CHAPTER 2 MATT

2

Matt

Earlier

BEING SUNDAY MORNING, SHORTLY after the last of the crisp night fog burnt away, Hollows Bend, New Hampshire, had a buzz to it. Streets deserted twenty minutes earlier were now bustling with vehicles. Most were tourists heading home after a weekend in the mountains or behind the business end of some expensive camera taking photographs of the New England leaves—leaves that by the second week of October were well on their way to deep shades of red and gold and thick enough on the grass of the commons to blot out the green.

The Stairway Diner on Main was the final stop for those tourists. It was also the starting point for many of the Bend's locals, who enjoyed watching them depart, and by ten there wasn't an empty chair in the place.

Deputy Matt Maro sat on his favorite stool at the far end of the counter, his back against the wall, watching Gabby Sanchez zip from table to table in comfortable shoes. With steaming breakfast plates balanced precariously down the length of her slender arm, she moved with this practiced elegance, twisting and bending like a dancer. Even when a customer complained, the smile never left her face. Matt envied her that she never let her anger slip. It was just one of the many reasons he'd fallen for her.

Gabby caught him watching, gave him a quick wink, twisted with a flirty cock of her hip, and turned to the corner booth holding the sizable Lockwood family, all eight of them, paying extra attention to Libby Lockwood, who recently turned four and insisted on placing her own order.

A grunt came from Matt's left, followed by a phlegm-filled cough, and Matt swiveled back around on his stool. The man slouched on the stool beside him would have passed for dead if not for the way he was shoveling in his eggs.

Roy Buxton (Buck to everyone but bill collectors and the nuns back at Saint Mary's) might have weighed 140 on a good day, and for Buck, today was far from one of those. His hair was greased back and smelled like a wet cellar. The filth on his skin and clothing was thick enough to flake off, if not for the layer of sweat holding it in place.

To the amusement of several out-of-towners, Matt had found him last night on Main Street at a little after eleven, bottle of Jack in one hand, shoes in the other, shuffling along barefoot two sheets deep into an argument with himself that might have been about politics or might have been about Game of Thrones . Matt'd walked Buck back to the small sheriff's office and set him up in the single cell with a blanket, a pillow, and two bottles of water. It was not his first time in that bunk, and Matt was certain it wouldn't be his last. That particular dance had become ritual, as had breakfast on the county at the Stairway the morning after.

"Pass the ketchup?" Buck held his hand out but didn't look Matt in the eye. He rarely did.

Matt slid the bottle toward him.

Buck worked the cap and held the bottle wobbly over his plate, dribbling his eggs, home fries, even the bacon. When he set the bottle off the edge of the counter—Matt snagged it mid-drop and replaced it safely. "When was the last time you saw a doctor, Buck? Got yourself checked out?"

He dug back into the eggs. "How 'bout we postpone the banter for another thirty? Bacon and lecture don't mix well, tends to give me gas."

"I'm just worried about you."

Buck leaned to his left, lifted his leg off the stool, and let out a fart loud enough to turn several of the closest heads. "You brought that upon yourself, Deputy."

Two stools over, Mr. Wheeler from the deli was staring at them both, his face twisted in a grimace. Matt paused a beat before saying, "You don't let up on the drinking, and your body's gonna give up on you."

"Ain't nothing givin' up. I'm fine." Even as Buck said this, sweat trickled down from his brow, streaking the dirt with salty lines.

"You don't look fine."

Buck stabbed at a potato wedge, missed, and tried again. "I slipped up last night, is all. Won't happen again." He managed to impale a slice and carefully maneuvered it to his mouth. "Didn't mean to burden you with my shortcomings, Deputy."

Matt took a sip of his coffee. They'd had variations of this conversation more times than he could count. Sheriff Ellie Pritchet had taken her share of failed runs at getting Buck some help, and her father before her when he'd been sheriff. The best they could all come up with was to put Buck on the town's payroll doing odd jobs. Try to keep him busy. The truth was, Buck had been putting away his share of drink for the entirety of Matt's twenty-nine years on the planet, and then some, but that didn't mean Matt couldn't try to get Buck to stay sober. "Tell you what. I'm barbecuing tonight at Gabby's place. Burgers, hot dogs, couple of nice sirloins she handpicked down at McKinnon's. Why don't I pick you up, drop you off after? Get another meal into you, maybe watch some football. Between Gabby and her daughter, Riley, I'm outnumbered over there. The place could use a little more testosterone."

Buck choked deep in his throat and took a drink of water. "I don't think your girlfriend wants the likes of me in her home. You best run that by Gabby."

"Run what by Gabby?"

Gabby had slipped back behind the counter. She was scooping grounds into the large coffee maker with one hand while filling a glass with Coke from the soda fountain with the other.

"I invited Buck here over for dinner tonight."

A lock of brown hair broke free from her ponytail and fell over Gabby's right eye. She blew it to the side and grinned at the old man. "Absolutely! We'd love to have you."

"You're awfully kind, the two of you." Buck ate a strip of bacon, then wiped the corners of his mouth with the back of his hand. "Excuse me a minute? I need to use the head."

He eased off the stool, took a moment to steady his legs, then hobbled off. Matt watched as he walked right past the restroom and pushed through the kitchen door at the end of the hallway.

Gabby watched him, too. "He's not coming back, is he?"

Matt shook his head. "He'll sneak out the kitchen and up the mountain, head for home."

Gabby frowned. "I don't get it. He must be so lonely."

Matt picked up his fork and started on his own breakfast. He'd let it go cold. "I guess some people prefer their own company."

"He always seems so, I don't know, sad." Gabby lowered her voice and nodded at a booth on the far side of the diner. "Henry Wilburt told his wife if Buck's trying to drink himself to the grave, he's doing a piss-poor job of it. Then she said someone should give him a gun and tell him to stop pussyfooting around."

Matt fought the urge to twist around on the stool for a look. Henry Wilburt's wife ran the bake sale at the elementary school, knitted winter scarves for the homeless, and volunteered two days a week at library story time. "Corine Wilburt said that ?"

Gabby nodded. "Don't let the gray hair fool you. That woman is malvada."

Matt considered that. "Evil?"

Gabby beamed. "You've been practicing!"

He held up his thumb and index finger. "Un poquito."

Addie Gallagher had come in while they were talking and managed to sidle up next to Matt and drop her purse on Buck's empty stool. "Practicing what?"

At the sound of her voice, Matt twisted a little too fast—coffee spilled over the side of his mug and dripped down his shirt.

"I'm so sorry! I didn't mean to startle you! Let me get that—"

Addie tugged a paper napkin from the dispenser, moistened it in Matt's water glass, and blotted at the growing stain on his uniform. "You've got to get it while it's wet, or it will never come out." She looked over at Gabby. "Do you have any white vinegar?"

Her hand drifted to Matt's shoulder and gave him a gentle squeeze.

Oh boy , Matt thought. Here we go. He really didn't want to start the day with some kind of territorial pissing contest.

Back in high school, Addie had been the girl Matt called twenty minutes after dropping his real date off at home. Friends with benefits. Fuck buddies. Nothing more than an alcohol-fueled grab-and-go. When she started getting a little too clingy, he'd put an end to it. And when he found himself dialing her again after partying a little too much, he'd put an end to that, too. They'd completely lost touch when he went off to UNH and she went off to wherever. He hadn't given her a second thought until she reappeared in Hollows Bend last summer, hoping to rekindle things. Matt had made it clear he was with Gabby and those days were in the past. Addie's return had been the fuel behind his first real fight with Gabby and the spark behind the others that followed. Matt didn't keep secrets from Gabby, but maybe that had been a mistake, because sometimes not knowing was better than knowing. Her relationship with her last boyfriend ended when she caught him cheating, and once that taste found its way into someone's mouth, it didn't wash out.

Although the smile was still on Gabby's face, there was no hiding the vein pulsing on the left side of her temple like the thin wisp of steam that signaled a tea kettle whistling.

Matt shrugged out from under Addie's hand. "It's fine. I've got a spare at the station."

Abbie grinned at Gabby. "It's funny, I was gone for so long, but everyone here has just welcomed me back, arms wide open. Feels like I never left, the way we're all picking right back up." Her grin shifted to Matt and widened. "Good seeing you again. Real good."

She retrieved her purse and wandered back through the dining room, her black bra fully visible through a sheer blouse worn over tight jeans. While Matt pretended not to look, Gabby glared at the other woman. "Pregnant women should not dress like that."

It had been about a month since Addie dropped that particular bombshell. She was about twelve weeks along, and she'd yet to tell anyone who the father was. In a town as small as the Bend, it was a hot topic. Addie and Matt's past wasn't exactly a secret.

Matt took out his wallet and set a twenty on the counter. "I best be getting back to the station. Ellie is out on patrol, and Sally's holding down the fort."

Gabby didn't answer. She was still looking out over the dining room, her flushed face gone white as a sheet. The voices behind Matt died away, the clink of silverware on plates vanished. There were several gasps, then silence.

One hand instinctively easing to his gun, Matt turned slowly on the stool and faced the front of the diner.

Standing in the open door, the sun bright at her back, was a girl of maybe sixteen. She wore not a stitch of clothing. Her long dark hair draped over her shoulder, partially covering her right breast. Her bare feet were caked in mud.