After Dark (The Night Owl Trilogy #3)(21)

We embraced, and I introduced Hannah as my fiancée.

“Nothing’s changed,” I said, looking into the glass cases.

“Well, we’re making chocolate from bean to bar now.” Stephen took us to the back room and showed us around. Hannah dipped a strawberry, giggling as she did, and I dipped another and fed it to her. I kissed the warm chocolate from her lips.

“Is your dad around?” I was hoping to see Stephen’s father, a white-haired man even when I’d known him, who used to show up for church with chocolate stains on his suit. He was a good friend to my father.

“Not today. He’s out with Lisa and the kids.”

“Your kids?”

“Yup. I got married, oh, seven years ago now. Got two little girls.”

“Well, hey, congratulations.” I flashed a smile at Hannah. She looked pointedly at the ground. “How is all that?”

“It’s good, man. Really good.” Stephen folded his arms and nodded. The bells on the front door jingled, announcing a shopper. “I better get out there. Help yourself to anything.”

“I was actually hoping you had a key to the church,” I said. “Wanted to show Hannah.”

“Oh, yeah, of course.” Stephen dashed upstairs, his feet thumping overhead, and returned with a key chain. “Front door and back. That’s just the shed.”

I promised to return the key before five and I drove Hannah over to Three Bridges Reformed Church. I parked in the side lot and led her to the front of the building. We held hands and admired the classic clapboard steeple, the whitewash and red door.

Large trees shaded us.

“I remember playing on this lawn between services,” I said. Hannah pressed against my side. “Nate would sit in the church, up near the pulpit, and like some wizard”—I laughed—“order Seth and I to find random things for him. A dry leaf. A broken stick. We’d run down the aisle and come out here to search. We sort of worshiped him.”

Inside, the church smelled musty. Cool air lay still on my skin.

We sat on a pew and I closed my eyes and remembered for a while.

Hannah held my hand in both of hers.

When I was ready, I told her the rest of my story. I told her how Mom and Dad traveled to South America with a mission group once a year and provided free medical care to people living in the favelas—the slums of Brazil. I breezed over the accident: a bus crash on a winding mountain road. My parents instantly killed.

Aunt Ella and Uncle Rick came into our lives then. Childless, they happily spirited Nate and Seth and me to their grand colonial-style home in Chatham, and we stopped going to church and playing in muddy creeks, and we learned instead how to play tennis and ride horses.

“‘My little gentlemen,’ Ella used to call us.” I chuckled, my eyes drifting open. “Only Nate really took to that.”

“Will we see Nate this weekend?”

Hannah had been so silent while I spoke, her hands so still, that I flinched at her voice.

“If you want. I’m sure he’d love to see you. Would you like that?”

“I think so, yeah.” She wiped her eyes quickly and stared toward the front of the church. Shafts of light came in through the single remaining stained-glass window. “I think they hate me, your aunt and uncle. It’ll be nice to have someone on my side.”

“Hate isn’t in their repertoire. And they have no reason to believe you knew I was alive last year. They’ll believe what we told the papers—that I masterminded my fake death, that you had no knowledge. No one knows you were visiting the cabin regularly except Kevin, Nate, and Seth. They’ve all agreed to keep quiet, and I believe them.”

I did believe them. Kevin, who owned the cabin, was my first and best friend in Colorado. Nate’s loyalty was unquestionable. As for Seth, little though I liked him, I trusted his word. I also knew he had no desire to drag Hannah deeper into my mess.

Hannah squinted at the podium, then at her feet. After a while, she said, “I just want your aunt and uncle to like me. The way they looked at me, at your memorial…”

“That was different. Everyone thought you wrote Night Owl then. Hannah—” I took her hand and led her out of the church. It struck me as strange that I’d shared my story with her and all she wanted to know was if we might see Nate tomorrow. “I’m marrying you. We’re only here to tell them, not to get their approval.”

“But you wanted my dad’s approval.”

“These people aren’t my parents.” I pulled her toward the car.

“How can you say that?” She dawdled, gazing over her shoulder at the church. I felt myself freezing up inside. Chilling toward her. “It’s so … ungrateful, Matt.”

“Am I supposed to be grateful that my parents died? My parents would have loved you, and you’re what I want. A simple girl—” The words tumbled out without a thought, and I gaped.

Hannah’s hand stiffened in mine.

“What?”

“Nothing,” I said, but I couldn’t take it back.

The dull impact of my words receded. Hannah swallowed and trailed me to the car.

I’d turned to ice inside. No meaningful emotion could pass from me to her. We drove back to the Fudge Shoppe in silence. I ran the church key in to Stephen and bought a little bag of toffee and chocolate brittle. I plopped the candy on Hannah’s lap; she mumbled a thank-you.