by Emily Conrad
She wouldn’t mind friends seeing her like this, but Gannon had already shown up at both of her jobs. Surely it wasn’t that much of a stretch that he’d try here next.
Bruce nosed the doorknob and peered back at her as if to ask what was holding her up.
What, indeed.
If the visitor was Gannon, did her appearance matter?
Even her most pulled-together outfit wouldn’t impress him. He had everything and more, including a famous girlfriend. And she didn’t want to impress him so much as show him she was living a life she’d prefer he not interrupt. Maybe these clothes did that as well as any.
But when she pulled open the door, she found Drew, his hair windblown from the hike. He bounced on his feet, attention on the boards of the porch while Tegan watched. He was testing the structure’s integrity.
Adeline cringed and pushed her shoulder into the storm door, opening it.
Drew’s gaze sprung upward, guilty. “Tegan told me about the letter.”
Of course she had.
Adeline reached back inside for a leash and brought Bruce onto the porch with her. “I haven’t gotten quotes yet, but we’ll figure it out.”
“Did you see the corner under that column?” Tegan motioned Drew toward the worst-looking part of the porch.
He took the three stairs down to the yard and crossed to the corner of the structure. “Sure enough.”
Adeline drew an even breath, hoping to exude calm confidence. “I tried painting it last year to keep water and bugs from doing any more damage, but I guess that was a lost cause.”
He braced a hand on the floorboards while he stuck his head under the deck. “Hate to say it, but you need a new porch.”
“You should see what the basement walls are doing, and the roof leaks.” Tegan leaned on the railing. “The water seeps into the spare bedroom, and of course, there’s the siding.”
Adeline stepped up to the railing. She couldn’t dispute Tegan’s list of necessary repairs, but since when had her roommate tallied it all up? And why was she talking with Drew about this? “Unless there’s a raise somewhere in this conversation, we don’t need to get into it.”
“I know.” Drew took and released a deep breath. “I’m right there with you.” On his way back toward the door, he turned and lifted his arms as if to embrace the lake. “At least you’ve got a great view.”
The whole reason she’d invested in this fixer-upper. Pink laced the clouds over the lake, and the water answered with rosy highlights—serenity patiently waiting for her to lift her focus from her problems.
“How’d the hike go?”
Tegan laughed. “Fine, if you don’t count all the pouting when I showed up at the trail and not you.”
Drew chuckled. He petted Bruce as he rejoined them on the rotting porch, then shot Tegan a glance as he straightened. “I heard you had an exchange outside church this morning. You seemed upset when I found you in the office. Then you looked like a deer in the headlights as the girls charged you.”
She felt for pockets to hide her hands, but the athletic shorts had none. Did she look like a deer in the headlights now too? She cast a desperate look toward the lake. Still there. Calm and still. The clouds might be even brighter than before. “Thanks for having the sense to ask me to sit it out.”
“Doesn’t seem to have cured you.”
She’d made pot pie, the ultimate comfort food, to help with that. As if eating could erase the past any more than a beautiful lake could give a person peace.
He glanced at Tegan again. “You’ve never talked about him, but given the little I’ve seen, there’s hard history between you.”
Drew and Tegan must’ve planned this conversation together. Adeline pressed her lips shut and willed the tears not to rise.
Drew gave an apologetic smile, as if her struggle to maintain composure were completely evident.
Tegan neared, head tilted with sympathy. “We’re here for you. It doesn’t matter to us who he is.”
Drew grinned. “Even a herd of high school girls couldn’t drag a detail from me—if you choose to share anything, that is.”
She hadn’t shared anything as deeply personal as her history with Gannon since … well since her history with Gannon.
Her secrets weighed on her, but she’d fought back by staying busy with good causes. If only busy were lonely’s opposite, the distraction might’ve worked forever. But since Gannon had shown up, none of her old coping mechanisms were doing the trick anymore.
Maybe the time had come to implement a new strategy.
Adeline finished the last of her water and set the cup on the arm of her Adirondack chair. She, Tegan, and Drew had settled in the most solid corner of the porch, where they could look out at the lake and enjoy the summer evening. Bruce lounged nearby.
When they’d gone in for pot pie, the conversation had skipped from Gannon to home-cooked meals and had strayed from there. But as Drew finished the last gravy-coated piece of chicken and leaned back into his chair, he and Tegan exchanged another loaded glance.
Tegan interlaced her fingers and peered pointedly at Adeline.
She regretted every bite of food for the way her stomach clenched, but these two wouldn’t let her stay silent forever. She started easy. “In middle school, when I had to pick an instrument, I elected upright bass.”
Drew laughed. “I can just imagine.”
“It looked as goofy as you’re thinking.” Her mom had pictures of her, maybe ninety pounds, lugging the instrument around. “I loved it. About halfway through our senior year of high school, the guy I was seeing, Fitz, joined a rock band with Gannon and John. Fitz asked me to play electric bass with them until he or Gannon could learn. They both caught on, but they preferred guitar, and I played well, so they kept me around.”
Tegan, who sat on the porch and leaned on the railing, pushed her long hair back. “That’s how Awestruck started?”
She lifted a heavy shoulder. The Awestruck the world knew wasn’t the same one she’d been a part of. “We got some gigs, but no record deal. When we graduated high school, the guys decided to move to LA to try to make it, but my parents wouldn’t hear of me canceling my college plans and going along.”
“Can’t say I blame them.” Drew tapped the heel of his hiking boot on the porch.
“Gannon, Fitz, and John recruited another bass player. Matt replaced me. It was kind of last minute, but Matt jumped at the chance.”
“So they went to LA and made it big without you.” Tegan spoke wistfully, as if this fairytale would have a happy ending.
“It wasn’t that simple. Before they left, Fitz, who had been my boyfriend for eight months, proposed. I said yes, and the next day, the guys got in their clunker of a van and set off.”
Tegan slapped the porch. “You were engaged?”
“For a while.” If the engagement was a revelation, other facts would be a shock. If not for Drew’s calm demeanor, she might’ve tried to get out of sharing more. “They got day jobs in LA. Nothing fancy, just enough to cover rent. They couldn’t afford trips home, but I talked with Fitz on the phone a lot. He was always full of promises of how things would be when they made it, always sure the dream was just another show or two away.”
His hope hadn’t been convincing, so when his tone dampened, she didn’t do much to rekindle his faltering dreams. To her shame. “We grew apart, but I wasn’t interested in anyone else and he was so down already. I didn’t want to pile on by breaking it off. Gannon came home for Christmas about a year and a half after they’d left. He seemed optimistic, but …” She shrugged, an ache in her throat. Did she have to get into this part of the story? Was this the time and place for confession?
No. Her story was shocking enough without getting into the part only she, Gannon, and Fitz knew. Oh, and God. Her vision blurred to gray, and she skipped ahead.
“A few months later, Awestruck was offered a deal on one condition: Fitz had to go. He’d gotten mono and had been struggling th
rough shows. Though he was an excellent musician, he must’ve seemed like a weak link. Or something. I don’t know.”
Drew rubbed his thumb over his fingernail, something she’d seen him do while studying for sermons. “They went along with it?”
“The three founding members of the band had equal voting power. John wanted to wait for an offer that included all of them, so he and Fitz could’ve overruled Gannon, no matter how Matt, who had less say, voted. But it didn’t come to a vote. Fitz took Gannon and the label trying to get rid of him hard, so he quit and came home. The others signed the deal.”
“What happened with Fitz?”
“He broke it off with me. He had his reasons, plus he was seriously depressed—a lot more so than I realized at the time—and nothing I said or did …” She stopped. She wouldn’t paint herself to be a hero when she wasn’t one. She was guilty. So guilty. “When Awestruck’s first album came out, it was more than he could handle.”
Drew leaned forward, elbows on his knees, while Tegan’s eyes widened.
“He killed himself.” And the only way she’d come to terms with his death and with her role in his downward spiral had been to build a whole new life where she didn’t have to talk about the tragedy.
Drew’s sigh washed into the air like a wave. “I’m sorry.”
“Oh, Addie.” Tegan climbed to her feet. Her shoulder bumped Adeline’s chin as she awkwardly wrapped her arms around her.
Adeline couldn’t relax into it. Couldn’t feel comfort. She patted her friend’s back and started to lean away, but Tegan gave her another squeeze before releasing her.
Drew fidgeted. “Why is Gannon here, after all this time?”
“I don’t know.” She picked at a snagged thread in her shorts. “Maybe fame isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Maybe it’s not an inoculation against regret.”
“I’m sure it’s not,” he said.
Time and moving and acts of service had also proved ineffective. She blinked at her tears and lifted her focus once more to the lake.
The sun had set, and twilight blurred the line between the water and the sky. Having the lake almost always in sight was the one comfort she’d allowed herself, the one thing she clung to while everything else rotted.
But could she afford to keep this view? Did she deserve to?
Tegan tapped Adeline’s foot with her toe. “His suicide is not your fault, Addie.”
Her friend wouldn’t say that if she knew the whole story.
The porch creaked as Drew shifted. “Maybe you should talk to Gannon. What he did to Fitz was awful, but Fitz died of a tragic choice that Gannon could never have anticipated. Neither of you should have to carry that weight. If he’s here looking for forgiveness, this might be a chance for you to give it—both to him and yourself. God doesn’t want us to spend years buried under guilt. Jesus came to set us free from condemnation.”
The sympathy in his voice fed her tears. She busied herself with gathering the dishes. Her movement roused Bruce, and when she took the plates in, she brought him along. When she returned to the porch alone, Drew and Tegan stopped whatever they’d been quietly discussing. Tegan gave her another hug.
Drew patted her arm. “I hope I didn’t say too much. I hate to see you hurting. And to think you’ve been carrying this for …”
“Fitz died eight years ago.” But she’d been carrying guilt much longer. The night that had changed everything, the one she’d skipped in her retelling, had been over a year before that. She’d been drowning in guilt ever since. For nine years.
“That’s too long.” He rested his hand on her shoulder for a moment.
Avoiding his eyes seemed like the easiest way to hide her doubts.
Had Jesus forgiven her? Maybe, but He shouldn’t have.
Drew stepped back. “Thanks for letting us listen. I will be praying for you.”
She nodded again, and he showed himself down the steps and away.
Back inside, Tegan finished the dishes while Adeline stopped at the dining table. She still hadn’t decided what to do with the slip of paper with Gannon’s number, so it sat under the letter from the neighborhood association.
She flipped the card between her fingers. Gannon’s handwriting hadn’t changed much since he’d scrawled lyrics in that red notebook of his in high school. Was this the handwriting of a killer? And how much responsibility did she deserve for Fitz’s death?
Drew and Tegan had deemed her innocent because they didn’t know the parts of the story she’d cut out, but since she’d skipped over them, those terrible details burned in her throat more intensely than ever before. If she gave voice to them, the sensation might stop. Or maybe this searing pain would only spread.
5
The air seemed as bent on freezing Gannon out of Wisconsin as Adeline was. When he took his guitar to the patio on Monday morning, the nip sent him back in for a sweatshirt—the only one he’d brought, since he hadn’t realized July would be so cold. Farther south in the state, the weather wasn’t like this. Either the lake contributed or being a couple of hours farther north made that big of a difference.
He reviewed the last set of lyrics he’d been working on. Yet another song about Adeline. The first in his collection of songs about her dated back to her time with the band over a decade ago. Some of them were his best work, but he’d never shared them because he could never muster the courage to ask Adeline if she’d mind.
He’d lacked the courage to face her at all.
He sighed and let his gaze wander the yard. A trail of broad, flat stones led from the patio by the house where he sat, through the lush lawn, to a second seating area along the cliff. A three-foot-tall stone wall separated the observation area from a one-hundred-foot drop to the lake. An island designated as a state park formed a green mass out in the water. Between there and the cliff, a sightseeing ship navigated away from its Lakeshore dock toward the lighthouse on the island.
From this distance, the tourists on the viewing decks were nothing more than dots of color.
The peace and inspiration he’d come for seemed equally far off, but pressure was mounting to write something worth recording. Even now, Tim was inside, arranging security for the grounds and a crew to set up a recording studio in one of Havenridge’s offices. A recording studio Gannon currently had no use for.
He set aside his notes for the latest Adeline song and pulled his guitar closer. Maybe lyrics unrelated to her would come if he started with music.
He hadn’t gotten far when his phone rang.
John was up and making phone calls this early on a Monday? That couldn’t be good.
He answered on speaker. “What happened now?”
“How’s the trip?”
“Just sat down to work.”
“Huh.” John fell silent a few beats. “How’s Addie?”
Ah. John had always had his quiet way of looking out for her. When the drummer had returned from a visit home over the holidays, he’d mentioned running into her. “You should go see her,” he’d said. “Button up the past. She could use that.”
They’d been interrupted, and when Gannon brought her up again later, John had brushed him off saying, “She’s okay. Getting by.”
That Adeline might only be “okay” and “getting by” had gnawed at Gannon.
Until then, he’d told himself she was better off without him. Once he’d started worrying about her and the impact he’d had on her, his songs had dried up. He couldn’t write about anything but her, which meant he had little for Awestruck’s next album.
He’d prayed and prayed for other inspiration, but the only answer he could discern was that if he wanted peace and usable music, he needed to face Adeline.
So here he was, but what he’d seen since arriving hadn’t comforted him. Adeline had let go of her dreams, and she clung to anger like a lifeline.
Gannon plucked a melody on the strings.
“So?” John prompted. “How’s she doing?”
“She
’s angry.”
“You blame her?”
“No.”
“No?”
Gannon sighed.
John talked like he drummed; he drove at the beat relentlessly, but he left the words for someone else to fill in.
“I accept that I’m responsible for my actions, and I was wrong, but I didn’t act alone. She’s acting like I did, blaming me for everything.”
“That’s the trouble with you front men.”
Despite years of decoding John’s cryptic statements, Gannon didn’t follow, so he waited.
“You think it’s all about you. Adeline Green had dreams as big as ours, and she hasn’t moved on any of them. She’s barely scraping by, and it’s not because she’s mad at you.”
“You think she’s punishing herself?”
“It’d be great if she’d stop.”
“Only God can change that.”
“Well, you’re all the way up there.”
So he might as well try. “We’ve already fought in public twice.”
“You have her number.”
Because John, not Adeline, had given it to him. Calling when she would immediately hang up would solve nothing. “She can reach me too. I left Tim’s number.”
“How romantic.”
“Who said anything about romance? This is about survival. I think you’re right. She needs something, but if she won’t speak to me, I can’t help her, and I can’t help Awestruck.”
“Songwriting’s still stuck, then.”
“More or less.” Gannon strummed his pick across the strings, then let his hand rest.
John’s voice brightened. “Me and Matt should come up.”
“You, sure, but Matt wouldn’t help anything.”
“He could use healthy ways to occupy himself.” The false luster wore off his tone.
“Why?”
“He hauled off and punched a guy at a club. Avoiding charges cost a pretty penny.”
Gannon rubbed the heel of his palm against his temple. If John knew, Tim did too, but he had said nothing. The guy really didn’t want Gannon distracted. With that mindset, would Tim put Adeline through to Gannon if she called?