her, and as Hilary talked, she nervously uncrossed and recrossed her legs under her desk, and Matthew, unintentionally, saw up her dark green skirt, catching glimpses of her inner thigh and a flash of plain white underwear. It was the type of thing that Matthew saw on a daily basis—the girls at the school sometimes seemed oblivious of their young bodies, the flimsiness of their clothes—but, for some reason, seeing it right after a visit from Richard made Matthew think about it differently. He heard Richard’s voice in his head—she’s up for it—and even briefly imagined how soft the skin of Hilary’s thigh must be. He felt the blood rising up through his chest into his neck and caught Justin Knudsen eyeing him with just a little bit of concern.
At the end of the day, Matthew sat in his Fiat in the school’s parking lot. He blamed Richard for the way he’d looked at his student and for the thoughts that went through his head. He should never have had him over last night. Just because he was his brother didn’t mean they needed to spend time together. They had zero in common.
Trying to calm down, he thought about what he might cook for dinner that night, and he decided he’d drive over to the fish market and buy a nice piece of center-cut cod, then he’d go to the grocery store and pick up Ritz crackers for the topping. It was his favorite way to cook fish, but Mira was not a fan, preferring salmon with a spicy Asian glaze.
He started his car, just as Michelle Brine was hustling across the asphalt toward her own car. She heard the Fiat’s engine catch and turned her head, smiled at Matthew, and came over.
He rolled down the window.
“I wanted to thank you,” she said. “Yesterday, I actually gave a full class lecture on the basics of the Constitution. I thought they’d go to sleep, but I think it was okay. I had them do their mock Constitution today, and it went great. They seemed really into it.”
“I’m glad.”
“And I used your tip to get Ben Gimbel to shut up, and it actually worked.”
“Which tip?”
“He was talking, and instead of telling him to be quiet, I just stopped talking myself and stared at him. The rest of the class got on his case. It was something else.” A warm gust of wind blew some of Michelle’s long hair in through the car window. She gathered it up and refastened it at the back of her head.
“What about Scott?”
“Oh, God. It’s been nonstop. I accused him of hiding his phone from me, so he gave me his new code and said he only changed it because he saw some suspicious-looking kids”—she made quotation mark signs with her hands—“watching him punch in his code at the coffee shop. And then he handed me the phone and told me to check out anything I wanted to check out, but this was twenty-four hours after his gig, so he could have deleted anything he wanted to.”
“Do you actually think he’s cheating on you?”
“I don’t know. Maybe. Probably.” Matthew watched tears well up in her eyes.
“If he is, he doesn’t deserve you.”
“I know, I know. Look, I don’t want to . . . You should probably get going.”
“It’s okay. Mira’s out of town again. Just me for the week.”
“Oh.” Michelle’s face flushed slightly. Matthew sometimes wondered if Michelle was secretly in love with him.
“I should get going anyway,” he said. “Dinner to cook, lessons to plan, TV to binge-watch.”
Michelle laughed, started to ask him what television shows he was watching, then stopped herself and backed away. “Michelle, stop blabbing,” she said, still laughing. “Have a nice night, Matthew. Thanks again.”
Driving home, the sun low in the sky, Matthew was, at least, relieved to be thinking about something other than his neighbor Hen and the way she’d looked when she’d seen the fencing trophy. Now he was thinking about Michelle’s boyfriend, Scott, and how it was pretty clear that he really was cheating on Michelle. Where there’s smoke, there’s fire, he told himself. You don’t change the passcode on your phone without having a reason. Matthew had never actually met Scott, but he’d seen pictures of him on Michelle’s Facebook page. He was pale, with a sharp, bladelike nose and a full reddish beard. Unless Matthew remembered wrong, in one picture he’d seen Scott was wearing a T-shirt advertising his own band, the C-Beams. How hard would it