“I remember that day,” Ian said. “Yeah, two sounds about right. I had Rooster, my dog,” he said to Matty. “And we were talking about the upcoming pancake breakfast and who was going to be back in town for the event.”
Dash chimed in as his memories were jogged. “It was definitely around two—when I left you, Ian, I came straight up here because Brad had scheduled a two-thirty appointment.”
Ian nodded. “That’s good to know—thanks, Matty for providing the information. I don’t think we’ll need to look into it, but if Sandra pursues you as a potential suspect, we’ll be ahead of the game.”
Matty glanced back and forth between Ian and Vivi. “I,” she hesitated. “I know I should have said something sooner about all this,” she continued with a sweeping gesture to the pictures, “and thank you for not berating me for that. But I just didn’t want to make things worse for Brad. I didn’t know him, but it seems like he was a good guy. I think we both paid for the sins of our parents, so to speak, when it came to any relationship he and I might have had, and I guess maybe I was just trying to make amends to him for not taking the olive branch I think he tried to extend when he was alive. He called a couple of times, but I just never . . .” Her voice trailed off. “Did you ever find his phone?” she asked suddenly.
By her tone, Dash knew she was remembering the many frustrated calls she had made to Brad in the past few weeks. None of which were efforts to extend a truce between them and the regret rang clear in her voice.
Ian glanced at Vivi, who reached across the table and laid her hand on Matty’s free one. “We did. It was on him when he died. And as to the rest, you told us now, so now we can put what we’ve learned in the context of what we already knew and we can also use it to inform where we look from here. It would have been good to know all of this right away, but despite everything, he was family and sometimes we do funny things when it comes to family.”
Ian raised his hand and rubbed it up and down Vivi’s back, as if to give her reassurance, and Dash knew why. The serial killer that had killed so many women, the man they’d caught earlier in the year, had been like a cousin to Vivi, someone she’d known her entire life.
Dash gave Matty’s hand a reassuring squeeze. “I second what Vivi said. Now that they have this information, they can use it however they need to. So,” he said, releasing Matty’s hand and rising, “I don’t mean to be a killjoy, but I have an early morning tomorrow and Matty is planning to come with me, so we should probably think about bringing this night to a close.”
Taking Dash’s cue, everyone else rose as well. It was true, he and Matty did have an early morning, but more importantly, he thought she needed some downtime. She wasn’t a woman used to sharing and she’d had to lay a lot out on the table today. Not just what she’d found out about Brad, but also her relationship with her father and the reality of just how tense her interactions with Sandra could be.
She was also dealing with the very real possibility that Sandra would try to point a finger at her for Brad’s death. There wasn’t a shadow of a doubt in Dash’s mind that Matty was not involved, and it looked like Vivi and Ian agreed, but still, knowing that her father’s wife might make the accusation, and that her father would be caught in the middle, couldn’t be easy for Matty.
A few minutes later, after saying good-bye to Vivi and Ian, Dash followed Matty up the stairs. By unspoken agreement they said nothing and crawled into bed, finding a quiet kind of comfort in each other.
***
A powerful wind blew Matty’s hair across her face as she stood on her patio watching Dash drive away. They’d spent most of the morning together, driving from farm to farm, meeting Dash’s clients and handling all sorts of matters—from shots for cows and sheep to emergency stitches on one of the local performance horses. They’d also stopped for lunch at Frank’s Café in town and had even done a little bit of comfort shopping—well, at least she had. She’d picked up another beautiful quilt at the store on Main Street, this time for Nanette. Now Dash was off to handle his afternoon appointments at the clinic and she was going to spend her time alone cleaning the house and writing.
Carly and Marcus had been searching the house while she was out. Judging by the car in the driveway, at least one of the officers was still present, so it wasn’t a surprise when the kitchen door popped open behind her.
“Oh, hi, Matty,” Carly said.
“Hey,” Matty answered with a smile. She might have met Carly under bizarre criminal circumstances, but she liked the woman. Quick to assess both of the situations and just as quick to start dealing with them in an efficient and business-like way without being too uptight or tense, her easy-going and attentive manner conveyed a confidence that put Matty at ease.
“Are you close to being finished in there?” Matty asked.
Carly nodded. “I just put away the last of the files.”
A gust of wind came up and blew Matty’s hair into her face again. Carly’s shorter hair stayed in place and Matty took a moment to envy the woman’s blonde curls. It wasn’t that she disliked having long hair, but it could get a bit unruly, especially in the wind and in any weather that wasn’t seventy degrees and sunny with no humidity.
“Want to join me for a glass of iced tea or something before you leave?” Matty offered, moving toward the door and out of the wind. “I don’t know what is up with this weather, but this wind is going to make me crazy.”
Carly laughed. “Thanks, but I need to get back to the station and keep an eye on things. There’s supposed to be a storm system moving in. I doubt there’s much flooding up here since you’re on a hill, but you may want to make sure you have batteries and flashlights and things like that.”
“Is it going to be that bad?” Matty asked, her hand on the door. She’d noticed the change in the weather, of course, but being a city girl, and one who lived in DC where most of the power lines were below ground, losing power had never really been something she’d worried about.
Carly shrugged. “It’s hard to tell right now. Summer storms can grow or collapse pretty fast, so it’s always good to be ready just in case.”
Matty thought that was good advice and made a mental note to do as Carly suggested. They said good-bye and she retreated into her house just as her phone rang. Glancing at the number she smiled, it had been a few days since she talked to her mom, it would be good to hear her voice, if not fend off questions about Dash. Actually, as she thought about it, between Brad’s death and the appearance of Dash in her life, Matty was kind of surprised her mother hadn’t just shown up. Like a lot of mothers, there was nothing her mom wanted more, other than the happiness of her daughter, than grandchildren.
“Mama,” she said as she entered the kitchen. She wasn’t sure what she had expected after walking into a house that had just been subject to a thorough search, but it was in the exact same condition in which she’d left it, which was kind of nice.
“Matty, how are you?” her mother responded.
“I’m good. It’s been an interesting trip, that’s for sure,” she answered and then filled her mother in on what had happened in the past few days, including the possibility that Brad had been murdered. She sat down at the desk in the office as she talked and watched the wind whip the trees back and forth outside. Her mother made occasional, appropriate sounds and when Matty was done talking, Carmen did exactly what her daughter had been expecting.
“Mija,” she said, her voice serious and her accent touching every word. “I think I should come up there. Charlotte, well, she too is worried.”
Matty sighed. “I’m fine Mama, really. I’ll call Charlotte next and touch base with her, too.”
“Someone was killed not one hundred feet from where you are living, in the middle of nowhere. I don’t like that you are alone.”
“It was more like a quarter mile from where I am and I’m not alone all that much.” She caught herself too late; she’d walked right in to her mother’s trap.
“You are n
ot alone much? Then you are spending time with that boy, Dash. If you are spending that much time with him, I think I must come up and meet him.”
“He’s a man, Mama, not a boy,” she responded.
“Mathilde.”
Matty sighed again. “Now just isn’t a good time.” She did not want her mother showing up when Douglas was in town or Sandra likely on the warpath to declaring Matty a suspect. She hadn’t heard anything from Ian, and Carly hadn’t mentioned anything either, but she would be more surprised if Sandra hadn’t accused her than if she had. And Carmen Viega was a very different woman now than she had been when Sandra Brooks ran her out of the house all those years ago.
“But this boy, he is special, no? Different?” her mother pressed.
For a beat, Matty thought about lying to her mother—saying no, Dash wasn’t special. But as much as she didn’t want to talk about it, she also didn’t want to belittle her relationship with Dash. Not only did she not want to demean her relationship, there was also the fact that Dash was different and her mom, who loved her and had given her so much in life, deserved to know.
“He’s a man, Mama, not a boy,” Matty repeated, more to tease her mom than anything else.
“Mathilde.”
Matty bit back a laugh at her mother’s predictable response. She could almost see Carmen sitting at the kitchen table, coffee in hand, rolling her eyes at her daughter.
“Yes, Mama, he is special. And yes, prepare yourself, because I would like you to meet him. But now really isn’t a good time. Both Douglas and Sandra are in town, and to be honest, I don’t want to deal with having all of you in the same town at the same time.” Matty decided not to mention that little issue of a possible murder accusation.
Her mother made a small sound on the other end of the line that gave Matty next to no indication of what she was thinking. “It’s very quick, no?” she said.
Matty was relieved that Carmen hadn’t picked up the conversation thread about Douglas and Sandra, but the concern in her voice as she asked about Dash gave Matty pause. It didn’t sound disapproving, but she didn’t really sound excited either. And then it came to her and Matty felt like she’d been smacked in the face with the true sentiment behind her mother’s concern. Carmen herself had been swept up by Douglas Brooks all those years ago. And though Matty knew her mother didn’t regret having had her, she was not oblivious to the destruction and pain her parents’ brief relationship had caused in the lives of many people. That it had turned out okay in the long run for most of them was good, but there were years her mother had suffered for what had happened in that whirlwind moment.
“Mama, I’m not getting swept up in this relationship,” Matty said in all seriousness. She wanted her mom to know she wasn’t throwing caution to the wind. “Dash and I aren’t doing anything dumb and we’re taking things as they come. Yes, it’s moving faster than any of my past relationships, and yes, Dash is different than the others, but I’m not going to lose my head over this. You don’t need to worry about that.”
Her mother was silent for a moment, then Matty heard her let out a little laugh. “No, Mija, you mistake my hesitance. You are not the girl I was when I met Douglas,” she said, reading her daughter’s mind. “You are thirty-two, educated, successful. You have a career of your own, money of your own, friends, and a very different kind of life. I was twenty-one when I met your father and a new emigrant. I spoke little English, was poor, and had no support other than a distant cousin in Connecticut. No friends, no family, no money,” she repeated. “You are a very different woman, Mathilde. I do not worry about you getting ‘swept up,’ as you say. Truly, what I worry about is that you won’t let yourself get caught up in something, or someone.”
Okay, that wasn’t what Matty had expected. “Mama?”
Her mother sighed. “Our life in your early years wasn’t easy, Mathilde. It was the best I could do—”
“And you did a great job,” Matty interjected.
She could hear the smile in her mom’s voice. “Thank you, Mija. But it was not easy and you did not learn to trust because there were so few to trust. And you did not learn to see the joy because there was so little of it where we lived. We couldn’t care about people, because if we did, it was used against us. We had to be cautious in everything. We had to doubt and we had to protect ourselves—physically and emotionally—to survive. That is what you learned when you were little.”
“Mama?”
“You are a remarkable young woman and I know I don’t have to tell you how much I love you, but things that are sometimes easy for other people do not come easy for you because of how you grew up. I lived there with you in the Bronx, but my childhood, when I was a girl, I was very happy. I grew up with a loving family, a big family. There was much laughter, and while there was not much money, there was much love. When I left for the states, they cried and did not want me to leave. And then when I got pregnant, I could not afford to go back. But I tell you this, because even though I lived in the same world as you when we were in New York, my memories of my childhood, of how people could and should be with each other, were still strong. I knew there was a different way of life because I had lived it. I couldn’t provide that for you, Mathilde, and I know it has impacted you—in ways that I see and, I’m sure, in ways that I don’t.”
For a moment, Matty was speechless. Her mother very rarely spoke of her family in Puerto Rico. By the time they’d had money to go back and visit, her mother’s parents had both died and each of her siblings had moved away—her brother to Los Angeles and her sister to South America. Matty had met them each once, but just as her mother’s poverty had kept her from her family in the early days, her subsequent wealth had had almost the same effect later on. Her brother and sister had both seemed uncomfortable during their individual visits to the DC mansion and neither had expressed any interest in building a relationship with Matty afterward. She knew her mom kept in touch with each of them, regularly, but it was only over the phone or e-mail, never in person.
But now, aside from her mother’s insight into her family, Matty was struck by how accurately her mother had, to put it bluntly, hit the nail on the head. Carmen had just hit upon the very issues Matty had been struggling with ever since she’d met Dash, issues she’d even discussed with him. All along, Matty had assumed that her mother was like her—that she struggled with the same questions. But she’d been wrong. The way they’d lived in the Bronx was all Matty had known at the time, but for her mother it was just a role she’d had to play to survive; it hadn’t become a part of her the way it had become a part of Matty.
Quietly, Matty responded. “You’re right, Mama. It did impact me in ways that I am just beginning to realize—just beginning to deal with and confront.”
“And this boy—this man,” her mother corrected herself with a small laugh, “he is helping you, no?”
Matty thought about Dash. About his quiet way. About his insistence that she not back down from her own fears and his confidence that she could overcome them. She thought about the way he pushed her just enough to challenge her but then backed off to let her think things through. And she thought about the way he quietly listened to her stories, especially those about her childhood, and didn’t judge or overreact. He didn’t want to fix her, but he wasn’t going to let her hide from, or behind, her past either.
“Yes, Mama, he is helping,” she said softly.
Her mother let out a long breath. “Then I am glad and I will be happy to meet him. Perhaps after Brad’s funeral?” she suggested.
Matty nodded to herself. “Yes, Mama, I think that would be a good time to come up.”
Feeling drained and exhausted when she ended the call, Matty stared absently at the floor for a long moment. It hadn’t been too long of a talk, but it had packed a lot of emotional punch and left her with a lot to think about. She had never given much thought to her mother’s life before she’d come to the US because the move itself, in both good and bad ways, de
fined so much of Carmen. Her mother’s comments had not only opened Matty’s eyes to the fact that Carmen’s childhood experience was different than her own, they had echoed so much of what she was already feeling, or becoming aware of, through her relationship with Dash. She had internalized so much of what she had experienced in her youth in a way that, until recently, she hadn’t even acknowledged. And it wasn’t that she thought her life would take a one-eighty if she really tried to understand her childhood, but maybe understanding it could help her live the kind of life that seemed so easy for Dash—the kind of life she was beginning to think she might want.
She put on a kettle of water, mulling over the scary reality of what it would mean to talk about her childhood and acknowledge the ways it had affected her in adulthood when she was startled by the jumping and barking of the dogs. They’d been lying peacefully about the kitchen just moments before, and with the wind, she hadn’t heard the car that was now obviously pulling into her drive.
Glancing at her watch, she frowned. She knew it wasn’t Dash because his afternoon appointments didn’t end until five. But thinking it might be Carly coming back to pick something up, she walked to the door and peered out.
To her dismay, Douglas was climbing out of his luxury sedan, his shoulders slumped and his movements sluggish. His face still carried the look of shock she’d noticed a few days before, but now it was tinged with a deep, unfathomable sorrow.
He closed the car door and made his way to where Matty stood in the kitchen doorway. She hesitated when he stepped up onto the patio, then moved aside and opened the door, silently inviting him in.
“Thank you,” he said quietly as he came inside. Perhaps sensing the grief that enveloped her father, the dogs stayed quiet and nearly still. The kettle whistled and Matty returned to the stove to shut the burner off. Pulling out a mug for herself, she gestured to Douglas, asking if he would like to join her. He shook his head then cast a look around the kitchen as if he wasn’t sure what to do next.
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