He chuckled and I smiled bleakly.
“We can’t be impatient with him,” I said. “We can’t inflict our desperation on him.”
“What if he’s sinking deeper? What if this is a small window of opportunity, a chance to pull him back, and we’re wasting it?”
“Hey. Was it really … today?” I softened my voice and leaned forward. I couldn’t answer Nate’s questions; I shared his fears.
He walked to the mantel, braced an arm against it, and lowered his head like a man in prayer. So, it was today. A late-summer funeral in Oak Grove Presbyterian Cemetery. A small group of mourners, I imagined. Both living brothers … absent.
I pictured the cemetery and I remembered Seth saying he had a plot there. I remembered him alive. Could it be that he was in the ground?
I went to Nate and we seized one another.
“Oh, God,” he said, clutching my back so hard it hurt. “I couldn’t go. You saw it coming. I didn’t. God help me. Now it’s done. Hannah…” Nate cried in a terrible, suppressive way, with breathless, gasping gulps. I told him no one saw it coming. I told him no one could have done anything. Gradually, he let himself weep unrestrained. His tears dampened my hair.
We swayed together and his sadness and my hollow reassurances faded to silence.
Motion caught my eye.
I jolted away from Nate.
Matt stood in the library doorway, staring at us.
“M-Matt,” I said. His eyes were calm and clear. I flapped my hands. “Hi. We—we were just being sad together.”
“Matt.” Nate wiped his face hurriedly.
“Let me get this,” I whispered. I scurried over to Matt and kissed him. “You want to sit with us? We made a fire.” He shook his head, and after a moment he turned toward his room. “Okay, we can go back. I’ll go with you.”
I trailed Matt back to his room and he sank into the armchair.
His MacBook stood open on the table.
“Were you online?” I sat on his lap and pulled the notebook onto my thighs. He gazed off at nothing while I studied the screen. I hoped to find he’d been writing, but no such luck. A Wikipedia page on Virginia Woolf was open. He’d scrolled down to …
“Matt, baby … why are you looking at this?”
I tried to make him look at me. He wouldn’t, or couldn’t.
He’d highlighted section four of the Woolf entry, DEATH. It summarized her suicide by drowning and contained a transcript of her last note to her husband.
Dearest, I feel certain that I am going mad again … I am doing what seems the best thing to do. You have given me the greatest possible happiness. You have been in every way all that anyone could be. I don’t think two people could have been happier …
“No, listen to me…” I closed the tab and cleared the browsing history. I shut off his laptop and glanced toward the library. Nate was deliberately not paying attention, his back to us but his head inclined. “Darling,” I whispered. “You can’t look at things like that. They’ll take you away from me. Please, don’t you understand? I need you here with me.” I stroked his face and pressed soft kisses all over it. “Come to bed with me.”
When I led him toward the bedroom, Nate stepped into the hall and eyed us warily.
“Everything all right?”
“Fine,” I said.
Chapter 32
MATT
On Friday morning, Mike, Hannah, and Nate filed into my study.
They brought chairs and sat.
I grimaced and tossed my book onto the desk.
“I was reading,” I said.
“Well, good morning to you, too,” said Mike. He grinned at me, then at Hannah and Nate. “Surprised you’re home at this hour. Is that new?”
“Quite,” said Nate.