The Butcher Read Free Page B

Jason glanced down.
    â€œWhat, you gonna hit me?” his friend said quietly. “Thought we were all done with that shit.”
    Matt forced himself to relax. “We are.”
    â€œGood, I’m glad those classes you took weren’t just for show.”
    Gritting his teeth, Matt didn’t respond. Truthfully, there was nothing he could say. He’d lost his temper one too many times in the past, and after a bar brawl and a night in jail, had been forced to undergo a three-week anger management course over a year ago. The Chief had had to pull strings so he could avoid jail time. It wasn’t something he was proud of.
    Finally he said to Jason, “I thought you were on my side.”
    â€œI’m on both your sides.” Sighing, Jason finally threw up a hand. “You know what? I tried. And I’m done, I’m out of it. Buy me a beer and I’ll shut the hell up, because God knows we both want me to.”
    And that, for the most part, had ended it. He didn’t know what Jason had said to Sam after the game, but she’d backed off once and for all, and for that Matt was grateful.

3
    His grandfather’s house was in the center of Sweetbay, one of Seattle’s oldest neighborhoods, and also one of the most desirable. A little to the north and west of downtown, Sweetbay was situated on a small tip of land that jutted into Puget Sound, and quite a few of the homes had water views. The houses were a mix of Tudor, Victorian, and Craftsman, and they all had perfect green lawns dotted with bright flowers and trimmed shrubs. Trees decades older than Matt lined the streets, and on a summer day when the wind from the ocean rippled the leaves just right, the whole neighborhood seemed to smell of good fortune.
    If you asked one of the old-timer residents where they lived (and there were a lot of old-timers in this neighborhood), they would answer “Sweetbay,” not Seattle, as if the place was a town all by itself. And in some ways, it was. It was completely self-sufficient. It had its own little shopping area complete with a Whole Foods, a movie theater, and an assortment of cafés and coffee shops. There was even a farmers’market on Saturdays (not quite big enough for Matt to justify a food truck, but it was cute nonetheless). Most everything was within walking distance, and the best part of all? Sweetbay was only a ten-minute drive to downtown Seattle, making it the ideal yuppie neighborhood for those who could afford a house in the city.
    Though he’d moved out of the Belltown apartment and into the Sweetbay house a few days earlier, Matt had just bought a new bed from Restoration Hardware, and that was what was inside the second U-Haul truck he’d rented this week.
    The truck was brand-new and not too big, easy enough to maneuver through leafy Poppy Lane. Jason and another friend, PJ Wu, who was also his assistant head chef at the restaurant, were following behind him in Matt’s utility van, because the bed was heavy and would be a bitch to unload. Matt took his time driving, minding the signs posted everywhere that said SPEEDING ENDANGERS OUR KIDS , which was interesting considering there were hardly any kids in Sweetbay. It would make more sense to change the signs to SPEEDING ENDANGERS OLD FARTS .
    He pulled up to the house and reversed, backing the truck halfway into the Chief’s long driveway. Smiling to himself, he wondered how long it would be before he stopped thinking of the house as his grandfather’s. The paperwork had been completed the day before and the house was officially in Matt’s name. It felt absolutely right; he’d grown up here, after all. His grandparents had raised him after his teenage mother had died in a fire when he was just an infant.
    Stepping down out of the truck, he looked up at the old Victorian and felt a sense of peace wash over him. He was almost there. He almost had everything he wanted. The house was