“Bartholomew Taylor, Junior,” he replied formally, and let go her hand, smiling a little awkwardly. “Shell and I used to be good friends, back when. My little sister Raellen and her were thick as thieves growing up. I just wondered how she was doing these days.”
Bryce relaxed at the benign tone; she had been nervous about fielding nosy questions, being forced to make flimsy excuses for what was unquestionably an unforgivable insult: Daniel’s own daughter refusing to make an appearance at his funeral. This man seemed mellow, though, his curiosity friendly. “She’s doing pretty well,” she lied. “We live in Oklahoma.”
He nodded, rocked to his heels for a moment, studying her face.
“I’d have known you anywhere,” he added, shaking his head then, his voice lowering with an almost-wistful tone. “You look just like her, somehow. It’s the way you tilt your shoulders.”
She instantly stared hard at him, her heart jittering with a monstrous possibility. Don’t, her brain was suddenly screeching at her. Don’t even. But Emma and Cody came running up suddenly, and the question burned away to a bitter crisp in her throat. They were with two little girls, and Emma said, “Bryce, Mom said we need to sit down, and that you’d show us where.”
Bryce cleared her throat, nodded, then shrugged helplessly at Bartholomew Taylor, Jr. He smiled gamely at her, and then he turned toaccept the outstretched hands of the two little girls.
“Daddy, where can we sit?” one of the girls asked Bar, and Bryce made herself turn away from the man who was quite possibly her father, hating Michelle with a white-hot intensity that created spikes in her throat.
She was too shook up to focus, the air around her suddenly hot and clinging; for a moment her vision scaled down to a pinpoint and she faltered. But Emma pulled her hand again. “Come on, we gotta sit down.” And so Bryce drew a deep breath and forced herself to snap out of it.
“Here, guys, this way,” she said inanely, then noticed Evelyn near the front and veered that direction, her stomach relaxing incremently. She guided Cody and Emma into the narrow space between one dark-wood pew and the next, and she sat between them just as her knees seemed to give out. With a sigh she curled her spine against the hardness behind her, tugged friutlessly at the hem of her jean skirt, thinking, Shit, shit, shit. Get me out of here. I need to go now. I fucking hate this place. All of the good feelings from last night while Wilder played the guitar under the moon evaporated away in the face of a dry, hot, hopeless wind that raged through her entire body. It was a feeling she knew well, though, the one that inspired drugs, alcohol, mindlessness. She hadn’t considered the fact that her absent father may very well be here under the same sharply-pitched roof of the church right now, staring at the back of her head and wondering if a wayward sperm had in fact found its way through Michelle’s dark interior over two decades ago.
Bryce bit her lips and concentrated on not puking. The church hummed gently with hushed voices as people filled the space around them; Erica appeared moments later, looking solemn and pretty in a sundress the pale hue of jade, her gorgeous apple-red hair loose and full over her shoulders. She smoothed the skirt over her thighs as she sat and took Emma’s right hand into her left, bounced it once against her lap.
“Where’s Daddy?” Cody whispered, and Evelyn tilted her head to whisper back, “He’s speaking about Grandpa, remember?”
“Can I speak, too?” Cody whispered, and Emma griped, “No way, not if I can’t!”
“Hush, babies,” Erica admonished softly as a minister climbed the shallow steps to the altar. He faced the assembled crowd with a somber face, then began in a low, gentle voice, “We are gathered here to celebrate the life of Daniel Sternhagen, a man all of us knew well, a man who called Rose Lake home his entire life.” Bryce saw the coffin then, thankfully closed, being rolled on a cot at waist height, pushed carefully by Wilder, Matthew, Riley and a man she didn’t know, all four of them dressed in dark suits. Her heart caught painfully as she realized Matthew had been crying; his eyes were red, his face stricken. She curled her hands together tightly, found them icy. The men stopped at the end of the aisle and quietly took their seats, Wilder filing in first to sit by Erica, Matthew next.
The minister went on in a quiet voice for minutes, but Bryce heard not a word. She found herself transfixed by the burning colors of the stained glass above the altar, which fractured the sunlight into oblique patterns in variegated shades of red. She marveled at the monochromatic color choice; it seemed far too passionate a tone for the front of a church. She wanted to get high or drunk, and quick. She had to get out of here today, would make an excuse. Her mind drifted absurdly, flirting with images of ways she could embarrass herself just now: screaming obscenities, stripping her clothes and lying naked in the broken crimson sunlight just behind the minister.
Bryce, you’re crazy, she told herself, trying to breathe normally. To her right, Matthew’s profile made her heart constrict. She wanted to shove Erica and Wilder out of the way and be at his side, take his head against her breasts and comfort him.
I’m fucking in love with him. How did this happen? She pressed the side of one fist against her mouth. No matter what, she had to leave here today. And never come back. Maybe time and distance would serve their purposes eventually, but right now she was filled with near panic at the notion that the memory of his lips and eyes, his face, his hands, his voice, his touch…oh, God, his touch…would haunt her always. No one would ever measure up to him, of that she was certain. She could remove herself from him physically, but the sense of him would never be abolished from her mind. Better to go now, make a clean, quick break.
Wilder rose then, made his way onto the platform, spoke for a few minutes about his father. His voice was warm and kind, his words geared to make people smile and even laugh, low, polite laughter reserved for this sort of occasion. He finished by speaking to his family, his eyes resting on his wife’s with the kind of slow, steady look that long-married couples exchange, and Erica placed one hand over her heart, making Bryce tear a little, in a kind of self-punishing jealousy.
“I am blessed that my father was the kind of man he was, one who taught me how to raise my own kids right. I love you all, more than I can say.” And he bowed his head and rejoined them; Bryce couldn’t quite meet his eyes, afraid the emotions in her own may be too sharply pointed: What about my mother? Where did your precious father go wrong with her?
Minutes later they were heading to the cemetery, a long, somber procession led by a county sheriff’s tan-and-brown car, its cherry light spinning silently. Bryce rode with Erica again, their car directly behind the hearse, and behind them Matthew, Wilder, Riley and the man who turned out to be Riley and Erica’s father, Roger Christianson. Upon entering the cemetery, they drove past the enormous willow that guarded Margaret Sternhagen’s grave, to a spot not far beyond, where the four men lifted the coffin from the mouth of the hunchbacked vehicle and carried it to the waiting hole in the earth. No one seemed to be speaking; Bryce found herself seated on a folding chair between Emma and Evelyn, who were tight-faced and grim, clutching the white roses that Erica had been handing out like candy. Bryce studied the shining black surface of the coffin, tracing her index fingers again and again over the tip of a thorn on her own rose.
Matthew, Matthew, she cried to him, her throat swollen and sore as she watched him trace a hand over the casket As he turned to take his own seat, his eyes met hers in a tidal wave of sorrow, and she tipped her chin and held his gaze, the fingertip of her right hand suddenly pierced by the sharp point beneath it, drawing a pinprick of blood. He sat as close as he could to her, with Cody and Evelyn between them, as the group allowed the family to sit before claiming their own chairs.
The minister spoke a few words, again lost on Bryce, whose gaze drifted up and into the leafy green above, craving sunlight on her face, craving Matthew’s hands in her hair and his chest against hers. When the symbolic handful of dirt was gently cast, Erica gave over to weeping, turning int
o Wilder’s arms, and Matthew tipped his head and gripped the lower half of his face, his shoulders shaking. Bryce wrapped her right arm around Emma, who leaned against her, sobbing, too.
“Amen,” the minister whispered, and the air around him seemed to sigh, as people rose to their feet and hugged, or murmured softly. Emma still clung to Bryce, and she brushed the little girl’s curly hair back from her face, feeling a swell of tenderness.
“Hey, it’s okay,” she whispered, and Emma nodded, but didn’t sit up. A breeze stirred the leaves, like the essence of a spirit, and it ruffled through both girls’ hair in a way that made Bryce’s spine tingle slightly. Erica and Wilder were standing now, and others were drifting away, back toward their cars. Bryce suddenly noticed a woman approach Matthew from the left, and all of her warning bells clanged. She was tall and lovely in a summer dress of lavender-blue, which clung delicately to her considerable curves. Caramel-blond hair, magazine hair, Trish would call it, waved around her face. She bent down and slipped her right arm across his shoulders in a possessive way that made Bryce’s neck prickle. Obviously her hands had been there before.
“Matty, I’m so sorry,” the woman murmured to him.
Bryce felt a fireball burst in her stomach. She stumbled as unobtrusively as possible to her feet, pulling Emma with her, as he replied, “Thanks, Angie,” in a low voice, and was simultaneously enveloped in a hug.
Blindly, Bryce turned away and said to her little cousin, “Let’s go find your mom,” and in her deep desire to get away from the sight of Matthew in another woman’s arms, she moved swiftly through the crowd and blundered directly into the path of a small woman in a butter-yellow sundress, whose eyes widened with surprise, and then softened into something like recognition.
“Sorry, I’m sorry,” Bryce said, shaking her head, her stomach cramping. She was certain she sounded and appeared ridiculous, but the woman touched her arm lightly.
“My brother said he’d met you,” she said then, her voice low and pleasant. “And you do, you look exactly like her.”
Bryce looked into the woman’s eyes, thinking this must be another of her mother’s old friends, and how strange that people kept saying that to her today, when no one back home ever seemed to make the observation.
“Rae Taylor,” the woman added, her hazel eyes crinkling at the corners as she smiled with fondness. Genuine fondness. “You mom and I used to be best friends.” So many things hovered in the air between them, questions Rae was dying to ask; in fact, she was forcibly restraning herself from dragging Bryce to a chair and demanding some answers.
Shit, the poor girl probably doesn’t have them anyway, she thought, shaking her head again at the sight of Shelly’s face peering out so plainly, her wide and mobile mouth with its full lower lip the exact same contour, her nose with its sifting of tiny freckles, the pixie chin. This girl’s eyes were different though, certainly not Shelly’s, large and coffee-brown, staring at Rae with a mixture of exhaustion and deep-seated agony. Rae drew a slow breath, struck by the irony of life, by the fact that Michelle’s eyes had held the exact combination of emotions the very last time Rae had ever seen her, 22 years ago. Oh Michelle, Michelle; what I wouldn’t give to go back to that night, stop you from driving away, find out the goddamn truth…
“I would love to talk to you before you head home,” Rae said then, and in her voice was a sincerity, almost a plaintiveness, that made Bryce’s heart catch for a moment. She felt herself nodding, and Emma, still clinging to her hand, squinted up at the woman in yellow.
Rae bent her knees and addressed the little one. “Hi, Emma. I grew up here in Rose Lake. I just moved home last night actually. I’m sorry about your grandpa. I knew him pretty well when I was a kid.”
Emma hooked a finger into her mouth and didn’t reply, but Rae was undaunted. To Bryce she said, “I would love to talk again soon. Will you be staying in town for awhile this summer?” Without waiting for an answer, she added, “I hope you will.”
Bryce, trapped, could only nod. The woman smiled, touched her arm again. “Good. Until then!”
Emma tugged at Bryce’s hand, catching sight of her parents up ahead. Bryce turned to watch her mother’s old friend walk away and was struck in the face with the sight of Matthew and the blond woman, who was clinging to his arm. The pain that accompanied seeing them was like a physical blow to her, and she turned away, bit her bottom lip hard. Evelyn suddenly appeared then and offered inadvertant rescue, asking, “Bryce, can we walk over to Grandma’s grave?”
“Of course,” Bryce said, and she and Emma followed Evelyn, whose beautiful red-gold hair was gathered high on her head. The three of them left the remaining mourners behind and walked solemnly to the ancient weeping willow, whose branches skimmed like loving fingers over their shoulders.
Margaret Sternhagen’s plot was quiet and somehow lonely on this sunny day. The flowers Erica had left yesterday were still in the same spot, nestled at the bottom edge of the stone. Bryce thought about Wilder wanting his father buried here, by his mother instead of Matthew’s. Evelyn tipped her chin and seemed to be praying, and Bryce watched the shifting rays of sunlight on her cousin’s hair, flashing over it in ruby streaks. Emma, too, remained silent and still, caught in the spell. Bryce continued to hold the little one’s hand in the peaceful stillness, and after a moment the rolling in her gut subsided a little, and she reminded herself that she would be leaving soon. She would not acknowledge how terribly her heart ached at the thought. It will get better over time…I know it…haven’t I lived with worse things?
“Hey, you guys,” he suddenly said from behind them, and Bryce felt her heart contract all over again. She turned to face the eyes that were killing her.
“Hey,” she whispered back, and his eyes poured into hers from 10 feet away. He was alone, to her relief, and the top buttons of his dress shirt were undone beneath a loosened tie, his suit coat slung over his right arm. The sunlight skimmed over his shoulders, glinted in his dark hair, and Bryce felt tricked, betrayed by some malevolent fortune that had made him so incredibly attractive, that had created this ferocious agony of desire between them. He moved forward and her heart slammed against her; he stopped no more than 12 inches from her right shoulder, not taking his eyes away.
Matthew wanted to put his hand on her shoulder, her elbow, anything just to feel her warm skin. He said, “You three ready to head over to the Lodge?” in a voice he hardly recognized. Evelyn was still standing with her head bent, and Emma had dropped to a crouch to examine a ladybug. It was the first time all day that Bryce had faced him without people directly between, and she thought, It’s allowed…I can hug him right now…the girls won’t think it’s strange…
“Matthew,” she said, and she didn’t know her own voice either. “I’m sorry.”
He shook his head, his lips pressing together for an instant. She could still see the evidence of his tears, and it made her insides convulse with sorrow. Matthew saw her shift slightly and had the presence of mind to move slowly and not crush her against himself, but joy ravaged his aching heart as she moved into his embrace and wrapped her arms hard around his midsection.
Seconds, we only have seconds. He clung for as long as he dared. Bryce drew back slowly, and her gaze pierced him to the heart as she left the circle of his arms. Her wide eyes were the shade of coffee without cream, luminous and dark, and he saw in them a well of sadness that he longed to ease.
“Bryce?” Emma was staring at them, her chin hooked on one bent knee. “Is this your grandma and my grandma’s grave?”
Bryce nodded, pulled herself together as best she could. With both hands she scooped loose hair behind her ears in a gesture Matthew had come to anticipate.
“This is Daddy and Aunt Michelle’s mom,” Evelyn added, and she reached to caress the headstone for a moment, reminiscent of her mother. “She died way before we were even born.”
“Aunt Michelle should be here,” Emma observed stubbornly. “Didn’t she want to see her
daddy get buried?”
Bryce closed her eyes for a moment, dragged out a response. “You’re right, she should be here. I wish I could tell you why she isn’t.”
Evelyn said, “We better go,” giving Bryce a look of apology. She grabbed for her little sister’s hand, but Emma darted away, releasing her energy as she ran back the way they’d come, and Evelyn, despite her fancy shoes with heels, gave chase. “Emma, don’t step there!” she yelled. Despite everything, Bryce giggled a little, and Matthew rolled his eyes at his nieces’ backs.
“Those two,” he said affectionately. He offered his arm to Bryce, and she smiled at him in a way that made his insides radiate: it was a sweet and wistful smile, and it killed him all over again to realize how much he wanted that smile near him all the time. She slipped her right hand around his left elbow, accepting this as a gift, and both their bodies burned with the contact. Matthew said, “Hey, I hope you know that no one blames you for Michelle not being here.”
They started walking, by unspoken agreement at a slow pace to prolong the excuse to touch. She tipped her chin for a moment. “I know, but it’s easier said than believed, you know?”
“Wilder really wants to talk to you about everything,” Matthew went on. “He hasn’t had a chance yet, though.”
“I know, I can see it in his eyes,” she told him. “But—” and she spoke quietly, her face hot. “I’ll be leaving soon.”
Matthew stopped walking and turned to face her. Her hands fluttered to her sides, unable now to continue touching him. He wanted to grip her shoulders and force her to look up at him as his insides crumbled at this inevitable news. “How soon?” he asked her, and she gave in to the tremendous pull and met his eyes, finding them dark and tortured.
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