Gateway to Heaven

by BETH KERY

“That’s not too surprising since the elevator opens right into my house,” he replied mockingly, but his brow crinkled with concern. Why did Megan’s sister want to speak to him?

  This can’t be good.

  Down in the lobby, Hilary glanced over at the doorman and smiled with a confidence that she was far from feeling. The poor guy looked like he was anxiously sweating out every possible dollar of his imagined Chris Lasher Christmas bonus. Hilary, who usually had a saleswoman’s talent for glibness, hesitated. But then Christian himself gave her an easy way out.

  “Is Megan okay?” Christian asked.

  “That’s what I need to talk to you about. I can’t reach her, which is very unusual. Can I come up and speak to you. Please?”

  “Put Jeff on,” Christian said, referring to the doorman.

  “It’s not Jeff. It’s some guy I’ve never seen before.”

  Hilary ground her teeth as she listened to the doorman “yes sir, whatever you say, sir” Christian Lasher. Apparently, you give a guy some good looks, a lone-wolf syndrome, and a trace of talent, and you had all the ingredients for winning unwavering respect from half of the nation’s population. The night doorman didn’t look a day older than twenty-one, and acted like he’d just been put on the phone to talk directly to God.

  A minute later, Hilary strutted in high heels across Christian’s wood floors to meet him. Even her walk was aggressive, he thought sourly. He sat on the couch plucking at the guitar in his lap.

  “When people gouge instead of walk, they usually have the courteously to take off their shoes before entering a room,” he said impassively when he met Hilary’s eyes. Before Hilary had a chance to give an equally nasty reply, he cut her off. “Do you think something is wrong with Megan?”

  Hilary secured her shoulder bag and faced him squarely. He didn’t like her particularly, but he had to admire her chutzpah, coming into his house like she was ready to do battle and screw his home team advantage.

  “I guess you would know that better than any of us, right?” she asked sarcastically. “You’re undoubtedly the expert on Megan. You,” she said, flipping her wrist around in a sarcastic gesture of respect that made him grit his teeth and bite his tongue, “who have known of Megan’s existence for all of two weeks.”

  He set his guitar on the couch and sat back in a semblance of calm. Hilary Molloy was primed to get something off her chest, and she was going to say it whether Christian participated in the conversation or not.

  “I want you to stay away from my sister,” she snapped.

  “Not going to happen,” he said after a few seconds of mock consideration.

  “You’re a selfish son of a bitch.”

  When he didn’t answer, but just stared at her stoically, she began pacing and gesticulating at him for emphasis. “I know what you are. You’re a player. You can’t be that depraved, can you? So whacked out that you would want to seduce a girl like Megan?”

  He leaned forward, part in curiosity and part in fury. “What do you mean a girl like Megan? Don’t you mean a woman? A woman who is smart and sensitive…and talented and beautiful? Oh, no. Let me guess. Hilary is jealous that little sister might second-guess her smug, ‘Heed me, I’m the queen of the realm’ trip.” He collapsed back on the couch. “Damn, it’s going to cost you a bundle to lose that role with Megan, isn’t it? No wonder you’re here to defend it.”

  Hilary’s restless pacing came to abrupt halt halfway through his acid diatribe.

  Christian scowled and mentally rolled his eyes. So much for peace, understanding and the Jedi way. The stark resemblance between this warrior woman who stood in front of him and Megan only fueled his regret at his lack of restraint.

  “You don’t even know about what happened to her, do you?” Hilary seethed.

  He watched the woman who suddenly felt like his mortal enemy through the narrowed slits of his eyelids. Her words—no, this whole confrontation—had caused a bitter taste to rise in his throat, but he refused to take Hilary’s bait. Which is exactly what her aim was in coming here, Christian realized. He would have sunk his fist into a man’s face for less than what Hilary said next. But things being what they were, he felt strangely comforted instead.

  “Did you tell Megan that you killed your wife?”

  Seconds passed in silence.

  “Damn it, did you?” Hilary shrieked.

  Christian picked up the Gibson guitar on the sofa and carefully placed it back in its stand.

  “I don’t have the answer you want to hear, Hilary,” he finally said when he turned around. “My wife died of leukemia five years ago. I loved her and I mourned her.”

  She hesitated for a moment, obviously put off by his response. She launched right back into battle mode after a few seconds.

  “And you didn’t coax her a little bit to the coffin with your infidelities?” she taunted.

  He tightened with fury at the repeat of the slanderous remark. It was hard not to get defensive when a missile hit tender territory. But then a look of triumph flickered across Hilary’s face. She’d shown her cards too quickly for a poker-player like Christian. The knowledge that she was purposefully trying to infuriate him helped his diffuse his anger.

  “Did you just come here to sling shit at me, Hilary, or do actually have anything of relevance to say?” he asked levelly.

  Her mouth twisting in anger. “I’ll tell Megan about your wife. Every sordid detail.”

  “Do your damndest.” He laughed mirthlessly as he scraped his fingers through his hair. “Not that I don’t hate to end this entirely pointless conversation, but I’m going to bed.”

  “No, you’re not. You’re going to listen to me, you smug bastard.”

  “Why should I? Listen, Hilary, I care about Megan. More than you imagine, I can tell you that for certain. But that doesn’t mean that you have the right to come into my home and insult me.”

  “If it were true that you really cared about Megan, you would leave her alone. Starting right now.”

  Christian’s heavy-lidded, bored expression told her that he was sick of hearing the same old song. He loosely crossed his arms and waited.

  “You’re going to end up hurting her. You know it as well as I do.”

  The image of Megan on the elevator last night flashed into his mind, but he stilled his qualms with effort. “People get hurt sometimes in relationships. That doesn’t mean they’re not worth it. It doesn’t mean someone should go live on a desert island or something. Megan is an adult. She’ll decide if she thinks the risk is worth it or not.”

  Hilary’s lips curved derisively. “By relationships, don’t you mean convenient sex? Leave her alone. She’s not what you’re used to and she shouldn’t be some kind of twisted challenge for your bored, thrill-seeking, rock star self to toy with.”

  “Didn’t I ask you to leave?” he grated out. He’d reached his limit.

  Hilary stepped closer as if she’d recognized the chink in his armor and was going in for the kill. “Your family used to live in the neighborhood, Christian. You know about what happened to Megan when she was a little girl. You must realize how vulnerable she is. Don’t you have an ounce of decency in you?”

  “I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about,” he said, that old, rank taste rising in the back of his mouth.

  “You don’t remember Henry Nightingale? He was the husband of Sheila Nightingale, who ran a daycare center on West Jackson back in the late eighties. The story was splashed all over the newspapers twenty plus years ago. I can’t believe you don’t know what I’m talking about. If you’re truly ignorant about it, I’m sure your parents aren’t.”

  He felt queasy. He didn’t know exactly what Hilary was talking about, but a formless, nameless dread came over him. He didn’t want Hilary to continue.

  He wished she’d get the hell out of here.

  “Henry Nightingale is still locked up in Joliet,” Hilary continued relentlessly. “My mother and I still go there every year for a parole heari
ng along with the families of the four other children that he raped while they were under his wife’s so-called care. We do everything in our power to make sure that he stays locked up forever.”

  Something shifted in Hilary’s expression as she stared at him in the seconds that followed.

  “You really didn’t know, did you?” she asked softly.

  That name…Henry Nightingale. It was like an ancient childhood specter had sprung to life in his consciousness. Christian might have shaken his head in response to Hilary’s question. He couldn’t be sure. He couldn’t even be sure how he’d ended up sitting on the couch.

  “How old?” he asked hoarsely.

  “Megan was three.”

  He hissed a curse. Hilary lowered herself shakily to a chair. For a few seconds, the only sound in the loft was the distant hum of his refrigerator.

  “We rarely talk about it,” she admitted with a twitch of her shoulder. “It’s too hard to…but it’s always there—you know—beneath the surface…like a nagging pain that just won’t fade.”

  Christian nodded, even though he had no idea what he was doing. His eyes remained glued to Hilary’s face. She stared in the direction of his piano, seemingly lost in her thoughts. Seconds passed before she started talking in a flat, dreamy voice.

  “I was a freshman in high school when we found out, along with the rest of the community and the city--not to mention the country--about the extent of Henry Nightingale’s crimes.

  “Our family needed extra money when my dad’s hours at the steel mill got cut temporarily. My mom had to take a job. I was much older than Megan—fourteen--so I could take care of myself. I could baby-sit Megan in the evenings when I came home from school. I usually did anyway. She was as much daughter to me as she was a sister. But with Mom working, we needed someone to watch Megan during the day.” Her voice wavered and died.

  Christian understood at that moment why Hilary never spoke of the topic. Her energy—all the fierce fight—seemed to be seeping out of her before his very eyes. After a moment, she inhaled and continued, but he had to strain to hear her rough whisper.

  “My mother blamed herself for voluntarily delivering her little girl into the home of a monster. Dad blamed himself for not being the provider he thought he should have been, making his wife leave the house and work when there was a child at home, thus inadvertently putting Megan in harm’s way.” Hilary glanced down at her knees. “It hit my father the hardest of all. He became withdrawn, irritable. He finally drank himself into his grave ten years ago.”

  Christian closed his eyes.

  Not Megan.

  “Megan says she doesn’t even remember it, thank God,” Hilary said quietly. “But the child psychologist that she saw afterwards said that the trauma had likely affected her, but that the memories just weren’t available to her conscious mind. We’ve never known if she didn’t remember because she was so young, or because her mind had blessedly blocked out the pain. Maybe it was both.”

  Christian felt like he’d just a received a brutal, disorienting head blow. But the resulting pain wasn’t just in his head, it was in his chest, his belly…his spirit.

  He had no frame of reference for how to respond to Hilary. He’d sadly learned the lessons of how to speak of human misery, of loss, and of death. But death was a natural as life, part of the great cycle of existence. What Henry Nightingale had done was an aberration against nature. How did one find the words to grieve that?

  Christ, no wonder Megan’s father had slowly and inexorably killed himself.

  Two words kept repeating again and again in his mind against his will. Not Megan. Not Megan. Not Megan.

  He felt Hilary studying him and figured she must be seeing someone that looked like they’d just been the victim of a hit and run accident.

  “Now do you see why I’m here?” she asked shakily. “What if…becoming intimate with someone reactivates memories of the trauma? Who knows how it could affect her?” Hilary asked softly.

  “What?” Christian muttered. For a few seconds, he’d felt like Hilary was speaking at the end of a tunnel. Her meaning trickled into his brain as if it were strained through an already soaked sponge.

  “How can you know how she’ll respond psychologically if she should become sexually active? She’s always been happy, stable. We’ve been so grateful that the impact on her was minimal.”

  Christian took a deep breath and his consciousness seemed to waver, then settle. “Wait…I’m confused. What are you saying? Your entire plan consists of chasing away all of Megan’s potential suitors until she dies a virgin?”

  “Haven’t you been listening? I just told you that she’s not a virgin.”

  “The fuck she’s not!”

  Hilary flinched back in her chair at his abrupt harshness.

  “What that sick son of a bitch did to her doesn’t equate to…” Christian drew breath raggedly.

  “Of course it doesn’t. But she’s far from being a normal woman who just happens to have never had sex, either. I won’t sit by and watch you seduce her, only to take off on a plane one day, heedless that you’ve just laid a very special young woman’s life to waste.”

  He uncoiled from the couch and began pacing. “Can’t you see this is ridiculous? You can’t protect Megan that way for the rest of her life. You can’t make her a sacrifice to your parents’ guilt…to your guilt. Doesn’t she deserve to have a normal life, to fall in love, to have a family?”

  “And that’s what you’ve had in mind, Christian?” When he paused in his pacing, she continued, relentlessly. “You’re willing to take the chance that you were the one who pushed her into re-experiencing her trauma, causing who knows what kind of permanent damage, just because you woke up with a whim to bed Megan one day?”

  He stared, his mouth hanging open. Hilary closed her eyes after she registered his expression. Tears scattered down her cheek.

  Christian supposed she’d finally gotten her point across. But from the looks of things, Hilary’s victory was far from sweet for either one of them.

  Chapter 6

  “What the hell is wrong with you, Christian?” Seth accused, his voice gravelly with anger.

  It was fours days until their performance at St. Cat’s block party, and relations had been growing progressively worse with the band. The rapid decline after such an encouraging beginning was all due to one factor—

  Christian.

  They’d all been enduring their lead singer’s irritability and sullenness, but barely. Now Christian had gone too far. When Jamie Gonzalez had struck an off note just a moment ago during rehearsal, Christian had dropped his microphone, grabbed Jamie’s bass guitar, and ripped out the strings as the band members and various others looked on in open-mouthed shock. Jamie started shouting aggressively close to Christian’s face, and though Christian was beginning to feel contrite and idiotic at that point, he didn’t back away.

  Jamie must have had second thoughts about getting physical with Christian. Instead he kicked Christian’s still active microphone in a tit for tat on the way out the door. Christian had stalked out of the studio as everyone raised their hands to protect their ears from the ear-splitting audio feedback.

  Christian had his back to Seth, his right hand braced against the wall of the corridor outside the studio. His heart hammered in his ears and would not slow. He didn’t notice that he’d cut his hand while venting his anger at Jamie’s guitar and that blood trickled down his arm. His breath came rapid and shallow. His muscles tensed tighter than a bowstring ready to fling its missile.

  “I asked you a question,” Seth said in a hard voice. “I’ve never seen you act this way before. Not even after Cecilia died. What is your problem?”

  “It’s none of your business,” Christian bit out.

  “You’ve been making it everyone’s business for the past few days. In fact, your selfish, sullen bullshit seems to be making a point of doing just that!”

  A tense silence ensued, broken only by Chr
istian’s harsh breathing. After a few moments, even that gave way to the quiet. The only other person who could have talked to Christian like Seth just had was his own father. His friend’s angry reprimand had the effect of sticking his head in ice cold water. The red haze of fury began to clear from his mind.

  Christian was left exhausted and hollow in its wake.

  And at least the rage kept him from feeling so helpless.

  “I haven’t been able to sleep at all for the past few nights.”

  “Are you upset about Jamie and Mike’s decision to split the band apart? I thought that’s what you expected?”

  “No. It’s got nothing to do with the band.”

  “Then why are you taking it out on us?”

  “Because you’re there,” Christian muttered lamely.

  “This all has to do with Megan, doesn’t it?”

  Christian didn’t answer. For the first time, he felt pain in his hand and examined it dispassionately.

  “Have you spoken to her about whatever it is that’s eating you?”

  “No.”

  “Why not? Just as soon take it out on us, huh?”

  “She doesn’t deserve my crap.”

  “Neither do we, but that didn’t seem to stop you,” Seth said with his usual lack of inflection. “Why haven’t you talked to her?”

  “Because she isn’t available.”

  Seth’s stony expression gave slightly when he heard the hoarse quality of Christian’s voice.

  “Sorry, man. That’s rough. Another guy?”

  He breathed deeply and finally turned to face Seth. He knew he was acting badly. He knew it. He just couldn’t seem to get a handle on himself. The concepts of restfulness, peace, and sleep had been banished from his mind and body’s vocabulary for three nights now.

  Ever since Hilary’s visit.

  “I wish it were that simple,” Christian muttered.

  Seth whistled softly. “That bad, huh? You look like shit, Christian. You need to go home and get some sleep. I’ll talk to Jamie. I’ll make up something.”

  Christian shook his head. “Nah, I’ll do it. I owe him an apology.” He met Seth’s stare. “I owe all of you one.”