Chapter 38 Nate
NATE
Light crept across the ceiling in pale, gray strips. Early. So early that birds hadn’t started singing yet, and the world was still making up its mind about whether to bother with the day.
Maya was curled into my side, her head on my chest, one hand resting over my heart. She’d fallen asleep keeping watch.
Yesterday was still there. The weight of it, the shape of it, lodged behind my ribs like a stone I’d swallowed. But the sharp edges had dulled overnight, worn smooth by hours of dreamless dark and the steady rhythm of Maya’s heart against mine.
I’d driven for hours. Through town, past it, out along the back roads where the streetlights gave way to dark and the only thing ahead was asphalt and pine trees.
No destination. No plan. Just the engine and the road and the dull roar in my head.
I’d looped back twice without meaning to, ended up on streets I recognized, and kept going.
Around and around until the fuel light blinked on and my hands ached from gripping the wheel.
And then I’d gone to her. Because that’s where the loop ended now. Every road, every turn, every aimless mile, and I still ended up at her door.
She’d opened it before I’d even gotten out of the truck. Taken my hand. Led me down the hallway without a single question. Undressed me. Put me to bed. Climbed in beside me and held on, and that was it. That was all she did. All she needed to do.
My throat tightened.
I pressed my lips to her forehead in a lingering kiss. She made a soft sound, her fingers curling against my chest, but her breathing stayed even.
The restlessness was already building. A low hum in my muscles, a pull toward motion.
I carefully eased out from under her, shifting her head to the pillow and sliding my arm free one inch at a time. She stirred, murmured something, and burrowed into the warm spot I’d left behind.
I stood near the bed for a moment. Her hair fanned across the pillow, one shoulder bare above the duvet, her face soft and unguarded in sleep. Achingly beautiful.
Then I pulled on my clothes and left.
Sunday morning, barely past six, and the town was still asleep. I drove with the window down, the air cool and damp against my face, and let my mind run the logistics the way it always did when everything else was too much to process.
The Brookes house was quiet when I pulled into the driveway. I let myself in, stopping short when I got to the living room. John stood in the kitchen, making coffee.
He glanced over his shoulder at me. “Morning, son.”
“Uh, good morning.”
“Heard you pull up. Figured you might want a coffee.” He filled two mugs and slid one across the counter toward me.
“Oh. Okay. Sure, thanks.”
“Come sit out back with me.”
The back deck looked out over the river.
The water was still and gray in the early light, fingers of mist curling low across the surface, drifting apart and reforming in slow, silent patterns.
The trees on the far bank were dark shapes against a pale sky, and the only sound was the faint lap of water against the bank and the occasional bird testing out the morning.
John settled into one of the weathered chairs and took a long sip of his coffee. I sat beside him, elbows on my knees, and stared at the river.
Setting his cup on the arm of the chair, John said, “You know, when you were about seven or eight, you came over for Dan’s birthday sleepover. You remember that?”
I didn’t. Not specifically. There’d been a lot of sleepovers at the Brookes house. This place had been my escape hatch for most of my childhood. “No, sir.”
“For the love of god, would you please call me John.”
That almost made me smile. “No, John.”
“Must have been ten, twelve boys. Nancy made a chocolate cake the size of a car tire and you all ate yourselves sick on it. Running around the yard till well past dark, screaming blue murder. The usual chaos.” A faint smile crossed his face.
“Took hours to get you all settled. Sleeping bags everywhere, the living room floor covered with boys. You all crashed eventually. Dead to the world.”
He paused. The smile faded.
“I got up around two in the morning. Something woke me. A sound, I think, or maybe just a feeling. You know how it is when you’ve got a house full of kids. You sleep with one ear open.”
The river moved in its slow, murky current. I sat very still.
“I came down the hallway and there you were.” John’s voice was quiet. Matter-of-fact. “Standing in the living room, facing the wall. Right up close to it, your nose almost touching. Eyes closed. Hands by your sides.” He paused. “Crying.”
The air left my lungs.
“You were asleep. Sleepwalking. The other boys were all out cold in their sleeping bags and you were just... standing there. This tiny little kid in his pajamas, crying at the wall in the middle of the night in someone else’s house.”
John ran his thumb along the rim of his mug. He stared at the dark liquid for a second, lost in the memory, before looking back up.
“And I knew, Nate. I knew exactly what I was looking at.”
My jaw ached from clenching. The tree line on the far bank blurred, and I blinked it back into focus.
“I woke you up. Gently. Took some doing. You came around and you didn’t know where you were, and you were scared, and I just..
.” He let out a long exhale. “I picked you up and carried you back to your sleeping bag. Sat with you until you fell asleep again. Took about ten minutes. You curled up on your side and you were gone.”
The silence stretched between us. A bird called from somewhere across the river. Then another.
“Nancy and I talked about it the next morning. And we talked about it a lot after that.” His voice was steady, but there was a weight underneath it.
The kind that came from carrying something for a very long time.
“We always knew, son. What was going on in that house. We could see it. The way you flinched when a door slammed. How you’d go quiet if someone raised their voice.
You’d always stand up straighter when you heard a car pull into the driveway, like you were bracing for inspection. ”
I kept my gaze locked on the trees across the water. My eyes were burning and my throat had closed over. If I opened my mouth, I was going to fall apart.
“We couldn’t fix it, no matter how much we wanted to. Nancy wanted to march over there more times than I can count, and I had to talk her down because we didn’t have proof, and the system...” He shook his head. “We couldn’t fix it. But we saw you, Nate. We always saw you.”
He let that sit. Gave it room to land the way a man who understood silence would.
“And now I look at you.” John turned his head, finally looking directly at me.
“Thirty-two years old. Kind. Steady. Honest as the day is long. And I think about that little boy standing at the wall in his sleep, and I think about everything that was stacked against him, and I just...” His voice caught.
Just barely. A hairline crack in all that steadiness.
“Nancy and I are so proud of you, son. So proud of the man you turned out to be.”
Everything in my chest pulled tight, straining against a stubborn, heavy knot. I dropped my head.
John’s hand settled on my back.
Elbows on my knees, a few slow breaths through my nose.
When I could trust my voice, I straightened up.
“Thank you, John.” I looked at the river. “That means a lot to me.”
He gave my back a pat and picked up his coffee.
We sat there a while longer as the mist thinned under the climbing sun. The silence was different now. Lighter.
Behind us, the sliding door opened. Nancy stepped out in her dressing gown, hair still mussed from sleep, and crossed the deck without a word. She pressed a kiss to the top of my head and rubbed my shoulder, her hand lingering there for a moment.
“I’m thinking of making pancakes,” she said. “Are you boys interested?”
“Sounds great, love.”
“Nate?”
“Sure. Thanks. That sounds good.”
John set his mug down and pushed himself out of his chair. “I’ll give you a hand.”
He paused beside me on his way to the door. A quick clap on my shoulder, firm and warm, and then he followed Nancy inside.
I stayed on the deck. That heavy stone behind my ribs was still there. But as I wrapped both hands around my mug and watched the water flow by, it shrunk just a little.