stopped.
The skin on that lean face had been weathered to the point of cowhide, and there was a tooth missing on one side as he smiled like a serial killer.
His father was going to die, Matthias thought. Right here, right now.
However improbable that was, given the difference in their sizes, the man was going to hit the ground and be dead in a matter of moments—
Abruptly, Matthias could feel himself start talking, his lips forming sounds that didn’t register on him. They had an impact on his father, however.
That expression shifted, the smile dissipating, that dental gap disappearing as the thin mouth flattened. Rage narrowed those electric blue eyes, but it didn’t last. Shock was next. As if something that he had been confident about now seemed less than certain.
And all the while, Matthias kept talking, slow and consistently.
This was where it had all started, he thought to himself: this man, this evil man who he’d lived alone with for too long, this sick bastard who had “raised” him. Now was the time for reckoning, however, and his younger self felt nothing as he spoke the words he did, knowing full well that he was finally caging the monster.
His father’s hand grabbed onto the front of the overalls, right over his heart, crushing the material, the dirty, chipped nails digging in.
And still Matthias kept talking.
Down to the floor. His father went down on his knees, his free palm thrown out to the banister, his mouth cranking open so wide that the other missing teeth, the ones in the back, showed.
He had never expected to get caught. That was his killer.
Well…technically, the myocardial infarction was what did him in. But the proximal cause was the fact that their ugly secret was out.
Death took its own sweet time.
As his father flopped over on his back, his hand now shifting to his left armpit as if it hurt like a bitch, Matthias stood where he was and watched the dying process roll in and take over. Apparently, breathing was difficult, that chest chugging up and down without much effect: Beneath the tan, his father’s color was receding.
When the view switched back to the bedroom, Matthias realized that he had turned away and was walking, going over to the radio, sitting down, turning it on. He could still see his father struggling like a fly on a windowsill, limbs contracting this way and that, head arching back as if he thought maybe a different angle would help increase the oxygen flow.
But it wasn’t going to help. Even a fifteen-year-old farm boy knew that if your heart wasn’t pumping, your brain and vital organs were going to starve no matter how many deep breaths you took.
Out on the prairie, they got only five stations and three were religious. The other two played country and pop, and he twisted the dial, going back and forth between the pair. From time to time, just because he knew his father was going to meet his Maker sometime soon, he let a sermon ring out.
Matthias felt nothing other than frustration that he couldn’t get hard rock to play. Seemed like Van Halen was a better match to his father’s kicking it than Conway fucking Twitty or Phil fucking Collins.
Other than that, he was calm as a pond, level as concrete, set as a table leg.
Hell, he didn’t even care that the abuse was over. He’d just wanted to see if he could get rid of the old man, like the effort was a science project: he’d made the plan, gotten the pieces into place, and then woken up that morning and decided to set the first domino falling at school.
Thanks to his particularly malleable, softhearted, very religious homeroom teacher.
Standing out in the hall, he’d cried in front of her as he’d told her the hell he’d been living in, but that show of tears had just been to give her some extra motivation. In truth, the grand reveal was no more internalized than a change of clothes: As he’d manipulated her with the truth, he’d been cold as ice on the inside, taking neither satisfaction that the first part was done, nor excitement that it was finally happening.
Everything had gone down fast after that, and that had been the only thing that he hadn’t banked on: He’d been immediately sent to the school nurse, and then the police had come, and paperwork had been filled out, and off he went into the system.
They’d sent only women to work with him, as if that would make it easier on him. Especially during the “physical exam” part—which they’d expected him to get really upset by.
And who was he not to give them what they wanted?
He had not expected to go into foster care within two hours, however.
The thing was, the only goal he’d really wanted was this part here, this endgame with his father on the floor—and he’d had to run away and hot-wire a car to make sure he got home before the police took his father to jail when the man came in from the cornfields. Everything was a waste if he blew the final act.
But it had worked out just fine.
In the last few moments of his father’s miserable life, Matthias twisted the radio knob over to one of the religious stations—and paused for a moment. The sermon was about Hell.
Seemed appropriate.
He watched as the final breath was taken and then the stillness came. So strange, a human being suddenly stepping over to the other side, that which had been animated becoming indistinguishable from a toaster oven or a throw rug or, shit, even a clock radio.
Matthias waited a little longer as the pallor in that face went completely gray. Then he got up, unplugged his radio, and tucked the thing under his arm.
His father’s eyes were open and staring up at the ceiling, much as Matthias’s had done at night over the years.
He didn’t flip the guy off, or spit on him, or give him a kick. He just walked past the body and went down the stairs. His final thought, as he left the house, was that it had been an interesting mental exercise…
And he wanted to see if he could do it again—
“Matthias?”
Letting out a shout, he jumped in his chair, the restaurant rushing back at him, those walls popping into place again, the ambient sounds of people eating and talking filtering into his brain once more.
As other diners looked over at him, Dee leaned in. “Are you okay?”
Her beautiful face was cast in perfect lines of compassion, her lips parted as if his distress was making it hard for her to breathe.
The removal he’d felt in his younger self slipped back into place over the center of his chest, as if the memory had recalibrated his internal hard wiring, tightening him up like a car that had had alignment problems: As he regarded the woman across from him, it was from a vital distance, a chilly objectivity putting space between them even though their chairs were no farther apart.
Emotions could be so easily faked, as he himself knew.
The smile he gave her felt different on his face—but also very familiar. “I’m perfectly fine.”
The waitress came over at that moment with his huge breakfast, and as she put it down, he could have sworn Dee sat back and smiled to herself in satisfaction.
Standing with the maître d’, Mels was through being StalkerGurl. Bad enough that she had come to the Marriott on the hunt, but to have found Matthias with that nurse? Now she had two reasons to feel like crap: She didn’t respect herself, and only a fool would compare anything but Sofia Vergara to that other woman.
As a plate the size of a countertop was put down in front of Matthias, he looked across at his eating companion with a sly smile, and—
His head turned for no good reason just as she pivoted away.
Their eyes met, and instantly, that cynical expression of his changed into something she couldn’t read—and told herself she didn’t care about.
Whatever. This was none of her business.
And she was certainly not going to bother with anything theatrical. Instead, she calmly headed for the lobby’s revolving doors—
“Mels!” came a hiss behind her.
