Whisper Me This(65)

“It’s a kids’ game,” he says. “So bear with me. There’s a verse to go with it. Like a nursery rhyme, sort of.”

“Like ‘Peter Peter Pumpkin Eater’?”

He laughs. “More like Truth or Dare. No. Wait. God, no. Not like Truth or Dare at all. There’s a lullaby and . . . oh, never mind. I’m not helping much, am I?”

“Sing it,” I tell him, wrapping the blanket around me like a shawl and huddling into its warmth.

“What? Now?”

“I can’t sleep, and you are holding out on me with this lullaby.”

“You’re serious.” A silence stretches between us. Another car drives by on the late-night street and then is gone, and we’re back to the sounds of breathing. Tony’s. Mine. The rustle of my blanket as I shift my weight and lie back down on the couch. Of course he’s not going to sing. The idea is ridiculous.

My mouth is already open to tell him to just explain this game to me, when he takes a breath and does begin to sing, after all. The melody is haunting, his voice a clear, sweet tenor. And before he gets through the first two lines, my heart is vibrating to the tune of grief in E minor.

Whisper me this, my darling, my love

The song of the moonlight, of stars up above

Whisper me truth, love, and whisper me lies

Warm days of winter, cold summer skies

Whisper me anger, whisper me rain

Whisper me flowers, then whisper me pain

When I come to die, love, then whisper me this

The shape of a memory, the truth of a kiss.

Whisper me, whisper me, whisper me this

A lifetime of memories, and one final kiss.

Silent tears well up and spill over, tracking down my cheeks, but it’s a beautiful pain, half grief, half pleasure. When the last note fades away, the silence that follows is alive with emotion. His. Mine. I want to cross the room, settle down in his lap, and rest my head on his chest.

It’s all too much. Too much sadness, too much beauty, too much intimacy with a relative stranger. I blot my face with the blanket and try to settle my shaky breath.

“That is a lullaby?” I ask, breaking the mood.

He clears his throat. I hear his weight shift in the chair. “My mother used to sing it to us. I always thought it was. I never realized what a sad song it is.”

“And there’s a game that goes with this happy song?”

“Whisper Me This. That’s the name of the game.”

“How do you play it?”

“Whisper me truth, whisper me lies. You whisper two things, one truth, one lie—and I decide which is which.”

“You go first.”

Tony laughs softly. “All right. Here you go.” He drops his voice to a whisper. “The moon is really a giant spaceship. Grasshoppers have ears on their bellies.”

“Wait, what? That’s not fair. Neither one of those can be true.”

“You have to whisper,” he replies. “And pick one.”

“All right. I choose the grasshopper thing.”

“Good choice. Your turn.”

“Okay, but really with the grasshoppers?”

Tony laughs. “Nights on call as an EMT or firefighter means finding weird things on the internet. And yes, really.”

“Hmmm.” I lie back, pondering my turn. “No man has ever sung any song to me in my lifetime. The moon is not a spaceship; it really is made of cheese. Camembert, I think.”

“Definitely camembert,” Tony says. “I think there’s a moon cave somewhere full of bottles of wine to go with it.”

My laugh is a whisper. All the tension is drifting out of my body, up and away, like tendrils of mist rising off a morning lake. My limbs, my eyelids, grow heavy with sleep.

“My turn,” Tony says, but his voice sounds far away. “I was a contestant on America’s Got Talent. My favorite TV show ever was . . .”

I drift off into sleep before he finishes.





Chapter Twenty

Tony sits wide awake in the dark, listening to Maisey’s soft, even breathing, asking himself what the hell he was thinking. The song, the game, the vulnerability of sharing them after all these years, has flayed him wide open.

Logic tells him that the bone-deep trembling that starts in his gut and radiates out through his body is just adrenaline, nothing more than the PTSD he’s been dealing with since forever, but it’s worse than usual.

So much worse.

Every nerve, every memory circuit is lit up like a neon sign. His heart feels exposed, the tracery of his nerves visible and glowing in the dark like the project of some mad scientist. Even though he knows full well it’s not logical, he checks his hands and is relieved to find they’re normal.

He tries to hold himself in the present. This room. This task he’s set himself, to act as some sort of bodyguard for Maisey and her daughter. Who is he kidding? He’s no hero, has never been. He’s not even brave enough to tell Maisey the truth about the Whisper Me This game.

Truth is, he hasn’t thought about the game in years and doesn’t want to think about it now, but he has opened the door and the memories are determined to run through his mind, his body, dragging the emotional debris of fear and shame and loss along with them.

What he told Maisey about the game wasn’t a lie, but it wasn’t the truth, either. Playing had nothing to do with sleep and everything to do with soothing frightened children and keeping them quiet. The game was played in closets, behind locked doors, always as a counterpoint to his father’s rages.