Lost Melody

by Roz Lee

  Melody took a seat at the counter and nibbled fresh fruit from a prepared platter while she listened to the stories, none of which she’d ever heard before. Jonathan joined them. He helped himself to coffee and added his own anecdotes.

  She’d never heard her mother speak so openly about her time with RavensBlood. It was a side of her mother she didn’t know, and one she desperately needed to understand. She listened attentively, noting the easy way she and Jonathan interacted, the story telling seesawed back and forth between them as they each told their side of the story. Contrary to what she’d always believed, it became clear her mother had enjoyed her time as a backup singer. Why then had she always discouraged her daughter from pursuing music—even to the point of banning her father’s music in their home?

  She followed the couple to the family room after breakfast to open presents, so she put her questions aside to enjoy the moment. Jonathan handed her a small package.

  “Hank sent it,” he said.

  She carefully unwrapped it. Inside was a folded note and, beneath, a beautiful gold chain and a gold-plated house key. She read the brief note.

  The key to my heart.

  The key to our home.

  Love, Hank.

  She looked up to meet Jonathan’s sympathetic gaze.

  “He asked me to bring it to you.”

  She closed her fingers around the key. “Thank you. It means everything to me. He’s well? You’ve seen him?”

  “I’ve seen him. He’s surviving.”

  Her heart lurched. Surviving. Getting by. Just like she was.

  She hung the key around her neck and pressed it close to her heart. “I know it’s hard for him. It’s hard for me, too, but I have to resolve my issues I my own way. I hope he understands.”

  Jonathan stood and held his hand out to her. “Let’s go for a walk.”

  She followed him down the steep staircase to the beach and across the sand to the wet surf line.

  “The man is crazy about you,” he said. “You have to know that.”

  “I do. I’m just so messed up right now I can’t think about being with him the way he needs me to be.”

  “What’s wrong, luv? Can I help you?”

  They strolled along the surf for a few minutes before she answered. “I have a lot of things to work out for myself. I’ve made a decision, and I hope you can help me with it.”

  “Anything. You know I’ll do anything for you.”

  With Hank’s biography at the editor’s, she had no reason to put off the next step of her plan any longer. She took a deep breath and let the words flow out with it. “I’m going to write a book about Daddy. A biography.”

  Jonathan stopped in his tracks. “You don’t have to do that.”

  She took another step and turned back to him. “Yes, I do. Mom has done her best to shelter me from the media, from life. Even to the point of not telling me my own father was dead. I wasn’t allowed to listen to his music growing up or take piano lessons. I don’t understand any of it, Uncle Jonathan. I need to make sense of it before I can move on. Don’t you see? Hank leads the same kind of life you and Daddy did. It scares me because I don’t really know anything about his life. I need to. I need to understand why Mom sheltered me so much.”

  He stared out across the ocean. Melody waited for him to speak.

  “Okay. Talk to your mother first. I’ll answer all your questions after you talk to her.”

  “Okay.” She nodded. “I’m going to Ravenswood to write it.”

  “When?”

  “I’m going to talk to Mom next week. So, the first week of January maybe. When you see Hank, will you tell him I love the gift, and I understand?”

  He gathered her in a fatherly embrace. “I will. Let’s go see if we can find a pot of tea in your lovely kitchen.”

  She clung to him as they walked back the way they’d come, sharing the peaceful solitude of the beach.

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Melody checked the batteries in her voice recorder and threw it along with several extra tapes into her bag. To remind herself why she was delving into the past, she wrapped an unsteady hand around the key hanging from a chain around her neck.

  I can do this. I have to do this.

  She took a deep breath, hoisted the heavy bag to her shoulder, and grabbed her car keys from the hall table. The most direct and fastest route to her mother’s house was by freeway, but she chose the more scenic Highway 101—a small, two-lane road winding along the northern San Diego County coastline, through beach communities and a state park.

  She drove with the windows down. The fresh, salty sea air teased her hair and helped clear her head.

  Her attitude would set the tone for the interview. She needed to focus and be firm in her commitment to the project. She needed to set her personal issues aside and listen with the ears of a reporter, not the frightened, lonely child still living inside her.

  Melody sat at her mother’s kitchen table and pulled out her voice recorder and the note pad where she’d written down her list of questions. She tried to put aside the fact she was interviewing her own mother and focused on getting answers.

  Her mother sipped her tea and set the fragile china cup back on the saucer. “What do you want to know?”

  “Everything.” Melody turned on her recorder. “Let’s begin with your obsession with Earl Ravenswood when you were in high school.”

  Her mother’s eyes widened and she paled. For a second, Melody regretted the harsh tone she’d taken. The last thing she wanted to do was insult her and loose her cooperation entirely.

  Her mom reached for her tea, raised the cup and set it back down without taking a sip.

  “You don’t pull any punches, do you?”

  “I’m sorry, but you were obsessed. The scrapbooks you gave me are evidence enough.”

  She nodded. “You’re right.” She mopped at the counter with her napkin then focused on something across the room.

  “I saw Milton on television. RavensBlood had their first hit, and they were big news in the United States. The local television station was at the airport when they landed. That was before they had jet ways. They rolled stairs up to the plane….” She closed her eyes and a smiled. “He stepped out of the plane, and I fell in love with him.”

  She sighed and looked at Melody. “It was more than a teenage crush. I’d had plenty of those. What I felt for him was different. I knew with every cell in my body he was the man put on this planet for me.”

  Hours later, her mother’s voice was strained, and Melody was on information overload. That it all had to do with her parents only made it harder to comprehend.

  “Let’s pick up again tomorrow afternoon, Mom. Okay?”

  “I suppose,” she answered.

  Melody shut off the recorder and closed her notebook.

  “I love you, Mom. Thanks for talking to me. I know it can’t be easy for you.”

  “I knew I’d have to answer for my decisions some day. I’m glad it’s you I’m telling. I know I can trust you to preserve some sort of dignity for me.”

  Melody smiled at her. “You can count on it, Mom. I won’t lie, but I don’t have any desire to make you into a pathetic figure. You weren’t, you know. Sometimes, we just know when we see someone that they’re the one.”

  Later that evening, Melody went over her mother’s words. She had taken one look at Milton Ravenswood when she was sixteen and had known he was the one. It was stupid and impossible for a junior in high school to conceive of ever getting close enough to someone like him, much less hope he would see her in the same way. Nevertheless, she set in motion a plan that would forever change her life—and his.

  At seventeen, barely graduated from high school, she’d set out to meet the then twenty-three-year-old musician, using her adequate singing voice to open doors for her. By a stroke of luck, she’d landed a job touring with RavensBlood as a backup singer. Her parents had been devastated and disowned her for publicly embarrassing the
m.

  It hadn’t mattered to her mom—or to the object of her obsession. Hamilton Earl Ravenswood fell as hard for Diane as she had for him. It hadn’t been just her mother’s obsession talking. Jonathan had confirmed her story months ago.

  So, she knew her parents' marriage had been love match, but getting pregnant hadn’t been part of the plan.

  Melody had hours of tape where her mother had described the whirlwind year she’d spent on the road with the band. She related stories about the roadies, the groupies, and the drugs and alcohol so many used to make it through the demanding schedule of performances and media appearances. She talked about the endless travel, hotel rooms, and constant demands for her husband’s time. Their personal time together had whittled down to those few precious hours in the middle of the night after a performance and before the real world awoke. Then he’d done interviews with the local media before the band boarded a plane or bus and headed for the next venue.

  She described the man she loved, his sense of humor, his incredible talent, the passion he had for music, his need to perform—to have that connection with an audience. Through her mother’s words, Melody came to know her father more as the man he had been, rather than the icon the media portrayed him as.

  Sleep eluded her. Images, thoughts, and questions raced through her mind. There was much more to hear, more truths to uncover, more roads to travel on her journey to understanding.

  The next day was more exhausting than the one before. Her mother attempted to explain why she’d chosen not to live with her husband and raise their daughter as a real family. Melody tried to comprehend, but as the child who had been denied daily contact with the father she loved, she found her mother’s reasoning less than convincing.

  “If you were going to let him sing to me every night, why not just live with him? I don’t understand. If you loved him as much as you say you did, what was the problem?”

  Her mother hesitated. “I couldn’t stand it. I hated the traveling. I hated everything about the business. I had a fantasy he would love me enough to give it up. Maybe not music all together, but at least the touring. And we’d go live somewhere, just the two of us. I realize how selfish and childish it was, but I was just barely eighteen when I became pregnant. When I told Milton and he insisted on marriage, I thought he would quit then. But he didn’t… wouldn’t.”

  “What did you do?”

  “I told him I was leaving, that I wasn’t going to raise you on the road. He argued, but he knew I was right. That was no way to raise a child. He let us go. He provided everything we both could possibly need, money, a house…everything. Then, he wrote that song and started calling every night to sing to you.”

  Melody reached for the teapot in the center of the table and refilled her mother’s cup and her own. She added a lump of sugar to hers and stirred.

  “Why did you help him?” she asked. “It began long before I was able to actively participate.”

  “I loved him so much, and because of the song, I was able to talk to him every day. He loved me, but I’d become third in line behind you and his music.

  “He used to sneak into town when the band was on the West Coast. He’d come to the house after you were in bed and watch you sleep.”

  “I didn’t know….”

  “Those summers you went to Ravenswood when you were older? I stayed in a house a few miles away. He still loved me, but he said it would only confuse you if you saw us together.”

  Did he love you, or did he tolerate you in order to see me? How much of what you’re telling me is your fantasy, and how much is reality? “What happened the night he died?”

  She had never heard her mother’s version of the events, and knowing how much her mother had loved Milton Ravenswood, she wondered at the lack of emotion in her mother’s voice. The retelling was flat, a practiced recitation of the facts, minus the part where she let her daughter’s birthday party continue after she’d received the news of his missing plane.

  Had her mother withheld the information in order to protect her daughter or to punish her because her husband had loved Melody more than her? It was an insidious thought, and one that had haunted her for the last seventeen years.

  It was me he was coming to see. It’s my fault he’s dead. Do you hate me for taking him away from you? She couldn’t bring herself to ask. Time to change the subject before she found out more than she wanted to know.

  “Why didn’t I have piano lessons? Why didn’t you let me listen to music? Given your own musical background and Daddy’s, I would think you would have wanted me to explore my musical talent if I had any.”

  Her mother surprised her again. “Oh, I knew you had talent. I suppose you’ve figured it out for yourself.”

  Melody nodded.

  “Music took Milton away from me. I didn’t want it to take you, too.”

  Melody reeled at the bitter and pathetic tone of her mother’s voice. A pattern of manipulation for selfish purposes had begun to emerge, and she wondered why she hadn’t seen it before.

  “I wasn’t going anywhere, Mom.”

  Chapter Thirty-three

  Ravenswood wasn’t the most hospitable of places in the winter, especially for someone who had spent the last few months in the tropical clime of San Diego. The manor house, built in the eighteenth century, was cold and uninviting, but Melody loved it all the same. Except for the few people employed to keep the place from falling down, she had the house all to herself. For six summers she could remember, she had run through the hallways, followed her father like a faithful puppy, and basked in his love and undivided attention.

  At night, he had tucked her into bed and sang to her.

  She hadn’t been back to Ravenswood since her father’s funeral. Her mother had refused to let her go, even when Jonathan had offered to make the trip to San Diego and accompany Melody. Mired as she had been for so many years in her own guilt, she hadn’t argued. Seeing the place through the eyes of an adult, she was capable and ready to understand the man who had loved her so much.

  She paused in the music room where she’d spent so much of her time with him. Memories rushed over her, and she crossed to the grand piano and sat on the padded bench. She lifted the cover with trembling hands. The keys gleamed in the light from the chandelier overhead. She tapped one key and another, tentatively testing the instrument. She took a deep breath and let it out. She began to play.

  She experimented with random melodies—anything that sprang to mind.

  With the music came memories of summer afternoons spent with her father sitting at the piano. Her small fingers scrambled to keep up with his strong ones. They mostly played children’s ditties, but occasionally he encouraged her to try more complex arrangements. She realized they were his own compositions, and she wondered if he had committed them to paper or if they were forever lost.

  Her days fell into a rhythm of writing, playing the piano, and exploring the house.

  Shortly after her father’s death, Jonathan had moved into the house and taken over Milton’s office for his own. He had stored all of his friend’s personal papers in tightly sealed boxes in the attic. Every day she discovered something new, and in little increments grew to know her father better. By extension, she learned about herself, too.

  Hank was never far from her thoughts. Sleep came easier. Dreams of Hank had replaced the nightmares she had experienced since her father’s death.

  The more she learned about her father the more it became clear why she had fallen in love with Hank. The two men shared many common likes from their love of music to their love of nature, reading, and business.

  On a day she couldn’t get Hank off her mind, a package arrived at Ravenswood. The small box contained a CD and a slip of paper containing a short note written in Hank’s bold handwriting.

  Happy Birthday, Melody.

  I love you.

  No signature. No plea for her to return. It was the first time she’d heard from him since Christmas when he had se
nt the key with Uncle Jonathan. The CD was probably an early cut of the new album—a polite gift because she had been involved with the recording and nothing more. She turned it over, looking for anything to make it more personal. Nothing. Just a blank jewel case.

  For the first time since her return to Ravenswood, she sought out the small recording studio her father had built in the basement. She located the CD player and put in the disc. The first notes filled the air, and she sank like a stone into the control room chair.

  Hank’s voice filled the room. She closed her eyes, remembering the spring day when he had played “Melody” for her. She recalled every line of his face—the raw emotion as he sang those words and put his innermost feelings on display. His love wrapped her in a blanket of contentment.

  The song ended, and she pressed the play button again. The second time, she forced herself to listen with a degree of detachment. Why had he sent her another CD? She had the only copy, didn’t she? Then she noticed the orchestration, the background tracks. The soaring violins, the seductive clarinet, other strings and voices rounded out the recording.

  Her heart pounded against her ribs. Her lungs fought for air, and tears formed twin rivers down her cheeks. How could he? He swore he wouldn’t record it. How could he betray me?

  She wrapped her arms around her midsection and rocked back and forth until she had no more tears.

  In the cold clear light of morning, she wondered if it was too late to stop him from releasing it. A phone call from Sunny confirmed her worst fears. The song was on every radio station across the country, and the reaction was unanimous. It was a hit.

  As the day wore on, she realized she wouldn’t be able to fight him. Even her mother had heard it and understood the implied message. It didn’t take a genius to figure out to whom the song referred. After many tries, she got a call through to Jonathan.

  “Happy Birthday, luv,” he said.