Echoes (14 page)
He raised bleary eyes. "How was it?"
"Boring."
"Did you talk about me?" His expression was so unguarded it hurt.
"We tried not to."
"Is there a chance? Do I have a chance?"
He sat down and sighed. "She said she's through. It's time to move on."
Ryan scrubbed his face with both hands. "Maybe if I got a better job, drove a better car."
"Your job's fine when you do it, and she doesn't care what you drive. Ryan, you're not putting out your best effort."
"What if I am? What if this is the best I'll ever do?"
"Find someone with lower expectations."
"That's all you can say?"
He shook his head. "I could say a lot. But you had three years to get it together. If Becca meant as much as you say she did, why didn't you try harder?" He crowded the table. "You can only get so far on your looks and your laugh. Then you have to get serious."
"Like you?" Ryan scowled. "You're as serious as a train wreck."
It had to be the booze. Only the amount of whiskey Ryan had drunk would make him say something that carelessly cruel. Matt got up and went to his room and closed the door. He hadn't known Jacky would step onto the tracks; how could he? From out of nowhere tears stung.
He hadn't thought about Jacky so much in years. Telling Sofie had cracked him open. What if he'd told Jack to hide and gone in his place? A beating would have been over and done, but this . . . It never ended. He swore.
Ryan knocked on the door. "Matt?"
"Get out, Ryan."
But Ryan came in. "I'm sorry, man. I didn't think about what I was saying."
"I said get out!"
Ryan slid down the wall and landed with a thump at the bottom. "I didn't mean it. I'm messed up. I shouldn't have touched that bottle. And Bec . . . I don't know what to do." He huddled on the floor. "I'm a loser."
"You're not." Matt sat down on the floor across from him, his back to the bed.
"What am I going to do?"
He sighed. "You're going to crash in the guest room, wake up with a headache, then go face the day."
"Face the day? How?"
"The same as the rest of us." Matt dropped his head back, replaying all the times he'd wanted to run away, give up, give in. Dad boasting,
"There's no quit in Matty."
And he'd wanted to quit, just to wipe that proud smirk off. But it wasn't in him. He survived and went on, and on, and on.
H
e had wanted that to be the end of it, but Ryan kept talking. It took hours before he finally passed out on the guest bed. Matt went outside and started down the sidewalk. Mist chilled his cheeks as he went, hands in his pockets, step after frustrated step. He had put Jacky away in a safe place, but he wasn't staying there. He was breaking through into places he couldn't be, places that hurt.
Matt moved faster through the dark as though Jacky followed still at his heels.
"Where you going, Matt? Can I come?"
Ragged clouds shuffled overhead, dimming and blotting stars and moon. At last he stopped and looked up. It was late—or early. He lit up his watch. 4:32. But a light was on inside the house. Nights with an infant. He looked up at the window, saw a shadow pass by, pause, then form a sharper silhouette as the curtain was pushed aside.
Idiot. How had he ended up outside this house? He must have walked three miles to get there, and now he couldn't move. Minutes later, the door opened. Sofie, in sweater and soft flannel pants, came down the walk and stopped at the waist-high wrought-iron gate. "What are you doing?"
He swallowed. "Walking."
"In a suit?"
He looked down at himself. "Yeah."
"Are you all right?"
He spread his hands. "I don't really know."
She opened the gate and he passed through. They sat down on the steps. He looked down at his Johnston and Murphy Italian-calf-leather loafers. Not exactly cross-trainers. He hadn't even loosened his tie. "This must look . . ."
"Like you wanted to talk?"
He bunched his fingers into his hair. "Maybe. Not consciously." Had he intended to find her again, pour out a little more, release the pressure just enough? Had he sought out a failed suicide who could understand what no one else could, offer a sort of absolution no one else could? "Talking seems to have punched a hole in some wall, and it's all gushing out."
"That's called catharsis."
"I'm usually on the other end of it." He thought of all the people like Ryan who piled their problems on his broad shoulders as if he were a porter whose purpose it was to bear burdens.
"What is it you wanted to say?"
"I don't know. Maybe that I wasn't always mean to Jacky, if it sounded that way before. Just when I was scared—mostly for him. I know that doesn't make sense."
"Emotions aren't all that connected to reason."
Very true. He dealt with people all the time whose emotions had overridden their sense. He didn't want to see that in himself, but he couldn't seem to stop showing Sofie. "People picked on Jacky, and he didn't know how to give it back, so I let him hang around with me and my friends. Even when they griped, I let him stay. If the teasing got ugly, I made them cut it out. But it was never enough. He always looked like there was something more I could do."
"How much older were you?"
"Almost three years. Looked like more. He took after Mom, slight and fair." He shook his head. "I mean it's genetics. When Dad married a pale little woman, didn't he realize her genes would show somewhere?"
How would it have been if their looks were switched—if he'd been small, but himself in every other way, and Jacky had looked like Dad? "His wrists were like twigs. Even at nine. And he didn't eat well, probably because he was always upset. At night in our room he'd creep up to my bed to hear me breathing. I'd tell him to get back before the monsters chewed his ankles, but I meant before someone heard him. If Dad knew he was afraid of the dark . . ." He frowned. "I wanted him to get tough so I wouldn't have to . . ."
"Protect him?"
"Be so scared." He swallowed. "I knew what I could take, but not Jacky. He was like a puppy, trying so hard to please he'd end up annoying everyone. And I couldn't control it. I'd learned how to take care of me, but I didn't know how to take care of him too." He pressed his hand to his face. "And in the end, I couldn't."
She put a hand on his shoulder. He felt each finger through his suit coat and shirt. Why had he shown her the ugliness inside? Was that any way to start a relationship? He turned his head. Enough light came from the streetlamp to make out her features, but her eyes were shadowed pools. Impossible to see what she thought or felt, but her touch undid him. He slipped his arm around her waist, leaned in and found her mouth.
Her lips were soft and warm. He deepened the kiss he'd wanted since the first time he'd seen her. Then, without warning, sorrow overwhelmed him, sorrow and loss and the fear that he should have done something all those years ago, something different, something more. He didn't realize the tears were streaming until she pressed her palm to his cheek and pulled his head to her shoulder.
He closed her into his arms, crying silently, less ashamed than baffled. As the tears abated, he kissed the curve of her neck, her hair, the lobe of her ear, the line of her jaw. He clamped her face in his hands, kissed her mouth and felt his life shifting. Jacky was gone, but
he
was alive. Matt wanted to live.
He rested his forehead against hers. "I'm way out of line."
She squeezed his hand. "You needed to let it out." Dawn had lightened the darkness enough to reveal her sincerity.
"I had no intention of coming here."
"The result would indicate otherwise."
"What do you mean?"
"You're here."
He gave a short laugh. "Do you mind?"
"Not too much." She quirked one side of her mouth up.
Since this was a time of bald honesty, he said, "I can't stop thinking about you." The whole time with Becca he'd reined in thoughts of Sofie, what she'd shared, how she'd looked and sounded sharing it. How he wanted to change things for her.
"You don't know enough to occupy an hour."
"I think of everything I don't know." Everything he wanted to. He shook his head, needing sleep, needing to shut up. "I'm making a fool of myself."
"When's the last time you let go and went with your instincts?"
"I'm pretty close to my instincts most of the time."
"For others."
He sighed. "I should transfer Diego's case."
"You can't." She drew back.
"I'm no longer impartial."
"You know what he needs."
"I want you to have him."
She jerked. "What?"
His remark was highly unethical, the entire situation a conflict of interest, but he didn't take it back. "You're wonderful with him—soft, nurturing, strong, and wise. You shouldn't have lost Carly. Wherever she is, she's worse for not having you." He didn't want the hole in her life to gape like his.
"Matt." She took his shoulders. "Maria needs her son. He needs her. I am not part of this."
Her words sank in. Reason wrestled with whatever had taken over his mind; the erupting grief, no sleep, too many other people's problems, and most of all Sofie herself. He dropped his forehead to his palm, elbow to his knee. A snap at the side of the house made him turn. Lance came around, walking a motorcycle.
Matt stared. "Your brother rides a Road King?"
"Mm-hmm."
"Isn't that . . ." He didn't want to set her off with another challenge to Lance's manhood. What made a man anyway? "Where's he going this early?"
"Church."
"It's not Sunday."
She just smiled.
At the end of the driveway, Lance sensed them and turned. "Sof?"
"It's okay. I'm here with Matt."
Matt prepared to explain what he was doing there at dawn, on the steps with Sofie, but Lance didn't ask, only eased the bike onto the street and started it. As the engine sound died away, Matt drew himself up. "I should go."
"I'll drive you." She got to her feet and tugged him up.
"That's okay." He didn't want her to see how far he'd walked.
"Really, Matt. You must be exhausted."
He threaded her fingers with his. "If you take me home, I'll want to go with my instincts." With their fingers entwined, he bent her arm up her back. He felt her heartbeat as he kissed her mouth until he'd memorized the feel and taste of her, enough to hold on to when his good judgment returned and kicked him hard. "I have to go."
Their hands slipped apart as he took one step down and another. She stood on the porch while he moved down the walk and out the gate. Three miles hard walking might not even be enough.
Sofie shook. Matt had come in the night like a wounded bear to the place he'd sensed haven and healing, probably not realizing his defenses were breached until he got there. She knew how it could sneak up, make you think and act crazy, do things you otherwise never would. He had needed a safe place to grieve, and the vulnerability had felt intimate. He'd acted on that. If Lance hadn't seen them, she would have kept it to herself. Now she'd have to offer some explanation, but how much could she say?
None of Matt's story. Nor the feelings he'd stirred in her. Certainly not that his touch, his mouth, had kindled an alarming response.
Lord
. All Lance needed was reassurance. She was fine; she could handle things with Matt and not . . . get in over her head, not lose herself again, not give up all the ground she'd gained. It was not the same. Matt was as far from Eric as two people could be. She pressed up from the porch and went inside.
Elaine sat at the top of the stairs, pulling her nightgown taut over her knees and feet. "I've always liked this time of day. Before the sun."
"Me too." Sofie smiled and started up. It was a poignant gift when Rese's mother's fog cleared. She wished it could last, wished there were a key that would open the doors of reason that had slammed shut and close the ones that let chaos inside.
It must be hard for Rese. How kind that she'd made a home for her—and kind for Star to be her companion. But then, Star had found haven here and purpose. It was no wonder she feared things changing. They were all refugees, even Rese, in the tides of life. Wayfarers joined by tenuous bonds as deceptively strong as tempered glass. Sofie sat down beside Elaine, who stared at the long narrow window above the door revealing the first blush of sunrise.
Elaine watched the pinking sky, then blinked when the fiery eye burned over the edge of the earth. "They always take them away. You know they do. And he's gone. Gone."
Sofie touched her knee, understanding on a visceral level exactly how she felt. "I'm sorry for your loss."
Elaine turned slowly and peered at her face. Her brow furrowed; her mouth drew in like a drawstring purse. "No one ever says that."
"I'm sure they think it."
"Think it." She turned back to the window and frowned. "Spoiled. All spoiled. Watch now. Watch out. He can see. Everything. He sees everything. He wants . . . everything."
Sofie stroked her shoulders. "It's all right, Elaine."
She let go of her nightgown, groped to her feet, and went back into her bedroom. Sofie heard her murmuring, "Think it. Think. It."
Sofie went into her room and checked on the baby, Matt's words squeezing her throat tighter and tighter.
"I want you to have
him."
Why would he say that when she'd made it clear how she felt? Or had he read behind her words, seen the aching desire for a child who was out there somewhere.
It was his nature to find solutions, to make things right. She should not have told him about Carly, should not have drawn him into her loss. But then how would he have opened up as he'd so badly needed to? She shook her head. There were reasons people didn't share their pain. It struck a harmonic resonance that started other griefs ringing.
Her arms and chest had formed to Diego's size and shape, but that didn't mean he was hers.
No blood relation
. She had not attached. Cared for him yes, but not attached.