I'd been rereading Matt's books over the last three months. Contained within his sentences, coded in his words, was the man I loved and all the secrets he'd kept from me. Reading the books was like hearing his voice. His wit, his sarcasm, his mercurial moods, and then his unusual, forlorn wisdom—it was all there.
On Friday morning I had telephoned Pam to ask if there were any new pages from The Surrogate. Jane Doe's writing arrived like clockwork on Thursdays, but we hadn't had an installment for two weeks. I was hoping for pages to read on the plane. There was nothing, though, and no explanation from Pam.
How annoying. The author was stalled on a scene I was dying to read, and dreading too. The sex scene.
Nate flipped over the cover of my book.
"Nate!"
I jumped, jerking it away.
"Sorry, I wanted to see what you were reading."
I shoved The Silver Cord into my backpack.
"Now you know." My face heated.
"Yes. That's one of my favorites of his."
I peeked at the immaculately dressed man beside me. I was flying comfortable in leggings and a teal tunic top. Nate was flying like a Wall Street executive in a gray suit and golden tie with an Eldredge knot so perfect that I wanted to stare at his throat.
When Nate wasn't annoying the hell out of me, he intrigued me. What did he do? I'd noticed his heavy wedding band. Did Sky men cheat on their wives, or just their girlfriends?
"Is it true?" I said. "That it's sort of... about your family?"
"Yes." Nate smiled at me. I frowned back at him. He had a way of smiling so warmly that my anger dissolved, and whenever he spoke to me he gave me all of his attention. It was unnerving. At present, he'd angled himself toward me and appeared oblivious to the several flight attendants ogling him. "I take it you read as much online?"
There was none of Matt's cynicism in his voice, just frank curiosity.
"Well, yeah. I... followed the news for a while."
"I can't blame you."
I thought about The Silver Cord while Nate watched me patiently.
"So you guys were very religious growing up?"
"Yes, very."
"I wouldn't have guessed it," I muttered. I slapped a hand over my mouth—fuck, I did not mean to say that—but Nate only laughed.
"Think about our namesakes—Matthew, Seth, Nathaniel. All Biblical. Our parents took us to church twice each Sunday. Our uncle, not so much."
"Your parents," I murmured.
"Yes. Their loss was very hard on Matt. He was young. Old enough to remember them, too young to really understand. I still don't think he understands. He feels pain like no one I have ever known, and always has. He's such an emotional creature."
I watched Nate, silently willing him to go on. After a moment, he did.
"I remember once we were on vacation in Maine and our father went into a cave, and he disappeared from view. Matt..." Nate smiled thinly. "He plopped himself down on the sand and cried so hard. He thought our father was gone. He was inconsolable, even when dad came out. All day these huge crocodile tears were standing in his eyes and I could see—" Nate gestured to his eyes. "—I could see that it meant something more to Matt, our father disappearing into the dark. It was more than fear. It was like a betrayal to him."
"Every small separation echoed a vaster goodbye," I said quietly. It was a line from The Silver Cord. My favorite line.
"Yes, exactly."
"Did he always want to be a writer?"
"Oh, I don't know. He would say no. He rarely talks about it, though I once heard him say that the only thing he hates more than writing is not writing." Nate chuckled. "After he left graduate school, I thought he would be a drunk for the rest of his short life. But he wrote—and the writing became his addiction."
Until now, I thought.
"Yeah, I see. Thank you."
"You're welcome, of course. Between the internet and The Silver Cord, it seems you know quite a bit about me and mine."
I ducked and pretended to be searching for something in my backpack. How awkward. It was one thing to snoop into Matt's life in the anonymous privacy of the net, and quite another to be sitting next to his brother and discussing my research.
"Yeah, I... I guess."
"Fair enough, Hannah. I know quite a bit about you and yours, too."