“There you go again,” Adam says as we slowly walk back. “So quiet. Still thinking about the future?”
He’s smiling. The moon is shining, I’m walking next to a cute boy and eating ice cream. It feels like a dream.
“It’s hard not to. Sometimes I wish… I wish I had the money to leave for college right now. Tonight. Other days I wish I’d already finished college and I were back for good, with a job waiting for me. Only I know that won’t happen that easily. And sometimes I wish…”
I wish I stayed here forever and never went off to college. Because what I really want… God, I wish I knew that, too.
He chuckles. “Such deep thoughts on such a warm night.”
“What about you? Do you think about the future?”
“Sure I do.” He stares up at the sky, munching on his cone. “And the past. It’s all linked together. One long road, and this is just a brief stop on the way.”
I look up at the few, scattered clouds, ghostly ships sailing into dark space. “Mom always says that the past doesn’t define us.”
“She’s wrong,” he says, his clear voice rising over the quiet of the street. “The past defines us all, and sooner or later it catches up with us.”
It sounds ominous, like there’s a story there, a scar, and I itch to ask about it.
But for some reason I don’t, instead watching the clouds sail away.
“I don’t want it!” Mary wails and stomps her small foot. “It’s not right.”
“Not right?” I look dubiously at her plate and try to figure this out.
I’m not a Michelin chef, but I can make mac and cheese with the best of them. Plus, I have Mom’s super recipe. Even when Gigi was going through her most difficult eating phase and wouldn’t eat almost anything else, she’d still finish up Mom’s mac and cheese without failing.
“It’s not cheesy enough,” Mary explains, her mouth trembling. She crosses her arms over her chest. “I won’t eat it.”
Cole shovels the macaroni into his mouth, staring at her sadly.
What’s going on here?
“You’ll be hungry, honey. And there won’t be any dessert if you don’t eat your food.”
Her eyes well up. “Grandma made it more cheesy.”
“Cheesier,” I say automatically.
Right?
Jesus, Octavia, who the heck cares right now?
“You lived with your grandma before?” At her nod, I sit down, thinking. “And why did you leave?”
“My dad is sad.”
Sad? Not angry and insensitive and near violent? But I don’t say that because I feel as if we’re finally getting somewhere. I’m finally stumbling over the bits and pieces of Matt Hansen’s truth.
“You left because your dad was sad,” I say.
Cole nods, too, stirring his macaroni. “Sad,” he says.
Unbidden, Adam’s words about the past catching up with us come to my mind. “And he’s not sad anymore?”
Mary bites her lip and lets her hands drop to her lap. “He remembers Mommy. I don’t. Not really.”
A lump fills my throat. Oh yeah, we’re definitely getting somewhere, and I have a feeling I know where this is going.
Please, dear God, prove me wrong.
“I was too little when she left us,” Mary says, her voice steady but resolute. “It’s my fault.”
“What is your fault?”
“That she’s gone.” Tears slip down her rosy cheeks, and my heart nearly breaks in two.
“Baby.” I open my arms and she hesitates—then slides off her chair and comes to burrow into me. Cole joins us a split second later, sniffling, too. I bury my nose in their silky hair and try to compose myself. “It wasn’t your fault. Didn’t anyone tell you? These things just happen.”
“I don’t want Daddy to go, too,” Mary whispers, and I hug her more tightly.
“Of course he won’t. He won’t.” I kiss her forehead and take a deep breath. “Where did your mommy go?”
“Mommy went to heaven,” Mary says.
I’d suspected it, but still a cold shiver travels up my spine. I hug her harder. “Come here.”
“And then,” she says, “Daddy went to hell.”
Oh God.
I believe it.
Chapter Thirteen
Matt
Another paper stuck to my door.
Another knife.
“Remember why you were in Milwaukee,” is printed on it in the same bold letters as last time.
Milwaukee.
“What happened in Milwaukee?” asks the cop. “Mr. Hansen.”
I blink. “I…” Focus, Matt. “I went there to work.”
There I met Emma. We got married, rented a house in a small town nearby. We had our kids.
She died.
“Where were you living before?”
“St. Louis. I’m from St. Louis.”
He jots something down in his notepad. His name is John, he said earlier. John Something. John Elba. “Anything happen there before you left St. Louis?”
I scowl at my hands. They clench into fists on top of my thighs. I’ve had to go to the next town to report the incident, and police stations make me itchy. “Nothing interesting.”
“Maybe not to you,” John says.
Yeah, I know. I know how experience warps perspective. How something you don’t even notice may be fucking huge for someone else.
Still. Can’t recall anything out of the ordinary.
John is watching me. He’s young, Hispanic, his eyes darker than mine, intent and focused. “Anyone out there who has a beef with you, Mr. Hansen?”
God? Fate? The world? “No.”
“Are you sure? He mentions Milwaukee specifically. Why did you move there in the first place?”
This is starting to feel like I’m the one under investigation. Gritting my teeth, I say, “Because a friend of mine got a job there, and got me one as well.”
“Who was your friend?”
“James McConaghue.”
“Tell me about him.”
What’s to tell? “We were at school together. He only stayed for a yeah in Milwaukee, then moved on.”
John nods. “And back in St. Louis? Anyone who might hold a grudge?”
After all these years? I shake my head. “My parents and my brother. I had a girlfriend. But I broke up with her months before I left. Last I heard she moved away.”
“And you’re here with your family?”
“My kids. They’re home with their nanny.” She’d looked at me funny when I told her to lock the doors and not let them out today.
Fuck, I need to tell her about this. I hope she won’t freak out and quit.
“What about your wife?”
“She passed three years ago.” Funny how I can say it without breaking down.
Then again, I never did break down, not in the ways others could see it.
“I’m sorry,” he says.
I say nothing. He’s just being polite, following the police conduct manual, and I’m sick and tired of fake sympathy and empty words.
“Look,” he says. “I can’t promise you anything. I have very little to go on. Any fingerprints on the knife are now overlaid by yours, so even if our guy was in the system, that’s a bust. I don’t suppose you asked the neighbors if they saw anyone sneaking about.”