“Of course he doesn’t!” Michelle felt her belly seize up, the relief of finally revealing the horrible secret instantly sunk beneath a wave of regret for spilling it, even to her best friend. “Rae, promise me again! I have to know that you will never tell anyone. I would die if Daddy found this out.”
Rae seemed to come back to herself, and she caught Michelle in a fast, hard hug. “Don’t worry, I never will. I promise, Shell.”
Chapter Nine
Rose Lake, Minnesota – Wednesday, June 21, 1995
Two miles north, Matthew bellied up to the familiar auburn smoothness of the long bar at the Lodge, hooked his elbows on its length and wrapped both hands around the icy cold bottle. Riley elbowed beside him, drank deeply from his own bottle, studying their reflections in the mica-flecked Warthog Beer mirror that had graced the back of the bar since time immemorial. It was the first time the two friends had been alone all day, and Riley clapped one hand on Matthew’s far shoulder, squeezed it.
“How you holding up, buddy?” he asked.
Matthew took another long swallow. He wanted nothing more than to get home and be near Bryce, even just in the same room, even if he couldn’t touch her…he just needed to see her. But Riley had offered to buy him a round, and Erica had insisted, telling him he looked terrible.
“Thanks, Ma,” he teased her.
The afternoon had been eternally long and somehow hazy, as though a low-lying cloud with a slightly amber tint had settled within the Lodge, creating faint auras around the guests. Matthew had attended events here for as long as he could recall, but somehow the familiar place was foreign today, sighing with murmured condolences from strangers he’d known his entire life, filled with arm pats and well-meaning hugs he would rather have shrugged away from. And Bryce had gone back home with Cody, leaving a razor-edged gap in the day, precious hours that he could have been near her…hours that were dwindling even as he sat here with someone who cared about him deeply, who had been his best friend since they were little.
“You wanna get out of here?” Riley asked him, glancing again at a girl they had graduated high school with, Kelly Iverson. She and Angie Strickland were lingering at a table near the bar, seemingly deep in conversation with Rae Taylor, a damn fine-looking woman, even if she was at least 40, who had been sipping martinis all afternoon. Riley knew Angie was dying to get Matthew alone, and he wouldn’t mind seeing if Kelly was also interested in further drinking this evening. The girls kept shooting surreptitious looks at the guys, which Matthew didn’t seem to be reading at all. In fact, he was a million miles and then some away. Riley felt it was his duty as best friend to help him out with this situation.
“Sterno, you there?” he asked again, and bumped his shoulder against Matthew’s. “Methinks someone is interested in consoling you,” he added, inclining his head just a fraction in Angie’s direction. Matthew closed his eyes for a moment and polished off his beer, signalled for another. Bar, who was chatting down the bar with his brother-in-law, Lew Ryan, nodded in their direction.
“Help yourself,” he called to the guys.
Matthew drank another in less than a minute, and Angie grew frustrated and made the first move. She and Matthew had been on and off since their high school romance, and in her opinion it was way past time for on again. She had just returned to Rose Lake after trying out a year of tech college in Minneapolis, had lived with her older sister there for the last year, dated plenty, but still no one really compared to Matthew Sternhagen. Damn him…with his hunky shoulders and those killer brown eyes…and damn all her memories of making love with him in the back seat of her parents’ car, in her basement, in his basement…it wasn’t something she could just forget. For fuck’s sake, they’d lost their virginity to each other. She wasn’t entirely sure that this was the right moment – with Daniel’s funeral and all – but he looked so sad. It was up to her to offer him a little comfort, and she knew just the kind he needed.
“Ange,” Riley acknowledged as she joined them, leaning provocatively over the edge of the bar. “How goes it?”
“Okay,” she said, playing it cool. “What do you guys think? Kel said her mom is watching the kids until midnight. You two ready to head out?”
“Sounds good to me,” Riley told her. He nudged Matthew again. “What’d’ya say, Sterno?”
Matthew said, “I think I’ll stick around here for awhile, if you guys don’t mind. I’ll catch up later.”
Angie blew out a breath that lifted her bangs. “Matty, come on with us. We’ll have a good time,” she added, pressing just slightly against him. He waited for the old rush, the one that meant, Sweet! I’m getting laid tonight, but it didn’t come. To lessen the blow–shit, he owed her that much, at least–he leaned and kissed her familiar cheek, caught the scent of her same old perfume.
“Thanks,” he whispered into her hair, and she gripped his arm for a moment, wanting more. But he leaned away. “I’ll find you guys later,” he told them, and Riley, seeing something in Matthew’s eyes, nodded and didn’t press the issue. He left with the girls, wondering what was up, thinking that Matthew was being a goddamn fool.
The place was almost empty now, only Bar, Rae and a couple of Ryans still hanging around. Matthew was about to take his own leave when Rae joined him, climbing delicately onto a stool and setting her martini glass down with a faint chiming sound. Two forlorn olives rolled around the bottom.
“Hey there,” Rae said, twirling the glass slowly with one small, perfectly manicured hand. Her nails were long, a gleaming raspberry color. Matthew watched the olives rotate as though mesmerized. Rae went on, “I’m sorry about your father, Matthew. He was a good man.”
Matthew remembered his manners with a jolt. He looked over at Rae, struck for a moment by the notion that she strongly reminded him of someone, before he blinked and replied automatically, “Thank you.”
She continued to study him, her hazel eyes unwavering. “You surely have grown up, Matty. God, I haven’t seen you since you were a little boy. Shelly wouldn’t believe her eyes if she saw you today.”
Matthew released a small, humorless huff of laughter. “I could say the same for her, I guess,” he responded ungraciously, buzzed and exhausted enough to speak without the buffer of politeness.
Rae was unperturbed. “You have a right to feel that way,” she said. “We’re all stunned that she didn’t make it up here for the funeral.”
“She has her reasons, I guess.”
“Yes, I suppose she does. I met her daughter today. Will she being staying with you guys this summer?”
Bryce, Bryce…I need to be home, he thought, his mind swimming. He was more drunk than he’d realized, and set his fourth beer gently onto the bar. He was barely able to speak the words, “She’s leaving tomorrow.”
Rae’s eyebrows lifted. “Really? She told me she would be here this summer. Damn. Well, see if you can convince her to stay awhile.” She sighed and moved her gaze to the rows of glass bottles five feet from their heads, went on without waiting for a reply. “I am dying to talk to her. She’s my last real connection to Shelly.”
Matthew heard himself say, “Bryce doesn’t even know who her father is, for Christ’s sake.”
Shit, where had that come from? He reeled a little, and was it his imagination, or did Rae’s face cloud just a fraction? She fiddled with her glass and suddenly her eyes darted towards her brother, a lightning flash that Matthew almost missed. When she spoke again, her voice was low, with a grit of sand in it. “I didn’t even know she was pregnant when she left Rose Lake that night. She didn’t tell me, but her little girl was born that July, so she must have been. It was all so terrible, when she left, and not two months later, your mother was diagnosed with cancer…I tried to get ahold of her, so many times, but it was impossible.” Rae was babbling, fairly drunk herself, delivering a self-lashing nearly 21 years after the fact. “I have a lot of regrets, but letting her go that night is the worst one yet. She was my best friend. She was th
e best friend I’ve ever had.”
Matthew watched her speak, trying to make sense of the words. Was she saying she knew who Bryce’s father was? For that matter, did Wilder and Erica know? He suddenly realized that Rae’s eyes were brimming with tears and he reached out and touched her hand, covered it gently with his own. She sniffled a little and blotted at her lower lids with a cocktail napkin in the other hand.
“Matthew, I’m sorry,” she said, regaining her composure. “It’s been a long day for you, I’m sure.” She gave him a hint of a smile then, and noticed that Bar and Lew Ryan were heading their direction. Rae had kept Michelle’s dark secret all these years, had actually almost forgotten it until this moment, watching Lew Ryan, who would certainly never know that Matthew was actually his younger half-brother, approach them with a friendly smile.
“Rae, good to see you,” Lew told her again. Lew was still handsome as a devil, same as all the Ryan boys, who had inheirited an eye-catching sexiness from their tall, muscular, stern-jawed father. John Ryan, who had never been forced to answer for his sins, who had died years back, even before Rae’s own father, Bar, Senior. And Bar hadn’t been that old, certainly not old enough to have a heart attack. Rae had never stopped missing him.
“You, too, Lewis,” she responded. She’d spoken to him earlier in the day, of course, but it was different now, away from nine-tenths of the prying eyes. Small towns with their unending rumor mills: it was one thing she hadn’t missed while living in Chicago for the past 18 years. Here she was, nearly 38, educated, refined, newly divorced, and yet all people could recall was how she’d once dated Lew’s little brother, Jeremy Ryan. Everyone peeked over their drinks at Rae and Jeremy, just to see if their eyes would meet in a significant way sometime today. Which of course hadn’t happened.
“You back for good then?” Lew went on, giving her his complete attention; she knew, from Bar’s wife Leslie, that Lew was single as of last year, when his wife Jody had left him and moved to Sacramento for her job. He, like herself, had no children, and Rae felt a small pang…it would be so damn easy to fall into this trap, and she was not about to give in to it, no matter how sizzling Lew’s dark eyes were, no matter how lonely she was, no matter how much a damn good fuck would do for her self-esteem.
Jesus, Raellen, you’re supposed to be talking yourself out of this, she thought, and shook her head slightly at Bar as he raised both his eyebrows and the Grey Goose bottle at her.
“That’s the plan, for now,” she said, trying for noncommital. Beside her, Matthew Sternhagen was staring into the middle distance, where a person went when soul-searching. Bar replaced the vodka and gave his sis a wink.
“Good. There’s no place like home, right?” Lew added, and then abruptly slapped the bar with the flat of both hands. “Well, it’s about time for me to head for the hills. Bar, Rae, thanks again.” The older man clapped Matthew on the back, seeming to startle him. “Sterno, you take care, all right? I’ll be out to the Pull Inn sometime this next week to see about those craters in the parking lot.”
Matthew turned and shook Lew’s hand briefly. “Great, thanks, buddy.”
“Sterno, I know it’s been a tough day, but what the hell?” Bar asked Matthew moments later, as Lew disappeared out the doors. “Angie seemed a little disappointed…sorry, it’s tough not to notice these things. Finely-tuned bartender observation skills,” he added, his lips curling into a half-grin. He poked the younger man lightly with the pour spout of the bottle of expensive vodka. “Am I wrong?”
“No, you sure ain’t,” Matthew said ironically, curling his shoulders with a hint of defensiveness.
“So fill the new girl in,” Rae added, watching the exchange in fascination.
Bar offered the floor to Matthew with a tilt of his head. Matthew volunteered, his voice low, “Angie and I dated all through high school.”
“And?” Rae popped the olives into her mouth in quick succession, chewed them vigorously as she waited for his reply.
“And everyone thinks I should have married her by now,” Matthew said, studying his beer bottle, tracing the bottom in loose circles on the bartop.
“And I’m assuming Angie thinks that, too, but what about you?” Rae wondered aloud.
Matthew bit the insides of his cheeks, his eyes growing even darker and suddenly blazing hot, a look not unlike the one in Lew’s eyes only moments ago, and something within Rae responded on a purely feminine level at the intensity of it. She was floored to fully appreciate how stunningly attractive he was, and she already knew what was coming when he confessed, “But I don’t.”
Bar blew out his breath. “Hey, when you know, you know. There’s not a thing in the world can change that.”
Matthew stood suddenly, shoved both hands through his dark hair. He said, “Thanks again, you two, I mean it. Everything was great.”
“Hey, no problem,” Bar responded. Rae felt compelled to ask, “Do you need a ride?”
“No, no, thanks,” he said, gave them a wan smile. “I’ll see you around.” And then he too was gone, leaving Rae and Bar, Jr. alone in the establishment that had served as the sole focus of their parents’ lives.
“How about that drink anyway, sis?” Bar asked, loosening his tie and pouring himself a double Crown.
“What the hell?” Rae asked rhetorically, stabbing three fresh olives with her toothpick. She didn’t stop to think about her next question. Chalk it up to the strangeness of the day, burying Shelly’s father, meeting Shelly’s child. “Bar, I have to ask you something, and you have to tell me the truth. I never did at the time.”
For an instant he froze, and his face took on the hardened planes of a statue. But then he softened a touch and replied with forced ease, “Ask away.”
Rae was too old to pull her verbal punches anymore, though she found she couldn’t look directly into his eyes as she asked quietly, “Is Michelle’s daughter also yours?”
Bar drained his drink, and Rae watched the muscles in his throat flex. He set the glass down gently, braced his palms on the far edge directly opposite her seated form, leaned 45 degrees and pinned her with his earnest brown eyes. “No,” he said. And again, more softly, “No.” But in the next instant he looked down, at the bar. Guiltily, Rae thought, though she wanted to believe him. He was seeing Michelle’s face as he remembered it: soft and fair and so trusting. It killed him still. He went on, “I loved her, Rae. I loved her with all of my heart, and I would have waited for her.” His eyes were agonized now, his voice rasping a little with long-buried pain and anger. “And then she left like that…and she was pregnant when she left…and she never even gave me the courtesy of a goddamn explanation.”
“Me, neither,” Rae said, her throat tight. She looked up at her brother. She wanted to believe him. “Who, then?”
“So help me, I’ve wondered that for years, been over and over it in my mind…but there’s no one I can even imagine. I think…at least I thought at the time…that she loved me, too.” Bar stopped and covered his face with one hand, briefly, then straightened with determination. “Jesus, Rae, I have no one to talk to about her anymore. Leslie wouldn’t understand—”
“Can you blame her?” Rae interjected.
Bar grimaced, flashing his teeth for a moment. Though his hair was thinning, reminiscent of their father’s, he was still very handsome, still looked much like the high school boy who’d had his heart broken and never fully mended even after two decades.
“I love Leslie, I do,” he said then, punishing or convincing himself, Rae wasn’t sure. Really, the point was moot in the here and now, seeing as how Bar had fathered four children with Leslie Ryan Taylor.
“I know,” Rae said, and she really did. Michelle would always be his heart’s first choice. There was no closure, no word from her after all these years…Bar, Sr. and Caroline had been in Spain the spring that Matthew’s mother died; neither Bar nor Rae, who had just recently moved to Chicago with Tony, had attended the funeral, hadn’t even realized Michelle w
ould be there. Apparently she had shown up the morning of, in a piece of shit car, dragging a small child with her. Rae had listened to the story, stunned, later that week, after Michelle had already left. Bar had spent three days drunk out of his head; Leslie hadn’t known what was wrong, and Rae hadn’t known how to explain to her sister-in-law. And Michelle had never returned to Minnesota, at least as far as anyone knew.
“She looks so much like her, doesn’t she?” Bar asked quietly then.
“She does,” Rae agreed in the same tone of voice. “Darker, but still…it took my breath away when I saw her.”
“I better head for home, Leslie’ll be wondering,” he said then, unable to continue discussing the topic. “You gonna be okay, sis?” Bar looked at her tenderly for a moment; he still wanted to kill Tony, his ex-brother-in-law, for the pain he’d caused Rae. The son of a bitch had put her through hell.
“Yes, yes, of course,” she said, downing the last of her drink. And found herself foolishly wishing that she’d accepted Lew’s subtle offer after all.
***
Matthew threw his suit jacket into the cab of his truck and left it in the lot at the Lodge, rolled up his sleeves and then walked with head bent and both hands shoved into the pockets of his dress pants. He wasn’t quite unsteady drunk, but didn’t trust himself to drive, and it was a gorgeous night, the sky deep and brilliant with stars, windless and warm, inviting him to walk. He did so along a road as familiar to himself as the trails at the Pull Inn, keeping to the grassy strip that edged the road but wasn’t quite yet the ditch, registering the night sounds with unusual clarity; he had heard the crickets and peepers singing their harmonies, the whine of mosquitos, the sigh of the pines for so many years now they normally mellowed into a gentle background cadence, but tonight his senses were oddly lucid.
Walking was good for the body but not exactly the heart, not with so damn much on his mind. To do so solitarily was something as conducive to reflection as gazing into a campfire. He felt removed from himself, swept along in a current he had not seen coming, had no clue, no forewarning, was waiting for him. Just last Thursday, not even a week ago, when he’d agreed to run Marshall’s three-day route to Texas because Marshall’s wife was a week past due with their first baby, he had been a completely different man.
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