I wonder if Nelda knows we had broken up. Would she be hugging me this way if she did?
“I am so sorry for what happened,” she says. “To all of you. It is so very wrong. . .such a waste.”
I nod, biting my lip.
“How are you?” she asks, brushing her hand across my cheek.
“I’m okay,” I say. But I’m not a good liar. I can see she doesn’t believe me.
“I have taken good care of your Hank Junior and Miss Patsy.”
“Thank you so much, Nelda. I’ve missed them.”
Case appears in the hallway, John at his elbow. “CeCe,” he says, “could I speak to you and your Mama for a moment?”
I’m surprised by the question, my stomach doing a jolt of dread. I nod. Nelda gets to her feet and strokes her hand across my hair. “If you need anything, sweetie, anything at all.”
“Thank you, Nelda,” I say.
“Nelda, why don’t you get Hank Junior for her? And Patsy, too. We’ll be in here,” he says, nodding at the open door of the closest room.
She says of course and walks toward the stairs at the end of the hall. Mama pushes my wheelchair into the room. John helps Case to a nearby chair.
“Call if you need me, Case,” he says and leaves, closing the door behind him.
My mind is doing a kaleidoscope of possible reasons for why Case would want to see us. I can’t blame him if he’s angry with me. I think in a way I’d almost welcome it.
He rubs the palms of his hands against the knees of his pants and looks at me with his sorrow-filled eyes. “I hardly know what to say to you, CeCe,” he begins.
I brace myself for what is to come. I deserve every word of it.
Mama squeezes my shoulder as if she knows what I’m feeling.
“I’m so sorry, CeCe,” Case says.
I glance quickly up at his face, shaking my head in confusion. “For what?” I ask, the words barely audible.
“For everything. For the horror of what happened there that night. I’ve tried so many times to imagine what could have been done to prevent it.”
“Case,” I say, “you’re not to blame.”
“Not directly, I know,” he says. “But you learn pretty early on in this business that there’s resentment and sometimes envy, I guess.”
“If anyone is to blame, it’s me,” I say, looking down at my hands. “There’s something I need to tell you.” I struggle to put my words in some kind of logical order. “The guy. Jared. He was at one of the shows earlier in the tour. Kind of harassing me. But Holden was there and basically put a stop to it. And I don’t know,” I say, starting to cry, “I should have told someone else what happened. If I had, maybe none of this-”
“CeCe,” Case says, raising a hand to stop me. “And what would the charge against him have been if you had reported him that first time? Probably nothing, and he would have done what he planned to do anyway. That’s the truth of it, hard as it is for any of us to accept. Almost for sure, there’s nothing that we could have done.” He stops there and looks off out the window.
From here, we can see the top of the tall broad oak tree sheltering Beck’s gravesite.
“I just wish,” he finally says, “that it had been me.”
“Oh, Case,” Mama says, quickly and urgently as if she can’t stop herself from objecting. “You can’t wish that.”
He looks at her then. Really looks at her. They hold each other’s gaze for a long moment before she adds, “Your son wouldn’t want that.”
“He wouldn’t, but I do.”
I have to tell him now. I can’t keep it inside me any longer. I need for him to know. I fully expect him to hate me. “There’s something I need to tell you, Case,” I say.
“What is it, honey?” he asks in his kind Southern voice. I wonder if that voice will ever again be free of the ragged edges of grief.
The words stick in my throat. I force them out one by one. “I. . .I broke up with Beck before the shooting.”
I sense his gaze on me, but I can’t make myself meet his eyes. I feel too awful, too horrible, and so I sit looking at my hands and waiting for him to rain down whatever ridicule I deserve.
“Aw, honey,” he says.
I jerk my gaze to his at the note of compassion in his voice. “I know about that.”
“You do?”
“CeCe. . .y’all are. . . .you are so young. And so was Beck,” he says, his name breaking off at the end. “Don’t let yourself feel guilty about things not working out between you. You and my son spent a lot of good time together. I think you made him want to live for some things that maybe he hadn’t been living for. You don’t need to waste any of your sadness worrying about me being angry at you for that.”
I bite my lower lip, trying to prevent the sob about to erupt from my throat. It does no good. I bend over with my arms anchored at my waist as a fresh wave of unbearable sadness flattens me.
My crying is not silent. I can’t make it so. I want it to stop, but it won’t.
Mama kneels down and wraps her arm around my shoulder, murmuring soothing words that I only wish could comfort.
Just then something warm and wet licks the side of my face. It’s my boy. Hank Junior.
He puts his head on my lap and whines a broken-hearted whine that tells me he’s had no idea where I’ve been or why I left him. His whole body shakes down to the tip of his tail. I lean over and hug him as tightly as I can, saying in his ear, “I will never leave you again.” And I mean it.
I hear the familiar plodding little footsteps and open my eyes to see Patsy wedge her way in next to Hank Junior. She wags her tail, looking up at me with her soft brown eyes. I can see she, too, has wondered where we’ve been. I reach out and rub her chin with the back of my hand, telling her how much I’ve missed them both.
Holden’s face comes to me so clearly then. I suddenly feel ashamed for not having the courage to go in and see him before leaving the hospital. I haven’t allowed myself to think of him, focusing only on getting through the trip home, the service today. I couldn’t face more than that, all of it like a mountain looming in front of me that I somehow had to find a way to climb.
But now, with Patsy in front of me, I let a little of my fear for Holden and Thomas in. It forms a crater in my stomach. I start to slip at its edges, barely able to prevent myself from tumbling in headfirst.
Mama reaches out and takes my hand, squeezing it hard. “We’ll go back as soon as you’re a little stronger,” she says, reading my thoughts.
I don’t know why I’m still surprised at her ability to know what I’m thinking. I nod once, not trusting myself to speak.
Mama looks at Case and says, “Thank you so much for taking care of these two. Letting them stay during the tour.”
“They were good company for Nelda.”
“Thank you, Case,” I say.
“You’re welcome, honey.”
“We should probably go,” Mama says. I barely recognize the note in her voice when she says to Case, “I hope you’ll take good care of yourself.”
He nods once, but I’m not convinced, and neither is Mama.
“Your son would want you, too,” she adds.
This registers with Case, and he gives her a deep, assessing look that doesn’t bother to hide his raw grief.
Mama walks over to him and puts her arms around him, hugging him with utter compassion. When she pulls back, I see the confusion in his face, and the moment when it fades to simple gratitude.
She wheels me to the door. “Just a moment,” I say, and she stops.
I look back at Case. “If you need us. . .for anything.”
He nods once.
We leave the room then. I wonder how he will ever survive the days ahead of him.
♪
AT THE FRONT of the house, Mama waits for a kind-eyed man to open the front door before she rolls my chair out onto the walkway. I’m protesting that I’m okay to walk to the car when I hear a familiar voice say my name.
I glance up. Macey Canterwood stares at me with naked accusation. She’s wearing a black dress that might as well have couture stamped across the front. Her hair is pulled back in a severe ponytail, accentuating the anger in her expression.
“I’m surprised you’d have the nerve to come here today,” she says.
“Hello, Macey,” I say.
“But then if ex-girlfriends weren’t invited, I don’t guess I would be here either, would I?”
“We should go,” Mama starts. I raise a hand to stop her. I think some part of me wants it all out in the open, the fact that I had hurt Beck.
“The only difference being, of course,” Macey goes on, “that my exit from his life wasn’t voluntary. And if you hadn’t stepped into the picture, we might have gotten back together the way I had hoped we would.”
Tears well in my eyes, but I forbid them to fall. “I’m sorry.”
“Yeah, well, that hardly does any good now, does it?”
The last word breaks on a sob, and I feel sorry for her. It’s clear that she really did care about Beck.
“It’s time for us to go,” Mama says, wheeling me down the brick walkway.
“I have my own regrets to live with,” Macey calls out behind us. “But I’d sure hate to have to live with yours.”
♪
ON THE DRIVE into Nashville, I sit in the back seat with Hank Junior. Patsy is up front in the passenger seat next to Mama.
Hank has his chin planted so firmly on my lap that I don’t think he ever intends to move it just in case I decide to leave him again.
“He really missed you,” Mama says, glancing at me in the rear view mirror.
“I missed him, too,” I say, rubbing his soft ears.
Patsy whines, and Mama reaches over to give her head a reassuring pat.
We drive on in silence for a few minutes. I watch the Tennessee countryside rolling by outside my window, my thoughts stuck in neutral. I don’t want to think about the past. I can’t think about the future.
“You can’t dwell on anything that girl said, honey,” Mama says, her voice soft and compassionate. “She’s just lashing out in anger at a loss she didn’t expect.”
“But she’s right,” I say in little more than a whisper.
“About which part?” Mama asks in a way that tells me she’s prepared to reason this out with me.
“That I’ll have to live with doing something like that to him right before-”
“CeCe. You didn’t plan any of this. You’re not to blame for what that man did there that night.”
“I know.” And I do. My logical mind accepts this. But as for hurting Beck? I am to blame for that.
“I just wish I could take it back,” I say, not even sure I’ve spoken the words out loud.
“But what would that really mean? Don’t you think you owed him honesty?”
I nod once, looking down at Hank. He’s staring up at me with his liquid brown eyes. I lean over and kiss the top of his head. “Why can’t love be as simple as my love for Hank?”
“The love between a man and a woman is never simple,” she says. “It can be wonderful but never simple.”
I’d like to deny it, but I can’t.
We’ve just reached the city limits when Mama says, “If I’ve learned anything in my life, honey, it’s that we shouldn’t put ourselves in the position of having something to regret. If there’s something we need to act on, then we should. Otherwise, we’re going to have to live with the results of not doing so somewhere down the line.”
“I know what you’re doing, Mama.” I stare out the window to avoid meeting her gaze in the mirror.
“I’m trying to say the things you need to hear.”
“And make me feel better. I don’t want to feel better.”
“Because you think you should punish yourself?”
“Maybe.”
“And what would be the point of that?”
I don’t have a logical answer, so I continue staring out the window.
“All any of us can do is what’s right when we have the opportunity to do so.”
I look up then, meet her knowing gaze. “What do you mean?”
“Thomas and Holden. That you didn’t go see them before we left the hospital.”
I feel a physical pain at the sound of their names. “I wasn’t up to-”
“I know,” she says, kindness in her voice. “But you are leaving yourself open to another cause for regret if you don’t go see them.”
I try then to let myself think about the fact that either one of them, or both of them, could have died. An immediate black wall erects itself at the end of that thought, and I can’t get past it. Life without Holden and Thomas? That is an unimaginable place.
But then I think about Beck, and that is unimaginable as well.
It feels as if everything that has happened is still sitting on the surface of my comprehension, none of it really having seeped in yet. It’s like an enormous rainstorm that falls on sunbaked ground, the soil so dry and hard-packed that the water cannot penetrate. Instead, it begins to stream in whatever direction allows it to flow, flooding anything in its path. I guess that’s where I am right now. Drowning in everything I’m trying to process.
I put my mind back in its neutral place, not looking back and not looking forward. For now, this is all I can manage.
♪
THE CLOCK ON MY nightstand blares 3:12 A.M. The minute slot flips to three, and it’s now 3:13 A.M. It seems as if I’ve watched every minute change since I went to bed several hours ago.
Now that I’ve let them in, my thoughts refuse to move beyond fear for Holden and Thomas. I want to know how they are. I need to know how they are, but I am terrified to ask. What if the answer is something I’m not prepared to hear?
Hank shifts beside me, his back pressed up against my left side, his head resting on the pillow beside mine. He’s snoring softly. Patsy is curled up in a ball at the foot of the bed, her snores even louder than his.
I wrestle with my fears for another hour before reaching for my phone on the nightstand. I don’t let myself consider what time it is, not even daybreak yet. I just need to take advantage of this moment where I’ve worked up the courage to call him.
I tap the phone symbol on my screen. It rings twice before a woman answers the phone, her voice groggy and a little surprised. “Hello?”
“Hi. I hope I’m not calling at a bad time,” I say. “This is CeCe MacKenzie, Thomas’s friend.”
“Oh, CeCe. Of course, dear. This is Thomas’s mother, Ophelia.”
“Mrs. Franklin, I’m so sorry to be calling at this hour.”
“No, no,” she says. “Thomas has been so concerned about you.”
“How is he?” I ask.
“He’s out of the ICU. We’re so happy about that.”
“Thank goodness.”
“Yes. Would you like to speak with him?”
“I shouldn’t wake him up.”
“Let me,” Mrs. Franklin says. “I know it will do him good.”
I wait, hearing her say his name softly from the other end of the phone and feeling ridiculous that I called in the middle of the night when I could have waited or better yet already called before now.
I consider hanging up, but what kind of cowardly thing would that be to do? I hear a rustling sound and then, “CeCe?”
His voice is hoarse and a little disbelieving.
“Hey, Thomas,” I say. “How are you?”
He coughs once and says, “I reckon I’ve been better, but I’m still here. Are you okay?”
“Yes. I’m all right.”
“Where are you?”
“I’m back home. In Nashville.”
“In Nashville?” He sounds confused. I can hear the pain medication in his voice.
“I’ll be back in a few minutes, honey,” I hear Mrs. Franklin say.
“Okay, Mom,” he says.
We’re both quiet for a moment. He speaks first
. “Mom hasn’t been willing to tell me too much since I started coming back around. She said Holden is still unconscious. Have you seen him?”
“No. I. . .I haven’t.”
He draws in a deep breath which I can hear through the phone. “What about the others?” he asks.
“Case is pretty messed up, but they say he’ll be okay with time.”
“The band? Beck?”
I can’t answer for several moments during which my heart pounds in my ears. “I. . .he didn’t make it, Thomas.”
“What?” The question is barely audible.
“That’s why I came back to Nashville. To go to the funeral.”
“No,” Thomas says. “That can’t possibly be.”
“They said he’d lost too much blood,” I say softly. “He died before they could get him to the hospital that night.” My voice breaks on the last word. A sob spills from me. I am suddenly crying full out as if I have not actually stopped since the last time this grief hit me.
“But he’s just nineteen years old.” And then Thomas is crying, too. It overwhelms him the same way it has me. “This isn’t right,” he says, the words broken and raw. “This isn’t right.”
“No,” I say. “It’s not.”
♪
47
Holden
I recognize the voice.
I know the voice is talking to me, but I can’t place who it belongs to.
“How long exactly are you planning on staying in this bed? And how many days am I gonna have to wheel this chair up to your room and ask you the same questions? Dying is not optional, so wake the heck up, Holden. You die, and I will personally kick your butt all the way to Heaven. By the time you get there, you’ll wish you’d never checked out of this hard as a board hospital bed.”
The name that goes with the voice surfaces then. Thomas. I try to open my eyes, but they feel so heavy. It’s tempting to give in again, as I have the other times I felt the pull toward coming fully awake.
He’s still talking when I finally manage to push my lids open far enough to see him. He’s sitting in a chair at the side of the bed. He’s probably lost twenty pounds.
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