#chapter fifty-four

She quickly crossed the room and started talking.

“I didn’t know it was him. I don’t know his car, and who was expecting him to show up, right? I turned around and there he was. He looked pretty glad to see me, too. I think. I was like, what are you doing way out here? And he actually said that he was looking for me.”

“He did?” Mattie grinned with genuine amazement.

“He said he’d gone away after we’d met, and he lost my number in his travels and he was hoping I would have called and left a message or a number or something.”

“But you didn’t,” Mattie said. “’Cause you’re a chicken. I told you, Amber...”

“I know. I know. I felt really bad, I should have called him. I know.”

“So he tracked you down,” Mattie said, getting her back to her narrative.

“Yeah, he remembered I said I worked out at the store near the Red Pine Campground. So he decided to go for a drive and see if he could find it. And he did! And I was there!”

“Kismet?” Mattie asked. “Sounds like all the stars aligned for you today. So? Are you going out?”

“Yes. Eeeee, yes! We’re going to the dinner theatre; apparently it’s a farce being staged this week. Xav, he’s really funny. He seems pretty smart, too.”

“He reads a lot, that we know. What else?” Mattie turned and followed the counter to the stove, where the kettle was getting ready to whistle.

“Can I do it?” Amber asked, almost blocking him from the stove. She never relaxed when Mattie had to pour boiling water. She didn’t miss a beat, though. “He likes architecture and the stars and planets and crosswords and road trips and old buildings. He has a brother in Montréal, a sister who lives here, and a sister in Calgary. He’s about your height, he has kind of auburn hair and a bit of a beard. Do you know what I mean by hipster? He looks kinda hipstery. But he’s genuine, he’s not pretentious. He likes movies. But don’t worry, he doesn’t make them.”

Mattie laughed. “And I am presuming he has a job?”

“He works in the research department at the newspaper,” Amber said.

Mattie was impressed. That sounded interesting.

“He took journalism at university,” Amber embellished.

Mattie nodded, his mouth set in a show of positive persuasion.

“He’s never had a horse,” she rambled, “because he grew up in the suburbs. He lives in an old stone building on Havers Street in the city, now.”

“Sounds like you know the whole story,” Mattie said, taking the mug his sister was putting into his hand.

“Gah, he’s really cute!” Amber said. “And he has a nice voice. You’ll appreciate that,” she added.

He gave her the look, saying, “Sure, I always appreciate the deep timber of a man’s voice. More importantly, what’s his situation? Ever married? Engaged? And even more important, does he have pets? You can tell a lot about a person from how they treat their pets.”

“I intend to find out all these things and more. We’re going out Friday night. My heart is skipping right now, is that crazy? I’m so excited. How will I wait until Friday?”

“It’s Tuesday,” Mattie said. “It’s not that far.”

“Ohhh,” Amber groaned. “It is! What do people wear to the dinner theatre?”

“You’d probably be safe wearing a ball gown,” Mattie said, straight-faced.

“Well, it’s probably not jeans, right? I mean, I guess a nice little dress or a pantsuit. No, you’re right, a dress is better.”

Mattie shook his head. “I didn’t actually say anything. But I would agree with myself if I had. Wear a dress. Something both elegant and a bit sexy, I’d say. He’s seen you in your natural attire, so you should knock his socks off.”

“Yeah?”

Mattie shrugged. “I don’t know. A guy likes a girl who makes an effort for him, but can also get a little dirty. You balance that, he’ll never find you unattractive.”

“Thanks for the man advise,” Amber said.

“You’re welcome,” he replied. “Well, well, well, so you’re going out with the fair Riley after all. Good for you, Kiddo. I’m happy for you. Cheers.” He raised his mug up to her and sipped his tea.

Friday could not come soon enough for Amber, and yet, it came too soon. She wasn’t sure she was ready.

“I really want to impress him,” she said to Mattie. She’d also said this to her boss, to Barb, to Tom, and to Chloë. “I really like him,” she added, sounding horrified and excited at the same time.

“Look, don’t try too hard. Be yourself. He needs to know you before he can fall in love with you, and you don’t want him falling in love with someone that you aren’t. You’ll spend the rest of your life either having to continue to be someone else, or you won’t like who you are.”

“I know,” she sighed. “But I feel like he won’t like the real me.”

“You’re selling yourself short, A. You are a good catch. You’re smart, you’re independent, you’re funny, you’re caring, you’re adventurous, and you have an awesome brother. You can’t go wrong.”

Amber had a brief memory of her most recent and short-lived relationship. The awesome brother was the breaking straw in that instance, though Amber had never told that to anyone. She hated that anyone would think of Mattie as a burden.

Mattie didn’t plan on waiting up. He had no idea if she was coming home, or whether she’d be early or late. And yet, he didn’t go up to bed. He dozed a bit listening to sit-coms on television, and when the familiar tone of Amber’s text message sounded, it nudged his senses awake. He reached for his phone, swiping it and tapping it three times.

“Text message from Amber: I’m home. It was beautiful. He’s a gentleman. He walked me to my door and then he kissed me! EEEEEE!”

Mattie chuckled. He touched the button to record to text. “I’m still up—full stop—You can come over if you want—full stop.” He sent the message and waited.

“Text message from Amber: Coming.”

Mattie smiled, shaking his head, and went out to put on the kettle.

Amber was floating on a cloud after seeing Riley. Mattie endured hearing about the many things she liked about him, and what they had in common, repeatedly. He heard about Riley when he and Amber went through the herb garden. He heard about Riley when they walked up behind the property one evening. He heard about the funny things Riley had said when Mattie went over to her house to borrow a colander because he couldn’t find his own. When she came over two days later to locate his for him, he heard about the way Riley had put his jacket around her shoulders when they went out to the pier the evening before to watch boats come and go. If he had to sum it up, he would say that Amber was in deep.

Mattie didn’t meet Riley for a few weeks into the relationship, which was fine with him. The less he was involved the better, in his viewpoint, until Amber made up her own mind. So far, her schoolgirl crush had, for want of a better term, he thought, blinded her to any faults Riley might have. So he listened and smiled and cooed when appropriate. He cajoled her and consoled her. Above all, he was happy for her. She deserved to have some happiness come her way.

With Amber dropping any plan in case Riley might plan something, and Peter still away, Mattie spent a lot of his time by himself. His cats kept him company, always coming to curl up with him for affection when he appeared comfortable to one or the other of them. He wanted to make good use of his time alone, but there was only so much sitting and typing or listening to voices emanating from speakers that a man could endure. He wanted to be outside.

Jonah was not surprised to hear from Mattie, and agreed to Mattie’s request. He came over one day to have a look at the henhouse, and spent the early part of the afternoon helping Mattie clean it and repair it, laying new chicken wire along the ground of the outer pen so foxes couldn’t get in. He brought three bales of hay, and later on in the week, he arrived with Lilla.

Mattie headed out to meet them, grabbing his cane on the way but not unfolding it.

“Mattie!” shouted Lilla.

“Hey, Kiddo, I haven’t seen you for a while, where’ve you been?”

“Ha ha, Mattie, you’ve never seen me ever, so there! I was at riding camp, remember?”

“Oh, yeah, Sweetie, I totally forgot! How was it?” He made a face at her first remark, pretending to be hurt. She barely noticed, too excited to tell Mattie about her time with real horses.

Mattie and Jonah listened to the little girl gush over her week away at riding camp. Her parents had figured either it would teach her enough about riding and horses that she could look after her own one day, or it would burn the notion out completely. It obviously had proven the former.

When she was mostly finished with her tale, she asked Mattie how his summer was going.

“Well, the reason I completely forgot about you going away to camp is because I was in Peter and Chloë’s wedding.”

“Ohhhh,” said the little girl. “Did you get a picture of her dress?”

Mattie laughed and shook his head. “Noooo,” he said, pretending dismay. “I don’t need pictures, I can remember it in here,” he told her, tapping his eyebrow.

“How, if you didn’t see it?”

Mattie smiled at her. “You didn’t know? I don’t have to know what everything looks like to have a picture of it in my head.”

He thought back to a conversation he’d had with his mother on a bad day about a year after his accident.

“Seeing is easy,” he’d said with sadness. “It’s so easy. You go into a room and you know everything that’s there. You know there are books and where the furniture is and what is on the wall and what colour the rug is and where the rug starts and where the television is... and the only way I know is to have someone tell me everything that is there. Or walk around and touch everything. And then I still don’t know everything that you see right away. Seeing is easy.”

His mother had reached her hand out and placed it gently on her son’s shoulder. “So make it easy.”

His body moved before he thought, and he raised his gaze to her in confusion. She saw his surprise and moved closer to him, looking him in the eyes as she used to do.

“You can imagine that room any way you like. Unless you need to know everything about it, and will be moving around in it a lot on your own, you really don’t need the details. You could make a meeting room a chamber in a palace if you wanted to. You could have cherry blossom petals snowing down outside the windows. You could imagine a dog being loved by a little boy in a hat on the other side of the room. You could imagine someone’s home to be however their personality was, and probably come closer in your head than any decorator. You could imagine anything you want, Honey.”

Mattie’s face brightened slightly under the gloom that had settled so heavily there.

“Anytime you feel you’ve lost something important, my darling, replace it with something you never noticed before that is important and beautiful to you now. I don’t want you mourning losses, Mattie. You have gained the chance to imagine freely whatever you like to be in your surroundings.”

“As long as I don’t imagine out things like benches and stairs,” Mattie had said, but he’d felt better. His mother was one of the most positive people he knew, and he wanted to emulate that way of being. Everyone always felt better after spending time with Marion MacTavish.

“That’s what the cane’s for,” his mother had lightly teased him, ruffling her fingers in his hair. “Reality. You don’t want to be doing too much imagining when the reality of a bench is in front of you.”

Mattie smiled at Lilla now, making a bit of a face. “I’m pretty sure Amber got lots of pictures, I’ll let her know you want to see them, okay?”

Once that was settled, Lilla guided Mattie to the back of the truck, where Jonah was pulling out a cardboard box from the bed.

“Can I show them?” Lilla asked her father, trying to hold the box.

“Here, over here, we’ll put them down so he can look at them,” Jonah said, not letting go of the load. “There are four of them, Matt. And I have a big bag of feed.” He and Lilla lowered the box to the ground and Mattie moved closer, crouching down as he heard them doing. He put his hand out and touched the box, creeping his fingers into it. An incredible amount of tiny peeping was emanating from within. He encountered a warm wriggly bundle of fluff and he carefully cupped his hand over it, finding another one under his other palm.

Lilla giggled, seeing the smile cross his face. She looked at him and then watched his hands as they gently checked over the little birds.

“They’re all yellow,” she told him. “But they will get brown. Or maybe white and brown.”

“They are sure fuzzy,” Mattie said. He scooped under one of the chicks and cupped it between his hands, raising it to his chest. It peeped twice and settled down into a little ball, and peeped three more times. Mattie tilted it carefully into one hand and with his free hand, he lightly touched the tiny creature, exploring it from its beak to its wings to its sharp feet.

“That one is Sheldon,” Lilla said. “And this one is Toblerone.”

Mattie laughed. “And the other two?”

“They don’t have names,” Lilla told him.

“So how do I tell them apart?” he asked her.

“Oh.” Lilla looked at the chicks. She tried to think of something that would give Mattie an idea of which chick was which, but she came up empty. “I don’t know, Mattie. Maybe one day they’ll learn their names if I call them whenever I am here.”

Mattie smiled. “Deal. You train them for me.”

Amber hadn’t seen Mattie’s improvements to the henhouse, and when he told her the night before Jonah and Lilla arrived that he was getting laying hens, she thought he was absolutely ridiculous. She figured it would give him something to do in the summer, but by fall, he’d be tired of it and have no more time for looking after them. He objected, saying she’d said as much when he’d gotten the kittens. She couldn’t say anything about that. She saw how much love and attention those cats received from him, and not once did they ever trip him, at least that she heard about. She figured he would find out one way or the other, but there was nothing that she could say that would dissuade him, that she knew for certain.

“Let’s help Mattie take them to their house,” said Jonah to his daughter. “We’ll get them settled and show him how to put the hay, shall we?” He knew Mattie had grown up around hens, and knew how to take care of them, but it would be useful to Mattie to have a couple of sets of eyes around while they got everything settled.

“Will they be lonely?” Lilla asked.

“No, they have each other,” her father said. “They’ll cuddle together for warmth. And it’s nice and warm in the nights now, they’ll be fine. A couple of weeks and they won’t be babies anymore anyway. They’ll be fine.”

He checked the chicken wire again, making sure there were no holes or loose spots. He checked the door to the house and they made sure Mattie could open it easily to get to the eggs. The hens would go inside each night and Mattie would open the little door in the morning so they could come out into their yard if they wanted to. When Jonah was sure that everything was secure and Mattie was comfortable with his new little charges, he shepherded Lilla back to the truck with the empty box. She was still calling the hens by their names, waving good bye.

“Give a shout if you need anything,” Jonah said. “Those are healthy little chicks, you shouldn’t have any troubles, but don’t hesitate to call.”

“Thanks,” Mattie replied. He’d given Jonah some money for the chicks when he arranged to have Jonah help him set up, but he felt indebted to his neighbour for all his kindness.

“Hey, uh, Matt? I noticed some of your gingerbread on your gable is loose there in the front. You want me to take care of it before it comes off?”

Mattie looked grateful. “Is it? Oh, that would be really great, if you could.”

“Yeah, I’ll come over Thursday morning, if that works. You have that nice ladder. It won’t take long for me to secure it, and I’ll have a look at the rest of it, make sure it’s tight.”

“You are the best,” Mattie said. Jonah always just looked at it as those things being part of his job, and also being a good neighbour, and Mattie never felt like he was a charity case with Jonah. And Jonah had finally accepted the fact that Mattie paid him a fair sum for anything he did, and stopped arguing that he didn’t want to take Mattie’s money. They’d worked it out, and a good friendship had built underneath it.

“Well, you had the roof done in the last ten years, didn’t you? While I’m up there, I’ll just make sure the shingles are all there and snug.”

Mattie smiled, his face showing how pleased he was. He turned to where Lilla was skipping and singing or talking to herself, he wasn’t quite sure which.

“Your dad is pretty fantastic,” he told her.

“I know,” said Lilla, still skipping or bouncing, her voice giving her motion away. “Daddy, can I come when you fix Mattie’s roof?”

“If you promise to stay on the ground,” Jonah replied. He shook his head at Mattie. “She loves to help me put up Christmas lights on our roof, but our house is only one storey. That’s bad enough.”

“You’re not scared of heights?” Mattie asked Lilla.

“I don’t know,” Lilla said.

Mattie pursed his lips together, nodding as if the idea made sense. “I suppose if you don’t think about it, it’s not scary,” he said.

“Are you scared of heights?” Lilla said.

“Only if I know they’re there,” Mattie said. “If I don’t see it, and don’t know how high up I am, then I guess I can’t get scared, right?”

“Are you going up on the roof with Daddy to fix it?”

Mattie shook his head, a smile on his lips, his face lowered. “No,” he said, raising his eyes again. “I’m going to stay on the ground and hold the ladder for your dad. So he’s safe.”

“Oh,” Lilla said. “That’s cool. I’m glad you will make sure he’s safe. He’s the best daddy ever.”

“I think you’re absolutely right,” Mattie told her. All the evidence he had supported the little girl’s statement.

“Why is it called gingerbread?” Lilla asked, looking up at the trim on the roof.

“Because it looks like a gingerbread house,” Mattie said with a smile. “Don’t you think it makes it look like one?”

“Yes,” Lilla giggled. “It’s fancy. Like your house is dressed up for school pictures.”

Mattie and Jonah both chuckled.

“I like it a lot. I want my house to have gingerbread on it. It kinda looks like lace.” She turned back to Mattie and pulled her lip down. “I losht ny toosh,” she said around her hand, jutting out her jaw.

It took Mattie a second to follow her new topic of conversation, especially through her muffled words, not being able to see what she was showing him.

“Oh, you lost a tooth?” he asked. “Top or bottom?”

“Bottom. I already lost the two top ones and bottom. This one is on the side.”

“Can you whistle?” Mattie asked.

He heard a stream of air blowing out, but no whistle. “Nope,” she said. “But I don’t know how to whistle.”

“You’ll have to learn to whistle before it’s time for you to go to work,” her father teased her. and then whistled the tune from Disney’s Snow White. “Come on, Pup, let’s go finish our chores, we have to take these chimney brushes back to the fire hall.”

“And get an ice cream,” reminded Lilla.

“Right, and get an ice cream. Well, Matt, good luck, and I’ll be by to fix that trim, I’ll see how you’re making out with the chicks.”

Mattie nodded. “Thanks, Jo. Thank you, Lilla!”

“You’re welcome!” called the little girl as her father opened the truck door and she bounced up into the cab.

Mattie smiled and waved as the truck moved toward the road. Then he turned and headed back to the henhouse, which now beckoned him with peeping as he got close to it. The little birds were out in their yard, and Mattie could tell they were moving in a bunch. They would get more independent in time, he knew, and they would explore their surroundings and find a treasure of seeds and ants once they did.

The sounds reminded him of his childhood. He closed his eyes, thinking about his early years, running around the farm with his older siblings. The world had been so big to him then, but he knew now that it was the smallness of his world that had made it so special and so safe. He was glad many times as an adult that he had been lucky enough to grow up in such a rural place. It had given his childhood a strong foothold.

Once more he thought of Danny. He didn’t know if he’d ever meet his brother again, but nothing ever would close him off from the idea. He still loved his older brother. He needed him, and he wouldn’t ever give up the idea that Danny would come home to them.

When Amber saw the chicks, she melted, as her brother knew she would. She didn’t even ask him if she could go inside to cuddle the birds, which were mounded together in the straw in the henhouse. As soon as she had one tucked up under her chin, the others came to life, peeping and tumbling out of the house into the sun. She came back out, cooing over the chick in her hands.

Mattie stood listening on the other side of the chicken wire fence, a smile on his face. Amber looked up at him, and the smile reflected on her own face.

“You think you can totally do this?” she asked him.

He nodded. “Yes,” he said.

“I’m not asking because I don’t think you can. I just want you to be sure.”

His gaze met hers when he answered her, and, as it always did, it made Amber’s heart jump a little. She had a hard time believing he couldn’t see her when he was looking so directly at her.

“I can do it. I can get here, I can get inside, I can count to four hens, and I can find eggs. You can have all the eggs you want. I’ll make sure they are inside at night, and I’ll let them out in the morning. Unless it’s storming.” He knew he didn’t have to ask Amber’s permission, but he wanted her to know he’d thought ahead on this, he’d weighed his pros and cons.

Amber nodded. Mattie had been in charge of the hens when he was a little boy, before he’d been given the responsibility of bigger animals. He’d taken it seriously, as he did any chore given to him that had anything to do with animals. He would never let an animal wait or suffer for his own laziness. Amber knew that trait had never left him. She put the chick down and went to him, putting her hand on his arm.

“Then I guess you know what you’re doing,” she said with a smile. “And thank you, for the eggs, you know.”

He grinned at her as she came back out of the fenced-in yard, and he followed her as she headed to the herb garden to see how much it was filling in.

“I know you have your doubts about things I do sometimes,” he admitted to her. “I get it. But when I feel really positive that I can do something, I need to do it. Because I live with so many doubts all the time. I’ve thought about this chicken thing for two years now, at least. No, it was more, I think, because I remember getting the cats around the time I started thinking about it. I’m just ready now. And I’m happy with my decision. And I won’t give up and make you take over. I promise.”

“Well, if you decide it’s too much, I guess we get a nice supper.”

Mattie scowled, and it was the reaction Amber had hoped for, and she laughed. “I’m kidding, Dumbass,” she said. “I wouldn’t dream of eating Sheldon.” She patted his shoulder. “Though I can’t say the same about Toblerone, yum!”

Mattie tried to keep the scowl on his face for Amber’s benefit. He did his best to glare at her. She giggled and reached over to hug his arm as they walked.

Amber had put off introducing Riley to Mattie. She didn’t think Riley would act the way Trent had when he’d found out Mattie was blind, but she hadn’t expected it from Trent, either. She wanted to know for certain that Riley was a better person than Trent had been. And Mattie was still friends with Craig, which made Amber need Riley to be even more amazing. She decided she’d tell him ahead of time that her brother was disabled, so the confusion that Trent had wasn’t repeated.

She had been on four proper dates, and gone to hang out with him and watch a movie at his place. She met his medium-sized dog, Spencer, who was loveable and well-behaved. She was happy things were going well. Riley was intelligent, funny, mature, and Amber loved that he seemed to always have a smile in his eyes. She was falling for him very quickly, and it terrified her.

She told Riley she wanted to have a birthday party for her brother, and that sealed the deal that Riley would meet him and her other friends there. She felt it was time to give Riley some more of her history, and see how he reacted to it all. She was on the verge of trusting him and she figured how he reacted would give her the answer she needed.

“You and your brother are close,” Riley surmised. He’d heard Amber refer to her brother a lot, and he knew they both lived in homes sharing an old family acreage.

“Yes.”

“You just have the one brother? No sisters?”

“I have two brothers, actually. An older brother and a younger brother. Mattie—Xav—is my younger brother.”

“Does your older brother live near?”

Amber shook her head. “No. He doesn’t.” She looked down. “He left home when he was eighteen, and we haven’t seen him since.”

“What?” said Riley, his hand on her shoulder, as he leaned to see her face.

She sat up a little straighter and shrugged, looking at him. “Everything had been really normal, really good, up until he started getting really snarky to our father. We didn’t know what his problem was, we all just figured he was a surly teenager. And my dad, who had been pretty awesome up until that point, got really upset with Danny all the time. Danny and my Dad were a lot alike, so they butted heads.

“Finally, Dad must have figured Dan would rat him out, he came clean to my mother that he had another woman. There were no kids, but he’d been with her for a long time, and my mother had no clue. He’d hated the farm, he had put in his time, he said. He wanted to work on the water. He moved out and left Mum with the house and the land, which she’d loved more than he did. My grandfather, my mother’s father, lived where I live now, and he helped us out as much as he could, he and my gran helped my mother out with us and things. But my mother was sick a lot, so she couldn’t look after the farm, so she had to sell the animals and the equipment.”

“Your mum was sick?” Riley asked with care.

“Yeah, she was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis after Xav was born. She has her up days and her down days, and it was unpredictable week by week. I helped with Mattie from the time I was really little, I think.”

“How much older are you?”

“A year and a half,” Amber said. “It’s not much, we were always very close friends, but I always felt protective of him. He was such a small kid.”

“How much older was Danny?”

“Two and a half years older than me.”

“And you don’t know where he is?”

“No. He left a while after Dad did. He was so angry that Dad left, he was so angry that he’d kept the secret. I guess he’d seen him with the woman in town when Danny first got his driver’s licence, but he’d heard Dad on the phone with her even before then. He was so mad at Dad for letting Mum down. After Dad left, Dan resented Mum because she’d let him get away with it all. He accused her of knowing, of not knowing and being completely naive, of knowing and not caring. He cared so much it hurt him. The worst was, he resented Mattie because he thought that Mattie was Dad’s favourite. Danny admired Dad so much when we were kids. He wanted to be like him, he tried to help Dad whenever he could. Mattie, he was my grandad’s favourite, but Dan and my dad were a team. But once he suspected my Dad of an affair, he started to resent Dad, and of course, Dad retaliated by pushing him away. By then, Mattie was a star in school, he tested at genius levels, and had the approval of anyone who met him. So Dan began to resent Mattie, his little brother, who had followed him around and tried to emulate his coolness. Mattie had wanted his brother’s approval, but every time he was around Dan, he felt awkward and uncomfortable. Dan didn’t try to hide the bitterness he felt. It hurt Mattie a lot.”

“What about you?”

“Oh, Dan had his fair share for me. I was the girl. I got everything I wanted. Right?” She smiled at Riley feebly.

“Dan decided he was no farmer, either, and he didn’t want to be stuck in some old house in rural no-where. He said it drove sane men mad. He blamed the land and the people and the stagnant neighbourhood for my father leaving.

“I can’t say it wasn’t a relief when he left. All of us felt slightly more at ease. But after a while, when we never heard from him, we started to get worried. For a few years, we’d get a Christmas card, no address, no anything. Just his name. Then that stopped.”

“Did you try to find him?”

“We knew if he wanted to be found, he could contact any one of us. It was his choice. I know my mother tried to find out through family but I don’t think she ever turned anything up. Or if she did, she never told me. Or Xav. He tried to find Danny a few times, but no luck.”

“And you?”

“I’m mad. I’m mad at how he treated Mum, and I’m mad at how he treated Xav. I’m mad that he could just up and leave. With Mum sick, and all.”

Riley shook his head and sighed. “That’s awful,” he said. “I’m sorry that happened. What about your father?”

“We found out he died. Heart attack. He was living in Yarmouth. He had a fishing boat and still had the same woman. I didn’t go to the funeral. I think my grandparents did.”

“Geez, Hun. That’s a rough time.”

“Yeah, well, I mean, up until that, we had the best childhood. We all got along and Danny was a good older brother back then.”

“You must miss him?” Riley asked, quietly.

Amber didn’t respond for a moment. “I miss the old Danny. I’d be afraid he would still hate us, though, and that he would be a horrible person.”

Riley smiled warmly at her. “But you still have Matt.”

“I do. I don’t know what I would do without him.”

“I’m glad you have him.”

“I almost lost him, too.”

Riley gave her a puzzled look.

Amber sat back against the seat. “He was hit by a drunk driver when he was on his way home from work almost four years ago. Guy going at least forty over the speed limit, though a red light.”

“Geez,” said Riley in disbelief.

“He almost died. He was in critical condition. Head injury, broken bones. He was in a coma for weeks.”

“Oh my god, Amber,” Riley said, his hand on her knee.

“Yeah. That was the hardest time of my life. I spent so much time at the hospital. My life became the hospital. Mum couldn’t be there all the time, she wasn’t in any health to do that.”

She sighed and turned to him, and he rubbed his hand along her wrist and arm.

“Xav is a fighter. He’s the strongest man I’ve ever seen. He pulled through and came out of the coma, but it was a long road. He had to learn how to do everything again. He came home to recover at my place just before Christmas, and... he’d been so... hurt. It was so hard for me to see how hurt he was.”

“I can’t imagine.”

She smiled. “He recovered. I mean, he was able to move back into his own home but...” She looked at Riley and then looked away. “The accident left him blind.”

Riley raised his eyebrows in surprise. “Blind?”

Amber nodded. “Completely and totally.”

“Oh, geez, wow, Amber. I’m so sorry. Did the other driver get put in the slammer? I hope to god so.”

“He did. Not long enough, and not with enough punishment.”

She shrugged again at Riley. “Xav just... he amazes me. I feel so terrible for what happened to him, but I can’t even tell you how amazing he is. Since this happened, he’s just...” She couldn’t continue, because she felt the emotion in her words.

Riley smiled. “What’s he like?”

Amber grinned at Riley. “You’ll get to meet him at the birthday party. He’s funny. I think you’ll get along with him. He’s a good sport and he can pretty much talk about anything. He’s annoyingly smart. Well, probably just annoying to me, but...” She giggled when she saw his eyes twinkling at her, but grew serious again.

“He went away to a rehab centre for the blind. He actually went for two four-month periods. He’s just... well, probably the most determined person I know. He went back to teaching at the university, he does all these great adventures and things with his friends. He inspires his friends so much. He’s really adapted himself to his handicap, he figures out how to do things his own way and he does them.”

“He does sound amazing,” Riley agreed.

Amber nodded. “He does so well in so many things that sometimes I forget how hard things are for him,” she admitted.

“Well, I’m looking forward to meeting him,” Riley said.

Amber smiled. “I’m glad you will be. I think I like having you around.”

“Yeah?” asked Riley, a grin on his face. He shrugged. “I like being around.”

Amber laughed, and looked into his green eyes. Her heart felt like it could possible blow up in her chest, and she felt her breath catch. Yep, she admitted to herself. I’m completely and utterly screwed.