What a beautiful place, she thought, caught off guard. So green and quiet and lovely. Lilacs were blooming in an explosion of pale purple all along the far edge of the porch. A wooden swing was positioned just beneath the bushes, so that the person sitting in it would be bathed all over with the fragrance. It was a home that radiated happiness, she thought. No one who planted so many purple petunias could be unkind.
“No one’s home,” Evelyn told her as they entered a screen door which had been unlocked. A fat orange cat lay on its back in the square of sunlight coming through the door, and it didn’t so much as stir when they walked past. “You can shower and get ready upstairs. Mom cleaned out the guest room for you, and there’s a little bathroom right off of it, too.”
Bryce was treated to a quick tour through the living room (dominated by a massive stone fireplace), the kitchen (gleaming and polished), the dining room (graced by a table that could have seated 20) before following her cousin up a flight of stairs to a long, wood-floored hallway. The second door on the right was “her” room, a small, square space occupied by a white bed with tall posts, a round pink rug, and two tall, narrow bookshelves. An actual bouquet of roses in a glass vase was placed on the bedside table…real roses, not the tight, scentless blooms sold wrapped in cellophane at gas stations, but luscious-smelling, open-faced, candy-pink roses, which filled the room with their perfume.
“Thank you, Evelyn,” Bryce told her young cousin, and the girl’s face flushed with pleasure as she set the duffle on the floor.
“I’ll see you later,” Evelyn told her, turning to go. Then, to Bryce’s surprise, she peeked back in the room. “I’m glad you’re here,” she said, and Bryce smiled back.
Me, too, she thought, for whatever inexplicable reason. Like a good buzz, she let the feeling ride without understanding exactly why. Me, too.
***
The first thing she did was smoke, as soon as Evelyn was out of sight on the golf cart. She sat on the swing beneath the lilacs and marveled at the sheer insanity of her life: here she was, a total stranger to these people, being welcomed into their house like a good friend. The bus ride from Oklahoma seemed like a bad dream in the vicinity of a million lilac blossoms, under a cloudless sky in Minnesota, thousands of miles from the dusty shithole of Middleton. Bryce blew smoke at the blueness above her, letting some of the tension leak from her shoulders, letting her mind drift sleepily.
She had thought of him about every two minutes since Saturday night, and here he was again in her head as she pushed a gentle rhythm with one bare foot against the porch floorboards. Granted it was only two days since it had happened, and she was as likely to see him again as she was to get her long-gone virginity back, but somehow it didn’t feel over. Maybe she was just sleep-deprived. Or insane. Insanity was probably more likely…but oh God, his eyes…they were burning in her memory, and his lips, the dimples in his just-slightly unshaven cheeks…his chest, rippling with muscle…the way he had brought himself all the way into her with the first stroke. She coughed and almost choked on the last of her smoke, and the cigarette came from a finite amount, she reminded herself. It wasn’t likely she would be able to procure another pack until she boarded her bus come this Thursday. So these better last; she drew the remainder of it, savoring, and then journeyed down to the grass to grind it out, careful to flush the butt upstairs in the tiny bathroom linking her room with another.
She was dying to explore the house a little, but the shower stall lured her, and she stood beneath near-scalding water for a good 15 minutes, letting it race over her body, hugging herself in the steam, pretending that he would be waiting for her on the bed in the guest room. There was a phone beside the roses, and as penance for her thoughts, she called Wade the minute she emerged from the shower, wrapped in a thick pink towel. No one answered at the Thompsons’. The phone rang and rang, and she finally left a quick message on their answering machine…Hey, I’m here, see you soon. It wasn’t until after she’d replaced the receiver that she realized she hadn’t left a return phone number.
Bryce curled around herself on top of the puffy white quilt, not meaning to fall asleep, but sunlight beamed lazily through the tall window and over her exhausted limbs, and she let her eyes drift shut, wishing that she at least had a name for Motel Man, something to make him seem more real. Let me dream about him, please, please…
***
She woke hours later, opening her eyes upon a room in which the light had subtly shifted. She started, sitting up too quickly, her skin sore and red in long stripes from lying on the damp towel. Shit, shit, shit. She hadn’t meant to sleep so long and was sick with anxiety again, hearing what sounded like an entire high school class in the rooms below. Someone was coming up the stairs, and she clutched her towel tightly around her naked body, thankful that her bag was at least in the room with her, and she didn’t have to dress in her bus-ride clothes. Seconds later a gentle tap sounded on her door.
“Bryce, you awake, honey?” asked her aunt Erica.
“Yes,” she whispered, then cleared her throat and tried again. “Yes!”
“Supper’s almost ready down here, if you feel like eating. You must be starving. You were sound asleep when I got home at 5:00.”
“I’ll be right down,” she assured her aunt, hurrying to make herself presentable. She bolted into the bathroom where she squeaked at the sight of her hair. No comb would help the situation, so she settled for scooping the sides back into a barrette. She dressed in cut-offs and her navy-blue hooded sweatshirt, spread a little gloss on her lips and squared her shoulders. Fuck it, she was Michelle’s daughter, and at the very least, she could handle this situation. So what if everyone was judging her, wondering about her, dying to ask her as many questions as she wanted to ask them? None of this is your fault, she reminded herself. But she dreaded the thought of showing emotion about the dead grandpa. Was she supposed to act sad, wistful? I have never even seen a picture of him.
She did recognize her uncle Wilder right away…his face looked so exactly like her mother’s. He saw her coming down the stairs and moved toward her immediately, a handsome man with a long, dark-blond ponytail and clear blue eyes. Bryce almost smiled, thinking he looked like the very essence of a country singer, down to the tight faded jeans and darkly-tanned face. Hand him an acoustic guitar and a cowboy hat. He was much taller than Bryce or her mother, his shoulders wide and his arms strong as he gave her a quick, hard hug. His eyes were intent as he studied her at close range; searching for traces of his sister? Bryce tried to smile at him, but her lips felt stiff.
“Little Elizabeth,” he said, and his voice was even warmer in real life. She wanted to like him, wanted to force him to talk, to spill every last secret he knew. “Since when did you change it?”
Her name, she realized. Did he mean from Sternhagen, or Elizabeth? She stammered, “There were two other Beths in my kindergarten class. I wanted to be different so I used my middle name instead.”
“Bryce was our mama’s maiden name,” he told her. “Our real mother, that is, Margaret Bryce.”
She nodded at this revelation, something she had not known, and then he moved to let her finish coming down the steps. A boy with shaggy blond hair was hanging back shyly, and Wilder introduced him as Cody.
“Hey,” the boy said. He wore a torn t-shirt and dirty jeans, and had a bandana knotted around his head, remniscent of his mother. Bryce didn’t move to hug him; he looked sticky and she was relieved when he turned and headed to the kitchen.
“Dinner’s ready, you three!” Erica called, and Bryce breathed in the tangy smell of spaghetti and meatballs, something she hadn’t eaten since Wade had splurged on a trip to an expensive Italian restaurant in Oklahoma City to celebrate Bryce turning 18 and likewise marking the moment when their relationship was no longer illegal in the eyes of the law.
“Have a seat,” Erica told her, nodding at the table that Evelyn was placing forks upon.
“Just not there, that’s my chair,” E
mma informed her, and received a smack on the shoulder from Evelyn.
“Like she’s supposed to know that,” she told her little sister, and Emma pouted as she slapped a basket of breadsticks on the table. Bryce hid her smile and deliberately moved to a new chair as Cody plopped down beside her, pulling his bandana off in one smooth motion, revealing hair that had been caked with mud sometime in the day.
“Riley and Matty are coming,” Wilder told his wife, and she nodded distractedly.
“Well, they can join in when they get here, this is ready right now,” she added, and clapped down a giant bowl of salad greens and two bottles of dressing. Wilder winked at his wife as the girls joined them. There was a pause, and Bryce cringed, sure they were going to pray and thank the Lord for her safe arrival or something equally awkward, but everyone dug in with no ceremony, and she carefully let out the breath she had been holding.
“Cody Patrick, your hair is a disgrace,” his mother informed him.
“Me and Jenny were catching frogs,” he explained. “And we saw a huge snake right in the water by the beach! Right by where everyone was swimming!”
Evelyn said, “Grossin’ me out, Cody.”
Emma cried, “Why didn’t you come and get me to see it? I’m finding it tomorrow!”
Erica shook her head. “You know better than to bother snakes.”
“Aww, Mo-om—”
The screen door slammed and a male voice called, “Sorry we’re late, Erica!”
“Don’t worry, we didn’t wait,” she responded pleasantly, and a moment later a tall, good-looking guy came swooping into the kitchen. He stopped short at the sight of Bryce and pulled the green baseball cap from his head almost involuntarily, revealing a halo of messy red-gold curls. “Well, hel-lo there.”
“This is Bryce,” Erica explained. “Bryce, this is my baby brother, Riley Christianson.”
“Hi, Uncle Riley,” the kids chorused, and Cody enthusiastically spouted, “Me and Jenny saw a huge snake today, way bigger’n the one we caught last summer!”
“Nice to meet you,” Bryce added quietly.
“Likewise,” he said.
From down the hall behind him another voice called, “Ri, help me unload the groceries, will ya?” as the screen door slammed and someone pounded down the porch steps.
Bryce froze.
Quick, quick, quick! Her heart kickstarted and then proceeded to slam into her breastbone like a fist. For a second she didn’t think she would be able to swallow the food in her mouth. Holy shit, holy shit. Think of something, quick, Bryce!
“I’ll help,” she said, keeping her voice level with tremendous effort. She could not think past getting out of the kitchen and seeing for herself.
Erica looked over at her in surprise. “That’s all right, honey, you don’t have to—”
“I don’t mind,” she said, and forced herself to walk rather than sprint from the kitchen; the second she was in the hall and out of their sight she raced, out the screen door and down the steps and then…and then—a man, a tall, broad-shouldered, dark-haired man was walking back up to the house with an armload of paper bags—
She whimpered in the back of her throat as she realized that it was him, her blood reversing course with the strength of a tidal wave, pounding into the channels of her veins, blooming in her cheeks and lips and nipples, and before she had total control of her feelings, joy swept in with a force all its own, singing through her blood for a burning instant in which her arms were reaching for him…
He stopped abruptly and the paper bags fell to the ground. He crossed the distance to within 12 inches of her, his hands reaching for her, too. He breathed hard through his nose, his eyes intensely dark as he gripped her upper arms almost painfully and blinked once, a man trying to convince himself otherwise. No words. He stared into her eyes as though hypnotized, clutching her arms in his huge hands, his heart crashing against his ribs.
“It’s you,” she whispered, fisting her hands around the material of his shirt, trying to bring him closer to her against all reason. She could feel the way his heart was thundering and her own responded in kind. “Oh my God, it’s you.” She was babbling. “What are you doing—how can you be—”
“Bryce,” he spoke her name as though it was beloved on his tongue. “Bryce.”
“Tell me your—”
“Matthew,” he told her, his voice shaking slightly. “Matthew Sternhagen.”
And her hands fell away from him as she fully understood.
Chapter Four
Rose Lake, Minnesota – Monday, June 19, 1995
Amazingly, everyone inside the house was still calmly eating. Matthew opened the screen door and called, “We’ll be right there,” to no one in particular, keeping his voice steady and lighthearted with immense effort. Bryce was standing rigid in the small orange glow of the front porch light, around which moths were already beating. Above her head the evening sky was a mellow baby-blue, a perfect backdrop to crisply outline the pine trees in solid black. Bryce hugged herself hard enough to leave bruises and yet still without enough pressure to keep her heart from spilling out onto the grass at her immobile feet.
Matthew came down the porch steps and asked her quietly, “Will you come with me for a second?” Politely, as though his tongue had never traced butterfly wings between her legs, as though her ankles had never been locked around his hips. His back probably still had scratch marks from her fingernails; her right shoulder still bore a pink, ragged-edged circle from his teeth.
She couldn’t bring herself to speak and he couldn’t bear the look in her eyes in the porch light, so huge and distraught, ripping him straight through the heart. He wanted to grab her and run away from here, run anywhere…and just as desperately, he knew he could not. She didn’t move, and he whispered, “Please, Bryce?”
She could tell he had spoken her name aloud since two days ago. Finally she whispered, “Okay.”
She followed him, staring at the back of his shirt in the gloaming light, a separate part of her noticing and loving the way his wide shoulders shifted under it as he walked. She could taste him on her tongue just as sharply as she could not shake the feeling that he was meant for her, and she for him. Slowly, agonizingly, she eased back to reality, the reality in which he was her mother’s younger half-brother and she had spent one incredible night fucking his brains out. Her stomach lurched and she clutched her elbows even more tightly against her ribs.
They came through the woods to a dock that stretched west over the lake, where the last traces of peach-tinted daylight skimmed over the impossibly flat, silken surface of the water, which seemed like something from a fairy tale, so unreal did it appear in this light. Or perhaps it was just her state of mind at present. Matthew stopped, turned wordlessly, and wrapped her in his arms. Instantly she wrapped her own around him, pressing against him, not caring about their predicament for that long moment. He clutched her like a drowning man, curving his huge body down to press his cheek to the top of her head.
“I’m so sorry,” he whispered into the familiar smell of her hair, and he closed his eyes, letting himself breathe her in for one last second. Then he made himself pull away. “Bryce, I am so goddamn sorry I left you that way.”
She was suddenly cold without his arms. Although no longer directly touching, they were only a few inches apart, and the air between them seemed to hum. She wasn’t imagining it, damn it. The universe felt it, and thrummed up into their feet and swirled in the space all around them.
“Don’t be sorry,” she told him, speaking through a throat that felt bruised. “You didn’t know.”
“Wilder called me that night,” he told her, his eyes so dark and intense on her own that her chest ached. Still she wanted him so badly…it stunned her with its force, far worse than she could ever have known that night. “He told me about Dad. Bryce…I have never left a woman like that in my life. I care that you know that.”
“I knew it that night,” she told him. “I’ve neve
r done that either. Just…let go like that with someone.” She couldn’t look away from him, even though her cheeks were blazing. “I don’t think I ever can again. You did something to me…and now…” She gulped and anger instantly swelled within her, replacing the shock in a hot and welcoming rush. She let it come into her and hissed, “What the hell were you doing in Oklahoma?”
“I was on a route for my friend Marshall,” he said, taking her shoulders in his hands again. “I was staying in that motel because the truck—Marshall’s truck—blew an axle, and it was getting fixed. I was heading back here when it happened.”
She shrugged his hands away roughly. “And what? You thought you’d hit some local tail while you were there?”
“No, Bryce, no. Not like that.” She wanted to believe him. “You did something to me, too,” he went on, his voice ragged. “I can’t stand here and pretend that you didn’t, even with what I know about us now. I have never felt that way with anyone, from the moment I saw you, I just…knew. I don’t understand any of it, Bryce.”
And just like that, her anger dissolved away, down a depthless channel in her heart.
“Matthew,” she whispered, just to speak his name aloud. She laced her fingers together over her belly, pressed hard against the pain there. “We have to pretend we’ve never met,” she said after a long moment, and then looked abrubtly away from him, out over the darkening surface of the lake. Around them the air had subtly shifted, on a level that was only sensed, not really seen. There was no exact second when evening became night, other than at a cellular level of perception. The gray-violet tint seemed to be simultaneously dimming her insides; surely she was not the same person she had been only a few minutes earlier.
Forbidden Page 5