LITMIR.BIZ

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hadn’t been prepared for this kind of problem. Since that scare with Elsa, he’d been really careful with birth control. So what had happened that night with Jenny? He hadn’t given it a single thought—had only felt that he needed her, and that he had to have her.

      He’d lost control.

      He started the engine, made sure the kid was still sitting on the veranda and then took off down the driveway, not caring how much noise he made. When he hit the highway, he revved the engine and burned rubber.

      He didn’t know where he was going, only knew that he had to get away to clear his head.

      I am a father.

      As Matt neared the turnoff to his parents’ house, he slammed on the brakes, hitting the gravel shoulder in a spray of fine stone and dust, and fishtailing. He missed the dirt road that led into his property.

      Breathing hard, he took off his hat and threw it onto the seat beside him.

      He didn’t have a clue where he needed to go or what he needed to do, but maybe it was no accident that he’d braked before he’d made any firm decisions.

      Putting the truck into reverse, he backed up and turned onto the old road. Rainstorms had washed ruts into the dirt, and the truck bounced off them as he drove.

      He approached the house and tried to dredge up a memory, any memory, that wasn’t bad. Not of Jenny and him and their night together, though. That memory was good and bad and insane. At this moment, he didn’t want to think of her, not when he wanted to hurt her so badly for the way she’d hurt him, for what she’d taken from him.

      His boots rang loud and hollow on the porch floor, and he sidestepped a hole. The door groaned like an old woman. Then he was inside the house and lost in memories of his childhood.

      He closed the door behind him, to keep the bugs out and the really tough memories in. On second thought, he opened it again, hoping against hope that all the memories would fly out, leaving nothing more than a house. But they refused to leave. They buzzed around his head like mosquitoes ready to draw blood.

      The stone fireplace still dominated the small living room and open kitchen.

      An ancient Christmas tree, brown and desiccated, stood in the far corner. Silver balls and bits of tinsel hung on it. His mother’s last attempt at making this place a home?

      Matt held himself rigid, afraid of the emotions that would flood out of him if he let them. They threatened to drown him.

      Keep it cool, Matt. Keep it cool.

      He spotted a bunch of dust-coated mail on the Formica table by the door. Matt had left it there, unopened, after his parents had died. Other than he and Jenny that one night, no one had been here since then. He flipped through what was left of his parents’ lives.

      He picked up one large manila envelope, then stilled. He didn’t have to guess what it was. He already knew. The autopsy. No, thanks. No, no, no. He dropped it back onto the table and stalked into what had been his bedroom. Not one clue to his personality existed in the room—no posters nor CDs nor photos. Nothing. No Matthew Long. He’d spent his adolescence avoiding the homestead.

      Kyle’s room had been messy, with football posters on the wall and a computer and his own TV and Playboy magazines under the bed.

      Matt avoided his parents’ room, couldn’t possibly go in there, so headed back out to the kitchen.

      He touched the stove and left his fingerprints in a layer of dust. When had it last been cleaned? More than fifteen years ago. Just before she died, Mom had been consumed by her anger and depression. The house had become more and more dirty, until Matt couldn’t stand to eat there.

      He opened a cupboard door and spotted a tin of beans and a loaf of bread, now green and dried out. He opened another cupboard door and froze. There on the second shelf, beside the salt and pepper and a bag of pasta, was a small, framed photo of his mother and him.

      He looked younger than Jesse was—maybe four, maybe only three. Why was it in the cupboard? Did she want to look at it every time she reached for the saltshaker? Or had she put it here without realizing? Like when he used to find the milk, warm and sour, in a cupboard, and unopened tins of beans in the fridge?

      His mother was holding him in her arms and smiling. She’d been so pretty when she was young.

      Flashes of memory filled his head, glimpses of this and that, with no rhyme or reason, before finally settling on this one. He thought that maybe he remembered when this photo had been taken.

      He remembered his shock later, after his mother had changed.

      “MATTHEW, WHAT IS THIS?” Mama held up a pair of pants with holes in the knees. He’d put them in the laundry basket on the floor of his closet, with all his other dirty clothes, just the way he was supposed to.

      “Well, what do you have to say for yourself?” Her voice sounded funny, like one of the bad ladies in the Cinderella movie. She sounded mean.

      “Those are my jeans.”

      “I know that, you little moron.”

      His mouth dropped open. Mama called him a name. She never did that before.

      “I mean, why do they have holes in the knees?”

      He shrugged. “I don’t know. I must have falled down.”

      She hit him across the face. He fell on the floor and cried. Where was the mama he liked? Where was the mama who loved him?

      MATT CAME OUT of his memory with the question he’d asked himself so many times as a child. Where was the mama who loved him?

      It had started the day she’d slapped him and had gone downhill from there, with Mama becoming more and more demanding, her demands more and more unreasonable.

      Then Pop started to stay out later and later, coming home only long enough to make sure his kid idolized him and then running off to another rodeo or another ranch or another bar.

      To another woman, Missy Donovan from Ordinary.

      When Pop did come home, he was angry and drunk and ready to leave again, but not before he and Mama tore each other apart in the bedroom. They went at it like animals.

      When Matt was old enough, he got out of the house before they started, and stayed out until long after they finished.

      Matt’s shell threatened to crumble now, to let the emotions free to kill him with their poison.

      He set the old photo on the scarred countertop, facedown because he couldn’t stand to look at him and his mother happy. What kind of weird compulsion had driven a warm, loving woman mad?

      Was it inside him, too? Was there some sort of double curse in his life? He’d learned too much of the wrong things from his father. Love ’em and leave ’em. Don’t let a woman get her hooks into you. When things get too tough, run scared.

      Was he also eventually going to lose his mind the way his mother had?

      And now he had a child to worry about.

      What on earth had he ever learned here that would help him to be a parent?

      JENNY HAD BEEN POSITIVE Matt would run, had known it in her marrow. Then why did she feel so disappointed that he had? It was nuts. She didn’t want Matt sticking around or deciding that he should have a hand in raising her son.

      She and Angus would do just fine raising Jesse. Angus knew how to be a good father.

      She sat down on the top step beside her son and took the small spoonful of custard he offered her.

      “Do you want to play in the backyard when you’re finished?” she asked, smoothing his bangs away from his face.

      “Yeah.” He lapped up more of his custard.

      Angus drove into the yard in his big silver Cadillac. When he got out, he looked tired. Frustrated.

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