A Song of Forgiveness

by Lillian I Wolfe

  “So, you sang for the funeral?” Gayle prompted.

  “Yes. That was about it. I sang the song he requested and his widow was grateful and pleased.”

  “Okay, I have heard from others who have attended, and to be honest, I have also witnessed, your performances at funerals. You are an amazing vocalist and pianist, but the surprising part is when you actually sing the lyrics. They appear to be personalized for the deceased. How did that come about?”

  And here it was. She was going to try to push me on this one. “I do my research, Gayle, just like you do. I wanted to try to add something truly personal for this very special moment to the family. Something that would give them a sense of peace and pride in the departed. In so many ways, the lyrics sum up the person’s life and how much he gave to his family and the community. So, I do my research.” I flashed a sincere smile at the camera pointed at me and hoped people would buy this.

  Gayle glanced at her notes, then asked, “How do you research someone’s life?”

  I gazed at her a moment or two as if to ask are you kidding? “Well, how do you research someone, Gayle? You look in the news files. You look on the internet. You talk to the family and friends when you can. You learn as much as you can about them from the best sources.”

  I leaned forward to engage her interest. “You know, everybody has some achievements in their lives, something that sets them apart and makes them special. This is what I try to find to include in my songs.”

  Gayle frowned for a second, a little flustered by my response. “But your lyrics seem to really hit on the mark and some people have said that you appear to have knowledge that you couldn’t possibly have. For example, let me play this recording made at a recent funeral you sang—”

  “Uh, let me stop you there. You do not, I repeat, do not have permission to play that recording on the air. The music is copyrighted and the lyrics are mine. Do not play it.” I had pressed my hand across hers as I’d started to speak. I’d heard the first few bars played on a piano before I’d interrupted and it had stopped now. “I won’t talk about this. How I do what I do is my business and is off limits in this interview. Is that clear?”

  She nodded, watching intently as I lifted my hand. “But why, Gillian? What is the big secret?”

  “That’s for me to know and no one else.” I sat back, crossed my ankles and stared at her. “Do you edit this part out and we continue? Or I can walk out right now.”

  The director had cut the taping when I mentioned copyright and he now waited to see what Gayle said. I could feel the tension on the set.

  Gayle nodded, yielding, but I could tell she wasn’t pleased about it. As the taping resumed, she forced an interested smile back to her face and asked, “Recently, and this was reported by me, you passed out after performing a particularly intense farewell song at the funeral of Saffi Alden. Is that true?”

  I took a shallow breath and nodded. “Yes, I fainted. It was an emotional funeral as the woman had been murdered and had very few friends or family to mourn her.”

  “Why did you faint, as you said, at the end? Was it that draining or was there something else going on?”

  I laughed. “What do you think might have been going on? I was at the piano singing. Isn’t that enough to occupy my mind and fingers?” I held my hands up wiggling my fingers, hoping that it would distract from where Gayle was trying to take the conversation. “Honestly, it was a sugar crash. I’d skipped breakfast and had drunk too much coffee. As you mentioned, it was emotional and my blood sugar was low. It overwhelmed me for a bit.”

  “I see. But then you got up and rushed out of the building, not pausing to talk to anyone. Why did you do that? Why not wait a bit to get checked out? You might have passed out again on the way home.”

  I glanced down at my hands that I’d folded neatly in my lap and tried to appear demure. “I was fine. The truth is I was embarrassed to have fainted. You don’t want to make a spectacle of yourself when the focus should be on someone else. In this case, the poor deceased woman. Besides, I didn’t want the medical technicians to be called out for something minor. I just wanted to get out of the building, go home, and get something to eat. I really was embarrassed.” I ducked my head, thinking of a mortifying moment I’d experienced, and hoping the blush would rise to my cheeks now.

  “Well, I guess that would explain it,” Gayle said, once again attempting to appear cheery.

  “One last question. People have told me that you seem to connect with the deceased. Have you seen them on the other side?”

  “What?! You must be joking. On the other side of what? Are you talking about seeing Heaven? No, I have not.” I gave her an indignant look and I hoped that she wouldn’t pursue this line any further. If she could read my eyes, they were clearly saying don’t go down this path.

  She seemed to get the message and began wrapping up the interview. She even mentioned the band’s name and plugged our album as she’d promised to do. After the director called cut, I sprang to my feet ready to say good-bye and scoot out the door.

  She laid a hand on my closest arm. “Look, Gillian. I am not trying to wreck your career or your life. But you have to admit, those lyrics you create are unique to the people who have died. I just want to know how you do it.”

  I hesitated a moment, then said, “It’s a gift. That’s all you need to know and no one else needs to hear it. This report of yours has cost my band bookings, and therefore, money. It’s aggravated me and brought the crazies out to our shows. So, watch how you try to spin this interview or I will be talking to my lawyer.”

  I yanked my arm away and strode briskly from the studio.

  Now, all I had to do was hope that she didn’t try to turn the words around or actually go through and play the recording she’d made or I’d be on the hunt for a lawyer who would handle the case pro bono.

  SEVEN

  I sat in one of the interview rooms, if that’s what you could call it, at the Sheriff’s Office, with Moss across from me and watched as he carefully placed five objects from Roger’s home on a cloth across the table. He’d set up a recorder at the side of the table.

  “You’re recording this?” I asked. I was doing him a favor by attempting the readings, but I hadn’t expected him to record the session.

  “Yeah. I’d like to have a record so I can check back in case you do get something. I don’t want to have to rely on my memory. Nothing to worry about.” He flashed a smile at me, then set a bottle of water on the table and sat down.

  “Okay,” he went on. “We picked up these items at Mitchell’s house. They probably won’t tell us a lot but maybe there’s something you can get from them that will help us.”

  I nodded and let my gaze wander across the items he’d placed. My eyes went to one in particular first—a very disturbing one for me. It was a photo of me taken during a performance, but a good close-up. It looked kind of worn like it had been touched a lot. I hovered my fingers over it for a couple of moments, then pulled them back. I didn’t like the vibration; it felt creepy. I didn’t want to know what might be attached to that.

  “He has quite a few photos of you on his walls,” Moss volunteered as he saw my reaction. “It’s safe to say he was obsessed.”

  I swallowed hard, not happy to know even that much about it except that it validated my side of the story. I looked at the remaining objects and wondered if any of them would tell me where Roger might have gone or what happened to him? A silver lighter, although I’d never seen him smoke, then a high school ring with the school logo on it. That looked interesting and I tried to recall if I’d ever seen him wear it. I picked it up and held it a few seconds, but it gave off nothing. Just cold metal, no impressions.

  Next, I looked at the computer mouse. An inspired choice. If Roger was planning something and he used the computer for research, the possibility of something from it might come to me. “Did you check his computer?” I asked.

  “Of course,” Moss replied.

 
“The browsing history?”

  “Our lab went over it. They didn’t find anything out of the ordinary. He did check the weather forecast around the time he disappeared.”

  I moved to the final object, a flash drive. I tapped it. “What’s on this?”

  “If the photo bothers you, then you probably don’t want to look at that.”

  “Photos?”

  He dipped his head.

  “Of me?”

  “Mostly.”

  I gritted my teeth and picked it up. It might be the most personal thing to him there. I got a flash of myself through Roger’s eyes, kind of a foggy image, but definitely with an enhanced filter. He saw me in a way I never saw myself, beautiful and sexual. But it wouldn’t lead me to any other information about him. Except as I started to put it back on the table, I sensed an emotion of sadness from him, a sense of despair.

  “He was depressed. I can feel that. But I’m not getting any sense of what he was doing. This is all emotional.”

  I sat back, still picking up the roiling emotions he had been feeling. A flash of white shot through my mind, blinding white like a snowstorm. Fear, disorientation, and cold. I wrapped my arms around my shoulders and stopped breathing.

  Moss practically leaped across the table. “You okay, Foster?”

  I heard his voice as if from a distance and in a dream-like state. Catching me in his arms, he shook me. “Come on, Gillian, take a breath.”

  I felt a slap across my cheek and I gasped for air, then I coughed a couple of times.

  “What the hell just happened?” Moss demanded as he rubbed my arms. He turned to open the water for me and I took a few shallow sips, afraid to gulp it down.

  “I don’t know. I got impressions and suddenly I couldn’t breathe.” I took a few moments to gather my thoughts and what I’d seen, then a soul-deep chill ran through me. I turned my eyes to meet Moss’ worried look. “I don’t... think...or feel...that Roger’s alive.”

  I leaned my head on my arms on the table and tried to compose my thoughts as Moss straightened up and pulled up a chair near me.

  “Take your time,” he said in a quiet voice. “There’s no rush.”

  As I ran the images through my mind, I began to get pieces of a possibility that slowly solidified. Bringing my head up, I shifted a little to see Moss. “I didn’t see anything specific, but the impressions I got seemed to suggest a heavy snow, cold... possibly being encased in the snow, freezing, then nothing. I think it’s possible he walked or crawled away from the overturned snowmobile and got lost in a snowstorm in the forest. The vision seemed disoriented. I don’t know. It may mean nothing, but I feel certain he’s dead.”

  Moss let out a heavy breath, reached over, and turned the recorder off. We sat in silence for about a minute, neither one wanting to break the quiet as we each organized our thoughts.

  “All right. If we consider that might be the case, then maybe we need to widen the search at the meadow. With nothing to suggest he might have wandered deeper in and gotten buried in the snow, we didn’t send in the dogs.”

  He asked me to repeat what I’d seen again and if I could get a sense of any direction from it. I shook my head. All I had were impressions and they were as disoriented as Roger would have been. What baffled me, even more, was why I was getting that reading at all. The flash drive wasn’t with him or on him, so how could it be coming from it?

  We talked a little longer until Moss was certain I was okay, then he escorted me out of the building. From there, I pointed my Jeep toward Ferris’ house.

  He’d just gotten home from work when I got there and he could tell I was upset.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked immediately, his arms going around me, squeezing me into a comforting hold. “Nothing’s happened to Nygard, has it?”

  I shook my head. “No, he’s fine.”

  We both worried about him since he wasn’t quite the same cat he’d been before he’d taken on a shade. But health-wise, he was doing great. “It’s something else. Just give me a couple of minutes.”

  He stroked the back of my head as his other arm hugged me tighter. Feeling more relaxed, I pulled back a bit, and he urged me toward the sofa, still not breaking the hold he had on me. We sank down onto the comfortable cushions and edged closer to him.

  Ferris’ house was an older one, but he’d remodeled a good portion giving it a clean, modern look. The decent-sized living room held the sofa, a couple of lounge chairs, and a huge television screen on the wall surrounded by a cluster of speakers, recorders, and other digital boxes.

  “When did you add the ceiling mounts?” I asked as I realized I hadn’t been inside for several months. We rehearsed in the studio, formerly the garage, and I hadn’t had a reason to come inside any further than the bathroom off the utility room.

  “About three months ago. It’s almost like sitting in a movie theater now.”

  “So, when we want to go to the movies, we come here?” I asked, a silly smile crossing my face at the thought.

  “If you want.” His look was just as goofy. Yeah, we could do this.

  “Okay, babe, what gives?”

  “I just need to talk to you,” I answered as we slipped back against the couch, his left arm wrapped around my shoulder. I dropped my head on it. “I went to Sheriff’s Office a little bit ago and it turned out to be more stressful than I thought it would.”

  A frown creased Ferris’ forehead. “Why were you there?”

  I hesitated. While Moss hadn’t cautioned me against saying anything, I figured he probably wouldn’t want me to tell people. But this was Ferris and he wouldn’t say anything, probably not even to Digby if I told him not to do it. I decided on a half-way point.

  “Moss had a few objects he wanted me to try to get a reading on. Most of them were duds, but one of them was pretty emotional.”

  “Are you okay?” He shifted his arm to pull me even closer.

  “I will be.” I rested my head against him.

  “Tell me.”

  I sighed. “For the most part, I just got emotions from it, but after I’d put the object down, I got a series of impressions.” Hesitantly, I described what I’d seen and skimmed over how it had affected me, not saying anything to alarm him.

  “So, you think he’s dead?” Ferris asked after I’d finished.

  “Yeah, I think it’s a strong possibility.”

  We remained snuggled like that for a minute or so, when I thought about the other reason I’d come over and said, “I have a favor to ask. Will you cat-sit for me this weekend?”

  He flashed a curious glance at me but nodded. “Sure. What are you up to?”

  “Janna and I are doing a girls’ weekend. We’re leaving Saturday, staying overnight in Roseville, then coming back on Sunday. Going to roam around the area and sample some wine.” I burrowed a little closer, playing with the buttons on his shirt.

  “Sounds like fun. You could use the break.”

  Impulsively, he leaned into me and his mouth connected with mine as I wrapped my arm around his neck, pulling us even tighter. His warm lips smothered mine, demanding as his tongue teased at mine. A wave of heat rushed down the middle of my body as a flood of desire surged within me. Cripes, I hadn’t felt like this about him since we’d dated years ago. Clearly, I still harbored a passion for him or at least, a lustful desire.

  He pushed me down on the sofa, shifting his hips alongside mine and his hands ran across my stomach. Heat and longing ran through me, wanting more as burning flashes of desire shot through me while my boobies tightened to attention.

  For a moment, an ugly face flashed across my mind and I cringed involuntarily. No, I scolded myself. This wasn’t the same. That was a sex-fiend murderer and he had no place in my life anymore.

  But Ferris had felt it and pulled back, his dreamy eyes gazing intently at my face. “What?”

  I shook my head slowly, willing the vision away. “A bad memory. Give me a moment.”

  He sat up, moving away
from me, and I wanted to reach out and pull him back. I couldn’t let the nightmare ruin my life. As long as I allowed that piece of garbage entry into my thoughts, he would prevent my happiness.

  “Could I get a glass of wine? I think it might help.” My voice sounded a little rough.

  With a nod, Ferris leaned in and kissed my nose with a light brush of his lips. “Sure. Be right back.”

  I sat up, irritated with myself, and took several deep breaths. Hadn’t that damn bastard already cost me Mark? Not that I hadn’t expected my relationship with the doctor to end anyway. But certainly, my sexual reticence after being almost raped and killed had been influencing my life for about a year now.

  When Ferris returned with a bottle and two glasses, I managed a small forgive-me smile. “Sorry. Sometimes it’s hard to let go of a bad memory. Maybe this will help.”

  He poured the wine, a scintillating Bordeaux, or so he said, and handed me a glass, then settled back again. “It’s okay, Gilly. We don’t have to rush.”

  “You’re a pretty awesome guy. How come you haven’t been dating a cool chick? I mean, there’s plenty of them that have come on to you.”

  “Because I’ve been waiting for the best one. The one I’ve wanted for a long time.”

  He gazed into my eyes and I felt a rush of heat zip through my body and down to my toes. I fixated on his lashes, how long and lush they were, and how soulful his eyes looked. How had I not noticed that fervor in his eyes before?

  My lips parted, suddenly dry, and I licked them. Conscious of what I was doing, I brought the wine to my mouth and sipped, leaving droplets on the surface.

  He smiled slyly as he put his glass on the coffee table. “You’d better not do that if you don’t want me to do this.” Then he leaned forward and licked the drops off my lips.