Chapter Thirty-Six

 

His mother always told him everything had a nature and truth had the nature of rising. When Matt resurfaced, lake water dripping from his hair, the night had grown woundingly cold with a breeze whistling down the cliffs. A transcendence took place inside him, so light he could not imagine what to call it. He was alive and uninjured and something had changed. The boy he was when he left his mother’s house was not the boy he was now. He didn’t feel like a boy at all anymore. Rumi said, There is a voice that doesn’t use words. Listen.

He sucked in breaths, closed his eyes for a moment against the feelings overpowering him, the unexpected joy. He had given up all hope of redemption, and yet there it was—sparkling on the star-strewn lake, the same lake that had taken Justin had spared Matt. And Matt listened to the voice that didn’t use words. He knew he must tell the truth, free his father, even if it meant his mother would go to jail.

He was drenched and shivering, but more hopeful than he’d been in years. He’d seen Justin. It didn’t matter that no one would believe him. Justin, still twelve years old with his shock of dark hair and his bright eyes had met Matt’s gaze, levelly and fiercely, and told him to go back. And in that moment, as his feet grazed the same rocks that had held tight to Justin, Matt saw himself in perfect focus—saw that he was forgiven.

He swam over to the speedboat and hoisted himself into it.

By the time he got back to the marina an hour later, his fingers and toes were numb from the cold. He felt as if icicles were dangling from his hair. He slipped into his shoes and socks, the only dry clothing he still had, tied up the boat, filled it with gas and hurried inside, just before closing.

At the marina store, he retrieved his credit card, paid for the boat rental and gas, then charged new clothes. A pair of khaki pants, pleated in the front like Dockers, a red shirt, a yellow jacket with Lake Powell embroidered over the breast pocket. He changed in the fitting room, his hands tingling and red. He dropped his still-damp clothes, black and smelling of lake water, into the trashcan on his way out.

* * *

Nine hours later, after stopping for a nap just outside of Lake Montezuma, Matt took the steps to his mom’s back porch two at a time. Through the window, he saw his stepfather sitting at the kitchen table, a stack of standardized aptitude tests in front of him. He seemed lost in thought.

Matt rapped on the back door.

A smile blew wide across Nate’s face as he leapt up from the table and answered. “You’re up early.”

Matt paused, tried to regulate his shaky breathing. “It’s really important. Are Mom and Sedona still sleeping?”

Nate nodded.

Matt’s stomach tightened with the faint beginnings of fear. He had to get the words out before he lost his nerve. “My father’s been arrested for Crystal’s murder. And I have to tell someone the whole truth,” he said, his breath coming way too fast.

Nate grabbed Matt’s arm and pulled him into the kitchen. It smelled like last night’s spaghetti sauce and freshly-brewed coffee.

Without letting go, Nate led him through to the living room. “You need to sit down,” he said as he gently lowered Matt onto one of the loveseats. “Deep breaths. Let them out slowly.”

Nate left the room for a moment, then returned with a glass of water and handed it to Matt. “Drink,” Nate said and sat on the facing loveseat.

Matt drank.

“I read the article in tonight’s paper,” Nate said. “But it made no mention of having your father or anyone else in custody.”

Matt set the glass on the coffee table. “The police found a pair of bloody scissors I’d hidden in a Saguaro behind our house.” He explained how he’d found them beneath the driver’s seat in the Lincoln and had wanted to protect his father.

“Oh, Matt. That’s not good.”

“He didn’t do it,” Matt said.

“I know how much you love your father, but how can you be so sure?”

Matt told his stepfather about the taillights he’d seen leaving Crystal’s house, the way they matched his mother’s Prelude.

Nate smiled sadly. “Oh, Matt. Your mother was looking for you. She told me she couldn’t go to Aruba with so much turmoil between you. I drove her out to Catalina around 10:30. When she saw your car in the carport, she figured you were spending the night with Travis. She must have forgotten about his dance. Once she knew you were okay, we drove back to the Hacienda del Sol.”

Matt’s tears rose. His mother had already known he’d been at Crystal’s house. No wonder she’d questioned him about the bloody shirt.

“Someone is trying to frame my dad.” He gawked at his hands, still wrapped around the water glass, while the facts ricocheted through him one more time. “It’s my fault they arrested him. If I’d just told…” Matt’s throat tightened. After all the nice things Nate had said about him when he’d offered tuition money for Iowa, Matt wasn’t sure he had the courage to tell him about his drunken sex with Crystal. “Jennifer said the students at Marana really trust you and that you keep their confidences like a priest.”

Nate gave him a closed-mouth smile. “I try. I know you don’t like me very much. But you can trust me.”

Matt shifted in his seat. “It’s not that I don’t like you,” he said, realizing it was true. “But, please, I need you to promise you won’t tell Mom or Sedona.”

“Listen to me. This is a murder investigation. What I will promise is we’ll work together to figure out what needs to be said to others.”

“I didn’t tell the police the truth about the night Crystal died.” Blood rushed to Matt’s head, an ocean between his ears. He told Nate he’d driven out to Catalina, and Crystal had invited him inside. “We drank a lot of beer.”

Nate listened intently, watching Matt without a flinch of judgment. He said nothing until Matt finished. Then Nate stared at him, his head cocked slightly. “Why was it your fault? Did you have an argument with Crystal? Were you angry over her affair with your father?”

He told Nate the truth—he was mostly sad about Danni and angry with himself for the way he’d behaved at the wedding, how he hadn’t yet known about his dad and Crystal.

Nate studied him for a moment in which Matt felt naked, like his stepfather could see right through his clothes and into his core. “Is there something else you’re not telling me?”

Matt saw the opening. It was like being lost in the darkest part of a cave and seeing a flash of light that gave him hope for a way out.

“You can trust me, Matt. I’ll help you if I can. I know you’re scared. Anyone would be.” Nate’s tone was soft, almost sad.

“Why would you want to help me when I’ve been nothing but a jerk to you?”

Nate smiled. “Sometimes we have to bend the bitterness to get ourselves straight again.”

“I lied to the police. I lied to everyone.” Matt kept looking at Nate, trying to see inside him, trying to determine if he really could trust this man his mom had married, this man he’d once thought of as his enemy. “Crystal lit some candles and we started dancing. I didn’t mean for it to happen.”

“For what to happen?”

“I didn’t mean for us to do it. To have sex.”

When Nate continued to look sympathetic, Matt’s tears fell for the first time since Crystal died. He didn’t deserve understanding or anything else from this man.

Nate reached across the coffee table and covered Matt’s hand. “You may have used poor judgment, but it’s not the worst thing that’s ever happened.” He stood, found a box of tissues on the end table and handed them to Matt.

“She’s dead,” Matt said. “And now my father is in jail.”

He blew his nose, then told Nate about Crystal’s anger when he’d mentioned telling Travis, about her wanting him to sleep off the beer. How he’d awakened because he heard a car out front. “At first, I was afraid Travis had come home. I checked the clock. It said 10:38pm.”

“That would have been your mother and me.”

“I fell back to sleep and when I woke up the second time, I heard the front door open and close, then a car door slam.” He explained how he’d run to the window to make sure it wasn’t Travis, then into the bathroom to throw up and that’s when he saw Crystal in the tub. He told Nate the reasons why he didn’t call 911.

“Did you see the second car? Did you recognize it?”

“No. But it couldn’t have been a Lincoln. The taillights were round, not the four stacked rectangular lights on Dad’s car. And it turned north on Oracle. My dad would have headed south to go home. He was there at 9:30 when you dropped off Sedona. And I don’t think he would have left her alone.”

Nate’s face changed and in it, Matt saw a little fear. “Why did you clean everything up?”

“I was scared. I didn’t want Travis to know I’d been there. I wanted to drive home, but I had to stop Travis. I couldn’t let him see—”

“I can understand that,” Nate said. “I might have done the same thing if it were my friend.”

“I don’t know what to do now.”

“Come with me.” Nate led him back into the kitchen, then handed him a yellow lined tablet and a pen. He pulled out a chair at the oak table. “Write down exactly what happened, just like you were writing a school essay. I play racket ball at the club with a criminal defense lawyer. I’ll call him, ask him to come by and look over what you’ve written.”

Nate grabbed the phonebook from the kitchen drawer and thumbed through it. “After that, we’ll call Detective Radhauser and set up an appointment.”

Matt knew his stepfather was right. Sometimes you get a glimpse of something and then you realize you’ve known it all along. There was no other way—he had to tell Radhauser the whole truth. Every single bit of it.

While Nate called his lawyer friend, Matt wrote out everything he could remember about that night.

An hour later, Nate’s friend read it over. “I’d be happy to go with you to see Detective Radhauser,” he said to Matt. “It would be best if you had an attorney present.”

“I don’t want to do that.” Matt feared it would make him look guiltier than he already was.

“Are you sure?” Nate asked. “It’s for your own protection.”

“I’m positive.”

Nate looked at his friend and shrugged. “He’s eighteen. It’s his decision.”

Ten minutes later, with his stepfather’s hand firmly planted on his shoulder, he phoned Radhauser.

“You’re doing the right thing,” Nate said. “Our best defense is the truth.”