Chapter 59
“You use repetition for the chorus, right? But then expand the story as the verses go along,” I said. “And the listener hears movement in the story. By the time the chorus comes around the second time, they can sing along but it hits a little different—”
“God, she writes one decent song, and we never hear the end of it,” Lourey said.
But she was in a good mood, French-braiding her hair into pigtails with jingle bells at the ends.
All the girls had brought their best festive for the show: Rooster wore a perfect sexy Mrs. Santa red dress with white fur along the hem, and Shanny had a green elf hat perched at a jaunty angle.
Suzy had traded the trademark cat ears for snowflake earrings that twinkled and swung as she threw super-casual looks down the long line of tables we’d pushed together.
Matt Kelley sat down at the end. His string band had played a brunch set earlier, then Charmaine.
Bee-Ann Rhymes had been our mistress of ceremonies, and would be joining us for a Patsy song later.
“Congrats, Dahlia,” Lourey had said, when I’d pitched the revised lineup and my vision for sharing the stage. “You invented opening acts.”
It was working, though. Everyone was mixing together: Bee-Ann and company, Charmaine and some of her friends, Matt and his band, and Rooster’s boyfriend, who was thinking, suddenly, about starting piano lessons. Some of the old regulars, with a few notable absences.
I looked around the pub.
No question that McPhee’s was having a good, busy day. Yeah, some of this business was drama tourism, but it was also butts in seats, burgers and beers in hand, money in the bank. The fire crackled behind the grate; all the coat hooks were full.
In the kitchen, Alex and Pascal staffed the grill, arguing good-naturedly about what to add to the menu now that Pascal was taking over cooking duties.
Oona held down the bar. She’d commandeered all three TVs to play It’s a Wonderful Life and paused between pours to shout at Alex through the pass-through, “This is the best part!”
She’d said it at least eight times, but he stopped to watch every time.
We couldn’t leave the TVs playing local channels, anyway, not with the relentless news coverage of our trapdoor entrances and secret tunnels. But if any looky-loo went looking for treasure, they’d be disappointed by a shiny-new security door between the pub and the living quarters.
Of course, no one lived here at the moment.
Oona and the dogs were already at the house with Alex for keeps, and that’s where I was, too, for Christmas, anyway.
The apartment was mine, if I wanted it. But without Oona and the dogs, it was too big, too empty.
And when I thought about being here alone, I was right back in the dark, alone.
Lost in a place I’d thought I’d known and scared I’d already suffered a loss I couldn’t recover from.
A loss I would not be able to avoid, someday.
Love! It was such a racket.
And the trauma was all so fresh. Memories from that day kept catching me unaware, sending me to the smallest, nut-hard center of my worst self. I saw my scuffed black boot rising toward Silent Jim’s chin, his hands scrabbling for the railing, too late.
One catastrophe away from doing anything to survive, he’d said. And I had.
The money and ring found was a weight off, but it was just stuff. I couldn’t return to Heather what she wanted most.
Joey, that idiot. When I’d got access to our apartment again and finally located my phone charger, my screen had lit up with a series of texts from Joey: from Heather’s, as he realized he hadn’t paid the rent, from the apartment when he couldn’t get the door open, from down the street from McPhee’s when he wasn’t allowed near me.
I’m sorry, the last one read. It was heartbreaking but also, I was even madder at him, knowing he’d allowed himself to be talked into this dumb scheme.
A plot for easy money that had cost him everything.
Ned, when he came to, had sworn that Joey’s death was an accident. They’d argued in the alley. Polished ice plus sharp metal corner of the garbage bin.
Their fight had been about Joey wanting out of the deal, Ned had admitted. It would make sense that he had. Digging for Capone’s stash was fool’s gold, and Joey had figured out, painting that baby nursery at Heather’s blue, that he wanted something real.
He’d gone to the apartment, as Cam had said, then arrived at McPhee’s, presumably to sort things out, Ned, then me. Or maybe to warn us? Maybe that was what the fight was really about? We’ll never know, probably. Ned is the only person left to ask.
When Detective Aycock called to let us know Ned had offered a confession from his hospital bed, I’d watched the security footage from that night.
One last time, all the way through, real time, and, yeah, you can almost catch movement at the far reach of the lens that might be Joey and Ned’s friendship coming to a fatal end or Marisa getting dragged into the mess.
The other camera would have been far more helpful, but then I suppose that’s why Ned had smashed it.
Suzy leaned across the table. “It’s almost time,” she said anxiously. “Should we go get ready?”
I’d just seen Sicily standing uncertainly inside the front door. Buried in her puffy coat, cheeks sugarplum pink from the cold. She held a package wrapped in red paper, dotted with white snowflakes.
“You all go ahead,” I said to the band. “I’ll be back in a few minutes.”
“Do not pull a things-came-up, Doll,” Lourey said. “Santa is watching.”
As they headed off, I went up to Sicily.
“You look cute,” she said.
“Thanks,” I said, swishing my pin-dot skirt to show off the feathers in the detailing of my new boots. “Are you here for the show? Is Marisa with you?”
“She’s in the car,” Sis said apologetically. The package crinkled in her hands. “She doesn’t want to come inside. Not because she doesn’t want to see you,” she added quickly. “I think she does. Actually, I know she does. But…”
“The building,” I said. “I get it.”
If it hadn’t been haunted before, now it was, by scandal and memory. Not in a fun, Scooby-Doo way, in other words.
“It seemed like Alex was going to sell it?” Sis said. “But I guess he can’t do that now? Not to Aunt Edie, anyway.”
MAXimum indictments for Edith and a few of her clients.
“We’re not selling it,” I said. “I have some plans.”
“Oh,” she said. “Oh, you’re…”
“Yeah. For now.”
“Cool. Well, I just wanted to come and, you know. Say thanks. And Merry Christmas?” Sicily held out the package.
“Oh, man,” I said. “I can’t, really. I haven’t had a chance—”
“It’s from Mom,” Sis said. “Not me. I don’t have any money, either. I have to get a job and start saving, or I won’t be able to afford to travel this summer. I can’t decide between Tokyo or Dublin. What do you think?”
“Both?” I weighed the package in my hands. I thought it was probably the same one Marisa had left behind that first night, returned to me. Passed back and forth, hot potato, like poor Joey’s body.
“Open it. Here.” Sicily reached over and tore the edge of the package.
“Hey, easy now. Don’t forget I’m still an only child at heart.”
I ripped the rest of the paper away to reveal a heavy frame with velvet backing. I turned it over. The photo was a copy of the one I’d seen on Marisa’s dresser, of Marisa curled protectively around baby Sis.
I looked up. “Uh, it’s nice. You were a cute baby.”
“That’s you, Sherlock,” she said, tipping the frame into my face. “Look how young Mom is. I was shiny bald when I was born, anyway. You have better hair in this photo than I do now.”
Me? Not this child so obviously the center of her mother’s world.
A part of me groped to keep hold of the certainty that it couldn’t be true. But that was just an old wire spike poking through.
A truth could be wider, deeper, more complicated than an old story that served no one, led nowhere.
Marisa had needed to go on with her life as though she hadn’t let me down.
And now she needed to stay in the car. We were under no obligation here.
And I didn’t have to visit that room in her house, open that mountain of gifts and pretend that they made up for anything or that she owed them to me. I also didn’t owe her forgiveness.
But if I thought of Marisa as someone who had needed to live her life with the spikiest bits of herself turned out, well. I guess I understood that.
“We’re doing that song tonight,” I said. “The one you liked.”
“You finished a song? It’s not about dogs, right?”
“It’s actually about being vulnerable, wiseass,” I said. “Telling the important people in your life what they mean to you. Before it’s too late.”
“Wow,” Sicily said. “I’m honestly sorry I’m going to miss that.”
“You could stay, play piano for us,” I said.
She didn’t faint or anything. Her eyes slid to the door. “I don’t think…”
“It’s okay,” I said. “Next time I see you, I’ll bring my guitar. We can play, just you and me.”
She smiled. “Next time.”
WE TOOK THE STAGE PROMPTLY.
I stepped up to the mic and was greeted by whoops and applause. “Hey, everyone,” I said. I had dropped the twang. “Thanks for coming out on a cold Christmas Eve.”
I had an acoustic borrowed from Lourey, for now, and a case of the nerves, if I was honest. We were unveiling an original song later in the set, laying it all out there.
It was easy for people like Bern to say we should write our own music, then stand aside and call it too much this, not enough that. He was late.
But that was fine. We’d decided to find out who we were, one song at a time.
We weren’t going to let the meat grinder chew us up, make us into something we weren’t.
We were going to write the songs we wanted to write: torch, rockabilly, boot stompers.
Who knew what we’d do? We were going to be all over the place.
It had to be a bit of a playground, or what was the point?
I gazed over the room: all our friends, some gawkers.
Full pint glasses on a long, crowded table, everyone here to get jolly and a little drunk.
To sing along, to travel a little bit outside their concerns and worries, their loneliness, the old cycles playing themselves out at family gatherings.
From here they would step out into the wind, and return to the things that were their own.
But right now, just for this moment, they were ours.
Alex joined Oona behind the bar. Her shoulder fit just under his arm.
“I want to introduce the band.” The girls smiled uncertainly as I named them all. I’d never started off this way before, and for a moment, they weren’t quite sure what was happening. “And I’m Dahlia McPhee,” I said.
Behind the bar, Oona’s mouth popped open in surprise. She lifted her chin to Alex, nothing but delight on her face.
Alex processed, processed. I strummed Lourey’s extra guitar, giving him the time. And then he laughed, big, loud. It was sweet, sweet music.