Blue Midnight (Blue Mountain Book 1)

by Tess Thompson

  Instead I let her go and she scurried down the hallway. I joined Kevan at the bar as he poured another scotch. “Care for one?”

  “No, I better not,” I said. “I had enough wine at dinner.”

  “Suit yourself.” He drank from his glass. His shoulders were curved as if there was a heavy weight there. “You’re good with Rori. I haven’t seen her soften to someone for a while.”

  I spoke quietly, moving closer to him. “Something’s not right with that Blake. Call it mother’s intuition but I think it’s not just as simple as he’s a rebel boy.”

  He observed me for a moment with those eyes that penetrated brick. “I know. But I can’t get her to talk to me.”

  “I’ll try, if you want me to.”

  “I’ve lost her. The first time I held her in my arms I remember thinking, my God, how could you have entrusted her to me? I’m a clumsy oaf with no idea what I’m doing. I was so totally in love with her in a way that terrified me more than anything ever had in my life. She came six weeks early but weighed almost six pounds, always tough and sturdy, and Doctor Sloane assured us there was nothing to worry about and that she could go home with us from the Boise hospital after only a couple of days. I spent a lot of those first hours just watching her sleep and holding her whenever the nurses allowed it. She was like a little bird and I thought I might break her wings. Since that very moment, I’m hopeless when it comes to her.”

  The back of my throat ached. Here again was raw vulnerability. I wanted to respond in kind and yet I wasn’t sure how because of this shadow hovering about my feelings for him, this nagging fear. Was he a man to be trusted? This house was nothing but questions and suspicions and words unsaid. And yes, when I was with him like this, alone, all of it faded and I wanted nothing more than to forget all the words I’d heard, wanted to forget that he was Finn’s brother, and lean into him, perhaps roll over and show him my own soft underbelly. Out loud, I said, “She’s not lost to you forever. You’ll get through this rough patch.” I fluttered my fingers toward the door. “I should go. It’s late.”

  “Of course.” The expression on his face went from open to immediately closed, like shutters on a cottage. I could no longer see inside. The moment was lost.

  Kevan followed me to the front door. “I’m sorry about my mother.” He put his hand on my wrist for a second or two. I took in a deep breath, not wanting to betray the feelings of desire that simple touch gave me. The wine had made my mind and body yielding and exposed. A simple tilt, I thought, a leaning, and I would be in his arms.

  “Other people’s mothers don’t bother a person nearly as much as our own,” I said.

  His eyes were soft and his breath smelled sweetly of scotch. “You’ll still be here in the morning then?”

  “Yes, of course.” My gaze was stuck to his mouth. What would his kiss be like? Would it be soft and searching, or hard and aggressive? I blinked, hoping to dispel the sudden urge to touch his face with the tips of my fingers. “Goodnight, Kevan. Thank you for dinner.”

  “Goodnight.”

  ***

  The door closed behind me. It was late but I didn’t feel tired. Instead I felt a yearning for the fresh air, hoping it might clear my mind and break the spell that seemed to fall over me whenever I was around Kevan. Using the stone pathway, I headed toward the lake. I could see quite well with the light from the patio in combination with the sliver of moon and dashing of stars spread across the sky. I ambled along the path, careful not to slip on the uneven stones. The moon and stars reflected on the water, like thousands of perfectly shaped diamonds. A trio of crickets played a symphony with the soft sound of water lapping against the shore. I sat on the wooden bench and slipped my feet out of my flip-flops to dangle my toes in the grass. Far away, I heard the high-pitched hoot of an owl. I’d always thought of the sound as lonely, imagining the solitary nocturnal bird in his hollow tree, but here in this place with the silver moon in an almost purple sky, it felt right. I thought of my girls, then, as I did so often during times of solitude. Missing them crept into the space in my chest tattooed with their names.

  When Lola was a toddler she developed a fear of the dark every time Michael was out of town, which was a lot in those years. She would cry so pitifully that I always relented and curled up next to her on her narrow bed until she fell asleep, usually waking in the middle of the night disoriented, my mouth dry and with no sense of how much time had passed. Lola had yellow curls in those days and while she drifted off to sleep, and often for minutes thereafter, I played with them, twirling the lock of coiled gold that fell across her forehead around my finger again and again. The baby powder and strawberry scent of her filled every empty space I’d known for so long. Her gentle breathing and occasionally the house creaking or a car driving by broke the night of its silence. I breathed it in, knowing this exact child was the one I was meant to have. But even then, at those precise moments, I understood how fleeting it all was, how quickly she would become a girl and then a woman who held a child of her own. I tried to hold onto the moment, there in the blue of night with her baby smell in my nose and the silken threads of her hair between my fingers, but as all mothers know, it was never a possibility. Time passes, no matter how much we yearn for the present to remain the future. Because now it was later, the future, and I was here under a night sky with a sliver of silver moon, chasing ghosts, while my little daughter was thousands of miles away on a beach somewhere with her father’s new wife. I was not there to make sure she wore her sunscreen or protect her from jellyfish or riptides or her father’s thoughtlessness. No, I was here in the midnight blue of letting go.

  It was in that thought I heard a rustling behind me. The hairs on the back of my neck rose. Someone watched me. I was certain of it. I turned but could see no one. The yard and house were quiet.

  I scurried back along the stone path, past Kevan’s, until I reached the guesthouse, grateful for the porch light. Once there, I used my key to open the door, faltering because of my shaking hands. Inside, I closed the door and locked it, leaning against it until my breathing returned to normal. I closed the shades and turned off the porch light. It was then I heard the shrill, warning shriek of the peregrine.

  ***

  I was about to wash my face and put on my pajamas and call this long, strange night to an end, when there was a knock on my door. My pulse increased. I turned on the porch light. “Who is it?” I called out, my face next to the door.

  “It’s Kevan.”

  I opened the door; the light cast shadows on his face. He seemed misshapen for a brief moment until he stepped closer, out of the rays of light, and his face returned to normal. “I’m sorry to bother you. But you left this at the house.” He held up my camera bag. “I didn’t want you to think you’d lost it somewhere.”

  “Oh, that was thoughtful. Thank you.” I took it from his outstretched hand. My hands trembled, still. I held the camera bag tightly, hoping Kevan hadn’t noticed. But his eagle eyes were just that: piercing, penetrating, all seeing.

  “What’s the matter?” His voice sounded concerned but also alarmed.

  “It’s stupid, really.” I set the camera bag down.

  “Tell me.”

  “I went out to sit by the lake for a moment and I swear it felt like someone watched me. I heard a rustling but when I turned to look, there was no one. The same thing happened earlier today.”

  “You’re probably imagining it. There are deer and bunnies and all kinds of animals. It was probably just that.”

  “Of course you’re right. Maybe I’ve just lived in the city too long.” But I didn’t believe this, even as I said it. I didn’t think Kevan did either by the way his eyes darted behind me, taking in the room.

  “You want me to look around in here, make sure everything’s okay, before I go?”

  “Sure. If you want.” I stepped aside and let him come in, watching from the kitchen as he opened the coat closet door and then went into the bedroom. He came out a few s
econds later.

  “Everything looks fine,” he said.

  “Thanks for checking.” I moved to the door, suddenly feeling awkward. I wished I had pockets to stick my hands inside because now they were flailing around like flags of self-conscious betrayal.

  But he didn’t move to leave, gaze scrutinizing. “You’ve changed toward me since you met my brothers.”

  “What do you mean?” I knew what he referred to, but I asked the question, hoping to buy time to think of what my response would be.

  “They told you of their suspicions about me.” He said this as a statement.

  I stared at him, unable to think of what to say or do next. He did not come toward me, as I thought he might, but instead went to the couch and sat, resting his elbows on his knees and covering his face with his hands. His back rose and fell in a deep sigh.

  Moving toward him, I resisted the urge to wrap my arm around his shoulders, and I sat on the chair opposite the couch instead. “Ardan told me Meredith was Finn’s girlfriend before you.”

  He looked up, his eyes pained. “And that fact makes me guilty?”

  “No. But it makes the likelihood of Finn and Meredith having an affair more plausible. To me, at least.”

  He didn’t speak for a moment, his face fluctuating in that way it does when someone’s thinking hard and wondering how to articulate their feelings. “Have you ever thought that focusing on your fears actually makes them come true?”

  I kept quiet, waiting for him to explain.

  “Because of the way Meredith and I met, I never stopped feeling suspicious of her. I watched her all the time Finn was around, looking for signs that she thought perhaps she’d chosen the wrong brother. It ate me up sometimes, watching them together and always wondering. Did that cause my greatest fear to actually happen? Sometimes I think so. If I’d trusted her, she would have risen to my level of trust. But since I didn’t, she proved me right by choosing him, finally.”

  “I suppose there are ways we sabotage relationships without necessarily knowing we’re doing it.” I thought of Michael. Had I driven him away because he knew deep down I wished I hadn’t chosen him? Had my ambivalence about him driven him into the arms of someone else?

  “Blythe.”

  His voice pulled me from my thoughts. I looked up at his pained eyes. “What is it?” I asked softly.

  “I didn’t have anything to do with their deaths. I don’t know if you’ll ever believe me but it’s true. Regardless, I feel desperate for you to trust me.”

  What did I think at that moment? It’s difficult to explain my uncertainty, both of him and myself. He possessed a quality that made me feel safe and sure. Later, though, in cold distance from him, might I wonder? Was he truthful? Could I trust him? Was his temper such that it drove him mad with rage? Was the deep jealousy and mistrust he felt about his brother and Meredith enough to cause him to harm them?

  I searched his face. “I want to believe you as much as you want to be believed.”

  He smiled. “That’s about as good as I could hope for at this point.”

  “Why haven’t you tried harder to prove your innocence to your brothers?”

  He shook his head; his jaw muscle twitched. “I don’t think I should have to. If they knew me at all, they would know I was incapable of doing something so impulsive, no matter how angry or hurt I was, and if I had done something, even on accident, I would certainly have confessed it. What kind of father would I be if I hurt Rori’s mother and her favorite uncle and walked away? I’m guilty of a lot of things, including being distant and suspicious of my wife, but I’m not a liar and I’m not a murderer. The fact that my brothers could think it of me, even briefly, was more hurtful than my wife running away with my favorite brother. Think about it, Blythe. Everyone I love has betrayed me.”

  “Except for Rori.”

  “She hates me.”

  “She loves you. She’s eighteen and been through a lot.” I debated if I should tell him what I’d heard earlier. I didn’t have the chance.

  He stood. “I should go and let you get some sleep.” In the dim light of the room, he sighed a shallow breath that sounded painful, like a mountain climber in thin air, and I understood he was not simply tired or drained or even exhausted, but weary. I knew the feeling exactly. It might take more energy to get through the next seconds, days, weeks, months, and years than you possessed. Mightn’t it be easier to just let go and fall into the abyss rather than stand and fight one more day?

  I moved toward him. Perhaps it was the recognition of the abyss that propelled me. I cannot say, really, what happened between us in that moment. I know only that it was a shift. It was a choice we both made. He chose to be vulnerable. I chose to move into him rather than away. Just then I did not think of his guilt or innocence, of his follies or triumphs. No, I thought only this: he is hurting, and I don’t want him to. So I reached out my arms, like I might for one of my children, and moved toward him. And he met me in that space between the couch and the door that was suddenly sacred instead of the ordinariness of only the second before. When we touched it was not the passionate variety that one feels during the years of lustful youth. No, this was more of the weary traveler seeing the open sign at an inn when the road had been dark for miles and miles, without the shine of hopeful stars or the twinkling of a candle in a window. This touch was the light in the window, the sliver of moon between clouds, the silence after the owl’s lonely hoot. Because of this, I enclosed my arms around his neck and he wrapped his hands around my waist and said what I already knew. “Sometimes it hurts to breathe.” His voice caught.

  I pressed closer. “I know.”

  He shifted slightly and moved his mouth to the line of my collarbone and pressed his lips there, almost a kiss but not quite, so that it felt like the flutter of a butterfly’s wings. Next, he moved up my neck—flesh that had hardened on the inside from forty-five years of living but was still soft, still pliable on the outside—and thus made me sigh with desire, with an urge for more. So that when he kissed me I was ready for him and let my mouth meet his gentle, searching touch. When he moved his mouth away from mine, he looked into my eyes without a sliver of ambiguity. “Can you ever trust me or is it like everyone else, always this flicker of uncertainty behind their eyes?”

  “I trust you.” And as I said it, I knew it to be true. Trust was a choice. To choose trust was intimacy. In that moment, I knew I’d never had trust or intimacy with another human being except for my children and perhaps it was because I’d never given anyone permission to be as vulnerable as he was then. I’d never allowed someone to be sheltered by me in that way, without judgment or calculation or anything but the purity of my wish to give him something of myself. And in that space of intimacy I wanted only one thing—for him to be comforted, for him to understand I believed him, for him to have a small moment of peace granted by the power of my compassion, my understanding, my own weary heart. “I believe you.”

  He slumped against me, holding me ever tighter. “Blythe, is there any way you could give us a chance?”

  “Will you help me figure out what really happened? Will you admit to me that it was not an accident?”

  He looked up then, unshed tears captured in the lashes of his eyes. “I’m afraid to know the truth.”

  “Why?”

  “What I already know hurts so much, I’m afraid to know more.”

  “But if you know what really happened, perhaps it will have the opposite effect. Perhaps it will heal you, finally.”

  “I don’t know if there’s any way to know what really happened.”

  “Finding the truth could get your family back.”

  “I don’t know if there’s a road back for all of us. Trust was broken between us all. Can it ever be found again?”

  “We won’t know until we try.”

  His eyes were red from tiredness. I moved out of his arms and held out my hand. “Tomorrow’s a new day. But tonight we need to rest.” I walked him to the
door, allowing him to kiss me once more before letting him into the night where we could not know what awaited in the dark shadows.

  After he was gone I went to bed but did not fall asleep until the early hours of the morning. When I finally drifted into a restless slumber, I dreamt of my daughters calling to me from a spinning car.

  CHAPTER 17

  I SLEPT LATE the next morning and awoke disoriented. Despite the fact that I wanted to take a run, I took a quick shower to help waken me, ate a cup of yogurt, and then dressed in running clothes. I ran the trail again, past Ciaran’s house, and then past the large oak where I’d met Ardan the day before. After a while I came upon another house, which I knew must be Ardan’s. It was set atop a small hill and had stairs up to a wide deck. I caught a glimpse of blue water, realizing after a moment that it was a lap pool. Someone swam in it at this very moment. Ardan must be a swimmer. I would ask him about it later.

  The trail ended after Ardan’s home but I continued my run, careful of the natural terrain’s twigs and rocks. I went another mile before reaching a wide meadow, in which sat the third house. My breath caught, realizing it was Finn’s.

  Of simple architecture, made of gray stone and covered with moss and foliage, it seemed more like a cottage one might see in an English village. I stopped running, standing in the middle of the swaying, overgrown grasses. Should I go closer? I debated with myself for a moment or two. Dare I go and look in the windows? Was it better to leave it alone? But, as I’d proven to myself every day since leaving home, I was incapable of letting any of this go.

  I walked through the long grasses to the house. The windows, covered with primitive and rustic boards, reminded me of an old man wearing dark glasses over his cataract-plagued eyes. Plants, overgrown and in terrible need of pruning, grew wild around the house. Rose bushes with pink flowers tilted over the small stone patio. At the front door, I looked around, as if asking permission from my mother to go inside. But there was no one to tell me what to do. I pushed on the front door. Made of heavy wood, it did not budge. It’s locked, you ninny, I told myself. I backed away, observing the door. Red paint peeled from its surface. It seemed right, this fiery, bold color for someone of Finn’s optimistic and open nature. I moved closer, grasping the iron knocker with my hand. I felt the urge to use it but let it go at the last moment.