by Ash Parsons
Ty just stands there, shaking his head. Unable to look at me.
Finally he says, “You’re right. I didn’t write the lyrics. I don’t write any of them.” He glances up at my eyes. Searching, not sure what he will find.
A question mark to match my own—and the parallel pain underneath it.
I think of the lyrics to the new song. My first kiss with Joshua—not Ty. No one else could have written that. No one.
“Joshua wrote it.” My words are raw, eking out around the pain.
Ty winces. “I was going to tell you. Before it got released—”
“Tell me where he is.”
Ty’s eyes jump to mine, startled. “What? Where who is?”
Anger at being deceived claws at my throat. I shove his shoulder again.
“Then tell me who paid my tuition.”
Ty’s hands lift, palms open. His voice is sad, like he is trying to coax an injured animal. “Roxy, no. This isn’t what you think. I don’t know exactly what—”
“That’s enough.”
Artie.
Like clockwork. Like perfect-catch timing. Her parabola of presence timed with split-second perfection to snatch the falling moment before it can shatter.
“Roxanne.” She smiles, but it doesn’t reach her eyes. “I thought you were joining us later, at the restaurant.”
She puts herself between Ty and me.
“I need to speak to Ty.” My voice is tight. “Privately.”
“Now is not a good time. Perhaps tonight. Now we have to go.”
She takes Ty’s arm and turns him. Ty’s eyes are minnows, darting between me and Artie.
But he lets her push him away. He walks away from me without saying a word.
And for the first time, I think about what it must have been like to be Ty when Joshua became famous. To watch your constant companion, your guardian, your hero big brother, grow away, go away, and leave you behind.
What was his life like after his brother left?
A quiet abandonment. A sorrow no one else felt.
Then a tragedy happened, shattering and horrific. But unchangeable. After the grief, through it, because of it . . . It might be your turn to be somebody.
To be seen.
“The car will be waiting, Ty,” Arties says. “I’ll meet you in a few minutes.”
Ty keeps walking away from me, down the hall to the doorway. Artie waits until he steps outside, and I catch a glimpse of a black SUV.
Artie turns back to where I stand. She sizes me up, caution in her eyes. Mistrust.
“Artie, I’m not crazy. What’s happening—” Emotion robs me of words, a choking that I can’t express, not here, not to her, not when I can feel the grit-needle sting of tears gathering.
Grief and hope a rigging, forever holding me suspended.
Artie sighs and brings her watch up slightly.
Checking if she has enough time to say something consoling.
“Joshua had such gifts. Didn’t he?” she says.
Had. Past tense.
“It all came so easily to him at first. But nothing about this is easy, no matter how it seems.” She gives her manicure the once-over, and I watch the hardness return to her eyes. “I’m sorry I don’t have any answers for you. Neither does Ty.”
I think of Ty’s face. The split second when I said the song was Joshua’s. Guilt that then turned into surprise when I demanded he tell me where Joshua was.
Surprise turning into pity when he understood I thought Joshua was alive.
But Artie’s face shows nothing. It’s a shield, covering vulnerability.
“You know something,” I say, not a question. An accusation.
Artie looks over my shoulder and crooks a finger.
I look behind me to see two huge security guys detach themselves from the wall and move toward us.
Artie’s voice is professional. “I’m sure you can find your way out.”
I laugh. “And here I thought for a second you were being human.”
“Don’t push me. Ty’s security team is exceptional. They make Joshua’s look like the babysitter’s club.”
She turns and walks away, heading down the hall toward where Ty disappeared.
I feel the presence of the security guards looming behind my back.
And that’s when it hits me. I haven’t seen Santiago. Everyone else is here, like a play with the same cast—except for the lead, of course. Now playing the role of Joshua Blackbird, an understudy, Ty Blackbird.
But all the other roles? Artie has made sure the rest of the group is precisely as she cast it for Joshua.
The show must go on.
Maybe that’s why I haven’t seen Santiago. Protecting Joshua felt like more than a role for him. Maybe he couldn’t do it, after what happened.
It doesn’t feel right. But who would blame him for not wanting to be part of this circus again?
When was the last time I saw him? My memory casts backward, seeking to fit Santiago’s shape into the puzzle, a blur from days and days gone by. The haze of grief blurring the shapes even more.
But I remember. It was the memorial service, the drive to the cemetery, the circle of chairs. Everything beautiful and unreal, heightened into sideshow surrealism by shattering grief.
He was definitely there that day.
I close my eyes, trying to remember. For once summoning the pain, instead of burying it. Trying to remember anything beyond the white noise of shock.
I remember holding hands with Ty, with Livie.
Everyone crying. Everyone’s eyes red-rimmed.
As we left, walking slow feet away, Santiago took my arm. He stepped forward, eyes downcast. He told me, “It’s no one’s fault. It’s not your fault, Miss Roxanne.”
I sobbed and hugged him. I reassured him it wasn’t his fault, either.
He didn’t cry, and he didn’t look into my eyes again.
I thought it was his ex-marine stoicism. I thought he blamed himself even after telling me I shouldn’t blame myself.
Everyone else came back. Everyone came back for Ty.
Why didn’t he?
I sprint down the hall, crash through the door, and see Ty in the back of the SUV, Artie reaching out to close the door behind them.
Another guard comes at me, hands up.
“Artie!” I yell. “Artie!”
She leaves the door open, waves at me to come forward. “Make it quick, Roxanne. We’re hungry.”
“Why isn’t Santiago here?”
It’s almost worth her annoyance, the sudden startled shift of her face, wide eyes blinking.
“How should I know?” she snaps, recovering.
“You didn’t try to hire him back?”
“Of course I did. He wasn’t interested.” She tries to pull the door closed, but my hand stops her.
Ty’s eyebrows climb under the floppy fringe of his hair.
“You’re saying you asked him, and he said no?” I still can’t picture it. Can’t picture Santiago turning it down, no matter what happened. I can’t picture him saying no to Ty, even if he felt he’d failed his brother.
“That’s correct. Now, if you don’t mind?” Artie lifts my hand from the door frame.
I step back, and she slams the door. Through the dim glass I can see Ty talking to her urgently, frowning.
Artie isn’t looking at him, her thumbs flying over her phone as she texts.
The security guard climbs into the front passenger seat, and the car pulls away.
Then they’re gone.
My phone buzzes. A text from Artie.
Roxanne, breathe. For Ty’s sake. Sending a car so we can talk in private.
I try to take a deep breath, but my body’s not having it. What in the world is going on here?
Ten minutes later, a car arrives, windows tinted black. “Miss Stewart?” the driver asks.
I nod, and he opens the back door for me.
I half expect a ghost to be waiting for me inside, Joshua himself. But the car is empty.
The car follows the path that Artie and Ty’s car took. A short drive, and we arrive at a posh restaurant, but the car passes the entrance slowly and turns into a café parking lot next door. We head to the back of the lot.
I stay in the car, watching my phone, waiting for instructions from Artie.
After ten minutes, my driver’s phone dings. He reads the message, then unclips his seat belt, opens the door, and steps out. Just as quickly he opens the door to the seat opposite mine and Artie slides in.
“Leave us,” she says to the driver before he closes the car door.
“Artie, what the hell is going on?”
“Ty doesn’t know.” Her eyes are sharp on me. “He doesn’t know everything.”
My heart is pounding. “Is Joshua alive?”
She looks away. “I don’t know,” she says. There is a crack in her voice.
“How can you not know?”
“Because I don’t! I’m as surprised as you are to say it, Roxanne, but the truth is I don’t know. A couple of days before the memorial service, a package was delivered to my office. No return address. No postage mark or any trace of who sent it or how it got there. It just showed up. No one paid any attention to it. There was too much going on. So the envelope was shoved aside with about a hundred others.
“The day of the memorial service, I went back to the office alone. After everything. I needed to throw myself into work. I went through the mail and spotted the envelope. Inside were handwritten lyric sheets. Joshua’s handwriting. No note accompanying the lyrics. No anything. Just song lyrics.”
I feel cold suddenly, the hairs on my arms standing up.
“They might have been sent before the night on the boat. Or they might have been sent after. No one has come forward. As far as I could tell, Joshua drowned that night and those lyrics are just part of what he left behind, knowing they would be found.”
I force myself to breathe. “You said Ty doesn’t know everything?”
She shakes her head. “It’s hard enough, doing what he’s doing. Stepping into his brother’s shadow, even if it’s something Ty wants. So I told him that Joshua left behind another notebook. Made it sound like something I’d known about. We’re going to hold a press conference about it after the album comes out. But Ty wanted to wait until then, didn’t need the added scrutiny. The added questions. And I told him not to breathe a word to anyone, even you, until he was ready.”
Artie meets my eyes.
“But what Ty doesn’t know is the timing or how the lyrics arrived. I didn’t want that to hurt him. This way, it feels like a lost treasure found. A gift. Not something more painful.”
I take all this in. It makes a kind of sense, yet it’s almost too much to bear. If she’s right, and this was something that Joshua did before the night he died, knowing what he was about to do . . .
Artie waits for me to process what she’s just said. She takes a deep breath. “There’s something more.”
“What? Artie, what more could there possibly be?”
“That song you heard today. It wasn’t part of that package, the one I found after the memorial service.”
“What are you saying?”
“A few days after Ty’s version of Orpheus landed online, another envelope arrived. Unmarked, just like the first. Inside was one more page.”
My skin is going to explode.
“That’s all I know, Roxanne. The end of the story. There has been no word from Joshua. No call, no text, no email. I haven’t seen him since the boat.” She looks me square in the eyes. “I would tell you if I had.”
“And there’s been no more mysterious envelopes?”
“No. Not since the second one arrived. I have no way of knowing if there will ever be a third. Or a fourth. As far as I know, Joshua Blackbird is dead.”
“But you don’t believe that—”
She laughs, a caustic sound. “I can’t tell the difference between what I believe and what I want to believe anymore. When you asked about the college application, I have to admit it crossed my mind. That he applied for you. Paid the tuition.”
“Don’t you want to know what’s going on? If he’s alive?”
“Of course I do.” Her voice has a sharpness I know all too well. “But it occurred to me that he may not want me to know. Think about it for a minute. If he’s alive, then he arranged all this because he couldn’t trust me with what he wanted. With what he needed. That he hated all of this so much—”
She leaves the rest unsaid, biting off the words that rush behind the guilt.
We sit in the car, listening to the soft whoosh of traffic behind us.
“So what now?” I say.
“That’s up to you. No offense, Roxanne, but I really don’t care what you do. Go live your life. Go to college. Or don’t—it’s all the same to me.”
Back on familiar ground, then.
“Except for one thing,” Artie says, holding up a hand. “Ty. Let me tell him all this, when he’s ready. When I’m ready. He’s talented in his own way, and he’s actually enjoying this life. I think he has the capacity to enjoy it all. Let him have it.”
She waits for me to consider. I think about Ty and everything I never considered before. I think about being left by the two people you loved the most. Being left and having to find your own way.
Artie’s not sunshining me about Ty liking performing. About him having the capacity to like this life, being famous. I could see it in Marchant when it started.
So I nod. Because it doesn’t change anything for Ty. And it doesn’t change anything about how I feel about him, or anything that happened between us.
Artie smiles and pats my hand like some aunt who doesn’t really like teenagers. Then she opens the car door and leaves.
Not thirty seconds later, the driver returns.
“Where to?” he says to me.
I scroll through the day’s events. One thing sticks out above the rest. One path left to follow.
“The airport,” I tell my driver.
* * *
•••
* * *
• • •
Ayudar is a tiny village of about three thousand people on the west coast of Mexico, a few hours’ drive from Acapulco.
I whisper the word ayudar, pulling the sound through my tongue. It feels open, like a kiss. It means “help”—but I don’t know if it means the place once needed help or that it now gives help to those in need.
The plane lands in Acapulco in the dark. I take a room at an airport hotel, and fall into an exhausted but short sleep, taunted by dreams of Joshua, images of him going into the water or smiling up at me from the boat deck, waiting.
In the morning I rent a car, a blue sedan. I’ve never done that before, but this whole trip seems to be about new possibilities. I buy a map in case my GPS goes out and then make my way to Ayudar.
What will I find when I get there?
I drive through the morning—pushing the questions away. I’ll know soon enough.
Ayudar is as small as advertised. There’s a tiny, two-street intersection in the center of a dust-blown downtown. A few thrift stores, restaurants, a grocery, some vacancy signs. A smattering of businesses. Beyond the immediate downtown are modest farms, a small school, and a hospital satellite clinic. An auto supply store and some gas stations and garages.
I drive through town, following GPS prompts until I have wound my way onto dirt roads on the extreme edge of town.
Suddenly I spot it, the white stucco of the house partially visible from the road.
I don’t
know what I was expecting. A small laugh huffs out because there’s just a rusty mailbox, no name, just #14 on it, and a dirt drive, heat cracked, threading down into a tangle of palm trees, mimosas, and bromeliads, all protected by a rough fence.
Across the driveway are two fat wires, stretched and hooked into a loop hanging off a post.
“Now what?” I whisper to myself. “You came all this way—what’s a little trespassing?”
The car chimes as I open the door. I walk up to the stretched-wire fence, not certain if I’m moving slowly from fear or stiffness.
It takes a fair bit of strength to pull the wires over enough to unhook them. Carefully I drag them across the road, curling them on the dirt. I drive the car through and park on the other side and replace the wire gate, wondering if the fence is to keep strangers out or animals in.
“Don’t get shot,” I tell myself. “Drive like a friendly person.”
Whatever that looks like.
The driveway winds down and around to the house. A battered Jeep is parked to the side. I park beside it and get out. Looking toward the front door, I see a curtain fall back into place behind a window.
I go to the door. Before I can knock, it opens.
Santiago looks out at me, the frown crease between his eyebrows battling against the reflexive smile on his mouth.
Before I can say anything, before I can greet him or glare at him and speak a word of accusation about Joshua’s lyrics, he mutters something in Spanish and pulls me into a fierce hug.
I hug him back, surprised and not surprised to find how it makes me feel: safe and sound.
“Ah, Roxanne.” Santiago’s voice is a deep rumble against my ear. “It’s good to see you.”
“You too, Santi.” But my voice drops into firmness, driven down by my hurt and anger. My eyes must match my voice, because Santiago steps back slightly. Then he nods.
“Better come inside.” Santiago’s eyes dart around, a habitual check from his days spent locating long-distance lenses. Then he sighs like he knows what’s coming from me, but he opens the door wide anyway.
The house is tidy, wide wood and tile floors create an echoing space. No jumble of knickknacks, no art or artifacts, just cool white walls and room all around you. A hallway leads to other rooms on the left, an arched doorway to the right connects to an empty dining room and probably a kitchen beyond that.