Page 61 of Silver Player

I lower to my desk chair, not even realizing I’ve been standing this whole time.

“I need to tell you something, but I need you to swear to secrecy, Matilda.” Her brows rise at the use of her full name. She slips into the chair before my desk. “Not Cora. Not your boys. Not even Denton. No one.”

Mati crosses over her chest with a big X and then twists her fingers near the corner of her lip and tosses an imaginary key over her shoulder.

“Do you remember Theresa McAllister?”

Mati’s brows pinch. “I…I don’t think so.”

“Trixie,” I explain. “She went to school with Rachel and me.” I don’t often speak my ex-wife’s name. It isn’t that it’s difficult, only that it’s been a long time, and Rachel is long gone from the area.

“Didn’t she have a crush on you or something?”

“Yeah, something like that.” I’ve always thought you were so hot, Billy. Words I haven’t recalled in sixteen plus years come back to me. She was here for a girls’ weekend. I was newly divorced, feeling the sting of what I’d learned about my wife. Ex-wife.

“She was Roxanne McAllister’s older sister. Was,” I emphasize. “Trixie died a few months ago.”

Mati nods. “Oh, that’s sad.” It is sad, and Mati’s sympathetic because of her husband’s death and the recent loss of Denton’s mother. “But I don’t understand what this has to do with Roxanne and you suddenly being friends.”

“Trixie had a daughter.”

Mati continues to look at me with wide brown eyes.

“And she lives with Roxanne now.”

Mati curls her lips, understanding the connection.

“And the girl…is mine.”

Mati’s brow wrinkles.

“Mine as in you are mine?” Her fist rises in the air. “William, that’s disgusting. How old is she?”

For fuck’s sake. “For fuck’s sake, why does everyone think I’m dating a child? She’s sixteen.” I raise my hand when Mati’s mouth pops open. “And I mean, she’s mine as in…I’m her father.” Darth Vader’s voice rings through my head, and I want to laugh except I don’t find humor at the moment as I watch my sister’s face morph from disgust to confusion and then shock.

“She’s your daughter?” Mati’s voice is rising. “You have a kid?”

“She’s a teenager, and I—”

“Hey, boss. Just checking in and—” Clyde’s voice interrupts.

“He has a kid,” Mati states, turning to Clyde while gripping one armrest of the chair and pointing at me as if I can’t see her. So much for keeping a secret under lock and key.

“Matilda Brooks Harrington.” I take on the tone of my mother.

Mati turns back to me, blinking. “I’m sorry.” She twists back to Clyde. “I’m sorry. I…”

“I know,” Clyde says, hugging the doorjamb. His big body looks ridiculous the way he’s holding the frame, and his dark eyes shift from business to thoughtful. “It’s crazy, right? But amazing.”

Good God. There’s that word again. Instantly, I think of the way Roxanne was looking up at me as I stood on the landing at the top of her back stairs. I felt like a teenager at the end of a date when you don’t want to say good night; you just want to stand at that moment and hold on forever. Her mouth against mine was amazing, although I didn’t spend the night as I had hoped.

“Mati,” I murmur her name, shaking my head.

“I’m sorry,” she says, eyes still wide as she stares back at me, confused and dazed, but smiling. “I didn’t mean to blurt it out.”

“It’s a good thing Clyde already knows.”

“Does Mama know?”