put it on top of his own and his mother's. "I'm not giving my mommy away," he said in what was clearly meant to be a confidential whisper, and which, from Jake and Mabs's expressions, was not an expected speech on his part. "I'm just keeping my daddy with us for good."
Mabs and Jake both dropped to their knees to hug the little boy, tears streaming down their faces. Matthew couldn't hear what they whispered to him—or rather, he chose not to listen—but theirs were not the only tears being shed, and it took rather a while to get the actual wedding back on track. All the things that were meant to be said, were said, but the truth was, no one doubted that Noah Brannigan had conducted the most important and most binding part of the ceremony. The rest was just for show.
Afterward, it felt to Matthew like the pictures and the reception line and all of the other important, communal parts of a wedding took for absolutely ever, as if the wedding itself was conspiring to keep him from talking to Sarah. He tried to temper his selfish impatience with happiness for the newly-official family, and truthfully, that wasn't hard. Noah clung to both Jake and Mabs, a little tuxedo-clad shadow holding on to one or the other, or better, both of them, at all times. All three of them looked a little overwhelmed, and Matthew thought they, too, would be happy to have a few minutes to themselves.
Still, he was incredibly grateful when finally the formalities broke up for a little while before the other formalities—the wedding cake, the speeches, everything else—began. He found Sarah looking for him, which lifted his heart so much that he
blurted, "I want to stay," without thinking it through.
"What?" Sarah's voice disappeared into nothing, her eyes so wide he was afraid he'd said something awful.
He took her hand and pulled her around to the back of the gazebo, where there were fewer people gathered, and said, "I'm an idiot," helplessly. "I can't leave Virtue, not even for a minute. I can't leave you. I can't take the job in the city. You wouldn't be there, and there's no point, without you. Can I stay? I'll get Noah to ask, if I have to. Nobody can say no to that kid. That was the most wonderful moment..."
"It really was," Sarah whispered. "I knew about—I mean, I knew he was going to give her away, nobody knew he was going to say something. I was afraid her dad might be a pill about it, but Mabs told him Noah had been the most important person in her life for years and her dad just asked if he could be the ring-bearer, and then we all cried, and—" She welled up and tried to pat her eyes dry. "I wasn't supposed to tell anybody, even you, because of the surprise—"
"No, I'm glad you didn't. It was perfect. But do I need to get Noah to ask because I just can't leave you, Sarah, I can't—"
"No!" She threw herself into his arms, hiding her face against his shoulder. "No, no, no. You don't have to get Noah to ask, yes, of course you can stay, please stay, oh, I want so much for you to stay, Matthew. I've been trying not to think about it, but I've been dreading you leaving, and oh, yes, please stay."
"Okay. Okay." He gathered her tightly, his hands in her hair, and held on for the longest time. "Okay," he finally mumbled again. "I can do anything, as long as I'm with you."
Sarah giggled. "I can do anything anyway, but I like doing it with you a lot more."
Matthew set her on her feet and gazed down at her with a foolish smile. "You really can. And I want to help you. And I want to be here to see you do it all. Because you're the most incredible woman I've ever met."
"But your job," Sarah said, suddenly dismayed.
"Doesn't matter. There's way more to do here in Virtue than I expected."
"I'll apply for funding for a permanent archivist position," she said thoughtfully, and his heart lightened even more. There was really nothing she couldn't do, no plan she wasn't prepared to make and implement. And this time, her plans were to help him, which was pretty amazing. "It'll take a while, though," she went on, a frown marring her forehead. "Until then—"
