“I’m trying, babe. I’m trying to understand.”
“It’s the miracle. It’s that inexpressibly sweet baby scent that I draw into my lungs, that hot rush of love when I see her smile. That fierce and primal protectiveness that means I’d kill anyone who tried to do harm to her. It’s looking into her face and seeing you looking back. It’s watching the two of you, walking hand in hand through my flower garden, picking a fistful to bring to me. It’s an addiction, like heroin. I need that feeling, that overwhelming, incomparable feeling of love that I can’t get any other place. And for some inexplicable reason, I need it over and over again. Which is why I can’t give up. I can’t stop trying.”
He pulled her closer, and she pressed her cheek to his chest, where his heart beat strong and steady. “We’ll talk about it again,” he said, “when the time’s ready. But for now…you’ll come to New York with me?”
She closed her eyes, exulted in his warmth, his tenderness. And let out a sigh. “Yes,” she said. “I’ll come to New York with you.”
PART II: THE MILES
Casey
New York City, the Big Apple, the city that never sleeps, was a loud, congested, smog-filled kaleidoscope. Five years had passed since the last time she visited this city she’d once called home, and although time had wrought changes, some things never changed. Yellow taxis still whizzed past slower vehicles, missing them by inches. City buses still lumbered along from stop to stop, spewing exhaust in their wake. Impatient motorists still honked at other drivers a half-second after the light turned green. Panhandlers still stood on corners, and discarded candy bar wrappers still littered the gutters. What was that French saying? Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose. The more things change, the more they stay the same. That perfectly described New York, where the players might come and go, but the energy level never faltered.
She’d always loved that energy, had thrived on it, but for some inexplicable reason, this time around, it drained her. The city felt hostile, suffocating. Every time she stepped outside, she was surrounded by people in a hurry. Rude, pushy people who looked right through her as they shoved past, intent on their own agendas and oblivious to the fact that she stood there, a living, breathing human just like them. They gave off high-stress vibes that left her jittery and unsettled and desperate to go back indoors, where none of this madness could touch her.
Being Casey, she stubbornly refused to let the anxiety control her. Instead, she forced herself to go out, even though her insides were screaming at her to hide in a safe, comforting place. While Rob spent long hours in the studio, she and the girls visited Macy’s, the Empire State Building, the Statue of Liberty. They explored Times Square, Central Park, the Museum of Modern Art. One rainy afternoon, she took them to see a matinee performance of Cats. Another day, they ate lunch in the dining room at the Hotel Montpelier, where she and Danny had once worked, so long ago that she could barely remember being that young.
She spent a morning with Rob in the studio, but her heart wasn’t in it. The music didn’t feel the same. She didn’t understand the stuff teenagers were listening to these days. As far as she was concerned, Phoenix Hightower’s music was little more than canned, electronic noise. She knew Rob felt the same way, but he was being paid well to produce, and that kind of money went a long way toward tolerance. Paige, on the other hand, was slightly star-struck at the prospect of meeting the pop idol. It made sense that the girl was deep into the current music scene. This was her era. She would be a high school senior in a few weeks. Someday, she would look back fondly on the music from this decade and wonder why her own kids listened to such awful stuff. It was the way of the world, the passing of the torch, the circle of life. Casey was a dinosaur, a throwback to an earlier time when pop music made sense, both lyrically and melodically, to her ears. So she packed up Emmy, left Paige there with her father and Phoenix, and returned to the apartment.
Peace. Quiet, blissful peace. Three days into their stay, Rob had managed to find them a furnished sublet just a few blocks from the studio, on the sixth floor of a 1930s-era Art Deco building with an elevator and a doorman and broad casement windows that, after dark, transformed a mundane view of Midtown into something wondrous. If it had been just the two of them, the hotel would have sufficed, but it was too much to expect the girls to be happy cooped up in a hotel for a month or more. This two-bedroom apartment, furnished right down to the towels and silver, was a perfect temporary home for their family. All they had to do was bring in a crib, a high chair, and their clothes, and, voilà! Chez MacKenzie.
She put Emma down for a nap, then ran herself a bubble bath. The tub wasn’t as big or as comfortable as the one at home, but it was deep, the water was hot, and the bubbles were satisfying. Best of all, she didn’t have to interact with anyone, didn’t have to think or feel. Here, in the hot, sudsy water, alone in the bathroom of her sixth-floor apartment while Emma slept in the next room, all she had to do was breathe in and breathe out, and let the frantic world rush by six stories below.
She closed her eyes and sank deeper into the bubbles. Rubbed her temple, wondering where this staggering exhaustion had come from. Last night, Rob had told her she was pushing too hard. “Remember what the doctor said?” he’d scolded. “You need to give yourself time to recuperate.”
He was probably right. Since they’d arrived in Manhattan, she’d barely given herself time to breathe, let alone recuperate. It would probably behoove her to slow down, but idleness didn’t sit well with her. She needed to be busy, needed to be doing something, needed to feel useful. Didn’t want to be dependent on anyone else. But this exhaustion was so complete, she wasn’t sure she had the energy to drag herself out of the tub.
The miscarriage certainly could—and probably did—account for the exhaustion. But not for the lethargy. Not for the ennui, or the apathy. She was a woman of strong convictions. Never, in thirty-seven years, had she felt indecisive about anything. If you asked for her opinion about something, she always had one. Always cared deeply, one way or another.
But this was something entirely outside her frame of reference. Yes, she’d carted the girls all over Manhattan. She’d done it because she felt it was what a good mother should do. Show them the sights, broaden their horizons, give them some nice memories while teaching them something. That was why she’d done it. That, and the fact that it filled up space and time in a way that sitting around the apartment, watching television, would never do. But she’d derived no joy from it. Her emotional investment in the edification of her daughter and stepdaughter was roughly equivalent to that of a paid tour guide.
In other words, she simply didn’t give a damn.
And that was so not like her.
* * *
Fifteen years ago, when they were both still wet behind the ears, Rob had taught her to play the guitar. None of that fancy fingering like he played; he was a musical genius, and she wasn’t a performer. She didn’t need to know how to make an electric guitar cry or sing. She just needed to know how to play a few chords to accompany the melodies that lived inside her brain. For her, the guitar was a compositional tool. So Rob had taught her, on his old, third-hand acoustic, how to play C and G and D7 and E minor. Basic stuff, and just in case what was inside her head included a note or two not covered by those basic chords, he taught her how to turn a simple chord into an augmented or diminished. That was adequate for her needs, just enough knowledge so that if there was no piano available, she would always have access to an instrument on which to try out her new tunes.
So while he and Paige were in the studio and Emma was sleeping, Casey took his Gibson from its case, along with a few pieces of manuscript paper and a couple of stubby pencils—she didn’t think Rob had sharpened a pencil ever in his life—and she sat down to capture some of the music that had been playing in her head ever since the miscarriage.
To her surprise, the music flowed like a bubbling spring. But it was nothing like the songs she’d written in the past
. This new work was dark and disturbing, rich and deep and discordant. Somehow, she’d tapped into some dark place she never knew existed inside her, and she was helpless to stop until the flow either bled out or stanched.
At some point, Emma awoke. Casey took her to the potty, called the deli down the block and ordered a plate of their special home-style spaghetti. After the delivery boy left, they enjoyed some cuddle time while Emma ate, then Casey parked her in front of the TV and kept on writing.
When Rob and Paige came home, she was asleep on the couch, Emma in her lap and a half-dozen new songs scattered about the room. “Hey,” Rob said, taking his sleeping daughter in his arms. “Looks like somebody’s been busy.”
Casey stretched and yawned. “Did you eat?”
“We had pizza brought in. What about you?”
“Emma ate. I’m not hungry.”
“You need to eat something. Want me to grill you a cheese sandwich?”
“I’m fine. I’ll eat a big breakfast in the morning to make up for it.”
He carried Emma into the bedroom she shared with Paige. Casey closed her eyes, listening to the soft murmur of conversation between Rob and his oldest daughter. He came back alone, gathered up the scattered sheets of music, and sat beside her on the couch. Slumped on his tailbone, he propped his feet on the coffee table. Brow wrinkled in concentration, he studied the music she’d written.
When he was done, he met her eyes. And said, “Wow.”
“I know. It’s dark.”
“It’s brilliant.”
“I’d hardly call it brilliant.”
“Are you kidding? You dug deep, babe. I’m impressed. Scared, but impressed.”
“Scared? Why on earth? It’s just music.”
“It’s music like I’ve never seen from you before. It’s like Carole King meets Stephen King.”
“That’s where my head is at these days. Do you have a problem with that?”
“I’m not criticizing. I’m just…wow.”
Later, in the darkness of their bedroom, he drew her to him and kissed her shoulder, worked his way to her collarbone. When she failed to respond, he said, “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. Nothing’s wrong.”
The silence from his side of the bed was dense and heavy. He rolled away from her, and a moment later, the bedside lamp came on. “What?” she said.
“You aren’t yourself at all. What’s going on?”
“I’m tired.” She plumped her pillow. “I just had a miscarriage. I almost bled to death. You’re the one who told me I needed to slow down.”
“I told you to slow down. I didn’t tell you to freeze every time I touch you.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
“Is it me? Have I done something to offend you? Are you mad because I dragged you to New York with me?”
She let out a long-suffering sigh and rolled toward him. “I am not mad at you,” she said. “I have a lot going on inside my head. None of it is related to you, except in the most peripheral of ways. I just need you to give me some space.”
He squared his jaw. “When are you seeing Doctor Deb?”
“Wednesday. I’ll fly home in the morning, see her, then fly back in the afternoon. You and Paige will have to take care of Emma while I’m gone.”
“Are you sure you’re up to it? Flying home and back in the same day? Isn’t there somebody you could see right here in Manhattan?”
“I know her. I trust her. She knows me. Why would I want to go to the trouble of finding another doctor when we’ll only be here for a few weeks? Deb’s my doctor. She’s the one who should be doing my follow-up exam.”
Those soft green eyes studied her speculatively before he reached out, turned the light back off, and drew her into his arms. They lay together in the darkness, both of them thinking thoughts they didn’t choose to share. “You know,” he said, “all I did was kiss you. I wasn’t trying to hump you like a dog in heat.”
“You paint such lovely, romantic word pictures.”
“Oh, shut up. We’ve been through this before. I know enough not to try anything until you have the go-ahead from your doctor.”
“Sexually frustrated, are you, Flash?”
“Stop playing games. I’m serious. I’m worried about you. You’ve been distracted lately. Distant. Depressed. Not yourself at all.”
“I’m not depressed. But the miscarriage hit me hard. I don’t know why. I just need you to be patient with me while I try to work it all out in my head. Can you do that?”
“Of course I can do that. But promise me that when you see Deb, you’ll talk to her about what’s going on with you. Because you’re starting to scare me.”
“You worry too much. You worry about things that aren’t real. Phantoms. This is one of those phantom things.”
“It looks pretty damn real from where I’m standing.”
“That’s the nature of phantoms. They masquerade as the real thing, but they’re made of sea smoke and half-remembered dreams. Far too insubstantial to be real.”
“Why is it I don’t feel better about that?”
“I love you, Flash. You know I do. But this is something you can’t help me through. I have to do it on my own.”
He sulked. Even in the dark, she could tell that he was sulking. The vibrations sloughing off him were clear and vivid. “Just don’t pull any further away from me,” he said. “Don’t disappear. Because I need you. You’re my true north. And you’re not the only one who has to deal with this.”
She reached out in the darkness and touched a hand to his cheek, brushed her knuckles along the line of his jaw. His skin was warm, the soft bristle of whiskers satisfying. “Sometimes,” she said, “I feel as though I’m seeing the world through the wrong end of a looking glass. Everything that should look familiar seems small and distant. Distorted. It’s very disconcerting.”
“Am I distorted?”
“You,” she said, “are my love. Always and forever.”
He kissed the top of her head and lay back against his pillow. Just as she was about to fall asleep, she heard him say softly, “You didn’t really answer my question.”
Rob
The kid was late this morning.
Rob killed a half-hour drinking coffee and cleaning up loose ends he’d been too busy to deal with over the past weeks. He worked his way through a stack of paperwork, then called Kitty’s agent about setting up a time for her to come back in and record the background vocals. After that, he and Kyle spent some time playing around, overdubbing the song he expected would be the album’s first single release.
An hour passed, then two. Finally, he called Drew Lawrence at the record company. “I just thought you’d like to know,” he said, “that your million-dollar baby was a no-show today.”
Lawrence uttered an epithet. Said, “How late is he?”
“Two hours. And I find it a little hypocritical, considering that when I took a week off because of Casey’s miscarriage, he had the nerve to call me at home and demand that I get back to work because he was in a big hurry to finish this album.”
“I’m sorry. Hang tight. I’ll see what I can do.”
Twenty minutes later, his cell phone rang. It was Luther, Phoenix’s sidekick. Part bodyguard, part babysitter, and part personal assistant, the mountainous black man said in his crisp British accent, “Mr. Hightower won’t be in today. He’s a little under the weather.”
“Meaning he partied the night away?”
Luther hesitated for a fraction of a second too long. “That’s not what I said. I simply said he’s not well this morning.”
“Right. That’s what I thought.” He tapped the pen in his hand against the desk. “Listen, Luther, you’re a good guy. I like you. But I don’t envy you your position. How do you put up with it?”
Luther cleared his throat, and his sigh carried distinctly over the telephone line. “I’m handsomely paid.”
“I’m sure you are. But is it worth selling your soul?”
“He’s not so bad. Once you get to know him.”
“Really? Because all I’ve seen is a spoiled brat.”
“I suppose it would be pointless to say that there are extenuating circumstances?”
“We all have extenuating circumstances.” He tossed down the pen. “You pull yourself up by the bootstraps and keep on keeping on.”
“While I fully agree with what you’re saying, please understand that I’m nothing more than an employee. I don’t run the train. I simply try to keep it on the track and make sure all the passengers are properly cared for.”
“I hear you, buddy. But if somebody doesn’t do something with your passenger pretty soon, your train’s going to derail. And then guess who they’ll blame?”
“Thank you. You’ve considerably brightened my day.”
“Glad I could help.” He disconnected the call and swiveled his chair in Kyle’s direction. “The enfant terrible is too hung over to work today. Looks like we get the rest of the day off.”
“Enfant terrible?”
“Hey, it fits. Note that I used the proper French pronunciation. I learned it from my wife.”
“Go ahead. I’ll probably hang around here for a while. Play around with some different mixes. That’s why you’re paying me the big bucks.”
“Hah! Right.”
Out on the street, he called Casey’s cell. “Hey there, my hot little mamacita,” he said when she answered.
“Hey, yourself. You sound uncharacteristically cheerful. What’s up?”
“Your husband unexpectedly got the rest of the day off, and he thought maybe you’d be interested in a hot date. Go somewhere, do something. Play tourist. Eat exotic foods. Have a drink or two. No kids included. Just you and me, my gorgeous, sexy woman.”
The Miles Between Us Page 6
