Cool Shade
Page 17
That they really didn't have one.
Whenever they were together, she sent brain signals his way.
Tell me about you. Share yourself with me.
But he never picked up on it. Or else he chose to ignore it.
And when they made love, she sensed a desperation in him that broke her heart.
"Maybe we should get a bigger bed," he said one night in the afterglow of lovemaking as they lay curled up together in his single bed. And what would it be after that? Separate beds? Then separate rooms? Separate lives?
She sensed that she was crowding him, maybe even smothering him.
She'd never meant to smother him. She'd never meant to be a burden, a weight, something to endure. She'd only wanted to make him happy and be happy herself.
Ever since the day Jason had come over, Eddie had been withdrawn, disappearing for hours at a time.
She was losing him.
Maybe she'd never had him.
Maybe she never would.
That possibility ate away at her. She hurt. All the time.
He was better about crowds. Just yesterday they'd gone to the park. There had been a moment when she looked up to see Eddie walking lazily toward her, Murphy on a leash at his side.
And she felt on the outside, looking in.
When Eddie walked, his feet touched the ground like everybody else's, but at that moment he'd seemed bigger than life. There was more to him than it appeared. And in that fragmented instant, a door had opened, then quickly shut. She'd caught a glimpse of the real Eddie. Like the transience of a sand painting. Like "Cool Shade," a song nobody would hear.
Like life.
It was that feeling of not being able to quite capture it, not being able to commit the moment, the feeling, to memory because it was too fleeting.
She loved him so much. So very, very much.
And she was afraid she would never have him, not really.
That evening, as she was leaving for work, Eddie stopped her. He pulled her into his arms.
"Play a song for me."
What kind of song did you play for a man who'd given the world so much? Because Maddie understood that, even though Jason was Rick Beck, so was Eddie.
Was she becoming a burden to him? If he wanted her to go, then she would go. She would move on.
After all, leaving was what she did best.
He kissed her good-bye.
~0~
At work, Brian sensed Maddie's depression. "Things not going well for you and Eddie?"
She shook her head, unable to talk about it. She wished she hadn't moved out of her apartment, wished she had some spot to hide, to sort things out and grieve if she had to.
"I hate to dump this on you, but could you check and see if this is suitable for airplay?" He tossed a tape to her.
Maddie caught it with both hands. No writing on it, nothing to give any kind of clue as to what was inside. "Sure." It would take her mind off Eddie. "What is it?"
"Something a buddy put together."
She made a face. "Asked you to play it, huh?"
"Actually, he wanted you to give it a listen. You're a better judge of stuff like that, anyway."
A con line if ever she'd heard one. "I'll check it out."
At two A.M., Maddie remembered the tape.
She'd just started a sequence of four songs, so she dug out the Walkman, put on the headset, snapped in the tape, and leaned back in her chair.
First mere was just the whir of the tape. Then… music.
A ballad. Haunting. Mysterious...
There are times in our lives
When the shadows grow so tall
They block out the moon
And the stars
There are times in our lives
When every breath is effort
Every sigh despair
Then along comes Madison
It was signed, Eddie. But it couldn't have been anyone else. That's what he'd meant when he’d asked her to play a song for him.
His voice. God, his voice. It made Rick Beck sound like a child playing in an adult world. This was real. It got to you, tore you up inside. Raw. Aching. Full of ragged emotion.
Love.
When the last note faded, Maddie pressed the rewind button and played it again.
His music had flaws. Wonderful, wonderful flaws. There was a spot in the vocals, in the refrain, that was slightly off-key, where his voice cracked. And it was a sound that tugged at her heart.
As the last note died, Maddie closed her eyes and leaned back in the chair, trying to come down to earth, waiting for the goosebumps to fade.
He'd told her the truth in his own way, the best way, with his music.
Another song began:
She's like a hangnail
That won't go away
Said she was a hooker
She came for a lay
My dog attacked her
Licked her white face
Said she was a hooker
I was on the case
Told her that I loved her
But she loved someone else
Said she was a hooker
I said, What the hell?
She's like a hangnail
That won't go away
Said she loved me
I'm hoping that she'll stay
The song ended abruptly.
Maddie sat there, hand to her mouth, laughing and crying at the same time.
She'd finally come to understand how she'd given herself to him so freely that first time. Because it hadn't been the first time. He'd been touching her for years.
He was the one.
He'd always been the one.
Eddie was the sweet ache of music in her soul.
She had to talk to him; she had to see him. Now.
She stuck the tape in her purse and headed for the door, stopped, went back into the control booth and set the reel to reel to start as soon as the CD player finished, then she turned and ran.
Outside.
To the parking lot.
There, under the tungsten glow of the streetlight, Eddie leaned against the front fender of her car, his arms crossed at his chest, feet at the ankles, trying to look casual. She could see through his act.
When he straightened away from the car, he moved a little stiffly, as if he'd been there for hours.
"Rick Beck didn't die that night four years ago, did he?" she asked.
"No."
"Jason is Rick Beck, isn't he?"
"I promised Rick's mother I would never tell anyone."
She couldn't condemn him for such stoic nobility. His silence had been a strength, not a weakness.
"I won't say anything," she said.
"I know."
"You wrote the music, but you couldn't perform in front of people. So you got Rick to do it. Am I right?"
"That about covers it."
"What about Evelyn? Does she know about Rick?"
"Evelyn?"
"Rick's aunt."
"Are you talking about Evelyn Stoikavich?"
"She was Enid's landlady."
"Oh, wow." He looked like she'd just taken him to a place he didn't want to go.
"Evelyn likes to tell people she's Rick's aunt, but she isn't. Get ready for a shocker. Her son was the guy who shot Rick."
Maddie thought she had everything figured out, but what he'd just told her was something she'd never dreamed of. "I don't get it. Wasn't he from California?"
"Yeah, but he was visiting his mother here in Chester when we did the concert. Evelyn's always had it in her head that I hired her son to kill Rick. The truth was probably too much for her. At least this way she can tell herself that her son wasn't completely to blame."
"Poor Evelyn."
Maddie thought about all the memorabilia in her basement. It had probably belonged to her son. No wonder the place had given her the creeps.
"Fear can keep us from living our lives the way they should be lived," Eddie said. "Don't ever
let somebody else live your life."
He was talking about his music. About himself.
"You woke me up,” he said. “You shook me up. You made me want to write again. To live again."
Everything was blurry. She was crying, and her face had somehow gotten wet without her knowledge, without her going to any work to make it that way.
Eddie's confession completely absolved Maddie of the pain of Enid's final words. She didn't need to discover a cure for anything for her life to have meaning. She could be a quiet flame.
"Maddie, I'm afraid. Not for me, but for you."
She tried to speak, but her throat hurt.
"I've been thinking about how being around me could put you in danger. But then I realized you're a danger to yourself. You do crazy things. Like not locking doors. Like going to meet strangers in the middle of the night, in the middle of nowhere. Like pretending you're a hooker. And then I decided, I don't know if I can handle thinking about you out there by yourself, wondering what kind of naive, dangerous thing you might be up to."
She pulled herself together enough to speak. "You're getting a little lavish with the compliments, aren't you?" she asked in a tight, achy voice. Loving him was the most dangerous thing she'd ever done in her life. And the most exhilarating. With Eddie, there would be no safety net.
"I knew this would get me in trouble." He paced. He came back to stand in front of her. "I don't mean you need somebody to make you eat right, although, come to think of it—" He looked skyward, then back, but not directly at her.
He's nervous. The concept was intriguing.
"I know you've been having second thoughts about me, about us—"
She shook her head, but he was on a roll.
"Problem is, I don't know if I can live without you. I mean, I lived without you before, but I wasn't really living. It was kind of a suspended state, like I was waiting for you to show up. But now, now that I know you, I don't think I can handle losing you. We see the world through the same eyes. Some people search their whole life for that kind of connection. Most people never find it."
It was hard to believe that just months ago her life had seemed a lonely, directionless highway, a highway that had ended up taking her to Eddie. How could something that had seemed so random have turned out so right?
"Is there anything else I should know about you?" she asked in a voice that was both serious and teasing, her emotions fragile. "Any other surprises?"
"Sometimes I watch Dukes of Hazzard reruns."
She laughed. "I always suspected you were secretly into that highbrow stuff."
"You?"
"I ate cat food once."
"See? That's exactly the kind of thing I'm talking about. You need me to make sure you take care of yourself."
He pulled her into his arms. He kissed her deeply. Thoroughly.
"And," she added, "I haven't had a shower in two days."
"I can remedy that. Let's go home. I'll fix you a bath."
"With candles?" she asked hopefully.
"And me."
"You didn't tell me what you thought of the new music. I've been working on it ever since Jason showed up the other day, singing 'Cool Shade.'"
So that's what he'd been up to. "It made me cry."
She wouldn't reveal just how deeply it had moved her, not yet anyway.
"Good."
"And it made me laugh."
"Even better."
She was about to leave with Eddie, the love of her life, when she remembered her job and stopped short, her hand in his. "I can't go."
"It's okay with Brian. I worked out a deal with him. If he lets you have the rest of the night off, he can get in on the production of my new release."
There was one more thing she had to ask him. "Your old music. Most of them are love songs. Who did you write them for?"
"You."
"Just how gullible do you think I am?" she asked, even though she'd thought the very same thing. "You've only known me a few months."
"I've known you a lifetime. Here." He touched his chest, his heart. "You've always been right here."
She smiled at him.
Words.
He had so many wonderful words in him.
-o0o-
More great Kindle reads by Anne Frasier / Theresa Weir
www.theresaweir.com
About the author:
Theresa Weir (a.k.a. Anne Frasier) is an award-winning, USA Today bestselling author of twenty-one books and numerous short stories that have spanned the genres of suspense, mystery, thriller, romantic suspense, paranormal, and memoir. Her titles have been printed in both hardcover and paperback and translated into twenty languages. Her memoir, The Orchard, was a 2011 Oprah Magazine Fall Pick, Number Two on the Indie Next list, a featured B+ review in Entertainment Weekly, and a Librarians’ Best Books of 2011. Going back to 1988, Weir’s debut title was the cult phenomenon AMAZON LILY, initially published by Pocket Books and later reissued by Bantam Books. Writing as Theresa Weir she won a RITA for romantic suspense (COOL SHADE), and a year later the Daphne du Maurier for paranormal romance (BAD KARMA). In her more recent Anne Frasier career, her thriller and suspense titles hit the USA Today list (HUSH, SLEEP TIGHT, PLAY DEAD) and were featured in Mystery Guild, Literary Guild, and Book of the Month Club. HUSH was both a RITA and Daphne du Maurier finalist. Well-known in the mystery community, she served as hardcover judge for the Thriller presented by International Thriller Writers, and was guest of honor at the Diversicon 16 mystery/science fiction conference held in Minneapolis in 2008. Frasier books have received high praise from print publications such as Publishers Weekly, Minneapolis Star Tribune, and Crimespree, as well as online praise from Spinetingler, Book Loons, Armchair Interviews, Sarah Weinman’s Confessions of an Idiosyncratic Mind, and Ali Karim’s Shots Magazine. Her books have featured cover quotes from Lisa Gardner, Jane Ann Krentz, Linda Howard, Kay Hooper, and J.A. Konrath. Her short stories and poetry can be found in DISCOUNT NOIR, ONCE UPON A CRIME, and THE LINEUP, POEMS ON CRIME. She is a member of Sisters in Crime and International Thriller Writers.
Title List
Writing as Anne Frasier
Hush, USA Today bestseller, RITA finalist, Daphne du Maurier finalist
Sleep Tight, USA Today bestseller
Play Dead, USA Today Bestseller
Before I Wake
Pale Immortal
Garden of Darkness, RITA finalist
Once Upon a Crime anthology, Santa’s Little Helper
The Lineup, Poems on Crime, Home
Discount Noir anthology, Crack House
Deadly Treats Halloween anthology, editor and contributor, The Replacement (September 2011)
Once Upon a Crime anthology, Red Cadillac (April 2012)
Writing as Theresa Weir
The Forever Man
Amazon Lily, RITA finalist, Best New Adventure Writer award, Romantic Times
Loving Jenny
Pictures of Emily
Iguana Bay
Forever
Last Summer
One Fine Day
Long Night Moon, Reviewer’s Choice Award, Romantic Times
American Dreamer
Some Kind of Magic
Cool Shade RITA winner, romantic suspense
Bad Karma, Daphne du Maurier award, paranormal
Max Under the Stars, short story
The Orchard, a memoir (September 2011)
Cool Shade
Theresa Weir
Author
Publisher
Copyright
Copyright Theresa Weir
ISBN
Table of Contents
1. Cool Shade
2. Chapter 1
3. Chapter 2
4. Chapter 3
5. Chapter 4
6. Chapter 5
7. Chapter 6
8. Chapter 7
9. Chapter 8
10. Chapter 9
11. Chapter 10
12. Chapter 11
/> 13. Chapter 12
14. Chapter 13
15. Chapter 14
16. Chapter 15
17. Chapter 16
18. Chapter 17
19. Chapter 18
20. Chapter 19
21. Chapter 20
22. Chapter 21
23. Chapter 22
24. Chapter 23
25. Chapter 24
26. Chapter 25
27. Chapter 26
28. Chapter 27
29. Chapter 28
30. Chapter 29
31. Chapter 30
32. Chapter 31
33. Chapter 32
34. Chapter 33