****
Before this evening, Melody had been convinced that the longest sixty seconds in her world were those right before she was called into a jury room for exams, or right before her turn to play in a recital. Now, she knew better. The time the phone connection took stretched her nerves almost to the breaking point.
Then she heard the phone ring. Once. Twice.
“Merry Christmas,” a female voice said, a voice that smiled.
Melody smiled back into the receiver. “Merry Christmas to you, too. May I speak to James, please?”
“Well, he’s out back chopping firewood. You want to hold on while I fetch him, or can I have him call you back?”
Melody’s first thought was, Thank heaven I got the right house! Then she frowned. Hattie’s clock read six-forty. It’d be twenty minutes to eight in Ontario. Wouldn’t their chores be done by that hour?
“Ch-chopping firewood?” she stammered. “Did I hear you right?”
Laughter bubbled over the line. “It does sound a little strange, doesn’t it? I think it’s a guy thing. He and his father need the macho time.” The woman chuckled again. “But you didn’t call here to talk to me. Let me get James. Can I tell him who’s calling?”
Melody closed her eyes. “It’s Melody Rowland, from Chicago.”
“Melody? James’s Melody?”
Melody’s eyes popped back open. Is that what they called her up there? “Yes,” she managed. “I’m his graduate assistant—”
“Oh, my dear, I know who you are! I’m Angela, James’s mother.” Her voice lowered conspiratorially. “He’ll be so tickled to hear from you! Let me get him right away.”
Melody heard a door open and close, background noise, bustling, voices. She heard an extension picked up, then an abrupt quiet before James came on, sounding out of breath.
“Mel? Is that you? Where are you?”
“Chicago.”
“Oh.” His voice dropped. “For a minute there, I thought…”
Her heart skipped. Maybe she should have hopped that plane, after all.
“Well.” He cleared his throat. “How are you?”
“Oh, I’m fine. Great.” What was she saying? She wasn’t fine. She was petrified. Closing her eyes, she decided to take the plunge. “J-James, I—”
“Melody, I—” he said at the same time. She heard him give a short laugh.
“Sorry, Mel. Ladies first.”
She clutched the quilt white-knuckle tight. She had to start with something safe. She didn’t think it’d be wise to jump in and say, I’ve decided to be my mother’s daughter and stake my claim to you. Not without something a little less threatening to ease the man into it.
“I heard you were out chopping firewood,” she said weakly.
A beat’s silence met her sterling observation, and she cringed. Well, if insipid was safe, that was safe enough.
“Oh, that?” James’s voice went bland. “I was helping Dad out. It’s part of the routine around here. Holidays, too, otherwise we don’t stay warm long.”
A pang went through her. James hadn’t said a great deal about the cabin in “God’s country,” but she’d pictured it enough times in her head that woodstove heat made perfect sense. Score one for a vivid imagination.
“Besides,” he went on, “I don’t mind. My mother cooked the fatted calf for dinner and I’ve got to work it off!”
A nervous knot formed in her stomach. Was she imagining things, or was James deliberately keeping his distance? He’d sounded so hopeful when he’d first picked up the phone, as if he’d missed her, but he didn’t sound tickled to hear from her now. The longer he talked, the more he iced over. He was polite and cordial, but that was all. Like making small talk with a stranger.
“Later on,” he finished, “we’ll be going to midnight Mass.”
She had to try harder. Gamely, she forced herself to smile and hoped that smile would carry over the line. “That sounds wonderful—”
“It’s a tradition. I wouldn’t miss it.”
A tear rolled down her cheek. Mere seconds from saying and I wish I were there with you to share it, she’d been cut off, and now what little courage she’d mustered to make the call had evaporated. Resistance loomed between them strong as a wall, and Melody wasn’t budging one brick. Maybe she wasn’t her mother’s daughter after all.
Or maybe things were too different between her and James. His mother had sounded delighted to hear from her, but James didn’t. Melody knew that during that lonely time apart, her father would have done backflips to hear from her mother. But James was far from hanging on her every word. As if he sensed she was trying to say something important, and he was heading off every attempt at it…
“Mel?” She heard him say her name a bit louder, and flushed in embarrassment. “Are you still there?”
“Y-Yes.” She gulped. “But I’d better not keep you any longer. I just wanted to say Merry Christmas—”
And I love you. She dropped the receiver down before the last words could go over the line. Then she huddled beneath the quilt, so sunk in self-reproach that when the soft jingling sound began, at first she paid no attention. Then she realized it came from the phone in front of her. With a deep chill, she knew nothing on earth could make her pick up that receiver again.
She was ruthless in making sure she wouldn’t be tempted. Reaching behind the unit to disconnect the cord from the jack, refolding the quilt, repacking it in the box, piecing together the torn wrapping paper, sealing it anew. Then she buried the treasure back among the linens and snapped the closet door shut. Finally, she gathered up the envelope and Hattie’s well-intentioned note and tore them into a thousand tiny pieces, which she then vacuumed out of sight. All the while, the silence echoed around her, a silence full of words not said but which now seemed to bounce off the walls and distill to two syllables.
Coward.
Melody wanted to shout back at the accusing voice in her head but knew that would only make her feel worse. Instead, she scrunched herself down in her father’s old chair, pulled its ever-present afghan over her, switched on the television, and prayed for oblivion to set in.
****
Christmas morning or not, Hattie was in her kitchen early. Melody took comfort in that much of their routine, listening to her aunt chatter about the evening before, hearing only half of it.
“You must have been really caught up in that movie last night,” Hattie went on, pouring coffee. “Knocked you out cold in front of the TV, it did.”
Melody gave a wan smile. “I was more tired than I thought I was, I guess.”
“Well, eat up. I want to get on the road to your aunt Phyllis’s early.” Hattie set a plate of pecan pancakes on the table, along with a pitcher of warm syrup. Seeing it, Melody wanted to crawl back under the afghan and never come out. Hattie had made one of her favorite comfort foods, so she knew something was amiss.
“Am I that obvious?” she whispered.
Her aunt pretended not to hear that. Or maybe she really didn’t hear; a tiny television in the corner was on to a news report — once again, a usual routine for Hattie with her morning coffee.
“…and you didn’t make that popcorn, either,” she chided, “so don’t tell me you’re not hungry, my girl. Go ahead. Help yourself.”
Melody drained her cup, hoping its high rim would camouflage how close she was to breaking down in tears, then reached for a pancake. Hattie had gone to such trouble. The least she could do was have one, although she wasn’t sure how she’d fit one in around a knot that seemed permanently clenched in her stomach. Maybe she was hungry. Maybe that’s what the knot actually was.
“Melody! No!”
Startled, Melody dropped her fork on the table, its clang blending with the crash of ceramic hitting linoleum. In seconds she was out of the chair.
“What is it, Hattie? What’s the matter?”
Hattie didn’t look at her or say a word, only braced herself against the counter and stared at the TV.
Shattered on the floor before her was what remained of her favorite holiday coffee mug, the liquid pooling in a steamy puddle.
“Don’t move.” Melody edged around the spill and reached for a dishtowel from the fridge handle. “Do you need ice? Did you get burned? Is that it?”
“N-No.” Hattie shook her head, her face pale. “Don’t worry about cleaning now—”
“Don’t—?” Melody frowned. “Okay, then—”
“Just—” Hattie pointed to the TV screen. “Just look. Look!”
Melody noted two things at once. First, that the headline news program was still on. Second, that they seemed to be featuring an odd light show, by all appearances…but the lights weren’t Christmas décor.
“Oh,” was all she could say, blinking. “I sure hope no little kids are watching this.”
It wasn’t a sight even for adults, truth be told. Not with those ambulances — three? four? — scattered through the picture the video camera scanned. Not with the pieces of twisted, scorched metal in the foreground. And not if you thought about who might have been in those cars sandwiched against the median on Lake Shore Drive, blazing like an out-of-season Fourth of July display.
“…flames shooting into the air…a spectacular crash…two cars, traveling southbound, approximately six-thirty this morning…”
The story went by her in bits and pieces, fragmented words she hardly heard. Morbid though she knew it was, Melody couldn’t take her eyes off the sight of that flaming vehicle. Life wasn’t fair. Not at all. Not when, on Christmas morning, someone could meet such a ghastly end. Just like her parents—
Then the camera panned in and she saw it. A Massachusetts plate, still visible despite the crushed metal around it…
By the time the picture changed and the driver’s photograph flashed across the screen, Melody knew whose it would be. She’d already begun to sob, in a terror too deep for tears, as the announcer’s voice droned:
“…the occupants of the second car were dead on arrival at Northwestern Memorial Hospital. Their names are being withheld pending notification of next of kin. And as announced at the top of this story, the driver of the first car, composer and concert artist James Michael Goodwin, is presently listed in grave condition at University Medical Center.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
Waiting at home for news of James, Melody slept only a few hours on Christmas night and the two nights following it. After seventy-two hours in a coma, finally James opened his eyes, and she relaxed enough to allow her own to rest. Then, she awoke each morning to small, treasured miracles.
Christmas miracles, Hattie called them, and why not? Nothing else could explain James’s ability to avoid hitting a third vehicle after a rear-end collision at forty miles an hour. Nothing else could have made a state trooper change his usual holiday patrol route so that, as the crash occurred, he turned onto Lake Shore Drive and saw everything. Only miracles could have engineered the right people at the right place to ensure James’s rescue before his car became a death-dealing fireball.
Melody was grateful for all those miracles, and more so when they moved James from Intensive Care on the day after New Year’s. But when she tried going to the hospital to see his improvement firsthand, not surprisingly, she was told only family were allowed in; despite Hattie’s urgings, she didn’t pursue the matter. No one knew why James was on Lake Shore Drive early Christmas morning — except Melody. She’d pulled him away from home and hearth with her idiotic phone call; she had no stomach to risk facing his family and hearing firsthand what they thought of her for that.
Instead, she did her penance in answering the studio phone. From the moment she’d walked in to start Winter Term, it rang almost nonstop, and Melody found herself amazed at how many news sources still considered anything that happened to James Michael Goodwin as priority stuff. Never mind she was already neck-deep rearranging schedules, changing lesson times, and all the other work that would have fallen to her anyway as a graduate assistant without an able-bodied teacher. Nor could the callers have suspected how some of their questions, and the answers she had to give, cut close to the bone.
No, James hadn’t died instantly in the crash, as one misguided tabloid had been prepared to print. Although if he’d been in that car a few seconds longer, a quick death would have been a blessing.
No, he wouldn’t be maimed for life. I hope.
No, she wasn’t the official contact person between the university and the medical center. The dean is, bless his heart, and at least he tells me what he can.
No, she didn’t know what would happen to the premiere, and she couldn’t begin to guess. James had left campus with a dark cloud over his reputation; who knew what fate lay ahead for the concerto? She knew what she wanted to see happen — letting the whole thing ride until James was well enough to make the decision himself, however long that took. It would mean she wouldn’t be awarded her degree until summertime, perhaps, but that was a small price to pay compared to what James would have to pay to get back on his feet…
…if they even let his work be performed on site at all after what had happened in the lounge. The possibility of losing that music, and the chance to work with James, was the cruelest cut of all.
She coped as best she knew how, not easy in a studio awash with James’s presence. She fended off the inquiries with a vague promise of “official word” soon, something that sounded good until she’d had to repeat it seventeen times. On the eighteenth call, she hung up the phone with trembling hands, and when she heard a voice from the front of the studio, she nearly jumped out of her skin.
“Got a minute?”
Looking up, Melody saw Barb with her head poked past the file room doorway, and promptly punched in a phone code to switch all calls to voice mail. “No, I don’t, actually. But please come in anyway. I need a friendly face.”
“Hmm. Too much phone stuff?” Barb edged her way against the jamb. “Or are you telling me you’re not cut out for administration?”
“No. Yes. No comment.”
“That about covers it all.”
“I need to cover it all. They’re asking it all.” Melody folded her hands on the desk top. “What brings you here?”
“Two things. You want good news or not-so-good news first?”
Melody felt the blood drain from her head. “I’m not sure I can take anything but good news right now.”
“Don’t worry. The good news is about James,” Barb said hastily. “His condition has been upgraded from serious to stable.”
Her equilibrium returned. “Thank heaven for that. So what’s the not-so-good news?”
“There’s a meeting coming up in an hour. The premiere planning committee.”
Melody blinked. “I didn’t know academic wheels could turn that fast.”
“In this case, apparently they need to.”
Rising from behind the desk, Melody stretched her arms above her head. “An hour, you say?”
“Give or take.” Barb glanced at her watch. “Three-fifteen now, they’re meeting at four-thirty. I’ve got a break coming, so if you want to go have a cup of tea or something…?”
Melody shook her head. “Thanks for the offer, but no. I don’t need to sit anymore. My brain is full of cobwebs, and my body isn’t doing much better. I need a walk in the fresh air.” She knew she didn’t need to say alone for Barb to get the hint.
“Gotcha,” the secretary agreed. “You want some company later, just say so. I have to stick around until all the shouting’s over anyway.”
Giving Barb a quick hug, Melody slipped into her coat, locked the office, and was out the door seconds later. She filled the hour with a brisk walk home, a hot shower, and dressing for business — a silky white blouse, gray skirt, a French braid to tame her hair. At least my outside looks calm, she thought, as she entered the anteroom five minutes early. Upon her entrance, Barb held up one finger to her lips.
“What gives?” Melody whispered.
“There’s a coup
le of extra people in there.” Barb looked uneasy. “I wanted to warn you before you went in.”
Extra? Melody frowned. She knew a few of the committee members; maybe she hadn’t met all of them yet. Only after she turned the knob and stuck her head inside the dean’s private office did it dawn on her that two particular people would have been in Illinois for other reasons entirely.
“Ah, Melody, you’re right on time. Good.” Dean Thomas rose from his desk and smiled. “I’ve introduced everyone, but I don’t believe you’ve ever met — Mike and Angela Goodwin, James’s parents.”
She clenched the door tightly, feeling dizzy. Fortunately, she was able to stay upright long enough for Mike to rise and gallantly indicate an empty chair beside himself and the woman who could only be James’s mother.
James favored his father in mannerism, Melody thought, but he favored his mother in appearance — especially the smile. Angela’s smile, much like her son’s, began in the depths of startlingly beautiful eyes, traveled over slender, angled cheekbones to her mouth, then lit up her whole face. For all the world, that smile looked sincere. In that woman’s shoes, Melody doubted she’d have been so gracious.
She managed to slip out of her coat and get to her chair without stumbling, then murmured some sort of greeting to the both of them. She hoped it was appropriate, but she wouldn’t have bet on it.
“Now that we’re all here,” Dean Thomas began, “let’s get this done as quickly as possible. Mike and Angela stopped by this morning, and I think I’ll just let them tell you what they told me.”
Mike and Angela made eye contact, and then, as if by implicit agreement, Mike began.
“We have a message from James as to what he wants done here, but with your indulgence, we’ll give you a little background first.”
Melody saw James’s parents clasp hands for a second before Angela took over.
From the Ashes Page 12
