“Your truth isn’t everybody else’s truth. Your beliefs matter, right?” he asks.
“I think they do. Not everyone else thinks they do, though.”
“But you wish they respected your beliefs?”
I nod.
“So don’t you think Emily wants you to respect what she thinks?”
I set my plate on the coffee table and cross my arms across my stomach. Fritz wakes up and drags himself across the room and plops down at my feet. I pat his head.
“Tell me what’s going on with this boy,” Daddy says, smiling coyly. He scrapes the bottom of his bowl. “Matt.”
I bite my lower lip, smiling. “I like him. He invited me to dinner tonight to meet his family.”
“I’m glad. I can tell he’s something you’re serious about.”
“How can you tell?”
“He makes you smile when not much does anymore. Even drawing doesn’t make you smile like that.”
My face grows hot.
“Is he treating you right?” Daddy asks, looking down at the dog.
I clear my throat, thinking of how many times we kissed in the past week. I lost count after fifty. “Everything’s perfect.”
We sit in silence for a few moments. Something is nagging at me, and I just have to ask. “I care what you believe,” I say quietly. “When I asked if you believed in God a few minutes ago, you looked away.”
He leans back in his chair, shaking his loafer. Our eyes meet, but he says nothing.
I ask, “Why did you always make me go to church?”
“I’ve never made you go to church, Kate. Never. You’ve always enjoyed it…up until Emily left. I know you’ve been upset.”
“But you don’t really believe?”
He sets his bowl on the coffee table and leans over onto his thighs, peering up at me. “I’ve thought for years about this, Kate. I just don’t know. Part of me believes that a higher being created evolution.”
My chest burns. Is he saying he doesn’t believe in God?
Has he just been going through the motions all this time?
“Why do you go to church?” I whisper.
“I have friends there. It makes your mother happy. I like organ music.”
I can’t help but laugh.
“Do you pray?” I ask him.
“Doesn’t everybody pray sometime?”
He is fifty-two years old and still hasn’t figured this out. He’s right that my beliefs matter.
But why does no one else seem to share them anymore?
Matt ushers me through his back door and we climb a short flight of steps to enter a madhouse.
His mom, a thin woman with bags under her eyes, is trying to make room on the table for dinner. She removes a tutu from the table and replaces it with a whole chicken.
“Jere,” she says. “For the tenth time, put away your tennis racquet. Please.”
A cute boy about my age doesn’t stop looking at his phone as he yanks the racquet off the table and stashes it under his chair.
“I don’t want lima beans!” a girl yells. This must be his littlest sister, Jenn. I remember Matt saying she’s six, about to turn seven in August.
“But beans are yummy,” Matt says, sweeping her up in his arms and kissing her cheek. He gives her a raspberry, blowing air against her face, and she’s giggling and squirming. “Jenn, I want you to meet someone special, okay?”
That’s when Matt’s mom and Jeremiah look up and see me. His mom pushes her damp blond hair off her forehead and wipes her hands on a dishtowel before coming to shake mine.
“Mom, this is Kate. Kate, this is my mother.”
She pats my shoulder and beams at Matt.
Jeremiah manages to put his phone down for approximately five seconds to say hi to me, but then goes right back to texting. Then Mr. Brown comes into the kitchen and moves a bunch of schoolbooks so his wife can set the bread and water on the table.
“It’s really nice to meet you,” he tells me, pushing his glasses up on his nose.
Mom would have a heart attack if she were to see their kitchen. Every visible surface is covered by toys, newspapers, and kitchen appliances. Why is an umbrella on top of the fridge? Why is a sock hanging from the ceiling fan? I don’t think the room has been redecorated in years, judging by the faded blue-and-yellow-flowered wallpaper. But I love it. It’s cozy and homey.
Matt wraps an arm around my waist and pulls me closer. Jeremiah watches Matt holding me and raises his eyebrows, then goes back to texting. That’s when five girls strut into the kitchen. One of them must be his sister, Lacey, who’s twelve.
I figure out which one she is pretty quickly because she pinches Matt’s arm and says, “You brought a girl home!” Then proceeds to tease Matt.
“You’re just jealous ’cause Dad won’t let you date,” Matt says to Lacey, and she scowls.
“Not until you’re ninety,” Mr. Brown says, placing a roll of paper towels in the middle of the table.
“Who’d want to date me then?” Lacey asks, plopping down in a chair. “I’ll be all wrinkly. Gross.”
“My dad says I can date when I’m sixteen,” one of Lacey’s friends says, looking pointedly at Jeremiah, who keeps right on texting.
Matt whispers in my ear. “Slumber parties freak me out. Last time she had one they played Truth or Dare and someone got dared to launch an Apple Pie Water Gun Kissing Attack at me.”
“What’s that?” I whisper back.
“You don’t want to know.” He shudders. I laugh softly, and he kneads my lower back.
I catch his mom and dad watching us. They share a meaningful glance before focusing on dinner again.
“Kate, Kate,” Jenn says, patting the table. “Sit by me.”
That’s when I notice nearly every seat is filled. “Oh, um, I’m not sure there’s room.”
His parents’ heads pop up. I watch them count the chairs.
“One second,” Mr. Brown says. He comes back and squeezes an eleventh chair in for me. He moves a pile of Barbies and a pair of shin guards so I can sit down between Jenn and Matt.
Holding hands, we say grace, and I’m grinning as Matt rubs his fingers back and forth across mine.
After dinner, Matt and I grab a seat on the couch in the basement. Finally alone.
Our mouths move together slowly, grazing, testing. He massages the inside of my thigh.
While he was in the bathroom, I studied the pictures sitting on top of the grand piano in the living room. I was learning the faces of several generations of Matt’s family when his brother came up behind me.
“Please don’t hurt him,” Jeremiah said quietly, as he texted on his phone.
“What?” I asked.
“My brother. You’re not messing with him, right?”
“I think that’s the last thing I’d ever do.”
He peeked up from his phone, smiling slightly. “Good. So do you have any sisters? Or cousins?”
I laughed, and that’s when Matt appeared and gave me a piggyback ride down to the basement.
“I love your family,” I tell Matt, leaning over to press my lips to his.
“I love them too,” he says back. “But let’s not talk about them right now.”
I dip my head and our lips meet again. I can feel him smiling against my teeth.
That’s when Jenn comes running down the stairs, screaming at the top of her lungs. She’s wearing Little Mermaid pajamas that look so comfortable. Matt breaks away from me as his little sister launches herself into his arms.
“Attack of the killer Jenn!” he says, tickling her. She escapes, but he chases her until she falls onto the floor. She howls and laughs and kicks at him as he tickles her. I’m getting exhausted just watching them play together, but I love that they have a connection. It makes me happy that she invited me to sit next to her at dinner.
When the Great Tickle Fest is over, he drags himself up onto the couch. Jenn climbs onto Matt’s lap and squeezes his nose. He stares back at her and that’s when I notice their eyes are an identical grayish blue, the color of Normandy Lake. If I ever have a little girl, I want her to sit on my lap and love me like that.
Was Emily’s baby a little boy or a little girl? Would she have had Emily’s straight auburn hair and green eyes? I find myself reaching out and touching Jenn’s elbow, to feel the skin, the reality.
“Jenn,” Mrs. Brown calls from upstairs. “Time for sleep.”
Jenn’s bottom lip begins to quiver and Matt wraps her up in a hug and kisses her cheek. “No tears,” he says. “I’ll see you first thing in the morning. You’ll wake me up, right?”
“Right,” she replies, bopping his nose with a finger.
“Good. How would I ever wake up without you?”
“An alarm clock, silly,” she says, rolling her eyes.
“Ohhh. Right. An alarm clock.” He knocks himself in the forehead, and she giggles again.
I smile at them.
“Jenn!” Mrs. Brown yells. “C’mon!”
“Night, Munchkin,” Matt says. His sister jumps off his lap and runs up the stairs.
I clear my throat and will my tears to dry up. Matt weaves his fingers with mine and we watch TV together, and I want nothing more than to be here with him in the now, but I can’t stop thinking. If I hadn’t agreed to take Emily to the clinic, she would’ve found another way there. If I had done that, would I feel so guilty now? Would I feel guilty just because I know what happened? Maybe if I hadn’t gone, Emily would’ve realized I didn’t support her whatsoever and would’ve come home and decided to keep the baby. Maybe by being there, I somehow validated her decision. Or maybe Emily would have felt abandoned and refused to talk to me after the abortion and sunk into depression and who knows what.
And now my own father questions the existence of God? I don’t know what to make of that.
I touch my cheek and focus on my lap.
“What’s up?” Matt whispers, taking in my face.
I lean my head against his shoulder. I can’t tell him what I’ve done. What kind of person I really am. “I’m just a bit down, is all.”
He squeezes my hand and kisses my hair. “Anything I can do?”
“Nah.” Just be with me, I want to say. But I’m not ready to let on how much he means to me yet.
“What did you mean that day at camp?” I ask. “When you told me I saved you?”
He leans his head back against the sofa and pulls me against his chest. “Mom was pregnant with Jenn when I met you. And Jeremiah was ten and wouldn’t stop trying to set things on fire, and Leigh was seventeen and wouldn’t stop asking Mom and Dad for a new car…Lacey was five and threw temper tantrums that would scare the devil…Dad worked all the time, teaching drivers’ ed on weekends to earn us extra money. Mom was busy with church and my brother and sisters, and I wanted to make things easy for her, so I kept my head down.”
“You were lonely?”
“Really lonely. And I didn’t get along with anybody at school really. I wasn’t very popular and no one cared about my music. No one read books as much as I did.”