The music ended slowly, drifting off and I went up to him. “That’s gorgeous! What is it?”
“It’s for you.”
I never heard of it. “By who?” I couldn’t wait to sing it.
He made a face in response to my cluelessness. “I wrote it for you.”
“Truly?”
“Yes.”
Sitting down next to him, there was absolutely nothing I could say.
“How is Shannon?”
“She called someone. I think it was Dustin.”
“I don’t want to say anything uncomplimentary about her.”
“I feel the same way.”
“Maybe she should be moved to another location. And gagged.”
“Good idea. Where are the lyrics?” I picked up the music in front of him on the piano.
“I’m a musician, not a lyricist.”
“That’s too bad. You better get back to practicing.” I stood and started walking to the stairs.
“We have a rehearsal this afternoon.”
“Yes, boss.”
***
Lunch was waiting for me when I came back downstairs an hour later.
“Where’d you go?”
“Upstairs. Like I could go very far.”
“Why?”
“I had something to do.”
“Were you phoning home?”
“Did you hear the phone ring?”
“You could be calling...”
“Stop it.” I put my sandwich down. “I can see you’re not going to give me a moment’s peace until I show you what I was doing upstairs.” I headed to the living room. “I don’t hear you following me.”
He appeared and I pointed to the piano bench.
“What?”
“Sit down and sing.”
“Sing what?”
“The duet.” I pointed to his music, now complete with a title and lyrics.
He scanned it quickly then shook his head. “I’m not singing that.”
“Yeah, it’s perfect for you.”
“Don’t use this to get back at me. I know you don’t like it, but you are great on The Farther You Go.”
“You’ll be great on this.”
“Broken?” His anger was on the surface, not being someone who was good at hiding his feelings.
I nodded. “You start. Then I go. You go. We sing together. I go. You go. I go. We finish. I marked it all out for you.” I pointed to the music.
He was still.
“Are you mad at me?”
“Yes.”
He wasn’t used to being pushed. He was used to pulling people along with him.
“Okay.” I turned and started to leave the room.
“Where are you going? We have to rehearse.”
“When you’re ready to sing this song with me, I’m ready to rehearse.”
“That is so unfair!”
“Is it?” I managed to keep from laughing as I went to the kitchen
I washed my hands, took the butter out of the refrigerator, found the flour, found the mixing bowl and rolling pin.
“What are you doing?” Truly asked from the doorway.
“Your mom asked for some help in the kitchen today. I had plenty of practice with Maude over the years.”
“It has to be now?”
“I have to do something to kill time waiting for you.”
He marched himself through the kitchen and went outside. I could see him go to the barn and figured he would hole up in the apartment for a few hours. Never having seen him angry, I had no idea how long it would last but at least I knew it wouldn’t end with Bactine and bandages.
Emily came into the kitchen. “I passed Tru in the barn. He’s riding a mad.”
“He sure is.” I went to the refrigerator for some ice cubes.
“Did you have a...”
“Is the word you’re looking for fight?”
“Disagreement.”
“Tru had an unusual experience, and it put him in a bad mood,” I said.
She nodded. “You’re good for him. But he is a handful.”
Emily opened one of the bags of groceries and took out two cans of pumpkin. “Steve loves pumpkin pie.”
“Then he should be a happy man tonight,” I replied. “Is Steve the only one who can call family meetings?”
“No. Anyone can.”
“Is the point that you don’t close out a day with a problem?”
“Yes. Should we be expecting a conference tonight?”
“No.”
“You’re braver than I thought you would be.”
I smiled. “You don’t survive the Kents by being a coward.”
***
The pies were out of the oven, and dinner started when I pulled a jacket from the hook in the mudroom. The garage was dark and bone-cold. I turned on the lights and the heat, sat in a chair and took out his cell phone.
I entered his number and waited for it to ring.
“Truly Lambert.”
“Tru, are we going to rehearse this afternoon?”
“No.”
“Will you talk to me?”
“I’m working on something for Professor Laszlo.”
“Okay. Then I guess we’ll talk at the family conference at midnight.”
“Don’t bring my family into this.”
“They’re my family, too.”
“Where are you?”
“In the garage.”
He clicked off.
Three minutes later the door opened and he came in.
“So?”
“Do you want to hit me?”
“Of course not!”
“Then that’s a good place to start. Do you want to rehearse?”
“No.”
“I thought how we felt wasn’t going to get in the way of rehearsing.”
“You were the one who said I had to act like a trained monkey or you weren’t going to rehearse.”
“I don’t accept the monkey characterization, but yes, that’s what I said, and it was a mistake. I’ve had enough conflict in my life. It’s your song. Sort of my song, too, but yours first, and you can sing it or not. Throw the lyrics away. I don’t care.”
“You really don’t care.”
“Not enough to fight about it. It’s a beautiful piece of music.”
“The lyrics are terrible.”
“I’m sorry. It was the first time I wrote lyrics. I’ve been writing forever, gee, how could I not and keep my sanity on the mountain.”
“You were the one who wanted to do Tommy the Turtle.”
“What does that have to do with this?”
“You want to sing happy songs. You make such a fuss about doing The Farther You Go.”
“Good point.”
“It’s not about us.”
“That’s what you say.”
“Broken is about us.”
Now I understood. “It’s a story, a fiction. It’s a performance.”
“You would get on a stage and sing those lyrics?”
I nodded.
“I won’t.”
“Tru, that’s fine. I get it.”
“I don’t get it. I don’t get why you wrote those lyrics. Aside from the fact, that they’re contrapuntal to the melody.”
“That’s by design. The contrast sharpens...”
“It’s a grim portrait of everything gone wrong.”
I looked at him for a moment. “It’s about restoration. It’s about everything gone right.”
“Impossible.”
“It’s a story arc. Yes, I agree, it starts out badly but by the end there’s all the hope in the world.”
“Hope is a frail foundation to base a life on.”
“It may be, but it got me here.”
He went to the desk and began sorting through all the notes and lists made for the Enchanted Gardens gig. “It wasn’t supposed to be for public consumption.” He dumped most of the papers in the wastebasket.
“I’m sorry. It’s suc
h a beautiful composition, all I thought was how much I wanted to sing it. But it’s off the table. We don’t have to do it, we won’t do it.”
“And you’re okay with that?”
“Certainly,” I said and meant it. “Aunt Maude showed me how to make pocket pies years ago, and this afternoon I showed Emily. They’re out of the oven. Apple with cinnamon and walnuts. Big glass of cold milk. Before we start rehearsing, I was thinking of going to go over to the house to have one.”
“Are there any for me?”
“They were all for you,” I replied.
Chapter 23
Late in the day, after we rehearsed, I did what I hadn’t done in weeks and that was to take a walk in the fields. I needed some time alone, just like back on the mountain. Even when change is welcome, adapting to it doesn’t always come easily.
I had never considered the future and now, one had been given to me like a treasure, sparkling gems and baubles, objects I couldn’t identify, mysterious offerings whispering promises. At some point in my past, recognizing the futility of it, I had stopped wanting anything other than to make it through the next day.
Now that a nearly unlimited amount of next days were before me, I found I still didn’t want anything.
I should. Almost everything that could be dreamt was possible. I could go to college, I could have a career, I could travel. Me, who had never been more than two hundred miles away from Acre. I could go see the New Jersey shore. Maybe Texas. The Grand Canyon. I could stand at the Great Divide or at the casino on Santa Catalina.
I didn’t want to leave here. I had no memory of another home. Here, I felt accepted and wanted; if not loved, then at least liked.
There was time, years, to figure out what I might do. I hoped that Emily wouldn’t want me to go a public school as I loved the hours we spent in the den together. I loved it when Steve came home from the barracks, happy to be home and we all ate dinner together. I loved it that they loved each other.
It was like a clip out of the dreams I invented years ago to keep myself from screaming at night. The simple life at home, warm and safe where people smiled and hugged and kissed each other. They worried about each other, they cared for each other.
I thought it was a fantasy.
But it turned out to be real and Kent Mountain was the pavor nocturnus, a recurring, persistent, waking night terror.
I was weak with relief that was in the past.
His phone started ringing. I took it from the coat pocket and clicked it on.
“Tru?”
“Where are you?”
“I’m in one of the fields.”
Something was wrong. I knew his voice better than I knew my own. I could feel it. He didn’t have to say it.
“Which one? I’ll come get you.”
That’s what you get for trusting happiness.
“The field where the horses aren’t. What happened? Is everyone alright?”
“We’re fine. I’ll be right there.”
Turning, I began hurrying back toward the barn. We were fine. That meant the Lamberts and was so grateful for that, I could hardly breathe.
There were only two people I would care enough about, outside the family, that would send him up here in the truck. Maude or Shannon.
Maude was of an age where medical events could happen without warning.
I saw the headlights of a truck enter the field and I kept hurrying along, my leg protesting every stride. How happy Joe would be to know that.
The truck stopped, Truly got out and came around to the passenger side as I opened the door. He put his hands on my waist to lift me up.
“It’s Shannon, isn’t it?”
“Yes. She’s gone.”
Chapter 24
“Dead?”
“No, just gone.”
We bounced down the hill faster than for anything other than an emergency. The lights of the house glowed in the dark, now signaling a crisis instead of a welcome. My dread grew until we hurried into the kitchen.
Emily was on the phone “They’re here, I’ll call you back.”
“What happened?” I asked.
“Reverend Helm went to talk to Shannon this afternoon as I asked him to. She wasn’t at the cabin so he waited, thinking she might have left to go to the diner, or got a ride to town from the owner. There was no one around to ask. Finally, he called me and I called Steve, who drove over immediately.”
“Did she leave willingly,” I asked.
“It doesn’t look like it. Steve says there are indications of a struggle.”
“Did Shannon take anything,” Truly asked as he pushed me toward a kitchen chair. “Sit.”
“It doesn’t seem so to your father.”
“We should go look for her,” I said.
“Where would we start,” Truly asked, being his practical self.
“Your father can go to the house. Make up something. Someone stole her driver’s license and totaled a car.”
Truly looked at me in surprise. “That came real easy for you.”
“I grew up surrounded by liars. I learned from the masters.”
“We can’t just drive around hoping to find her. We have to leave it to the police,” Emily replied.
“I don’t want to seem critical of Steve, so this isn’t about him, but the police have generally been bored by anything that’s ever happened up on the mountain.”
“I understand, but you never had Steve on your side before. Let’s let him do his job, and he’s really good at it. He’ll call as soon as he knows something. Then we’ll know if we have to go look for her.”
“You mean like if he doesn’t find blood in the cabin, maybe she’s okay,” I said.
“Yes.”
“Nameless and formless, blindsiding you when you least expect it,” Truly said remembering what I had told him. “Any other time I’d tease you but not now.”
“What would you have said?”
“No wonder you’re such a crazy chick.”
“Tru!” Emily said. “You’re not helping.”
“It’s okay. I can translate.”
Emily crossed to the telephone. “I was talking to Maude, so I should call her back.”
Truly took my hand. “Let’s go to the piano, and work on something.”
I followed him into the living room but it was the last thing I wanted to do.
He sat at the piano. “Tommy the Turtle?”
“No, something...”
“Grim?”
“Yes.”
“Funny you should mention that. I found a song. It’s nothing like what we’ve done before but I made an arrangement that I think will work for us.”
“Okay, what is it?”
“Wrecked and Reckless.” Truly removed a couple sheets of paper from his back pocket, placed them on the piano then stopped. “Do you trust me?”
“Where did that come from?”
“From where it counts.”
I never thought one word would be so hard to get out. “Yes.”
He nodded.
“Do you think I could talk to your father?”
“Sure.”
We went into the kitchen, he picked up the phone and keyed in some numbers. “Dad, do you have any word on Shannon?” There was a brief pause and he shook his head for me. “Neal would like to speak to you.” He handed me the phone.
“Steve. Where Janie lives, there’s an old barn up the road, further to the north. Go across the stream at the springhouse. Go straight. About a quarter mile in, you’ll find an old logging trail. Even in the dark, you’ll see it. Follow that all the way up to a flat area, they used to park the equipment there. Go to the right, and you’ll be going further up the mountain. The logging trail goes to the right, but there’s an animal trail to the left. It’ll be harder to see but it’s there. Follow that to the ravine. You’ll find Shannon at the bottom. With the kittens.”
Truly took the phone from me, told Steve we’d be here, then hung up.
“Your entire childhood must have been a nightmare for you. I keep telling you the bad part’s over, and I feel like I’m lying.”
“Not lying. You’re just mistaken because nothing in your past could prepare you for them.”
Truly put his arms around me. “Joe will have to go through me to get to you.”
“God, don’t say that.”
Some losses you can’t survive.
Chapter 25
Emily and I picked at dinner. Truly ate with no hesitation.
“I guess the bad part is that now Joe has Shannon’s cell phone, and can access the log of the calls she made.”
Truly reached for another biscuit. “Our phone is unlisted so he has the number but can’t do a reverse lookup for the address.”
Emily smiled at me encouragingly. “That’s right. Try to relax.”
I was as relaxed as I could be waiting for the inevitable. There was a part of me saying this could be my last night. Now that there was so much I wanted to do, it was just a list of more things that could be stolen from me. I knew that if I lived through this I would put nothing off again.
We gave up on dinner and decided to go into the living room while Tru practiced. I wasn’t sure how he managed to concentrate on music at that moment but then, he had never even talked to Shannon so it wasn’t personal. I had no great affection for her but we had lived in the same room and faced some of the same threats. I didn’t want anything to happen to her, especially since she had been on the verge of getting off the mountain.
Truly could have played till morning, and I could have listened but at nearly ten, we saw headlights come into the driveway, then stop.
“That must be Steve,” Emily said and stood.
The phone started ringing and she went to the kitchen for it.
“Neal,” Truly said. “Would you come upstairs with me for a minute?”
I wanted to know who was on the phone but I always had a difficult time saying no to him. It only took a minute or two and we were back downstairs before Emily was off the phone.
As we reached the kitchen, she was hanging up. “That was Steve and they did find Shannon where you thought she’d be.”
“Who’s in the car?” Truly asked.
“A trooper. Steve won’t be coming home tonight and he didn’t want us to be alone.”
Bad Apple 1: Sweet Cider Page 12
