Authors: Meg Muldoon
I caught up with him on the path, and we started climbing up along one of the bluffs. I felt like I was floating along, not even conscious that I was putting one foot in front of the other.
His music had changed my life, was all I kept thinking.
“But what happened?” I asked, my voice cracking a little. “I mean, how come you don’t play anymore?”
He dug his hands deeper into the pockets of his jeans and sucked in wind.
“I told you about that bad woman?” he said. “But even before her, things had started going downhill for me. It’s a hard business. After the band broke up, I went at it alone. A decade of playing dive bars on the south side of hell with no light at the end of the tunnel, you start to get tired. Real, real tired.”
A couple of deer showed up on the other side of the river, lapping at the waters. We paused for a moment to watch them.
“Hell, maybe falling for her was some sort of self-sabotage, I don’t know. I met her during a bar gig in Memphis. She was staring up at me from the crowd with these big bright pretty green eyes. I knew, right then and there, I was done for.
“I’d only felt that way one other time before, a long, long time ago,” he said. “But uh, I never did find that other girl in the crowd.”
He went silent again, and I waited for him to continue.
He shook his head.
“I would have done anything for Christina,” he said. “And I just about did.”
He let those words linger in the air for a while, before continuing on, his voice heavy and defeated.
“She was mixed up with this guy. This drug dealer who she’d been with since high school. I tried to get her out, away from it all. But it was too late for her. And when he found out that she was seeing me, well…”
He trailed off.
“That explains the nose,” he said.
He stretched his mangled left hand out in front of him.
“This too,” he said. “He had a crew of his guys do this. He knew it was my livelihood. Can barely feel anything it anymore.”
I touched his hand. He flinched at first, but then let me lightly hold it. It was rough and scarred and his fingers were twisted in places, in ways they shouldn’t have been.
A deep spring of sorrow welled up in my chest as I remembered the way these fingers played once.
“I was in the hospital for a week,” he said. “She didn’t visit me. Wouldn’t return any of my calls. When I got out, I went looking for her, thinking he’d hurt her. That I had to save her.
“I showed up at this dingy joint he owned. And I… I saw her there. With
him
. And I saw that she was there with him because she wanted to be there with him. You know?
“That’s when I figured out what a fool I’d been. You see, she used me. She wanted to make him jealous. She used me to do it.”
I closed my eyes, like it would somehow help.
“She took
everything
I had,” he said.
Those last words echoed for a long time in my mind.
I soon realized that Fletcher’s story made my own heartache look like a stroll through the park. That she hadn’t just taken his heart, but she’d taken his livelihood too.
She had ruined him.
“I’m so sorry,” I said.
The word felt so insignificant and useless. But it was all I could think to say.
Because there was nothing that could be said to make any of it better.
Fletcher shook his head.
“Don’t be,” he said. “I felt sorry for myself a long while. Tried to drink myself into the ground. Almost did. But it got boring. I figured I needed to make a choice—start living again, or stop.”
He sucked in some air sharply.
“So I used every last dime I had to buy a small little hole-in-the-wall place in Nashville. I realized that working was the only thing that helped take my mind off her.”
We reached a large tree trunk that had fallen across the trail. He reached out a hand to me, and helped me cross it.
“The place did real well,” he continued. “I still thought about her, but I found something to do at least. A couple of months ago, I sold it for a good price. Thought I’d come out West and start over.”
He sighed.
“And that right there is just about everything there is to know about me, Bluebird,” he said.
We came to the end of the path. We stopped, watching the water flow down around a bend and disappear in the distance.
“I bet you regret asking now,” he said, looking over at me.
I shook my head.
“No,” I said. “I’m glad you told me. I mean, I’m glad you trust me enough to…”
I trailed off, realizing I’d been holding onto his mangled hand all this time.
I thought about letting go, but I didn’t really want to, so I didn’t.
“I hope you buy The Cupid,” I said.
And I meant it.
I really, really did.
He was just the right person to take over the place. It needed someone like him.
I liked Fletcher Hart.
And it wasn’t just because his playing that night had had a hand in changing my life, or because I liked the way he talked, or because I liked that broken nose of his.
Or because he brought me expensive bottles of whiskey.
We were kindred spirits, Fletcher and I.
Both hopeless romantics who kept their hearts on their sleeves, taking literal and figurative beatings because of it.
The difference between us was that he’d been able to move on with his life, past his heartache, past losing absolutely everything.
Meanwhile, I still kept that picture up on the wall and kept my heart closed up tighter than a safe.
But hearing his story and seeing the way he was now, still optimistic about life even after all he’d been through, gave me a feeling of hope.
I squeezed his hand.
“Thank you, Fletcher,” I said.
He glanced over.
“What for?”
“For telling me.”
I smiled, and our eyes met. I knew he understood what I meant.
He brushed away a strand of hair from my face.
“It feels good out here, doesn’t it?” he said. “Like winter’s lifted, and spring’s just around the corner.”
He looked out at the river and I followed his gaze. Down at the sparkling water, bending away in the distance through the canyon.
And then, just like a semi plowing into a highway meridian, the migraine hit.
And the entire world turned a fluorescent hue of burning white.
Chapter 53
It’s the 1980s.
I know this because all the girls in the stands have fluffy, teased hair and wear bulky shoulder pads and tight neon leggings. The boys are wearing their own fashions of the era. Tapered jeans and converse shoes and more shoulder pads.
Most everybody’s got a cowboy hat on.
The place has the vague aroma of manure and livestock.
The announcer’s voice cracks over the speakers. Something inaudible. A wave of cheers erupts all around me.
The dusty ring below the stands almost shines under the stadium lights.
It’s a rodeo, I realize. I’m at a rodeo.
I make my way through the stands. It smells of stale butter popcorn, mustard and body odor.
I get down to the railing, and turn around. I scan the crowd, looking for faces, the way I try to do in visions, looking for whatever I’m supposed to be seeing.
And that’s when I see her.
She’s mousy, but there’s a quiet beauty about her. The kind that most people might miss. She’s wearing dark lipstick and a black shirt that makes her look different then everyone else in the stands.
She’s by herself. I can tell by the nervous way she’s fidgeting and looking around.
I follow her gaze to someone in the pen. He’s got hazelnut brown hair, and a look of determination on his face reminiscent of thunderclouds right before they let loose. He gets on the horse.
A moment later, the pen door opens, and the horse starts bucking out into the ring. The boy holds on as the bronco thrashes and kicks under his weight.
The crowd goes wild as the cowboy holds on, the horse’s movements becoming more and more desperate.
I look back at the girl in the stands. She’s jumping up and down with excitement.
I can almost hear her heart pounding like a jackhammer in her chest as she watches the boy.
After what feels like an eternity, the horse finally throws the boy off. He lands nearly on his feet, not so much as a scratch on him.
A bright smile comes over his face as the crowd erupts in more cheers.
She watches him as he comes over to the stands.
Her voice echoes in my ears.
“I love you,” she whispers as she watches him. “I’ll love you, always. Until the day I die. You’re the one.”
Her thoughts aren’t anything special. The same as every teenage girl in love.
But I can feel the connection between them.
It’s not just a crush.
The boy she’s looking at is her soulmate.
But it’s not her he’s coming over to the stands to see.
He wraps his arms around another girl, a girl with a small waist, red hair, pink lips, and “popularity” written all over her good looks. The boy kisses her, and the crowd bursts into a low cooing of “Aww.”
The boy glances up at the girl in black for a second, but quickly averts his eyes.
The sound of her heart breaking could rip the stands in half.
Chapter 54
I woke up in my bed with the feeling that I’d just been hit by a train.
It could have had a little something to do with the fact that Hank had draped himself over my midsection like a 130-pound hairy electric blanket, causing my breaths to be shallow and short all night.
The shades were all drawn and the room had a peaceful darkness that made is hard to tell what time it was.
My head, which all night had felt like someone had taken an ax to it and split it right down the middle, now felt much better. The migraine had come swiftly and mercilessly, and had just about knocked me off my feet when it hit.
I didn’t know what I would have done if it hadn’t been for the stranger.
The stranger
. I would have to stop calling him that soon, now that I knew who he was.
The rich aroma of dark roast coffee drifted into the room, and I realized that I wasn’t alone in the house.
I moved, squirming under Hank’s heavy body, trying to signal him that I was ready to get up. He finally got the message, and rolled over on his side, grumbling and then slipping into heavy dog snores again.
I threw my legs over the side of the bed and stood. I steadied myself as a rush of blood caused my eye sight to black out for a few seconds.
That vision…
It had the same feel as the one I’d had about the boy watching the girl walk across the parking lot. The same thoughts and feelings.
The same darkness.
I’d had plenty of these visions in my time. But rarely were they about people who were dead.
I knew the boy in the vision.
At least, I had known him, 30 years older with thinning hair, a beer belly and a gambling addiction.
That had been Dale in my dream. The rodeo rider. I knew it in my gut, even if the teenager in the vision hardly looked like the man he’d become.
And that girl, that misfit, the outcast up in the stands, was Dale’s soulmate.
And while I could have been wrong, she didn’t seem like Courtney to me. In fact, I had a pretty good sense that Courtney was the other girl, the red head that Dale had embraced in the vision.
I remembered the way Dale averted his eyes from the girl in black.
I rubbed my face, trying to make sense of the dream. Trying to think through what it could possibly mean.
And why I was suddenly having visions of the dead.
I started walking slowly toward the closed door when a thought crossed my mind.
What if there was some relevance to the vision? What if… if there was some sort of clue I was missing?
But even if it did mean something, what was I really going to be able to do with that knowledge? Not a thing. Nothing that I could think of at the moment, anyway.
I opened the door. The smell of breakfast wafted through the air. Bright sunlight streamed through the windows of the living room. I squinted hard, trying to see.
How long had I been asleep?
“There you are.”
I jumped.
I shielded the sun out of my face and squinted at where the voice was coming from. I could make out the figure of a man in the kitchen, standing over the stove. There was the sound of something sizzling.
I rubbed my face again, wondering if I was seeing a mirage.
I couldn’t remember the last time anyone had made bacon and eggs in my house.
I couldn’t remember the last time I’d seen a man making food in my kitchen.
“Didn’t mean to scare you,” he said.
He had, but I was glad to see him. Gladder than I wanted to admit.
“It’s okay,” I said, suddenly realizing that I was wearing nothing but a weathered Dwight Yoakam concert t-shirt with holes and tears, with a pair of old pajama bottoms.
“How’s your head doing?” he asked.
“Ugh,” I said, resting it in the palms of my hands. “It’s uh, it’s getting better.”
I took a seat at the counter bar, grabbing an old sweater draped over one of the barstools and quickly pulling it on, hoping he hadn’t seen the tears in my shirt.
“You almost fell over the side of the bluff,” he said. “You remember that?”
I remembered his arms around me. Of him helping me along the trail, back to the truck.
“I was lucky you were there with me,” I said.
He smiled, flipping the bacon, then leaned across the counter.
“I hope you don’t mind that I stayed here on your couch,” he said. “But I didn’t want to leave you alone in the state that you were in. Plus, that couch of yours is pretty comfortable.”