76 EVIE
E VIE
Two years later
“You ready?” Lainey asks.
I smile and nod. “Yes. I am.” I take her arm.
We’re holding hands as we walk into the theater in London’s West End, taking our seats at the front, along with Lucas and Rick.
From behind me, an aged, sandpaper-rough hand touches my shoulder, and I turn to see Fred, alongside Haley and Wyatt, all grown up.
There are others I recognize from over the years, dotting the reserved seats among an exclusive crowd of three hundred that has been invited to the special screening.
A local member of the press takes to the stage, microphone in hand, introducing Derek. An interview takes place then, with Derek detailing the events and the two-year process that led to this night, starting from the day I had proposed the idea to him.
It began with a phone call I received one day after I’d been trying to reach him.
“Well, I’ll be damned—this is a voice I never thought I’d hear again,” Derek had said when I picked up. “When my assistant told me that someone named Cameron Leigh was trying to reach me, I about fell over.”
I could hear the smile in his voice, and it lit me up in return.
“You’re not an easy man to reach these days, mister,” I said.
“Hey, what can I say? The public loves me.”
I laughed. “As well they should.”
“How’ve you been, my love? How’s life been treating you?” The last time I’d seen or spoken to Derek had been at Carter’s funeral, where he’d gently hugged me, offering only a few words and the teary-eyed shake of his head. Together, we caught up on two decades of life.
“So what’s really got you on my phone?” he asked eventually.
“What do you think of working together again? I have something you might be very interested in.”
“I’m intrigued,” he said. “Tell me.”
Two years later, here we sat, with him onstage, discussing the results of that conversation.
Microphone in hand, he talked about the work and vision that had gone into the documentary and the origins of the footage.
The story behind it. I knew Derek would be the only person I would ever trust to take the lead on it, handling the delicate material with grace, along with the artistic vision that he’d always shared with the band.
We’d worked alongside one another in comfortable harmony, as we had when we were just kids getting started in the world.
As he speaks, Lainey and I continue to hold hands, gripping with nervous excitement and more emotion than one can possibly contain, knowing full well that our lives are about to change.
Eventually, the room goes dark and the film begins—starting with black-and-white home-video footage of four teenage boys from Yorkshire becoming stars.
Woven into the initial photographs and grainy scenes are audio voice-over clips from the recordings of the first day we met—the interview backstage at Jones Beach—our youthful voices comingled.
Scenes of Carter, playing an old piano or sitting quietly in their Camden flat, skinny and boyish, then later writing songs for their first album, captured when he thought no one was watching, all contrasted with the older version of him and millions of people singing the songs in stadiums across the world.
“That’s our band. And our future,” his voice says. “To keep the dream alive and make a living at it and hope that somewhere along the way, someone will think that the music we made mattered.”
I hold my breath as a song plays and words begin to appear.
M A Y L U N A : R I S I N G
A FILM BY D EREK D ’O RSAY
E XECUTIVE P RODUCER —E LAINA W ILLS R OWE
D IRECTED BY —D EREK D ’O RSAY AND E VELYN W ATERS H UTCHINSON
I think they would have liked what we did.
The story we told. Their story and ours.
A Grammy Award for Best Music Film sits on my desk now, as does a cat named Siggy, in the small beach house near Cupsogue where I live, not far from the house where it all began.
After the film was released, life changed.
The neighbors I’d once called friends looked at me as if I no longer quite belonged, with sidelong glances and awkward questions, and I’d sold the house in Pennsylvania.
Lucas and his family visit often, populating the rooms overlooking the beach with the laughter of children.
Lainey has found a new home in London—a city that made her come alive as if she’d always belonged.
She’s become good friends with Tommy’s son, Wyatt, and a piano sits in her den.
There’s lots of travel in this new phase of life—very different from the quiet existence they once feared I would disappear into.
Lainey and I often visit the Greenwich Observatory and the Queen’s House when I’m in London.
Together we’ll sit at the bottom of the Tulip Stairs, looking upward at the spiral.
“They say a spirit inhabits these stairs,” I tell her, and I wonder, maybe, if it’s true.
After the success of Rising , other films followed.
Derek and I have started working on new projects together here and there when we feel moved to do so, breathing life into an old career and dreams I thought long gone.
Carter would have liked that too. I often imagine him watching nearby, leaning against a wall with one foot crossed over the other as a smile plays on his lips.
Carter has been gone for many years. Steve now as well.
And I’m on my own again. But what’s remarkable about it is that I’ve realized I’m okay alone.
I’m not scared of that anymore. Because I had what I needed all along; I had myself, and there is peace in that.
Peace in the quiet that is left as I exhaled the last of my ghosts and secrets.
It was the long shadows of my past that were keeping me lonely all along.
And left behind, there has been a soothing calm and the new relationship I hoped to create with my daughter.
My children. I always thought of their early-childhood days as the ones I’d cherished, constantly longing to go back.
But now, this new phase of life, knowing them as adults, has grown in equal beauty.
On clear nights, I sleep with the windows open, and sometimes when I do, I can swear I still hear him, just as I always have.
The music traveling on the salty breeze and with it, his voice.
I’ll be right beside you, dear. I stopped wondering where it came from a long time ago.
It’s best to just trust that there are things at work in this universe we can’t begin to understand.
He taught me that. And so, as I imagine grand geometric patterns spanning across the celestial sky in infinite beauty, the patterns of thirds and fifths and spirals and time dancing among the planets and stars, I stop and listen.