He didn’t smile.
“Come on. That was funny.”
“Christ, how can I do this? My wife ran away, she may or may not be suicidal . . .”
“No, we’re not going there, because that’s you being melodramatic. Marianne isn’t suicidal. Hasn’t been for years. Do I have to remind you that she took suicide off the table on your wedding day? That’s how much she loves you. I know her current actions seem a bit screwy, but our Marianne’s more Iron Lady–ish than that dead British leader who was Reagan’s best buddy. She assures you she’s got plenty of meds and will use them responsibly. I believe her and so should you. We have to trust her.”
He opened his mouth to speak, but she kept going.
“This makes sense to me. A controlled fall or something. As if she knows, in some corner of her mind, what she’s doing.” Or close enough. “Marianne and I are survivors. We recognized that in each other from the beginning. When the chips are down, we protect ourselves. I think that’s what she’s doing.”
“Why?” He started pacing again, this time going counterclockwise.
“Could you please stop moving and park your butt on a stool? Try flipping your thoughts to find a different approach. When you have a migraine you don’t want anyone around, and—”
“My wife has more than a headache, Jade.” He didn’t sit, but at least he stood still.
“Fair enough. Crap analogy, but it’s like being really sick and not wanting others in your business fussing, and—”
“I don’t fuss.”
“Stop interrupting.” She wagged a finger at him. “I know you’re scared—”
“Are you scared?”
“No, because my gut’s telling me it will all work out. She’ll come back to us when she’s ready.” God, she was good at making up shit. “But trying to force ourselves into whatever’s going on isn’t going to achieve anything other than turn a bad situation into a total shitstorm. We have to sit this one out, boss.”
“Give me more, more to hang on to.”
A hawk screeched as it flew over the garden, and Jade shivered. There were far too many birds in the backyard thanks to Marianne’s obsession with feeding the damn things. It was like being on the set of a Hitchcock movie.
“Let’s use logic,” Jade said. “Marianne’s at her best when she’s focused on others, but that car crash has pushed her inward—to a place she doesn’t want us to follow. Isn’t her teenage wasteland the reason she banned us from her therapy sessions? What if there’s something in her past she’s never dealt with, something related to this Simon?”
“Then I need to go after her. I’m sorry, but I can’t do this.” Darius shook back his hair and sprayed droplets of water in every direction. “Book the first flight to England. You deal with the band.”
“Darius, listen to me. If you corner her this will end badly for you.”
“You’re telling me you’ve seen this before. With my predecessor?”
Yes, but no need to elaborate. “No, I’m telling you that the best thing you can do for Marianne is keep her business safe. Nightjar is her passion, her lifeblood, her reason for getting out of bed every morning.”
“I thought I was,” he said quietly.
“Unfair comparison. The studio has been her baby for twenty years. By keeping it safe, we’re showing her that we understand. We have to stay here. For Marianne. And whatever’s going on, I’m thinking Dr. White’s in the loop. That’s why she wouldn’t give permission for you to talk to him. Which means we’re not taking any action until he’s called.”
Darius stared out the kitchen window, silent. Finally he was listening.
“And here’s another thought: What if she’s in the village and you arrive and spook her? She could run again, and we might never find her.”
“England’s smaller than Illinois,” he said. “We’d find her.”
“With bloodhounds?”
Two squirrels started a squawking match in the black walnut tree by the deck, and Darius tensed.
“Compromise time,” she said. “Give me this afternoon to figure this out. I’ll talk to Dr. White when he calls, get his take, and then dig up proof that she’s in the village. If we know where she is and we know she’s safe, we can figure out our next play. Fair enough?”
“Anything could be happening to her, and doing nothing is—”
“You’re not doing nothing. You’re protecting Marianne’s reputation in a reputation-based business.”
He stood up straight. At last she was talking his language. For all his amateur dramatics, Darius was a professional.
“There’s only one direct flight a day from Raleigh to Heathrow. I checked while you were in the shower. It leaves at eight tonight, so I still have time to get you on that plane. But right now you need to meet with the band and I need to find Marianne.”
He took a breath. “Deal. But you better be right about all this.”
“Always am, boss.”
The moment Darius slammed the sliding patio door shut, she slumped into the spot he had vacated on the breakfast island. Pain jabbed the back of her skull and radiated around to her eye. If she waited, the headache flare would burn out. Unlike the masquerade of being a studio manager with her shit together.
She had also run away on an escape route for one. And hers left behind a casualty. Two if she counted the baby asleep in the upstairs crib. Jesse, however, was wide awake and whimpering on the hall floor when she bolted out the front door. The sirens were getting close, and she had only minutes to get away. But minutes could give a grown man plenty of time to beat the crap out of a skinny kid he detested. She knew that and had left her brother anyway. What if Marianne was doing the same thing—abandoning her family to save herself?
FIVE
MARIANNE
Shake her hard, and Edward Scissorhands meets A Nightmare on Elm Street would tumble out. She saw herself grabbing a carving knife from the butcher’s block in the kitchen; she saw herself hacking off her fingers.
A carousel of depraved images spun as Marianne paced in the cell of Gabriel’s guest bedroom. Her mind snapped back and forth with as much energy as a saggy piece of elastic, marshaling every part of her body, even her eyelids, to never-ending movement. To do the fandango, as Freddie Mercury had sung. Clearly the singer knew a thing or two about dysfunction when he wrote “Bohemian Rhapsody.”
Rest, the sane part of her brain said, the part that knew bipolar illness and international travel were mortal enemies. Visit your baby! the crazy part countered. Meanwhile the grains of time filtered through the hourglass. One day ended, another began. Sleep eluded her.
The twin beds, squished into opposing corners, were reminiscent of beds in a mental ward. Who had twin beds for adults? Someone who didn’t approve of sex, someone who had run away on an Easter pilgrimage to Saint Albans after she made the moves on him with a box of condoms. A ludicrous overreaction given their years of fooling around. Or maybe leaving her alone was a test. Sixteen-year-old Marianne with no social plans never ended happily, and only an idiot could have failed to notice her flirting with Simon. And Gabriel was far from stupid. Gabriel, her alternative future. Missing him had been her penance for years, and now they were back under the same roof.
Chasing Simon had started as a game. He was everything Gabriel wasn’t, and she’d grown restless. She wanted more—more danger, more of the unknown. More sex. Under all that charm, Simon had a temper. Gabriel was stable, sunny, and ridiculously optimistic. And she held such power over both of them. The art of manipulation—a talent she’d never wanted.
She flopped down on the rumpled bed, sinking into the old-fashioned eiderdown.
Once again, Gabriel had made everything easy—bundled up the mess of her like dirty laundry he would wash and press. No harsh words, no demands, nothing but acceptance and the offer of a place to rest. Was he acting out of duty as an upstanding vicar, or was he also haunted by the tiniest seed of doubt that had whispered through the years, Wh
at if?
He had led her upstairs to this tiny bedroom and suggested she take a nap. And she tried to do the sensible thing, huddling into the slightly damp bedding that smelled faintly musty. But then she needed to pee and couldn’t remember where the bathroom was. Only three other doors off the landing and all closed. The first one revealed a pack rat’s dumping ground, with an old exercise bike, a record player, piles of books and magazines, a broken chair, and a stack of sealed cardboard boxes. The bottom two were labeled: one said “Simon,” the other “Marianne.” He had packed up their memories and hidden them away. And she was bringing the ghoul out of storage. That was when she decided to run again. Gabriel was logic and reason tied up with a big red bow; the best of her and the worst of her. And she couldn’t unpack all those feelings stored in a box. The knowledge of what she’d done to Gabriel was the one part of the past she didn’t want back. She had all but flayed him alive.
Around seven p.m. he’d knocked quietly to announce supper: bangers and mash. When she didn’t answer, he returned five minutes later and said, “There’s a plate of food and a glass of water outside your door.” She drank the water, left the food, and snuck out to brush her teeth. The rest of the evening she plotted her escape and listened for Gabriel. He came up to bed after midnight and was moving around the hall until at least two a.m. Insomnia had always been the only glitch in his otherwise perfectly tempered personality.
She tiptoed to her bedroom door and leaned against it. Finally he was quiet. Going back to the window, she tugged open the faded floral curtains. Hand-me-downs from Gabriel’s mother, no doubt. Or white elephants from the church bazaar. Nothing belonged or complemented in his long, narrow house. The walls were mostly bare but for a few framed prints of tormented angels.
She pried up the stiff latches on the window and filled her lungs with night air. What time did it get light: four a.m.? She needed to get to the cemetery before sunrise. Before the village woke up. Before anyone could recognize her and say, “Look, it’s that batshit insane girl who killed her boyfriend and got buck naked in the churchyard.” Did they use batshit in England? Probably not. Quite mad would likely be the phrase. And not quite mad in a romantic Ophelia way. Paranoid, delusional, dangerous. That kind of mad.
Gabriel had offered to drive her over to the cemetery after breakfast, but she planned to be gone before then. She’d head north, hitchhike to Scotland. She and Simon had once planned a trip to Glencoe, drawn to the idea of camping on the site of a historic massacre.
Marianne glanced down at the clothes she’d been wearing for two days. Showering took energy she needed to conserve for flight. Except first she had to pee again. Damn the weak bladder, the curse that leveled the playing field between all middle-aged women: sane and insane.
She creaked the door open and paused while her eyes adjusted to the gloom. Clearly Gabriel didn’t believe in night-lights. Inching forward her foot found something large, warm, and alive. Instinctively, her hand stifled a scream.
Gabriel.
What the hell was he doing curled up asleep outside her door? She backed into the wall and squinted hard. He was oddly cocoonlike in a sleeping bag. Surely it was not their sleeping bag, the one they had used for ghost hunting? Sliding down the wall, she hugged her knees to her chest. Nothing rumbled his breathing; nothing clouded his sleep.
What do you dream of, Gabriel? Rainbows and puppies? She smiled. Sherbet lemons?
Simon had called Gabriel her loyal Labrador because whatever lunacy she concocted, Gabriel followed obediently. And when things went wrong, he took the blame. And here he was—guarding her as if she’d never left his life, as if she hadn’t broken his heart. As if he hadn’t relegated her to a cardboard box.
Shivering, she rested her cheek on her knees and listened to Gabriel breathe. Unlike Darius, he didn’t snore. Darius did nothing quietly; he was not someone you could ignore. When he arrived on the local music scene pretending to be a nobody, his subterfuge didn’t last a week. Wild and sexy, almost as impetuous as she was, he wasn’t wired to blend in. She rubbed her chest, but it didn’t ease the longing.
I love you, Darius. Please forgive me.
A lifetime of hurting others may have been her greatest achievement to date. She’d run from Gabriel before reaching adulthood; she’d run from two husbands; she’d run from Darius and Jade. She was still running from herself. And now that she was back at the beginning, it was time to stop. For decades she said, “Drug me. Let me forget who I am,” and allowed meds to become her crutch. Before that, alcohol and broken memories did the job. Not anymore. It was time to face herself here, where it had all begun, with the person who understood her darkness better than anyone.
All those discussions she and Gabriel used to have about life and death had only one point of intersection: they both believed hell existed within the hearts of men and women. And they’d been right, because she was the proof. And if hell was a person, not a place, maybe the same was true of home.
Marianne raised her head and stared into blackness. Forgiveness—from God, from herself, from her ghosts—had never been part of the equation, but she had been searching for something in the last few months. A reason to keep living for Darius and Jade. And here was her answer, asleep outside her door.
She flopped forward onto all fours, clarity lighting up her brain with halogen spotlights. She was making a stand here, in Newton Rushford; she was turning inward to stare down the monster. Face the devil within. And Gabriel’s protection would be the string that would lead her back out of the maze. No matter what he saw, even if she transformed into her full fiend persona, he would keep her safe, as she had done for all those kids with Girls In Motion.
Girls In Motion started as a summer band camp. But she wanted to expand, to keep the music going. Which led to a physical space for girls to hang out year-round and a recording studio so campers could take their songs with them when they left. Her summer ended long ago, but Gabriel was the keeper of the memories she needed back. And he was going to be her savior one last time. Had she suspected, the moment she’d opened the fireproof box to find her passports, that Gabriel could be the key?
Crawling back into the bedroom, she retrieved her pills from her bag. Then she stepped around Gabriel, walked into the bathroom, and slid the bolt across the door.
Hell, here I come in all my unmedicated glory.
She lifted the toilet seat, dumped her pills, and flushed. As they swirled around the toilet bowl and disappeared, she started humming Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah.”
SIX
JADE
In the larger of the two tracking rooms, Sasha perched on the drum throne talking with her hands. The long, skinny legs that had once earned her a decent living as a pole dancer were crossed demurely. Even the sociopathic singer, whose body was splashed across the current issue of Vanity Fair, was transfixed. The studio was full of ridiculously famous people, and Sasha was impressing the heck out of them.
Hell yeah.
The interns scurried around collecting trashed sushi containers from the Japanese restaurant and dumping beer bottles in the recycling crate. Occasionally they exchanged smug looks that said, Can you believe we’re in the same breathing space as Media Rage? Fame was overrated—seen one musician’s meltdown, you’d seen them all—but these guys were in a different league for Nightjar. Although no one would have figured that out from watching Darius. He might have worked with music deities, but couldn’t he at least feign interest? Instead he stood slightly apart from the group, scowling at the row of guitars hanging on the wall.
“Don’t you agree, Darius?” Sasha said.
Darius didn’t react.
“Boss!” Jade cleared her throat loudly, and five famous faces turned from staring at Darius to staring at her. Her heartbeat bounced all over the place. Okay, so she was kinda starstruck. “A word?”
Darius shot forward and pulled her into the narrow corridor lined with Nightjar’s history: floor-to-ceiling shelves of CDs
, hard drives, and old two-inch reels. The corridor, lit only with recessed lights, even smelled like the past. Or that could have been lingering mold from the last time the studio had flooded.
Jade glanced around Darius to make sure no one was listening. “I talked with Dr. White.”
“You tracked him down in the remotest corner of Appalachia?”
“His receptionist wasn’t joking about him being out of cell range. And you were right—he won’t discuss her treatment, but Marianne’s talked enough about me over the years that he was willing to listen. He said if she contacts either one of us, we need to establish she’s taking her meds and encourage her to seek treatment on an outpatient basis.” She withheld the final piece of advice—that if the situation worsened, she or Darius should fly to England and offer support on the ground. Darius would translate if into must do this right now, which would amount to tossing a dozen matches into a tanker of gasoline.
“That’s it?”
“He did ask for her cell phone number.”
“Oh, that makes me feel so much better.” Darius narrowed his eyes.
“In other news, I’ve found Gabriel.” Jade held up a scrap of paper. Darius tried to snatch it from her, but she hid it behind her back. “I’ll go call him from the house.” The lack of a landline in the studio had never annoyed her before today.
“No. Use my cell.”
“Why? So you can call later and interrogate him about their past relationship?”
“No,” Darius said slowly. “Because I want you to call him right now and then interrupt me again. And since the call’s going to be expensive, I don’t want you using your cell.”
“Fine, where’s your phone?”
“In the control room.”
“Seriously, boss?” Did he think none of the studio rules applied to him?
He gave her a wolfish grin. “Thank you, doll. I owe you big-time. Come get me the moment you hang up.”
Echoes of Family Page 6