Everything You Are(91)

“It’s not that I don’t love you,” he whispers. “I have to do what’s right. This one is goodbye.”

He begins to play the lullaby he wrote for Allie . . .

In the present, in the now, something gives way inside him, a dam bursting under the pressure of a memory that refuses to be contained. He’s lying on the lumpy mattress, his lower back aching, and he’s also playing the lullaby, playing it for the very last time.

He’s immersed in his thoughts and the music when he sees the headlights, an unexpected flare in the dark window.

Hope leaps in his heart. Maybe it’s Lilian come to tell him they’ll figure something out. She’s had time to think, to understand how the music is everything he is, that he’ll be only half a man without it. He stops playing, watches the door as if it is his only hope of salvation.

But instead of Lilian, it’s Mitch.

“No,” the Braden lying on the lumpy mattress whispers, pushing back against the memory. “No, no, no.” But it’s too late; he can’t stop it now.

Mitch, a cooler in his hands, stamps his feet on the doormat to shake off the snow. His eyes home in on Braden. “Good God, man, you look like hell warmed over.”

Braden, stricken by the dashing of his last desperate hope, says nothing. Mitch clomps across the room in his boots, leaving a trail of precisely patterned prints behind him. He drops the cooler on the kitchen counter with a thud. “Want a beer?”

“Thank you, no.”

“Suit yourself.” Mitch pulls a six-pack out of the cooler, frees a can from the plastic and pops the top, takes a long drink. “That’s what the doctor ordered. Jo sent food. She wasn’t sure if you brought anything, said you might forget to eat. That’s never going to be a problem for me.”

Mitch drains half of his beer, opens a bag of chips. “We need to talk. That’s why I came out here.” His gaze slides away from Braden’s. He crushes the can, already empty, and tosses it into the trash. Opens another.

“Might go easier with a beer. Sure you don’t want one?”

Braden can’t imagine what Mitch wants, why he’s here. They’re not close, have never had anything in common.

“What’s going on? Jo okay?”

“For the moment. Look, this isn’t easy to say. Seriously. Can you put that cello away for just a minute? Have a drink. Or two. It’ll take the edge off.”

Braden sits up in bed, breathing far too fast.

Don’t tell me, don’t tell me, don’t tell me.

Getting up as quietly as possible, he grabs the box of matches from the shelf where they’ve been kept as far back as he can remember, pulls on his jacket and shoes, and eases out the back door.

It’s not quite pitch-dark, the snow-covered lake and trees creating what he’s always thought of as snow light, and he’s able to make out dim shapes. The barbecue. The deck table and chairs. He takes care with his footing. The stairs that lead down from the deck are steep and can be icy and slick this time of year. Using the railing, taking his time, he works his way down to the firepit.

Firewood is neatly stacked and covered to keep it dry. The kindling box is full and also contains old newspapers wrapped in plastic. He pictures Jo out here replenishing the wood supply. Making kindling. Skills she was always better at than he was. His mother hadn’t let him use the axe at all until he was old enough to defy her. He didn’t do Boy Scouts, he went to summer music camp. Everything in his world was music until suddenly it wasn’t.

Back then it was Jo, not his father, who taught him how to make a fire. Who spirited him off from his mother’s hovering and taught him how to fish and shoot a gun. It was Jo who took him hiking in the woods on the long summer days. And look how he has rewarded her.

Braden crumples a couple of sheets of newspaper and sets them in the center of the firepit. He adds kindling and tops it all off with two bigger pieces of wood. Then he strikes a match and holds it to the paper, the small flame quickly transferring itself to the edge of the paper, blossoming into light, licking at the kindling.

Now he can clearly see the chairs around the firepit, lightly dusted with snow. Mitch sat right there, across from where Braden is standing now, his back to the dark expanse of snow-covered lake.

The memory flash hits him again.

Snow drifting down.

Rage and grief and loss flooding his body.

Mitch’s face, alternately shadowed and illuminated by the crackling fire.

The two loose ends of the flashback flail, loose in the breeze, connected to nothing. Braden watches the firelight, ironically amused at himself. On the trip here he’d fought a giant inner battle about whether to allow himself to remember, as if his psyche is a take-out window where he can order at will.

One memory to go, please, supersize the fries.

And now, nothing.

“Talk to me, Mitch,” he murmurs out loud.

“Mitch is not the talkative type.”

Braden startles at Jean’s voice. He’s been so lost in his own thoughts, he didn’t hear her descending the stairs and coming toward him.

“Mind if I join you?” She sits before he can answer, across the fire in the place where Mitch sat so very long ago.

“Allie’s fine,” she says before he can ask. “I checked the loft before I came out. All three girls, sound asleep.”