Night Owl(47)

"Matt, I promise. I'll be right there. No matter what."

CHAPTER 20

Hannah

MATTHEW ROBERT SKY Jr. was born on November 9th, 1984. His father, a renowned orthopedic hand surgeon, and his mother, a pediatrician, were killed in a bus accident in South America when he was nine. They were doing philanthropic work in the favelas of Rio.

Matthew and his brothers, Nathaniel and Seth, were raised by their uncle in New Jersey.

He graduated at the top of his high school class and attended Cornell University. He published his first short story at the age of twenty.

He left graduate school after a failed suicide attempt and stayed in a psychiatric ward for over a month. Upon release, he began a downward spiral into drug and alcohol addiction, followed by a string of petty crimes and misdemeanors.

Until getting sober at the age of twenty-three, Matthew lived a playboy lifestyle on the east coast, funded by the considerable inheritance released to him on his eighteenth birthday. He never stopped writing.

After over fifteen rejections, he queried Pamela Wing with Ten Thousand Nights in 2007. The book was published to national and eventually global acclaim.

I watched, dazed, as everything I wanted to know about Matt spilled onto the internet.

July. The month of Matt.

The month without Matt.

Even the big news stations and papers ran stories on M. Pierce's unveiling. No one could get an interview from him, not even a comment, but Pam quietly confirmed the author's identity and released several generic statements.

"Mr. Sky's private life was very important to his writing," said Pamela Wing of the Granite Wing Agency. "The media has respected him as an artist; now they need to respect him as a human and stop splashing his life all over the net."

One reporter finally caught Matt outside of his apartment. An altercation ensued. The reporter was badly beaten. Charges were filed, then settled outside of court.

The local papers and news stations lost interest by the middle of July.

Fit to Print got national attention for uncovering the story but never revealed its source. They continued to run a column on Matt's life and writing. Pictures appeared there regularly.

I saw a ten-year-old Matt boating with his parents, his hair swept back.

There was Matt in his high school graduation gown.

Matt on the rowing team at Cornell.

Matt and his friends riding lunch trays down a snowy hill.

Matt and his girlfriend, Bethany Meres.

Want to tell you so many things.

It was Bethany Meres, various articles speculated, who released the information that led to Matt's uncovering.

"Bethany was crazy about Matt," said a close friend of Meres, "and he was crazy about her. She said more than once that she thought a proposal was coming. Then he ended it out of the blue." That was three days before the story broke.

Despite his non-disclosure agreement, Matt never pressed charges.

He kept his head down.

Bethany made no statements.

Pam fielded the occasional reporter.

Matt's family and friends maintained a stony silence.

As for me, I was nothing to no one in the story of Matt.

I ignored his calls. I didn't listen to his messages. I didn't read his emails. Eventually, I changed my cell phone number and made a new email account.

With a loan from my mother and my first paycheck from the Granite Wing Agency, I got a small condo in Denver.

I began my hollow life.

There was nowhere I could go and nothing I could do to escape memories of Matt. I accepted a perpetual feeling of nausea as a new condition of my existence.

I loved him—I realized this when it all collapsed—and I had never known him.

So it was possible to love a stranger.

I didn't allow myself to dwell on the extent of Matt's lies. Matt the businessman. Matt with the bachelor pad. Matt calling me his. Matt laughing and smirking as I enthused about M. Pierce. And worst of all, Matt making me an unwilling accomplice to his cheating.

How could he do it?

How could he smile and chat with my family while he used me like that?

The only people who knew why I was suffering were my family members. I told Chrissy, Chrissy told mom, and mom told dad. If Jay knew, he didn't care.

Matt didn't go to the house, but mom thought she saw him drive by a few times.

He didn't come to the agency.

I probably should have quit the job on principle—after all, Matt helped me get it—but I didn't. It was my dream job. I needed the money. Matt had his fun with me and I got the raw end of it. At least I had something to show for my pain.

Pam must have known I had some stake in the M. Pierce identity explosion, but we only had one conversation about it. It was the day after the news broke, the day after I walked into a reporter babbling about Matthew Sky being M. Pierce. The day after I read the infamous Fit to Print article.

The day after I promised to go see Matt no matter what, and never showed.

I remember how I felt when I woke that day, as if someone had scraped out my insides. I was a walking shell of Hannah.

I had a job to get to. I had motions to go through.

I showered and dressed mechanically. I arrived at work ten minutes early. Pam was waiting for me, leaning against her desk.

"Hannah," she said, giving me one of her terse smiles.

"Morning." My voice didn't sound like mine. It was a croak coming out of my hollow body. I didn't bother to clear my throat.