Without another word, Perry Devine turns his back on us and walks away. Adam stays completely still and watches him disappear down the street. When Mr. Devine rounds the corner, Adam turns back to me. His eyes are watery and clearly full of private memories. He doesn’t say a word as he pulls his car keys from his pocket, presses the unlock button on the fob, and walks around to the driver’s side of his car.
As I tug the passenger-side door handle, I glance at the envelope in my hand. It’s bulkier than the last one was, making me wonder if there’s more in it than there should be. Before I climb in the now open car door, I peek inside the envelope. It’s full of cash. Hundred-dollar bills. Whether or not it’s more than it should be, I don’t know. But the sight of it brings Charlie and her little one to the forefront of my mind. I picture her face as she opens the envelope and sees another cashier’s check inside. Her Blue Cliff tuition can be paid in full. And she’ll have enough left over to pay a half-year’s rent, either to Tasha or to a landlord of her own. The thought spikes my blood with a heady rush of pleasure. I’m inundated by peace and happiness, believing beyond a doubt that, this time, Charlie will make our daddy proud. She’ll finally have the perfect life she deserves. For herself and for her child.
I tuck the envelope full of Charlie’s future into the pocket of my scrubs and climb into the car.
My seatbelt is buckled before I notice Adam hasn’t started the engine. I look over to find him sitting quietly in his seat, staring at a large, bloated manila envelope on top of the car’s dash. Something is written across the front of it, in bold, black marker.
“For K’acy McGee Only” it says.
Adrenaline gallops through me.
CHAPTER 38
Evelyn Sinclair—Room number 112
I spent most of my life raising little boys. Three of them, to be exact. One grew up to be a scoundrel and another never got to grow up at all. The third one, though, he’s the one I’m the most proud of.
Winston never knew his father, and maybe that was part of the problem. I lost Carl when Winston was just a month old. He had a massive heart attack and that was that. Some might say I babied Winston too much, letting him get away with things another mother may not have. But he was all I had, and I didn’t know what I’d do if I lost him, too. I just wanted him to be happy.
When I found the dead, half-rotted canary in the bushes beneath Winston’s bedroom window, its wings broken and twisted, I didn’t say a word. I figured he’d hurt the bird by accident, and he’d only lied to cover it up so I wouldn’t be disappointed in him. I learned soon enough that I was wrong. Winston didn’t care about disappointing me. He only cared about saving his own hide.
When he grew into a teenager, full of more stories and lies, I kept thinking it was just a phase. I thought he’d grow out of it, but the lies kept building and the mountain he’d become grew too tall for me to manage. It was easier to pretend. Mothers always want to see the best in their children, and I kept believing someday he would change.
I really thought he’d turned a corner when he married Heather. She was good to him, and she gave him a beautiful son. When Adam was born and they asked me to help care for him, I was more content than I’d ever been. He was my sweetheart. I loved him more than I’d loved anything in my entire life, including my own son. Adam and I were best friends. I took care of him almost every day, and I’d often stay over at Winston and Heather’s at night, too, when they needed someone to stay with Adam for one reason or another. We’d go to the playground, build Lego castles, and eat chocolate pudding every day for lunch. He was my everything.
The instant Winston showed up at my door with a pudgy baby Bradley, I felt the noose tighten around my neck. My own son was forcing me to give up what I loved the most in order to help him hide the biggest lie of his life. But I knew if I didn’t, Heather and her lawyer would take all of my boys away from me. If she found out about Bradley, she’d leave Winston, and he’d blame it on me and never speak to me again. I could handle that part, but I’d also never be allowed to see Adam, and my new grandson would probably wind up in the foster-care system, and that’s the part I couldn’t handle. Heather was not mean and vindictive, but I knew her hurt would make her want to fight back the only way she could. Bradley and Adam would be the collateral damage in their divorce.
I only saw one way to stop it from happening. So, I let the mountain swallow me whole. I took Bradley to save us all from complete devastation. Winston had already moved Adam and his mother to the other side of the country and now I knew why. I figured I’d still get to see Adam from time to time, and I knew Bradley would be safe with me. I thought I could handle everything. I thought it was the only way.
I should’ve known Winston was lying.
Bradley grew into a sweet boy, too, though he was far more stubborn than his half-brother. I came to love him as much as I loved Adam. I sent Winston pictures of Bradley as he grew, hoping someday he’d want to meet him in person, but I never heard back from him. For all I knew, those photos went straight into the garbage.
As he grew, I’d tell Bradley stories about his father and mother, just to make him feel like he was part of a larger family. I told him his parents couldn’t take care of him because of issues he’d come to understand when he was older, but he died well before he could understand. He died a week after his ninth birthday.
When Marissa showed up at my door, she already felt like an old friend. Even though almost nine years had passed, I recognized her from the playground. I didn’t know she was my son’s lover back then, but when she stood on my front porch looking for Bradley, I knew she wasn’t just the one-night stand Winston made her out to be. I knew my son had loved her and then discarded her when she got pregnant. I knew it because I’d heard the entire story from her own lips, nine years ago, in Canterbury Park. Only I didn’t know the man she was talking about was my own son.
I felt so much shame. Shame that it was my son who had hurt her so much. Shame that I didn’t recognize baby Bradley as belonging to the girl from the park when Winston came to the door with him. Shame that I believed my son when he said Bradley’s mother had chosen drugs over her own baby.
I knew there was more to her story, and I figured if I let her get to know Bradley, someday I might find out the truth and Winston’s mountain would collapse.
Only it didn’t happen that way. The next morning, I had to call my son and tell him about the car wrapped around the phone pole.
After that, I was alone. I spent the next eight years falling into a hole. That’s what Alzheimer’s is, really. A hole. You can feel yourself falling, but you can’t stop it. You just keep getting sucked in, and eventually, you’re too far down to know where you are. Too many memories disappear and it changes you. You forget who you are.
By the time Adam came to Pine Manor, the real me sat at the bottom of the hole, inside my own brain, waiting for something to lift me out, even just for a moment. Occasionally a memory would crash down on me and I’d be hoisted up out of the hole. But it wouldn’t last long. Just when I’d recognize myself, the memory would leave and I’d be dropped back down into the hole again. Alone. It made me sad, and I knew there was nothing I could do to change it.
I also knew that one day the hole would swallow me up entirely.
Adam tried to lift me out of the hole. I know he did. He wanted more memories to come and raise me out of there, and whenever one would, it was shiny and brilliant and amazing. But he couldn’t make them come any more than I could. So, most of the time, I just sat in the hole and waited for it to swallow me completely.
But it never got the chance.
I died before the hole closed, before I lost all of myself to Alzheimer’s. The girl—the one Adam loves—came in to my room one afternoon, when things got bad. She lifted me up out of the hole one final time.
They never told me, but I now know my son died six weeks before I did. His mountain had crumbled to nothing more than a pile of burned-up metal and skin.
I’m glad they didn’t tell me, because I wouldn’t have understood. The hole kept me from fully comprehending a lot of things, and Winston’s accident would have just been another one of them.
Some people say ignorance is bliss. And that just may be the only good thing about the hole they call Alzheimer’s.
EPILOGUE
Evelyn Sinclair left this world looking like a million bucks. I made sure of it. Her owl brooch—the one now pinned to the leather strap of my Music Man StingRay bass guitar—twinkled in the light of her bedside lamp. She was wearing her favorite bubblegum-pink sweater set with matching polyester pants. I dressed her that morning, almost two months ago, knowing it would be the last day she’d get to spend in this world. Things had gotten bad. She’d fallen and hit her head shortly after Mr. Sinclair died, and she hadn’t gotten out of bed since.
I knew it was time, because her eyes told me so.
She died with all the dignity and compassion she deserved. It wasn’t as hard as I thought it might be. Adam was ready, too. Even though those words never came out of his mouth.
As the stage lights whirl around me, tiny specks of radiance spread over the audience, moving and swirling across their skin. The dots are only reflections of light, bouncing off the owl’s rhinestone eyes, but I like to think of them as little pieces of Ms. Sinclair. Every time I move, she’s shuttled in a million different directions, spreading herself around the room in erratic prisms of radiance and light.
My bass notes vibrate their love through everyone’s chest as the bits of Ms. Sinclair dance with joyful exuberance. It seems that tonight, there’s no better place for a person to be than right here. At Crackerjack Townhouse’s feet. Jarrod’s voice pours over the audience like icing over a still-warm cake.
With me thumping inside his heart and his grandmother’s light dancing around him, my bed-headed swooner looks more than happy. He’s encased in Jarrod’s voice, too, and as I look down at Adam, standing at the corner of the bar with a shot glass in his hand, I know everything there is to know about forgiveness and love. I know about perfection. He smiles up at me as numbness settles into my fingertips, unstoppable music rushing out of them. Naysayer Records may not have been impressed by what they saw at Bartholomew’s three months ago, but it doesn’t matter. Crackerjack Townhouse will keep doling out the panty-dropping feels for as long as Philadelphia thinks funk deserves a home.
As the notes of Marquis’s trumpet solo cut through the air, yesterday returns to my mind. Jarrod sang the National Anthem at the groundbreaking ceremony, and it was absolutely beautiful. Adam insisted on it, saying the Evelyn Sinclair Alzheimer’s Center deserved one hell of a welcome reception. I’ve heard Jarrod sing a million times before. But, I’ve never heard him sing like that. It was breathtaking. Ms. Sinclair would’ve loved it.
After Jarrod sang, Adam’s mother gave a touching dedication to her husband, reminding us all that, sometimes, money can do a lot of good. Even when it comes from a giant dickhead. She and Adam fully funded the Center’s construction using his trust fund and some of her inheritance from Mr. Sinclair’s life insurance policy. She flew back to Seattle this morning, leaving Adam to oversee the project and represent their family on the Center’s Board of Trustees. As I see him out there tonight, dressed in his favorite hoodie and slurping down a shot of vodka with Grace and couple of her friends, I’m so proud of him. Of us.
After a few more measures, Crackerjack Townhouse ends the song with a deafening punch of horns. The sound ricochets around the room for a hot instant before the audience erupts with appreciation. We don’t stop very long to let it soak in, because a moment later, Liam delivers the first tight chords of “Break It Out,” quickly turning the crowd into a fresh frenzy of drunken exuberance. I’ve come to realize they’re watching all of us move around the stage, not just Jarrod. They’re soaking in our music, but also our presence. It’s the part that makes it a live show, instead of a bunch of songs coming out of an iPod. I’d never thought about it before, about how much the actual performance makes us who we are. Not until I saw the pictures from Perry Devine.
I waited until I got home to open the bloated manila envelope he’d left on Adam’s dash that night, and as I sat alone in my bedroom sorting through the contents, things became clearer. There were dozens of photos of me, surveillance shots likely taken by Mr. Devine himself. Images of me on the street in front of Wicked Mocha, on stage at Bartholomew’s, slapping my bass at The King’s Court, opening the door of a twenty-four-hour pawnshop, walking into Pine Manor, stepping onboard the 61A on my way to work and off the 43D at one in the morning. There were pictures of my empty apartment and some of the things he’d found there while I was at work. There were also plenty shots of Adam and me together, too, taken at the Mexican restaurant, the coffee shop, my place, and his.
But the image that probably made the biggest impact was of the vial of pentobarbital from the dealer on Latham Street sitting inside the small wooden box of syringes in the back of my closet. The photo was obviously taken before I threw the contents of the box down the garbage chute.
Also in the envelope were pages and pages of handwritten notes, filled with information about my childhood, my father, and Charlie—including her pregnancy. There were even notes about Jarrod, things that happened well before we even met.
I burned every one of the photos—and every last page of Perry Devine’s handwritten notes—in a metal trashcan in the alley behind my apartment building. And when I was done, I called Adam and told him about everything that was in the envelope. Everything except for that one photo. He said he was angry but not surprised. Then he apologized again for having the kind of father that would do such a thing.
A small river of sweat makes its way down the front of my neck as the last few notes of “Break It Out” spring from my fingers. Sometimes, I can still feel the downy head of a mourning dove nestled between those same fingers, and if I listen hard enough to my own thoughts, I can hear the snap of their small, brittle bones. Ever since Mr. Sinclair died, I’ve been dreaming about my daddy’s quarry and the flocks of mourning doves flying overhead. In my dreams, there’s always a single bird sitting in my lap, its dark eyes watching me without fear as it waits to die. And in my dream, just as in my life, I’m swift and sure. I end the dove’s suffering exactly how my daddy showed me. In the dream, when it’s over, I cry. I only remember having cried once in real life, on the day I met a dying Lindsay Chapman in the parking lot. After that, I don’t remember shedding a single tear in that quarry. I only remember feeling thankful and necessary and right.
Soon after “Ecce Homo,” our final song of the night, comes to its always-rousing end, Crackerjack Townhouse leaves the stage, overflowing with satisfaction and energy. I step off the stairs and follow Jarrod down the narrow hallway toward the back room, knowing my Mr. “Soul to Squeeze” is headed there, too. With a quick snap of his fingers, Jarrod turns on his heels, cursing about leaving his cigarettes on Liam’s amp yet again. As he slides past me in the slender hall, he gives me one of his sly smiles.
The moment he does, a stampede of happiness washes over me and weaves its way through my scarred heart. I suddenly know without a doubt that we’re both going to be okay. Because for the first time ever, I see hope in Jarrod’s eyes.
The End
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
In addition to THE SOUND OF LIGHT, Claire Wallis is also the author of the novels PUSH and PULL. Her “day job” as science writer allows her to share her love of rocks, plants, insects, and microbes.
She lives in Pennsylvania with her amazingly awesome husband and son.
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OTHE
R TITLES BY CLAIRE WALLIS
PUSH
PULL
Praise for Claire Wallis’s Novel PUSH
“PUSH was an intoxicating book, leaving the reader spellbound from the very first page. The twisted plot, brilliantly conceived and executed, had me on the edge of my seat with every word, wondering how it would all play out.”—JM Darhower, author of Monster in His Eyes, Torture to Her Soul, Sempre, Made, and other titles
“Wallis’ first New Adult title reads more like a psychological thriller along the lines of a Gillian Flynn novel with New Adult elements thrown in. Sure, it has the requisite hot bad boy and loads of steamy scenes, but there are also extraordinary twists and missing pieces revealed, guaranteed to surprise readers… Definitely one of the most unique NA books out there!”—RT Book Reviews
“Now that was an exhilarating read indeed. Excuse me, while I pick my jaw up off the floor. I’m just sitting here. Stunned.”—Maryse’s Book Blog
Table of Contents
Copyright
Dedication
Table of Contents
K’acy’s Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
The Sound of Light Page 28