Love on the Dark Side by Love on the Dark Side

Author:Love on the Dark Side [Black Lace] (retail) (epub)
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Ebury Publishing
Published: 2007-09-08T04:00:00+00:00

The Shadow of Matthew Gwen Masters

Alison opened the bedroom door.

It was a simple thing, opening a door that she had opened a million times before. So why did the knob seem to burn in her hand, and why did the door open so slowly, like it was just as afraid of her as she was of it?

There were his jeans on the floor, his shoes right beside them. There was his book and that was on the floor, too. A bookmark held the place where he had stopped reading. A pair of glasses rested on the bedside table, in front of the little sound machine that mimicked ocean waves. The quilt was thrown back and the pillows were rumpled. There was an indentation where he had laid his head.

Alison flinched violently at the sight of that, as if an invisible hand had risen up to strike her.

She had expected the bed to be the worst. The bed where they had read books while lying in companionable silence, his hand occasionally brushing across her arm in a gesture of marital contentment. The bed where they had made love during long and lazy days and even longer nights. The bed where their whole marriage had been played out, in arguments or in lovemaking, in one way or another, for the last ten years.

Alison sat carefully on the edge of the bed, as if it might leap up and swallow her. She waited out the earthquake that didn’t come. Wind rattled the branches of the big oak tree against the windows. A cold front was coming through and, by the time night rolled around, it would be snowing. There would be four inches, maybe more, or so the forecast said. Matthew always loved winter. She remembered when they would lie in bed and watch the first snowflakes together.

This was nothing but a bed. This was nothing but their house.

Hers. Not theirs, not any more.

A month ago, her husband had gone for a walk in the fallen leaves. It was his favourite time of year, right before the first of the snow fell. It was his favourite time of day, right before the sun went down and the moon went up.

It was a simple walk down a simple road that no one ever travelled – but that day, someone did. Someone was travelling that road at a speed fuelled by one too many drinks, a kid who shouldn’t have been drinking and maybe shouldn’t even have been driving in the first place. And that kid certainly shouldn’t have been driving that big SUV, the one that was too big for her to keep under control.

The SUV wrapped itself around the tree, an old maple whose leaves were all but gone. Alison’s husband had seen it all. She could imagine the horror on his face, the paralysis of watching it happen, then the sudden break into a run, the determination to help.

During the time between life and death, Matthew had done everything he could do to save that girl.

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