Grave Refrain: A Love/Ghost Story (53 page)

“I had another dream the other night. The same one I had in Boston—about the ocean. You were terribly hurt—bleeding.” The hair on the back of his neck rose. He remembered the images that had rushed through his head when he found the chest in the passageway: the cliffs, the hotel, the screaming. “What did that man mean the other night about Emily? About someone wanting her dead?”

“It’s bullshit, Mum.”

“No it isn’t, Andrew. Something is obviously bothering you. Tell me.”

And so with great reluctance, he explained to her everything they had learned from the ring and the letters and where they were heading off to on Friday morning.

“That’s only two days away.”

“I know, but part of me wishes it was yesterday—just so we could put this behind us.” More than anything, he wanted to end this now. Burn the letters, scatter the ashes, and destroy it all. But he knew he couldn’t. No matter how much he wanted it over with, Emily and he could not run from this. It would find them. Because he knew he had seen it all before.

This was his secret—the dreadful secret he could not tell his mum; he couldn’t even tell Emily. He was afraid they would think he was losing his mind again. Every detail of this chaos and every step they took seemed eerily familiar, as if he had lived this nightmare over and over. He felt like he was stuck in an endless loop—helpless to change the outcome—lifetime after lifetime after lifetime.

“Well, it doesn’t matter,” he said, pushing away his fears. “After this weekend we’ll have our answers.”

“The trip sounds dangerous, Andrew.”

He couldn’t argue with her. Even Zoey had insisted they invite Dwayne and his fellow stoners to dinner tonight to go over the details of the séance. But what help they could provide seemed tenuous at best.

“Tell me about Neil,” he asked brusquely, sick of discussing the bloody mystery.

Taken aback, she placed her hands in her lap, smoothing out the line of her skirt. Always so composed, she transformed before his eyes into a teenager again, gawky and shy.

“I met Neil during his last year at university. It was at a pub in London. He was there for a band—he was always with a band—it was in his nature.” She smiled wistfully, as though looking through pages of an old photo album, though her body remained tense. “I loved him the first moment I saw him. I think you may know how that feels. I’m sorry if these words are hard for you to hear. Love can exist in so many different ways. I know you. I know how passionate you are, how driven, how all-consuming love is to you. It was the same for Neil and me. It’s just that we, we weren’t as brave, you see.

“We were inseparable in those months after we met. He was finishing his final year. Everyone expected him to follow the sensible route. He had so little money, as little as I did. It only made sense that he would pursue a professional future—doctor, barrister…But his true passion, what he loved more than anything, was music. His family’s expectations were quite different, as you can imagine. He was never close to them—although he was thankful they had adopted him—but he just felt he was too different, I suppose. So it was me who convinced him to chase his dreams. To rebel.”

She took a long breath and looked out into nothing, then back at him.

“I found out I was pregnant with you a month before the end of classes. I cannot begin to explain to you the joy—from the very beginning, Andrew—the pure joy of knowing you would be in this world. Please know that.”

He sat very still, knowing what her next words would be before she even spoke them. Yet his heart hammered in his chest as though it was running to reach them.

“So I ended it. I knew what he wanted, and what his dreams were. I couldn’t stand in his way.”

“Did he know? Did Neil ever know?”

“I did the right thing.”

“Mum, did Neil ever know about me?”

His pulse beat so hard he felt it in his fists.

“Yes.”

The finality of the word stole away his breath. His hope, a fragile, fledgling thing, died. He was so sure she would say no.

“I know you would like my past to have been some sort of fairy tale. And I wanted that too, Lord did I want it. We were both so young—we had all our lives ahead of us. It would be wonderful to think everything we wanted was possible, because it did seem like that, we were so caught up in each other. Everything mattered, we were going to change the world. But when I told Neil I was pregnant, I knew in an instant by the look in his eyes what he would say before he said it. That he would pay to have it taken care of, that I didn’t have to worry. And for the first time I saw what he wanted the most in life, what would always come first for him, what had to come first for him. And it wasn’t me.

“I couldn’t hate him for it, although I did for a while. It was the hardest time. We barely spoke. He tried to fight for us, or how he wanted us to be, but I was too proud. He never imagined that I would consider keeping the baby. I don’t think it entered his mind. So I told him that the baby was gone, and that he should be as well. In the end, we fell apart. He left for the States without even a goodbye. Nothing.”

Andrew tried to concentrate on her words, but the room seemed to be spinning around him. She went on tonelessly.

“A few weeks later I went to a party with a friend. I swore that I heard the host say a St. John was there. For one precious moment I hoped against hope that Neil had come back, that he couldn’t live without me after all. But it wasn’t a St. John. It was a man who just happened to be named John, a man who also had an amazing capacity to love in his own way. Someone who wanted to stay. And it was for the best. Your father adored you, and Neil, well, he went on to achieve everything he ever wanted.”

“But did Neil ever know how you felt about…what you wanted?”

“I couldn’t do that to him. Oh, Andrew. Regardless of everything else, he was so poor. You can’t understand what that’s like. The family he lived with could barely feed themselves. I had nothing to offer. I would have only been a burden to him. If he had known about you, he might have stayed and given it all up, and I knew he would come to regret it. Regret me. And—”

“Regret me.”

Claudia’s beautiful face fell. “He never looked back. It was for the best.”

“Did you? Did you look back?”

“Your father was a dear man who loved me more than I deserved. He married me in spite of everything, and we had a fine life together—and he loved you without reserve. It’s all over between Lainey and me. It doesn’t matter anymore.”

“Stop. Why do you call him that? His name is Neil.”

“It was his nickname—or my nickname for him. It was a family name, he didn’t much care for Claudia either. He always called me C.C.” She smiled sadly.

“So what happens now?”

“Now? I’m done telling you what to do, Andrew. I love you, but you’re old enough to make your own decisions. I can tell you that my decisions brought me happiness because they brought me you—and your father. Please know I did love him in the best way I knew how.”

“But what about Neil?”

Claudia looked lost, caught somewhere between confusion and apprehension. He took her hands in his. “Thank you. I know this was difficult.”

“It’s too late for Lainey and me, Andrew. Our time is passed.”

“Do you want it to be?”

She didn’t answer.

He stood up to leave and made it to the door before he turned. “Mum, we’re playing tonight at the Elbo Room. It’s a small club over on Valencia. It’s for Emily—she’s graduating and we wanted to surprise her. She thinks it’s just dinner—but I would really love for you to be there.”

“Oh, Andrew, thank you. Of course I’ll be there.”

“Nine o’clock, then?”

She nodded.

He wasn’t sure it was the right thing to do. He wasn’t even sure he wanted to do it, but he knew where he had to go next. He was tired of fate fucking with him.

Andrew paced outside Neil’s home for what felt like an eternity. He didn’t know how to begin; this was turning out to be much harder than he had expected. All he wanted to do was say his piece and be gone, short and to the point. That was it. In frustration, he sat down on the stone steps and tried to take a few deep breaths, placing his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands. He heard soft footfalls approach and glanced up into the sunshine.

Neil’s dark blue suit set off the blond-gray of his hair, and sympathy lined his tired face. “How’s your hand?”

“It’s been better. How’s the chin?”

Neil rubbed it thoughtfully. “No wonder you can play the way you do.” Andrew laughed, though he didn’t want to. “Want to take a walk?” Neil offered, as though encouraged by the sound. “I was going to grab a bite.”

A few blocks down the street they found a taqueria where one could order at the window and sit outside at tables covered by the shade of umbrellas. Outside was good, Andrew reckoned. There would be less chance of a fight with witnesses, and he wouldn’t appear the bundle of nerves he was at the moment.

“It must be very hard for you right now,” Neil said as they sat down. Andrew couldn’t read his eyes; they both wore sunglasses, the afternoon rays blazing down on them.

“I could say the same for you. How much do you…know?”

“Enough, or enough after you came to see me. That kind of clinched the deal. I knew the exact date she sent me away, I found out your birthday. The math was, as they say, elementary.”

“So then—you sought us out knowing who I was?”

“No, not then. I had my hunches, but I wanted to see you because of what others had said about your music. I couldn’t believe anyone could be that good. But you were, and you were also her son—one look at you told me that. You have her face, her mouth. And so many of her mannerisms.”

But I have your drive
, Andrew thought.

They drank their beers and watched the people go by. It wasn’t until that moment that Andrew realized what all of this might mean to Neil. He was this man’s son, as well. Neil had searched him out and had gone to great lengths to keep him close by. Why? Curiosity? Morbid fascination?

“Andrew, I want you to know that I understand, to a small degree, what you’re going through right now. I have spent my life loving your mother—and I’ve tried my best to live without that love. I went on, I found a dear woman, and I lost her to cancer. Up until the moment I saw Claudia the other night, I thought I had found a place for all those memories. But life isn’t like that, is it? It’s not ordered and organized…it’s shocking and messy, and at times we’re forced to react instead of act.

“I’m not going to sit here and make excuses for my twenty-one-year-old self or my forty-four-year-old one, either. There is only one thing I need for you to hear and that you must understand. If I had known, if I had realized the situation—no matter what she said to me—I would not have left her. Ever.”

“You say that now. It’s easy to say that now. But the truth is, you did leave.”

“You’re right. And it is my biggest regret.”

They sat there not knowing what to say to the other. Both of them were trying to hold on to things taken from them and to reclaim lost time.

“How is Emily? That was quite an interesting party the other night,” Neil asked, changing the subject.

“That’s an understatement.”

Their meal arrived, and Andrew spent it telling him what he had learned about Nick and Nora, under the belief that any information he could glean in return would help them, though in reality he didn’t want to leave yet. Every minute together seemed to solidify the fact that the situation was real. Neil and he were real.

“That’s fascinating,” Neil said as a woman cleared the last of their plates.

“May I ask you a question?”

“Of course.”

“Could your wife hear them? Nick and Nora?”

This startled Neil, but he shook his head. “No, she could not. Maybe it’s because…I don’t know.” He waved to the waitress for their bill.

“I’m sorry I punched you.”

Neil glanced at Andrew, then shook his head as if not wanting to dwell on that subject any longer. “S.J. rang me. She wanted to know why you aren’t returning her calls. She says it’s urgent regarding the
Rolling Stone
shoot.”

“Oh. Well, yeah.”