Rising West: A Turner Artist Rocker Novel (The Turner Artist Rocker Series Book 1)
Page 20
Then the sun goes black.
CHAPTER 23
Katrina Holloway 1997-2016
You were my sun, Kat. What am I supposed to do now?
LIBERTY
Nine hours. That’s how long I can stand to wait for a response from Mason. His phone isn’t even ringing anymore, and yes, maybe I’m hurt. But I also know that boy goes through mental hell like no one I’ve ever met, so I try to be understanding. After nine hours of ignoring my texts and calls, however, any overbearing intrusiveness is on him. I knock on the door of his apartment, waiting impatiently for his broody ass to answer. I’m not prepared for Gary.
“Hi, Mr. Holloway. Is Mason here?”
The older man studies me with what feels like suspicion. Does he not remember the woman who slept over last night?
“No,” he says after a long pause. “We’ll let him know you stopped by.” He goes to close the door, and panic sets in.
“Wait! Please, let me talk to him for a second. I know why he’s upset, and I just need to reassure him that it’s all resolved.”
Gary’s face darkens. “It’s all resolved?”
“What I mean is… just five minutes. Please!”
“Look, Ms. Blake, he’s not here. Now, if you don’t mind, it’s late and—”
Rose appears beside him and places a hand on his arm. “I’ll talk to her,” she says gently. Relief flutters through me as Gary gives me another hard look and leaves us at the door.
“Please, Rose. I’m really worried about Mason. He’s not returning my messages. I just want to assure him that everything’s okay.”
Emotion washes over her face as her knuckles blanch gripping the door. “Gary is telling the truth, Liberty. Mason isn’t here. And you’re right to be worried. So are we.”
“He’s not? Where is he?”
Her gaze shifts away, and I brace for a blow.
“He asked us not to tell anyone where he was going. He said he’d call when he was ready.”
“Ready for what?”
She shakes her head. “I don’t really know, honey. To talk maybe? He came home from your meeting worse than I’ve seen him in years. We insisted on keeping Brooklyn while he dealt with whatever was going on, but all we know for sure is that he was headed to the airport.”
“The airport?!”
“Shh,” she says. “We don’t want Brooklyn to know anything’s wrong. He promised to check in and that he’d be back soon.”
I shove my shaking hands in my pockets. “And has he? Checked in?”
Her expression drops, and a wave of fear rushes through me.
“No. He’s not returning our messages either. He never even called to say goodnight to Brooklyn.”
He didn’t call Brooklyn?
“Has that ever happened before?” I practically whisper.
Her face ages ten years as she looks away. “Never.” With a heavy sigh she opens the door a little wider. “Why don’t you come in. It’s probably time we talk candidly.”
I accept a cup of tea from Rose and blow on the surface while she settles nearby on the couch. It feels wrong sitting and drinking tea while he’s out there, somewhere, in heaven knows what kind of trouble. My heart is already running all over the world, scouring each airport in a manic search, while my body waits for Rose and whatever bombshells she’s hiding.
“What exactly do you know about the accident and Mason’s past?” she says, studying me.
I take a quick sip that singes my lips. “He told me some things. I know he was driving the car the night of the accident.”
She nods, and I swear there are tears in her eyes. “Yes. I suppose that’s what he told you. Mason is… he’s a complicated young man, Liberty.”
Understatement.
“On the surface he seems confident, but underneath that façade is a boy who’s been deeply wounded. His father left when he was very young, and his mother never wanted much to do with him. A lot of the stuff they’ve been printing about him are lies, but some is probably true. I don’t even know much about his life in Brooklyn. He never talks about it. All I know is that he moved to our area when he was about sixteen, and met Katrina shortly after. Mason wanted to name his daughter Brooklyn because he saw it as a way to make something beautiful out of a very dark time in his life.”
My eyes are not going to survive this conversation. I already feel the heaviness of tears bubbling deep. Why is she telling me this? Can she sense what’s starting to become so clear to me? That I might be falling hard for him? What is the mother of his deceased first love supposed to do with that?
“So it’s true he ran away as a teenager?” I ask.
“Yes, I believe so. As you can imagine, Gary and I weren’t thrilled about our daughter’s new crush at first.” She smiles sadly. “Although he seemed nice enough, we were wary when Katrina started dating him. It wasn’t until she got pregnant that we saw what kind of man he truly was.”
I watch her expression change from wistful to warm.
“He was a prince to my daughter, and then my granddaughter after she was born. When Katrina died…” She chokes on the next few words and holds up her hand. “I’m sorry. Just a minute.”
My own eyes fill as I watch her fight back from the ledge. This is strength, and love, and heartache, all wrapped in one gorgeous, tragic moment. She takes a sip of her own tea and clears her throat.
“After the accident, Gary and I watched him give up everything for Brooklyn. Everything. Hear me, Liberty.” Her eyes lock on mine as she suddenly grows stern. “No one, I repeat, no one, blames Mason for what happened that night. No one except himself.”
The boulder in my chest shifts violently at the pain on her face. Pain for her daughter. Pain for the boy who lost everything, including himself.
“I know he blames himself because he was driving.” My voice is barely above a whisper.
More tears streak down her cheeks as she closes her eyes. I watch her chest rise and fall several times before she finally faces me again. “That’s not what happened, Liberty.”
Oh god. My heart thuds against my ribs. I feel it pounding in the deep cavern that just hollowed out inside me.
“It’s not?”
She wipes her eyes. “No. Mason had been doing everything he could to take care of Katrina and Brooklyn, while still fulfilling what he felt were his obligations to the band. No human being on Earth could have sustained the schedule and stress he did for as long as he had. It was a miracle he was still functioning at all.”
With a deep breath, she continues in a strained voice.
“It’s true it was snowing that night. It’s also true the other car swerved into their lane. The lie is who was driving. The police report confirms that Katrina was thrown from the driver’s side, not the passenger’s side.”
I can’t breathe, can’t speak as I stare at her. “But he told me… I mean, all the articles and everyone… he’s never denied he was driving. He lets everyone think he’s responsible for what happened.”
She looks away. “Yes, because that’s what he believes as well. The truth is too complicated, so he tells the simple narrative. It’s a way for him to cleanly accept blame for something he thinks he deserves.”
“I don’t… I’m so confused,” I say, shaking my head. “He’s always saying how he’s not enough. How he killed Katrina. How is he not enough if he wasn’t even driving?”
She sighs and sets down her cup on the end table. “That’s what I’m trying to tell you. No one else believes that. Not the police, not the insurance company, and certainly not Gary and I. The kids had a two-hour drive home that night. Partway through, Mason started to drift off. He worried he was too tired to continue, so he asked Katrina to drive the rest of the way. He believes he should have been the one in that driver’s seat. It should have been him that was thrown from the car. He thinks if he’d just been enough, he wouldn’t have asked her to switch, Katrina would be alive, and he would have been the one who was killed.”
“It was Katrina,” I breathe out suddenly. “She’s the one who told him he needed to make the sun rise in the west.”
When I dare to open my eyes again, a sad, compassionate gaze glistens back at me. “Yes. He’s always struggled with self-doubt, even before the accident. Katrina was his champion in so many ways. The story about the sunrise is in her journal.”
“Her journal?”
She nods and bites her lip. “Mason has her journal. It’s kind of his lifeline. He reads it when he’s having a hard time. I saw him carrying it when he left which is how we knew he was in a bad place and needed space to clear his head.”
My pulse picks up. “Does he usually travel with it?”
“No. I don’t believe so. He wouldn’t risk anything happening to it.”
He turns to Katrina’s words when he’s struggling. Where would he go when he’s spiraling?
My hand starts to shake, and I set my mug on the coffee table. “Rose, he went back to her didn’t he? He went home?”
She looks uncomfortable as she nods. “We believe it’s likely, honey.”
I jump up from the couch. “Then, I’m going after him.”
Why is it that no one seems to want to cooperate in an emergency? Not the airlines who never have enough flights. Not the clock that suddenly seems to stop functioning altogether. Not your twin brother who keeps insisting everything is fine even though you can read in his face that he’s not so sure. After one of the longest nights of my life, we’re on our way to the airport the following morning when my phone finally rings.
A rush of hope and fear plunges through me at Rose’s name. We exchanged numbers last night, along with promises to share news the second either of us heard from Mason. My heart is pounding out of my chest when I answer.
“Hi, it’s Liberty.”
“Liberty! Thank heavens.”
“Hello, Rose. Any news?”
She quiets. Thump. Thump. Thump.
“Are you still flying to Pennsylvania this morning?” she asks.
“I got the first flight I could. I’m in the cab to the airport now.”
“Okay, good.”
Why is her voice shaking?
“Rose, what is it? What’s wrong?”
“We just heard from a hospital near Reidville. They found Mason.”
CHAPTER 24
Blank page one.
MASON
An angel?
A star?
A sun?
The closer I get, the brighter she shines. I reach for her, her warmth spreading through the empty space and curling around my fingers. I’m desperate for it. Floating, climbing, clawing to get to her.
“Mason.” Katrina’s face glows with the smile I remember, but also something else. Something so far beyond my time and space I can’t process it.
“You’re here. Kat, I—”
I… what? There are no words for this reunion. No apologies.
I’ve finally reached her, and I have to turn away.
“I’m here,” she says, lifting her hands to my cheeks. She forces my gaze to hers, locking my face until I have no choice but to absorb her brilliance.
I blink against the blast.
“Are you doing what I asked? Are you making the sun rise in the west?” she asks gently.
I shut my eyes, trembling. “I tried. I swear I tried, but I can’t.”
“Of course you can.”
I shake my head, still not looking at her. It hurts too much. “I’m so sorry, Kat. I’m so sorry for not being enough.”
“Mason, look at me.”
I can’t.
“Mason.”
I can’t!
“Mason, no one is enough. We’re not supposed to be.”
I choke on her words, finally opening my eyes. The softest, kindest expression reflects back a radiance I thought I’d snuffed out. But I didn’t. Here it is. Still burning and fighting the void on my behalf.
“If we were enough, we wouldn’t need each other. We wouldn’t grow and struggle to be the beautiful, fallible humans we were designed to be. What makes us enough is when we try. It’s through the fight that we learn to shine and help others do the same. If we do all those things, we become more than enough; we become the sun.”
I fall into her arms, tears flaming down my cheeks. I want to stay here forever. In the warmth. In the light. In the peace. Warm and whole. More than enough.
Can I really be more than enough?
“Don’t you see, Mason? You already are. You tried then and were my sun. You try now and you’re Brooklyn’s. You make the sun rise by becoming it. You shine through your own world. You brighten your life and the lives of those around you. And when you do that you don’t have to chase a sunrise. You’re always rising west.”
I wake from my dream to the whir of machines. Sterility. The deep chill of absence. After basking in the warmth of the sun, a hospital room is a rude companion. I pull in a long draught of air, Katrina’s words still streaming through my head. They fill me with a strange mix of hope and loss.
After several seconds, I finally feel brave enough to open my eyes.
“Mason?”
I blink up. Can’t be. Am I still dreaming?
“Liberty?” My voice cracks from disuse.
Her sudden smile is sad and warm and relieved and so full of love that shouldn’t be there. She takes my hand and brings it to her lips.
“This isn’t real. It’s not possible,” I whisper.
“Yeah? Says who.”
Damn, the entire band came. Liberty tells me Rose and Gary would have brought Brooklyn too, except the doctors say it’s likely I’ll be released soon. Personally, I’m grateful Brooklyn won’t see me like this, even though I’m desperate to see her.
“Can I borrow your phone to call Brooklyn?” I ask Liberty who’s cozied up beside me on the hospital bed. The others just went off in search of snacks.
She glances over in surprise. “What happened to yours?”
“Water damage. I need to get a new one.”
A flash of emotion passes over her face. “Is that why you haven’t returned any of our calls or messages?”
Guilt spreads through me as I look away. “I’m sorry for that. I was so fucking lost yesterday.”
“And now?” She searches my eyes, and a ray of something hot and radiant pierces me deep.
“Maybe I have a map.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. We’ll see what happens, but I’m ready to try.”
“Hmm. Any room on that bus for a keyboard player slash possible backup singer?”
I smile and brush my lips against her forehead. “If she’s still willing to come along.”
“Pretty sure she’s already dropped everything to secure a ticket.”
I swallow and pull her into my side. “Thank you for coming after me,” I say quietly. “Thank you for believing in me.”
“I will always come after you, Mason.”
She rests her head on my chest, and I tighten my arms around her. For several minutes we sit in silence, breathing together, hearts pumping life in perfect harmony.
Finally, her fingers reach up and trace my cheek. I look down to meet her soft gaze. “So where exactly are you headed, West?”
I think for a second before letting a grin spread over my lips. “West.”
Apparently, I got lucky. After just a day and a half in the hospital, I’m released with all my extremities and no permanent organ damage from my brush with hypothermia. The doctor said I have the caretaker at the cemetery to thank for that. He must have seen my car shortly after I passed out and called an ambulance right awa
y when he found me. I wish I could thank him, and maybe that’s a project for another day. For now, I have one more important stop to make before we head west toward home and the future.
Liberty and the others take their car to the airport, while I make a quick detour to an old, rundown apartment building just east of the main highway. Climbing the familiar steps, I shake off memory after memory of my time in these halls. A television blares from behind the door of my old apartment, and I wonder who lives there now. Are they trying their best too? Struggling but still fighting for the sun?
I knock on the door across the hall.
Heather answers and nearly drops the glass in her hand when she sees me. “Oh my… Mason?”
I smile and lean against the doorjamb. “Hey. How’s it going? Do you have a minute?”
“Um… Yeah. Just… Wait, don’t you live in L.A. now? You’re some big rock star. I’ve been following the headlines.”
“Hopefully not too closely,” I say with a smirk.
She returns it and opens the door. “I know what to believe and what not.”
Inside, she’s just closed the door when another young man comes out of the kitchen holding a beer. He stops when he sees me, his gaze sliding to Heather’s. She blushes and clears her throat.
“Oh, uh, Pete this is Mason, my former neighbor. Mason, this is my boyfriend Pete.”
Boyfriend? Hell yeah. I grin and step forward for a handshake. He returns it, his stance relaxing.
“Cool. You want a beer, man?” he asks.
“No, thanks. I can’t stay. I have a flight to catch. I just needed to talk to Heather quick.”
He casts a glance at Heather who nods to him. “It’s fine, babe. I’ll be in to watch the movie in a sec.”
Pete tips his bottle toward me. “Hey. Nice to meet you, man.”
“You too.”
He disappears into the back bedroom.
“So, what’s up? I’m surprised to see you back here. Is Brooklyn with you?”