Part 18 (2/2)

Then Frank was moving closer, and he had both arms around me, saying, ”I know, I'm so sorry.” It felt surreal to be in this man's arms, in this place, the mystery of Lila's death laid bare. I noticed that his s.h.i.+rt was wet, and then I understood why he was holding me. I was crying, and I couldn't stop.

I was thinking of Lila on that final morning, how she'd noticed the fallen limb on the deck, but we'd done nothing about it. I was thinking of the night we lay on the gra.s.s in our backyard, searching for Lyra, while she told me the story of Orpheus, who could not bring his wife back from the dead. I was thinking of who she was-my beautiful, brilliant, secretive sister-and who she might have been, if she had lived. And I was thinking of my parents, each of whom had managed to make a life with one daughter, instead of two. All these years, there was so little I'd been able to give them. Now, finally, I could at least give them this story.

I'm not sure how much time pa.s.sed before my breath came easily again. I know that the light changed in the room, and water went on upstairs, and the house's old pipes began to clang. Finally, Frank let go of me. It was a strange, awkward moment, both of us s.h.i.+fting out of that unexpected intimacy. I wanted to say something to him, but I couldn't imagine what. We sat there for a minute or two, neither of us meeting the other's eyes. He was the one who broke the silence.

”Ever since he died, my hope has been that, one day, his music will resurface. Some DJ will play it on a radio station somewhere, or some journalist will write about it for a magazine, and people will be reminded of him, they'll start playing his songs again. I just want him to be remembered as Billy Boudreaux, who made great music.”

”You should hear it,” I said. ”It's a beautiful song.”

He went over to the tape player and pressed play. Billy Boudreaux's voice came out raw and raspy, growing stronger as the song progressed.

Deep in the trees I'm on my knees Looking at you and not believing What have I done, my beautiful one What have I done As the song ended, I looked up and saw Frank. He hadn't even bothered to turn his face away from me. He just stood by the tape player, one arm on the mantel, staring at a spot on the wall, his tears coming soundlessly.

Thirty-eight.

THORPE SAW MY REFLECTION IN THE WINDOW before he saw me. He jumped, turned to face me. The only light in the room came from the computer monitor. In its glow, he looked pale and somewhat sickly.

”How did you-”

”I knocked, but you didn't answer. The front door was unlocked, so-”

The expression on his face changed from startled to hopeful. ”I'll have a key made. You can come and go as you please. Just knowing that you might show up at any moment would keep me motivated. I'd be sitting here at my desk in the middle of the night-”

”I meant to ask you, why is it that you write in the middle of the night?”

”My mind is clearer.”

”I see.”

”As I was saying, I'll be sitting right here in my office, struggling to squeeze out the next sentence, and then I'll hear your key in the lock. I won't get up, you won't even have to come say h.e.l.lo. But I'll hear you walking around downstairs, fixing yourself a bite to eat in the kitchen, taking a book down from the shelf. Maybe I'll even be able to hear you turning pages. And as I write I'll be imagining you as my ideal reader. The words I put on the page, they'll all be directed at you. Forever ago, a writing teacher told me you have to always think of the audience. I never could figure out what he meant. How does anyone know who his audience will be?”

”I'm probably not it,” I said.

”Pardon?”

”Your audience.”

”You could be.”

”I prefer fiction, remember?”

”You're in luck. My novel is really coming along. Who knows, maybe you'll like it.” Thorpe gestured toward the desk chair. ”Have a seat.” He was perched on some sort of ergonomic stool, clad in a beat-up pair of flannel pajamas.

”That doesn't look very comfortable,” I said, eyeing the stool.

”I got it on the recommendation of my life coach. Align the body before you can align your mind, that sort of thing.”

I remained standing and surveyed the desk, which was covered with papers and Post-it notes. Beside the keyboard was a white sheet of paper bearing a pencil sketch. I picked it up and looked more closely. The sketch was of my old house. There, on the second-floor window frame, was the little Victorian birdhouse.

”Look,” Thorpe said. ”What do I have to do to make it up to you? What do I have to say to make it so we can be friends again?”

He smelled like cigarettes. I almost felt sorry for him. I knew how hard he'd tried to break the habit. What if my doctor told me I had to give up coffee? I was pretty sure I couldn't do it.

”You were wrong about Billy Boudreaux,” I said.

Thorpe raised an eyebrow. Everything about him looked bus.h.i.+er tonight. His hair, his beard, the eyebrows. He'd put on weight since I'd last seen him. There was something else about his hair, too. There were tiny follicle dots along the hairline where he used to be bald.

He smiled slightly. ”How so?”

”He would have made a good character.”

”You met him?” Thorpe looked a bit surprised.

”Yes.” I didn't tell Thorpe that it had been over twenty years ago when we met. Or that he had since committed suicide. I didn't really want to tell him anything. I could see his book t.i.tle now: Music and Madness: The Unauthorized Biography of Billy Boudreaux. When I drove to Thorpe's house, intending to confront him about the extent of his lies, I wasn't sure what I would say when I got there. But now I understood something of my own motivation that hadn't been clear to me before. I was here to prove to myself that, for once, I had the upper hand. I wasn't going to tell Thorpe anything-who killed Lila, or why. He didn't deserve to have that information handed to him. He could read about it just like everyone else. I knew just who could handle the story.

”You really should have included him,” I said. ”Steve Strachman, too. And the janitor, James Wheeler. Don Carroll, all of them.”

”Red herrings,” Thorpe said, and then he smiled again, as if he was waiting for me to say something. ”Red herrings, right?”

”Maybe, but any one of them, if you looked closely enough, would have been enough to build a chapter on. Earlier today, I remembered something you told me once, when we were reading Brighton Rock in cla.s.s.”

”Hmmm?”

”We were talking about Pinkie, those gold crowns on the red-upholstered chairs in his hotel. Some guy raised his hand and asked why Graham Greene spent so much time on Pinkie, when he was just a minor character. And you said that, in order for a book to be really good, it's not enough to develop the major characters. The minor ones, too, have to be distinct. When readers close the book, they shouldn't just remember the protagonist and antagonist. They should remember everyone who walks across the page.”

Thorpe reached up and fingered the dots on his forehead, as if he'd just remembered they were there. ”I said that?”

”Because that's what life is, you said. It's not just about the major characters and the big events. It's about everyone, everything, in between.”

”Yes,” he said. ”That sounds familiar.”

”Do you still believe it?”

”I'm not sure I ever believed it. Maybe it was just something I said, a way to fill the time in cla.s.s.”

”Well, I was thinking about it when I was driving over here. And while it's probably true for books, I don't think it's true for real life. Here I am, closing in on forty, and I can count on my fingers the people who have really mattered.”

”Who are they?” he asked.

”Lila, of course. My parents. Peter McConnell. Henry.” I paused. ”You.”

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