“I do declare”—she slathered on a southern accent—“are you worryin’ about me, good sir?”
He blushed, which was sexy as hell.
“Hugh gave me a magic pill. I expect to sleep the entire way.” Jade stirred her drink with her finger. “I wish I could have stayed here longer. Something about your village crept up on me.”
“Newton Rushford tends to do that.” Gabriel played with the salt and pepper shakers. “It’s a community with a large heart.”
“While you were at church on Sunday, your elderly neighbor came by to check on us. Poor woman heard every word of Friday’s epic garden scene.”
“Phyllis? Yes, she’s a kind soul. She doesn’t gossip and at eighty-four thinks it’s her duty to mother me. When I had flu last winter she organized a rota of meals-on-wheels. It was all rather sweet.”
“And intrusive.”
Gabriel shrugged. “I’m communal property in the eyes of the village.”
“Minus Bill Collins.”
“Aha, I see you’re a quick learner.”
“Why does he hate you so much?”
“I wish I knew. Marianne and I played some pranks on him when we were children. Silly, thoughtless pranks, but not enough to explain a lifetime of animosity.” Gabriel sipped his beer, picked up his knife, put it back down.
“Do you ever think about moving away, starting over? I mean, people here knew you as a kid when you—”
“When I was a shoplifter?”
Jade cocked her head to one side and smiled.
“Newton Rushford’s a good place to live,” Gabriel continued. “The village looks after its own, and there’s some measure of security in knowing you’re never really by yourself.”
“Except when you lock the door last thing at night.”
“There is that, yes.”
“I get it, I do. I’m a loner, but I have the ghetto mentality.”
“Ghetto?”
He laughed. So did she, but it disappeared into the acoustic chaos of the space.
“I think that’s what drew me to traditional Appalachian music. It’s all about community. Just a bunch of guys trying to create something beautiful.”
“You play an instrument?”
“The fiddle.”
“Not an answer I would have expected.”
“Me neither, until I was moonlighting in a local bakery during middle school. One day someone left a fiddle in the store. The owner kept it for a year. Never got claimed so I figured it needed a home.”
“Do you have an electric one?”
She shook her head. “I work with technology but I like my own music to have nontechno feel.”
“Feel?”
“Hard to explain, but it’s unique. When a musician has great feel, you fall in love. I mean, if you’re one of those smushy people who believe—”
“You’re not a smushy person?”
What the hell was she talking about? Music. Right. “Nope. Except when it comes to making music. Music isn’t supposed to be perfect. It’s about passion, about digging deep into your soul. That often means messing up and playing out of tune. But my job and the technology I use contradict that. Every day I manipulate and disguise faults. When I play, I want an undoctored sound.” Jade watched the waitress walk toward them with two piled plates. “We’ve started going back to the old ways with some of our recordings at Nightjar—everyone crowded around two mics, jamming. Feeding off each other. Those sessions are my favorite. Do you have any vinegar?” she asked the waitress.
The waitress tugged a bottle from the pouch of her apron. “There you go, m’ducks.”
Jade shook vinegar over everything on her plate. “I love English food,” she said.
“That’s not a common statement.”
“Here, you’ll need this, too.” He passed her the salt.
“It’s going to be strange, not knowing when—or if—Marianne’s coming back. I assured Darius she would, but I don’t know.” Jade grabbed a soggy, vinegar-soaked chip. Chip, another new word. Yum. Loads better than crispy french fries.
Gabriel looked down at his plate, then back up. “I know Darius doesn’t believe me, but I hope you will: nothing is going on between me and Marianne. She didn’t return to Newton Rushford for me. And if she stays, it won’t be for me, either.”
“When we first met, Marianne often reminisced about being a messed-up sixteen-year-old who’d managed to survive. I realize now that the stories were edited—nothing about Simon—but I think it was her way of giving me hope. You were part of nearly every episode.”
“How curious,” he said, but gave her no emotion to translate.
“Yeah, a fair amount of Gabriel chatter packed into those pre-Darius years.”
Gabriel said nothing.
Jade shoved two chips in because one wasn’t enough. No way. She covered her mouth with her hand. “This is better than—” She swallowed the word sex. “Anything on earth.”
“Bubble and squeak next time you come. It’s a fried hash of leftover vegetables. With potato.” Gabriel cut his fish delicately.
“Gross.”
“Quirky, not gross. I think you’d like it.”
Now he was making assumptions about her taste? Jade glanced at his chips. Would he leave any for her? When she looked up, he was staring at her. Man, those eyes . . .
“How did you and Marianne meet?” he said.
“She didn’t tell you?”
“I like to get both sides of every story.”
“I ran away with my fiddle when I was sixteen. And no, I don’t want to talk about it. I headed south because it was March and fu—freezing in New York. I ended up in Carrboro and heard about this place that was safe for runaway girls, where you could go and jam and crash on the sofa and no one bothered you. Marianne was a street legend.” She paused to trip on memories, until she realized Gabriel was watching her again. Couldn’t he look at something else? “Never expected she’d turn out to be my salvation. One night she was working late, found me asleep on the sofa hugging my fiddle. I guess she decided then and there to make me her next project, because she wouldn’t leave off until I agreed to go stay at her house. It took three days, the offer of a home-cooked meal, and new fiddle strings.”
“And you never had any contact with your biological family again?”
“Nope, which was fine. The only person I cared about was my baby brother, but I left him behind when I ran.”
Gabriel sipped his pint. “Ah, guilt. Something I understand.”
“You too?”
“My last memory of Simon is saying some rather unpleasant things to him.”
“My last memory of Jesse is saying nothing at all. If you had the chance for one last conversation with Simon, would you take it?”
“No. You can’t undo what’s been done.” He picked up his knife and fork and started eating again.
“I meant in a hypothetical way.”
He chewed slowly, then swallowed. “I know what you meant.”
His cell phone rang and he held up one finger. “Yes, Mum. I’m here. Let me get outside where it’s easier to talk.”
He threw her a tired smile, dropped his napkin on the table, and disappeared.
Jade ate her fish alone while his grew cold.
TWENTY-THREE
GABRIEL
The itching started on his scalp and spread. The thunderflies had disappeared as quickly as they’d arrived, and there were no other gnats around. That left only psychosomatic causes. At least he was in the right place, then. As he stood on the pea gravel, staring up at the white Gothic arches of the Beeches, every piece of clothing chafed. None worse than his dog collar. Gabriel tugged it away from his neck and scratched.
Marianne had asked him, with some urgency, to visit today. She’d hardly spoken to him on either of his previous visits. Would this be a case of third time lucky now that she’d been in residential care for a week and seemed to be making progress?
He glanced back a
t the car park. His leaving ticket, his out from Marianne, had long expired, but had it been a horrible mistake to encourage her family to fly home? In another life he had never been happier than when the world isolated the two of them from the crowd. But these days the ride was bumpy and lonely. He wasn’t even sure he should be on the ride. What if the refusal to see her husband was somehow tied up with him? Did she still have feelings for him? He didn’t know, nor did he want to. He had no wish to explore his own feelings let alone Marianne’s.
The itching started up again, and his muscles tensed. His ears rang with the past: Marianne laughing and saying, “You stole for me”; Marianne dragging him onto a dance floor, insisting he “let it all hang out”; Simon announcing, “Your little girlfriend didn’t tell you she was pregnant with my baby, did she”; carrying her unconscious and bleeding to the cottage where the elderly lady—long gone—used her old-fashioned phone to ring for an ambulance. She said she’d never seen so much blood.
Gabriel pulled up the gold chain that hung around his neck. Clasping the small crucifix that normally lay flat against the skin of his chest, he forced himself to walk across the gravel and through the main entrance.
A huge vase of lupines and delphiniums greeted him. There seemed to be a different floral arrangement on the front desk every time he visited. This was not a bog-standard NHS hospital with flowers banned for a slew of ridiculous reasons. Nor was it a bog-standard parishioner visit. No, this was in a different league on many levels.
I hope you’ve got my back, God, because I’m making this up as I go along.
The nurse at the front desk raised her eyes but kept her finger marking whatever she was reading. “Good afternoon, Reverend.”
“I’m here to see Marianne Stokes.” Gabriel tucked his chain back under his shirt. “She’s expecting me.”
“I believe I saw her heading to the patient garden. Do you know where it is?”
He nodded and thanked her; she returned to her work. No one ever questioned the collar. Gabriel kept his gaze lowered as he followed the circuit of pale corridors, each identical to the one before. Marianne had told him several famous people were in residence. Heaven forbid he accidentally gawk at a movie star.
Finally he reached the door to the garden. He hesitated, watching Marianne through the glass. Still painfully thin, she was less jittery. Only her hands trembled as she spoke to a young girl. He pushed the door open and breathed in the warm air. The garden was a little contrived for his taste—his preference would have been for less gravel and more green, less design and more wilderness—but Gabriel had yet to visit a garden that didn’t soothe.
The itching stopped.
Marianne waved him over to the wooden bench. The girl turned to leave, a curtain of lank hair hiding her face. She was petite and fragile; a breath could snap her in half. Marianne grabbed her arm and spoke quietly. The girl remained, staring at her feet.
“What news of Media Rage?” Marianne said.
Progress, indeed. Last time, any mention of Jade and Darius had been taboo.
“Full steam ahead, I gather.”
The girl raised her face slowly and fixed huge, haunted eyes on him. He was used to down-and-outs, to tramps and addicts, to people who had lost their way and needed a hand up. But this girl? It was as if life had chewed her up, spat her out, and said, No, thank you.
Marianne smiled. “Gabriel, I’d like you to meet my new friend, EmJ.”
“You a real vicar?” EmJ stared at the collar.
“Yes, I am.”
“So you have to tell the truth?”
“I hope everyone does that.”
“But it’s, like, eternal damnation if you don’t, right?” Her monotone voice was so quiet he nearly asked her to speak up. He’d learned to read lips in the army, but hers barely moved when she talked.
“I’m a truthful person, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“Shag me sideways. You weren’t lying.” EmJ turned in slow motion to look at Marianne.
“EmJ’s a Media Rage fan,” Marianne said. “I think she wanted to make sure I wasn’t delusional when I talked about recording them.”
“Got it.” Gabriel smiled. “In that case I can confirm that yes, Marianne and her husband are recording the band’s new album. And they’re due back for mixing and overdub. Did I get that right?”
“Jade has taught you well, young Padawan,” Marianne said.
“Who’s Jade?” EmJ said.
“Someone I love dearly,” Marianne said. “She’s almost my daughter.”
“Almost?” Gabriel said.
EmJ squinted as if the gray afternoon light were too strong. “Whatevs. Enjoy your reunion.” She pulled her voluminous cardigan around her. The right sleeve was full of moth holes.
“More therapy?” Marianne said.
“Like it makes a difference.”
“It does. You need to stick with it, honey, especially when you get out.”
“Yeah,” EmJ said, turning a positive into a negative. She started walking away, then stopped. “See you in a bit?” She scowled over her shoulder at Marianne.
“Dinner at six, honey. It’s a date.”
EmJ shuffled along the path like an elderly person who’d misplaced her walker.
Gabriel sighed with relief. While EmJ had been talking, it was as if he’d been trapped in that moment between sleep and wakefulness when movement seemed impossible. He sat next to Marianne and breathed in the scent of fresh rosemary from the huge aluminum pot by the bench. Tonight he would make fresh pesto with basil from his herb garden.
“Shouldn’t she be in a children’s hospital?” he said.
“She’s eighteen.”
“She looks as if she hasn’t made it through puberty.”
“Eating disorder.” Marianne shrugged. “Plus a few other things. Her mom threw her out when she was sixteen, and her father killed himself in the room next to hers—with a shotgun. EmJ was five.”
Gabriel shook his head slowly. He had no words.
“She’s a National Health patient. Only ended up here because there wasn’t a bed anywhere else.”
“Maybe someone was looking out for her.” He glanced skyward.
“Or she got lucky. I heard a news story, a few months back, about this teenager in a mental health crisis who was housed in a police cell because there wasn’t a bed for her. In the whole country. How is that possible?”
Gabriel crossed his legs and leaned back against the bench. How refreshing to hear Marianne register indignation minus the histrionics.
“One of the nurses told me she hasn’t had a single visitor. She has no one, Gabriel. And her only choice when she leaves here is to crash on the floor of her ex-boyfriend’s apartment. He’s a thirty-year-old drug kingpin.”
A siren wailed in the distance, pulling closer to the front entrance, and Gabriel angled his face toward her. A single word hung in his mind: No.
“Marianne, I know where this is heading, but you can’t adopt her like a stray. You need to heal, and I’m sure she does, too. I doubt doing that together will be healthy.”
“I need to focus on being a force for good in someone’s life, not a force of destruction. She wants to be a singer. I can mentor her, help her find her voice.”
“And what happens when you return to the States?”
“Obviously I haven’t dotted all the i’s and crossed all the t’s, because”—she held a finger to the side of her head like a pistol—“heavy-duty drugs kill the thought process, but I guess I’ll take her with me.”
Marianne was thinking about going back, then. Up until that point he hadn’t been sure. He’d thought—well, he didn’t know what he’d thought. With Marianne it was futile to map out tomorrows. That had been his biggest mistake as a teenager: daring to believe they had a long and happy future together that included a mortgage and a family. “And residency?”
“Hire an immigration lawyer. I mean, how hard can it be?”
“Is th
is about being a substitute mother to another lost teen?” He paused. “Or avoiding your own problems?”
“Did the guy in the parable of the Good Samaritan ask that question? If you’re trying to pick up someone from the roadside, trying to be a ray of light, not a cloud of darkness, does it matter what your motivation is?”
“Marianne, it’s not that simple.”
“To see hope, not tragedy?” She held up her hands. “I thought you were the one who believed in God, not me.”
“You don’t believe in God?”
“Sorry. Stopped believing in fairy tales when I was sixteen, stripped naked, and hallucinating demons in a churchyard.”
“Religion isn’t a fairy tale. It brings clarity and peace; it helps people see in the dark.”
“Or helps them avoid dealing with the mess of life.” She laid a hand on his knee and gave a light squeeze. He stared at her fingers and, after she had moved them, at the place where they had been.
“You would have to share the spare room.”
“That’s a yes?” She beamed, the first real smile she’d shown him since falling back into his life.
“No. I’m thinking aloud. And, with your permission, I’d like to discuss this further with Hugh. Get his take.”
“Yes, yes. What did you think? Did you like her?”
“Is she an addict?”
“Does it matter?” Marianne looked up into the sky and watched a flock of starlings.
“Not if she’s clean. I have a no-recreational-drugs policy for houseguests.”
“I’ll make sure of it.”
Her hand moved to find his. Such an inappropriate gesture for a married woman, but somehow it transported them back to innocence. How many hours, days, and weeks of his life had he spent holding her hand? A question he would never be able to answer.
“I can help save her, Gabriel, I can.” The twinkle was back in her green eyes.
“Marianne—” Gabriel reclaimed his hand. “My other reservation is whether you’re stretching yourself too thin. You passed Girls In Motion to Jade because you couldn’t manage two jobs. Isn’t trying to heal while helping someone else on a similar journey the equivalent of two jobs?”
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