moved toward the door to her mother’s room, then turned back. “Are you staying for dinner?” she asked. “But before you answer, remember — I don’t want to talk about Mother tonight. For Matt’s sake, let’s just try not to fight about her, all right?”
Bill nodded, managing a smile. “For Matt’s sake,” he agreed quietly.
While Joan went to tend to her mother, he went to his closet and began laying out his tuxedo.
The Hapgood tradition, he decided, could survive Emily Moore.
Whether his marriage could remained to be seen.
* * *
MATT LAY SPRAWLED on his bed, staring up at the ceiling.
Why the hell did they have to have a dinner party, anyway?
But he knew why — because tomorrow he’d turn sixteen, and whenever a Hapgood boy turned sixteen, they had a dinner party the night before.
And then they went hunting.
And then they played a round at the Granite Falls Golf Club.
And then they had a big party for all the birthday boy’s friends.
It was the way his dad’s family always did it.
Except Bill Hapgood wasn’t his dad. Not anymore. He was just his stepfather, and three weeks ago he’d walked out, leaving him with his mother and his grandmother.
And everything had turned to crap.
From that night, when he’d watched his dad leave without even looking up at him, let alone saying good- bye, nothing had been right. At first he told himself the nightmares would go away — that they’d just begun again because of what had happened with his parents. After a week, he thought, he’d get used to the way things were and the nightmares would stop. But when they were still plaguing him in the middle of the second week, he began dreading going to bed, knowing what would come. For a while the house would be silent, but it wasn’t the kind of quiet he was used to, when you could hear owls hooting softly as they hunted, and listen to the gentle rustling of the wind in the trees outside the window. Instead it was a foreboding silence that enveloped the house.
But soon it would be broken by his grandmother’s voice. At first Matt had gone out into the hall to listen, in case she needed help, but every night it was the same. His grandmother was always in the room that was filled with his aunt’s stuff, always talking to his mother’s sister as if she were actually there. So he would go back to his room and try to go to sleep.
And every night the dreams would come. Dreams he could never quite remember in the morning, but that left him so tired he could barely stay awake at school and couldn’t concentrate on the lessons even if he managed to keep his eyes open.
This week he’d actually failed a history test.
It should have been an easy test — history was his favorite subject, and he’d been studying the textbook the night before the quiz. Except that even as he pored over the book, trying to memorize the major tenets of the Monroe Doctrine, the first tentacles of the terror of the nightmares were already creeping up from the dark depths of his subconscious, distracting him from his work, setting his nerves on edge, making his skin crawl as if some unseen creature were slithering over him.
So he failed the test in the morning, and then after lunch Mrs. Clemens wanted to know why his math assignments — always perfect until three weeks ago — were no longer being turned in at all.
And today Ted Stevens had dropped him from the first string of the football team.
Shit!
The last thing he felt like doing was putting on his tux and sitting in the dining-room pretending like there was something to celebrate!
Screw it — maybe he’d just stay in his room. If they wanted to pretend to have a party, let them do it by themselves.
There was a rap at his door then, and he heard his mother’s voice. “Matt? The Conroes will be here in fifteen minutes!”
He hesitated. Should he tell her he was sick? But he wasn’t — not really. Just tired, and pissed off, and —
— and it would just make things worse if he didn’t show up downstairs. “Okay,” he sighed as he rolled off the bed.
He put the studs in his shirt, put it on, then pulled on his trousers and fastened the braces. He was still struggling with the bow-tie when he heard the muffled sound of the doorbell ringing. Jerking the half-done knot loose, he replaced the tie with a pre-tied one on a ribbon that fastened under his collar, pulled on his socks and shoes, and arrived in the living room just as his father was pouring drinks for Kelly’s parents.
His grandmother, her tiny body all but lost in one of the wingback chairs flanking the fireplace, seemed unaware that there was anyone else in the room at all, not even looking up when he came in.
“How come you didn’t wait for me after school?” Kelly asked as he found a Coke in the refrigerator under the bar.
Matt shot a quick glance at his parents. He hadn’t even spoken to his dad yet, nor had he told his mother about what happened at school that afternoon. “I just didn’t feel like it,” he said, trying to signal Kelly to drop the subject.
“ ‘Didn’t
Though Conroe tried to make it sound like he was joking, Matt still felt the sting of the words. His face flushed, but Kelly leaped to his defense before he could say anything. “He didn’t do anything wrong, Daddy! It’s just that Mr. Stevens kicked him off — ”
“I quit the team,” Matt cut in quickly, but it was already too late.
“You quit?” Joan Hapgood asked. “But you love playing football! Why would you quit?”
Matt felt his face burning. “It — I — ” His eyes darted from his mother’s face to his stepfather’s, then back to his mother’s. “It was just taking up too much of my time, that’s all.”
“From what I’ve been hearing, maybe you’re right,” Bill Hapgood said. “It seems your grades haven’t been what they might be lately.”
Matt felt his face burn hotter, and his temper began to smolder. “How would you know about my grades?” he demanded. “It’s not like you’ve been around here to find out what’s going on!”
“Matt! Don’t speak to your father like — ”
Matt’s angry eyes shifted to his mother. “My father? I don’t even know who my father is, remember?”
“Now see here, young man,” Gerry Conroe began, his own face darkening with anger. “Boys don’t speak to their mothers in that tone of — ”
Bill Hapgood raised his hands as if in supplication, saying, “Can we all just hold on a minute? This is a party, remember? A sixteenth birthday party, and in my family — ” He hesitated, and his eyes fixed on Matt. “ — and this is my family — sixteenth birthdays are important. So let’s just not worry about anything tonight except having a good time. All right?”
An uncomfortable silence fell over the room, and it seemed as though everyone was waiting for someone else to break it. Nancy Conroe was the one who finally spoke. “I agree with Bill,” she declared, struggling to infuse her voice with a gaiety that no one was feeling. She raised her glass. “Happy birthday, Matt. And may we all celebrate many more of them together.”
Though everyone lifted their glasses, Nancy Conroe’s words couldn’t quite dispel the pall that had been cast over the party by the angry exchange between Matt and his parents. Only Emily Moore, who spoke not a word during dinner and barely ate a bite of her food, seemed unaffected by what had happened. Even after the Conroes left — almost as soon as dinner was over — there was still an air of tension in the house.
“We have to talk,” Bill said quietly to Joan as he closed the front door behind his departing guests. When his wife’s eyes flicked toward Matt, who was standing at the foot of the stairs, he shook his head almost imperceptibly. “Just us.”
Without a word, Matt turned away from them and disappeared up the stairs.
* * *
