Undercover Truths - Undercover Lies
Page 8
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Crystal bustled about getting breakfast and lunches ready for the day. It was a task she’d cherished every morning of the thirteen years of her twin daughters’ lives. Today, it served to take her mind briefly off of her husband’s strange brooding.
“Hi, Mom!” Heidi, always the happier of the girls in the morning, said as she skipped into the kitchen. Crystal finished depositing their lunches into the insulated carriers and then closed the bags and her thoughts off. She forced a smile as Heidi and her sister Linda each took a plate and a glass of juice from the counter to the table and sat down to eat.
“Mornin’, girls,” Matt said from behind his cup of coffee. “Sleep well?”
The twins acknowledged their father’s morning ritual with a nod. His habits, he always claimed, were what made him successful. It was an assumed personality trait rather than a natural one, Crystal knew. Back when they had met, and later on vacations and weekend excursions, Matt was charming, funny, irreverent, and sometimes downright chaotic. On work days, though, her husband seemed to toss on a cloaked disguise, switching from her fun-loving mate to Dean Vincent with the deft twist of a Windsor knot.
Dean Vincent’s regularity, in fact, was what made this morning’s difference noticeable, having so far run along a subtly changed script. Matt still looked the same, his copper-colored hair styled just so and his black business suit and pastel tie carefully plucked clean of the white hairs from Yuki, their Chihuahua, that tended to find their way to every article of clothing in the house. This morning, though, the normally talkative man said nothing of consequence to her when he walked in to the dining room, and he also ignored the newspaper that she had placed in its usual spot on the table. His own breakfast sandwich lay uneaten beside the mug of coffee that he was sipping.
“Is everything all right, Dad?” Linda asked. So Linda picked up on it, too, Crystal noted. Heidi laid claim to all of the youthful impishness in the twins, while Linda had been blessed with an attentiveness that belied her age.
“Fine, Linda,” Matt said. “Sorry. I—I had a bad dream last night that’s still bothering me. There was a disaster. You two stay close together at school today, okay?”
Heidi snorted and said, “Dad, it’s been decades since there was a major earthquake here.”
Matt’s eyes stared at a point far away for several moments, and then snapped back to focus on each of the girls in turn. He rose and opened a cabinet door above the refrigerator, reaching in to where emergency supplies had been stocked ever since they had moved in.
“I didn’t say earthquake. Even so, you’re probably right, Heidi. Still, it would make me feel better if you each tossed a flashlight into your backpack for today. Please? For me?” He placed a small emergency flashlight beside each girl and then headed upstairs.
Crystal broke out of her own routine and followed him up the stairs. “A bad dream, Matt?” she asked as he brushed his teeth. “Matt, you’ve said that you don’t have any dreams, much less bad ones. So now your first dream happens to consist of a disaster scene scary enough to inflict on the girls and me?”
“Mm hmm,” Matt said around his toothbrush, shrugging as his eyes met hers. He rinsed his mouth before continuing, “Look, I can’t explain it. I feel like something disastrous is likely to happen today. I can’t know for certain, but I—well, I sense it coming. There’s a flashlight in the cabinet for you, too. Just do me a favor and keep it close. You’re not going anywhere, are you?”
“No. Ms. Evans doesn’t need me to volunteer in her classroom today. I’m just dropping the girls off at school and coming home. I’d planned to spend the day cleaning up and organizing the craft room, but if we’re all going down in a deadly disaster of doom, maybe I won’t bother.” She stuck her tongue out at him.
Chuckling, her husband flicked his towel at her. She dodged to the side, and he took advantage of her off-balance moment to dart to her, enfolding her in his arms. His eyes held hers, his expression turning playful for a moment.
“I love you, Crystal,” he said. “That’s why I worry. Look, I could be wrong. Everything’s probably going to be fine; I’ll just be a little bit embarrassed over predicting a disaster that didn’t happen. Just keep the flashlight close by, okay? For me?” He kissed her and then left the bathroom.
“And with that,” he called over his shoulder, “I bid you good day.”
“Drive carefully!” Crystal yelled after him, watching her husband, his form still muscular despite his age, slip his suit coat back on and step purposely out of the room. She listened to his footsteps descend the stairs, and then turned to look in the mirror. She smiled to reassure herself. Crystal had never seen that look in her husband’s eyes, but all this over a dream? Really, now….
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