A roadside plaque read, WELCOME TO HUNTERDON COUNTY.
“This is Flemington,” he said. He stared ahead, eyes dark, arms braced. We swung around a circle and passed a large white barn with a gray roof, and a sign: DVOOR BROS. STOCK FARM, DAIRY COWS, HORSES.
He slowed the car almost to a stop as we crossed an old stone bridge.
MINE STREET.
I blinked rapidly, trying to take in everything.
“It’s really … cute here,” I whispered. Then I clamped my mouth shut. He glanced at the creek below the bridge—flashing water, flat brown rock. He swallowed and I watched the powerful play of emotion on his face.
Half a block from the bridge, he turned into a neighborhood across from a sprawling sandstone church.
“Saint Magdalene’s,” he said.
We passed several small homes and stopped at the curb beside a blue house with a red door. An oak loomed in the backyard, a flowering tree on the small front lawn. The grass looked neatly kept, as did the shrubs around the stairs, but a pile of trash clustered near the garage door: crates, beams, a garbage can, a sack of cement.
Despite the sunlight, I felt sad and unmoored. Why were we here?
I looked at Matt.
Pale-faced, he stared intently at the house.
“I grew up here,” he said.
My lips parted; I sucked in a thread of air.
Jesus. How hadn’t I considered this possibility? Matt … showing me the home where he grew up. Matt letting me into his life.
I gulped down my instinctive response to the house—it’s tiny!—and took his hand. He flinched, but his fingers tightened around mine.
Here. He grew up here. Before his parents died, presumably.
I pictured a towheaded boy on the front lawn. Little Matt …
Tears shimmered in my eyes.
“I—I want to…” I dug through my purse. Get a fucking grip! “Take a picture…”
He said nothing.
Was this tasteless? Cruel? Weird? My thoughts flashed around wildly as I snapped pictures on my phone, framed by the car window. Little blue house. Lost blue boy.
“Y-you grew up here,” I stammered.
“Mm. For the first nine years of my life, at least.”
Nine years. Sure enough. When Matt was nine, his parents died in a bus accident in Brazil, and his uncle and aunt whisked him into a different life. Maybe a better life, by the look of this house. I swallowed the questions I wanted to ask. So much I burned to know. Matt was showing me this—giving me something, the edge of the map—and I sensed that I needed to be patient. Time, not wild curiosity, would illuminate his life.
“Do you want to knock? Go in?”
He shook his head.
“Okay.” I rubbed my thumb over the top of his hand. We sat in silence, watching the house. He sneered subtly, pulled forward, and nodded.
“That’s an addition.” He pointed to the extruding back half of the home. “All that. And they cut down the pine tree. There was a big tree—right there by the window. I climbed up one time, looked into my parents’ bathroom, and saw Nate doing push-ups, like, against the sink. Admiring himself in the mirror. He was big into his looks.”
I pictured boy Matt in the missing tree, and boy Nate with his dark hair. My thoughts strayed to Seth and I grimaced.
Finally, we pulled away from the house and drove through the neighborhood, which was small and T-shaped with two cul-de-sacs. Matt made a few comments. My friend lived here. These people had a dog that bit Nate. Everyone used to say a Mafia family lived there.
I saw the place through his wondering child eyes. The menacing dog. The alleged crime family. Cracked streets where Matt maybe rode his bike or trailed his big brothers.
“I’d like to see pictures of you as a kid. I’ve only seen a few.” Online, I thought guiltily.