No Greater Love

by Susan Rodgers

  “And who did she say she was?”

  Jacob paused. “Annie,” He said quietly, looking away. He was a traitor. The girl he loved would never speak to him again. He shook his head, still not quite ready to believe that his Annie was Jessie Wheeler. “She was just another drifter, like the rest of us.” He looked up at Stephen. It wasn’t lost on either of them that Jacob referred to Jessie as a drifter. It was not intentional. Yet he could see that Steve knew it was true. Jessie was a Drifter, all right.

  “We had this thing where we didn’t ask a lot of questions. We all had our reasons for taking up residence in Edinburgh, for keeping family and home at a distance. It’s a logical city for artists, especially after the Fringe, which is when she showed up. And her persona, her aesthetic – it fit. The only thing I never really got was how she was surviving, you know, financially. She has a small flat but she’s not working, like the rest of us. She told one of the girls, Charlene, she saved some money and she was there to get over a bad break-up of sorts. And then…then I saw the ring. And I figured well okay she comes from money, so that makes sense.”

  “Ring?” Shit. Well, they figured she took the ring. “She showed it to you? I take it you guys are…were? Close…?” Steve found it hard to believe that Jessie would show that ring to anyone unless they were…someone she trusted.

  Jacob studied Stephen’s face. It seemed like the guy was taking him seriously, but Steve was also noticeably wary and definitely shaken up by the image of Jessie’s guitar case in an Edinburgh flat. Answering carefully Jacob said, “She wears a diamond ring around her neck, on this little leather string.” He pantomimed touching the ring. “She hides it under her top. I’ve never seen her without it.”

  Huh. Well, that was interesting. At one time Deirdre and Josh had discussed the ring with Janet, the Keating publicist. The decision was made not to let the news that she likely took the ring with her go public. It would be hazardous from a theft perspective, for one. The ring was from Tiffany & Co. and was valued at over $ 23 000. Although Jessie had been photographed with the ring on, her time with Josh was sensitive in the eyes of the press. So she’d kept it quiet and although some images of it were made public, its style and detail weren’t really common knowledge. And it wasn’t likely Jacob would throw in that she had the ring unless he knew for certain she did. Unless he was taking a chance, like a fortuneteller reading the reactions of her client. And…Jacob said she hid it under her top. So that answered the question about the two of them being close. Although…how close? Since she was still apparently keeping Josh’s ring close to her heart.

  “What’s it like, this ring?” Just in case. It was worth asking.

  Jacob knew he was being tested. He shifted on the cement barrier before answering. “It’s a band with diamonds all around it. And it’s got one large diamond in the center and smaller ones on each side. It looks expensive as hell. At first I thought it was from someone who died.” He studied his feet. “Later she told me the guy who gave it to her was still alive. I just didn’t anticipate he was someone who beat the shit out of her.”

  Stephen sighed. “He didn’t.”

  Jacob looked up. His eyes met Steve’s. Neither wavered. “What?”

  “He didn’t hurt her. Someone else did. She was being stalked. Josh was the guarantee, the power the stalker had over her. Jessie did what the stalker wanted until it got so bad she felt there was no choice but to leave – not just Josh, but all of us. This life.”

  “Uh-huh.” Jacob was floored. Well. That explained everything. “I’m guessing you shouldn’t be telling me this, since it seems the rest of the world doesn’t know.”

  Steve laid a hand on Jacob’s shoulder. “Not a big deal, bro. You don’t strike me as the type to go talking to the rag bags. Anyways they’ve heard enough bullshit fake Jessie revival stories that you probably wouldn’t get in their front doors.” He paused. “And you haven’t even mentioned the reward that’s been posted for news of her whereabouts.”

  “Hell,” Jacob said. “She’s already going to hate me. I’m not taking money for giving her up. Anyways,” he added with a small tinge of hope, “she’s an adult. It’s not like you can force her to go back with you. She might choose to stay.”

  Steve noticed Jacob stared at his feet a lot as he spoke, as if he didn’t dare believe the words he spoke might come true.

  “Why are you doing this, then? If not for the money. Why would you want us to know where she is? I’m uh…I’m getting the impression that you’re close.”

  “Ha,” Jacob chuckled sardonically. “Close.” He shook his head. More cobwebs. He pressed a thumb and forefinger to his forehead, as if squeezing his brain might sort out the confusing feelings that addled his soul. “Yeah,” he said, his anger and frustration seething to the surface. “If you discount the fact that everything I’ve known about her has been one gigantic fucking lie.”

  Pause. “Not everything,” Steve interjected.

  Jacob glanced up at him. No wonder Jessie was such a good friend of this actor from that Canadian TV series. He seemed to be taking this all in stride. And he had some sense of her power over him, Jacob, the stranger who sung, to a whole bar full of Jessie’s friends and acquaintances, a song about what she meant to him.

  “You mean the music,” Jacob said quietly.

  “Music is her means of communication, mostly. At least, it used to be.”

  “It still is,” responded Jacob, jumping down from the barrier. “But it’s also her wall. And I think she would say her curse as well.”

  “What makes you say that? Her curse?”

  Jacob reached for his guitar case. “Because. Music holds you captive. You’re powerless to ignore its call. You feel sick when you are not writing songs, like you’re not being true to yourself. And in her case, from what I’ve read about the whole Jessie Wheeler disappearance, in combination with what you’ve just told me – this stalker thing, which put her in the hospital, correct? Well, I’m guessing it’s the music that attracted him to her in the first place.”

  He started to back up into the shadowy mist as Steve digested this. “Yeah. I guess that’s true.” He knew the power Jessie had on stage. She was divine, like a gift direct from the hands of God.

  “Her music has the power to heal,” Steve added. “Maybe she can heal herself.”

  Jacob stopped walking then, and then turned back to Stephen. He spit out words he could no longer contain.

  “You know, we play a lot of music together, but she never sings in public, and she refuses to play live with me. I always just thought she was shy about playing on stage, and I figured well hell, maybe she just can’t sing. But one day I walk into the bathroom, she’s taking a shower, and she’s leaning against the wall, her head down, and she’s singing the most amazing song. She doesn’t see me there, so I back out slowly, but I can hear her sing, just loud enough over the sound of the water to be able to make out the lyrics.”

  He stopped and pondered the memory before looking up at Steve’s quiet countenance and continuing.

  “I figured she was singing about him, you know, because she looked so sad and she had her fingers on the ring. So I have to say, I don’t know if she has the power to heal herself, because that was a miserable fecking song and I think I can honestly say it only sent her down another lonely path that day. So take back any designs you have of Jessie healing herself, because I can tell you now, once she sees you, she’s going to go back down that fecking godawful road, music or no music, and you guys will have your work cut out for you to lighten her load. You bring her back here, where he’s with someone else, and you think you’re going to be helping her? I doubt that. I fecking doubt that.”

  “What about you?” Steve called out, thrusting his hands into his pockets. “Are you just going to stand back and let her go?”

  “One look at me and you in the same room, my friend, and I doubt she will speak to me again much less want to be with me, regardless of whether she comes back he
re with you or not. Hell,” he threw his arms open wide to accent his point, “maybe it’ll be your lucky day and that’ll be the very reason she chooses to leave.”

  At that, he called out his cell number, and Steve added it to his cellphone’s contact list. Steve started to holler out his own number for Jacob but the younger guy walked away. Behind him, over his shoulder, Jacob said, “Don’t need it. I won’t be calling you.”

  Frustrated, Steve held up his phone and called, “Hey! What am I supposed to be putting yours under?”

  “Jacob. Jacob Ryan.” And don’t ever fecking forget it, Jacob caught himself thinking angrily. He kicked a beer can and it went scuttling noisily, hollowly, across the parking lot.

  “Jacob!”

  Dammit, enough already. I just want to go sleep somewhere so I can escape this bullshit for a while.

  Jacob stopped, but he didn’t look back.

  “You never answered the big question. You say you care about her. I can tell you care about her. So why the hell are you telling us where to find her?”

  “Because sometimes she cries in her sleep. And this is the only way I know to maybe help her.”

  He walked away then, shoulders slung low and cool blue eyes staring a few feet ahead at the drizzly shiny wet ground, the ubiquitous guitar a shield at his side, a weapon against the world. Like some long ago warrior fighting alongside William Wallace himself, Jacob was a freedom fighter, even though the battle he fought was tainted, raw, and called for a sacrifice he wasn’t sure he was prepared to make.

  ***

  Chapter Sixteen

  They had not told their friends they would be travelling together. Deirdre was away anyway, so Charles simply explained his absence from home by saying he had business in Toronto. Steve made up some story about an audition in New Mexico. These people who traversed their worlds, who lived inside their bubbles, meant too much to lead them on. Charlie, who kept Arnie’s postcard a secret for so long, was now on the other side of the coin. Nobody had a clue Charles and Stephen were finally on Jessie’s trail and, to be honest, neither did they. Not until they could touch her, and hold her, would this be real. There were too many false starts, lies, people hoping for rewards. Mediums had been consulted, and occasionally had even called out of the blue. Apart from the one consistent story that those who do not want to be found are generally not found, and that she was safe, they had not been able to provide any real illumination as to her whereabouts.

  Jacob was already in Edinburgh by the time Stephen and Charles had even boarded the Keating jet. At eleven p.m. Scotland time, duffle bag and guitar in hand, he knocked on Jessie’s door.

  Engulfed in her big comfy chair by the window, picking out a tune on the Gibson, Jessie didn’t notice his approach. Her songwriting that night had been frequently interrupted. A constant stream of cigarettes rested on the ashtray perched stubbornly nearby on the windowsill. Jessie was smoking relentlessly. Jacob was expected home. She had no idea what to anticipate from him, if anything at all. Praying he cared enough to at least confront her, she was hopeful she could convince him to stay and talk out his anger at her betrayal of him, of all of them.

  Once again, Jessie contemplated packing and leaving. But she knew in her heart she was tired of running. Katrine had raised a lot of significant points. These friends in Scotland were the real deal. Jessie spent far too much time running from her life, starting at age seven with a brown- bagged peanut butter sandwich and chocolate chip cookies. She wanted to see her mother again. Dee, Charles, Stephen, Charlie, all of them. Josh. No wonder Jacob was too upset to contact her. No wonder he was pissed, hurt.

  That damn ring, she thought. I should have taken it off months ago. It was now buried in a box in her nightstand. Since the day Katrine tried to talk some sense into her, Jessie had averted her eyes from its steady glow.

  So when the quiet knock came at her door in the deep darkness of night, Jessie was almost too scared to answer. Over the past few weeks she spent a lot of time contemplating what Jacob was likely thinking. She was terrified of how this was going to end…if indeed it was going to end, which seemed rather likely. Why would he want to be second to a memory, a ghost? Especially once she explained that Josh didn’t hurt her – that she left North America in the hopes that some diabolically damaged soul wouldn’t hurt him.

  Jessie slowly pulled open the creaky old door, and there he was – Jacob. He was forlorn, exhausted, worn. She could see the cracks in his soul. She could feel his utter torment. It killed Jessie to know she caused this anguish, not just in the man who stood utterly defeated before her, but to so many others as well…Josh. Once again her old lover was an unseen spirit flitting across her body crying I am yours, always and forever. But he wasn’t here. Jacob was. And Jacob was suffering. He needed her.

  She stood back and let him wander slowly, hesitantly, inside. Jessie took his guitar case from him and set it further down the smoky room where it leaned against her own stickered case, its music by osmosis melting into the partner it must have desperately missed these last few weeks.

  Then it was time to fight.

  Jacob was low on energy, but there were things that needed to be said. He started.

  “I feel like a fecking fool, Annie.” He closed his eyes, shook his head. “Jessie.”

  She crossed her arms, bit her lip. Jesus, he looked so tired. “Jacob,” she started, but he wouldn’t let her speak. He raised his arm to stop her.

  “You,” he pointed a trembling finger arrogantly about a foot from her nose, “are not the person I thought you were. What kind of person leaves behind friends who love her with no idea of what happened to her, to worry and fill an ocean as big as the Pacific with their tears?”

  He had seen their pain first hand - although Jessie thought he was referencing the magazine article.

  He continued, his voice shaking from the effort to control his frazzled emotions. “What kind of person lives a complete lie with the people in her life now?”

  She watched him, biting her bottom lip hard and digging fingernails deeply into the back of one hand to keep the pain on a part of her body she could control.

  Jacob ventured deeper into sacred ground. “You know what I feel the worst fool about? The music, An…Jessie.” Will I ever get used to calling her that? “I thought I had this amazing, intimate connection with you over the music. But you just made a fool of me. You sat there with your fecking ten professional years of - let’s see, shall we call it, oh I know, international stardom - playing music for thousands, recording, selling millions of records, working with superstars…like yourself,” he added as if it just occurred to him that she was indeed an international superstar. “And then you’re here with me, coming on these stupid pukey little tours in dark caverns, playing for mostly fifty or sixty or a hundred people every night…and you’re sitting there drinking your Guinness and smoking weed and pretending it’s cool to be a part of all that. And then we write songs and – holy shit! They’re fecking good, and I think wow I am onto something with this girl, we could maybe make it together, the two of us, maybe she’s been the missing ingredient all along, and…the worst is that I should have known better than to get involved with you.”

  He let that sink in before adding, as Jessie wrapped her arms despondently around herself and let him have his say, “I was doing just fine, taking women to my bed here and there and staying unattached, and then you come along and not only do you feck up my hope and belief in doing something with my music – because if you believed in me as a singer songwriter then you would have helped me girl, you know this business and you could have introduced me to someone or helped me figure out some things on the tours or something, anything, not to mention that you could have funded a record, a piddly little cheap record or even just a song, but no – nothing. And so not just the music but you have messed up my belief in you, too, Jessie…because I had things sorted out with us, with how I felt about you, and even though you wore that fecking thing around your
neck all this time I still hoped someday you would see that I meant more. And now I don’t think so, I don’t think I’ll ever mean more. And I don’t think – no, I know – that I don’t want to be second.”

  He stood there puffing in the stale smoke, bathed by the moonlight washing in through the picture window and in the light of one small incandescent lamp Jessie flipped on when she answered the door. He looked haunted, done in. And he was waiting for her response.

  Jessie couldn’t help herself. She reached out to unbutton his denim jacket, like she always did when he came in, as if he were a child, but he shoved her hand away. The anger in his eyes flashed like sparks about to ignite. He was not a child tonight.

  “Jacob,” she replied with determination and a practiced grace. “I wasn’t ready to help you with your music because I needed a break from all that. I loved that you guys could light up that pub the way you did without all the encumbrances of fame – managers, agents, publicists, all that crap. What you are doing is so real. My life as a singer is overscheduled, monitored, there’s no privacy…”

  He pointed a shaking finger at her. “We work so hard. Me and John Paul have been trying so hard, and to you it must all be just one big stupid joke.” He spit the words out as if they took everything he had left at the bottom of his barrel to even say them.

  Her temper starting to flare, Jessie jumped in. “That world corrupts people, Jacob. Do you think I want that for you? For you and John Paul? This world is homey and safe! Once you’re on that higher plane you become a target!”

  Recalling what Stephen said about the stalker, Jacob was truly sorry things ended so badly for Jessie, that she ended up in the hospital feeling she must end a relationship with someone she deeply loved. What he didn’t know was Jessie was still deathly afraid of the stalker – he was still at large, and even though she hid undercover here in Edinburgh as Annie, she still deeply feared the resurgence of a man she knew as Deuce McCall. Jacob thought she dreamed about losing Josh – he didn’t know she also dreamed about a boy named Sandy and a horrific violent death she witnessed firsthand.