Look Closely - Laura Caldwell [49]
I picked up my purse and followed him out the door.
We walked without speaking down Matt’s street, around a park, and along another street. I was acutely aware of Matt at my side, aware that he was family to me. Matt walked with his hands in his pockets, his head hung low as if it was an effort to keep it on his shoulders. I could almost feel how exhausted he was.
The rain had stopped but the air felt heavy with moisture. And I sensed something else, too, a feeling I’d had before, one that was growing familiar. I looked around and saw a black car as it turned a corner. A midsize sedan, an Alamo rental sticker on the bumper; a gray strap flapped from the trunk as if it had been closed too fast and had caught the handle of a bag. There were probably a million black rental cars cruising around Portland right now, yet I remembered that one in particular because of the Alamo sticker and the gray strap. The car had been in front of me for a few blocks on the way to Matt’s house, before it turned off. And I remembered seeing a black car behind me a minute or two later, but then I had begun to look for Matt’s address, and I forgot about it.
I shook my head. I was being paranoid.
I was about to make conversation with Matt, but as I began searching for a neutral topic, we reached the restaurant. It was a large, yellow stucco building, with arched windows and doorways. There were stone reliefs of carved cherubs in the corners. We walked up the steps, and Matt swung open the heavy wood door and held it for me. I was about to step inside, when I saw it again. The black car. It was parked a half block away. Glare on the windshield prevented me from seeing inside, so I stayed where I was, waiting for the car to move. But the car sat there, so that the sedan and I seemed in some type of standoff.
“Hailey?” I heard Matt say. “Ready?”
I felt foolish suddenly. “Sure, sure.” With one last look at the still car, I walked through the door.
Inside the old schoolhouse, all the rooms were still intact, so that what had once been the classrooms and offices were now bars, dining rooms and hotel rooms.
I remarked about how great the restaurant was, but Matt barely managed a smile in return. He led me down the old wood hallway to a courtyard that held a large fireplace pit in the center.
Once we were seated, Matt pushed the menu away. “The Caesar is excellent if you like salads, and the burgers are my favorite.”
“Sounds good,” I said. I ordered a chicken Caesar, while Matt asked for a turkey sandwich. “No burger for you?”
“I normally would, but…” He scratched his jaw. “I guess I don’t want to enjoy myself.”
I nodded. “I was wondering, if it isn’t too painful, if could you tell me what Caroline was like. I mean, is like.” I wanted to shoot myself for using the past tense.
Matt made a short exhale, almost like a laugh. “How do I describe Caroline? It’s so hard to come up with the words. What was she like when you were a kid?”
“Beautiful, quiet, sad, or at least I always thought she was sad.”
Matt nodded. “Caroline does carry around a certain amount of melancholy. One of the reasons she moved here was for the rain. Most people just put up with it, but she said it’s comforting to her, and that it’s the sunny skies that depress her. My friends were surprised when we started dating because she wasn’t the outgoing party type I usually brought around, but they came to love her, too.”
“How did you meet?”
“We met in Astoria. It’s a small town on the Oregon coast. My hometown, actually. Caroline was taking a weekend trip there.”
“By herself?”
“Yeah.”
I knew he was going to say that. I was struck by the first similarity, other than physical, between my sister and me—loneliness had been a companion to us both.
“I met her in a diner there,” Matt said. “We started talking, and we were there for four hours. I knew by the end of that day that I was in love with her.”
Our food was delivered,