The Villa(72)

It’s sad.

She doesn’t know it then, but this is the last time she’ll see Noel. In a month, he’ll leave for Nepal, seeking inspiration, but also wanting to do something grander with his life. It’s an impulse that will kill him, less than a hundred days from now, when the tiny plane he’s flying in crashes into the side of a mountain. Mari will spend the rest of her life thinking about that moment, wondering if he knew what was coming, wondering how Noel Gordon could be snuffed out so quickly.

And there will be a little part of her that thinks, Now it’s just me and Lara.

Now we’re the only ones who know.

She’ll hate how much that thought warms her.

Noel leans down then and kisses her, his lips cold but gentle against hers.

When he pulls back, there are tears in his eyes, and it might just be the frigid air, but Mari doesn’t think that it is.

“I wish I’d never said it,” he tells her now, and she knows he’s thinking of the same moment she was earlier.

That day in the sun by the pond.

Cut yourself free.

“I don’t,” she replies, and he gives a huff of laughter, letting the ends of the scarf drop.

“No, you wouldn’t, would you?”

Then he turns and leaves. Noel Gordon, once the most famous rock star in the world, now just another man on the cold, damp streets of a December night in New York.

Mari starts walking in the other direction, intending to hail a cab at the corner, but she spots a phone booth, and before she knows it, she’s ducking inside, fumbling with gloved hands to pull out the necessary change.

She’d gotten the number months ago, not long after she’d heard that Lara had moved to California. She kept it jotted down on a scrap of paper in her purse, but she’d looked at it so many times, she now knows it by heart.

Punching in the numbers, Mari tells herself that Lara won’t even be home, that this is a wasted call and a stupid whim that she’ll feel silly about in the morning.

So, when she hears Lara’s familiar, “Hello?” Mari is so surprised, she almost hangs up.

She stops herself, though, and stammers, “L-Lara? It’s me, it’s—”

“Mari. I know.”

The last time Mari saw Lara, she was onstage at the Scala in London, the stage lights making a halo around her. She’d played all of Aestas from beginning to end, and Mari had listened in the dark, her hands clenched against her chest, her eyes full of tears.

She hadn’t tried to go backstage, hadn’t even wanted Lara to see her in the audience.

“I don’t know why I’m calling,” she says now. “I just … I suppose I missed you.”

There’s silence over the line for so long that Mari thinks maybe Lara hung up, but then she hears a sigh, and Lara says, “I don’t think that’s it. I’ve been waiting for you to call, actually. I knew you would one day.”

Mari stands there in the phone booth, her breath fogging the glass, the city lights distorted.

“I’m proud of you,” Mari tells her. “I’ve listened to the album more times than I can count. It’s breathtaking, Lara.” She laughs then, self-conscious. “Not that you need me to tell you that, given how it’s sold.”

“I bought three copies of Lilith Rising,” Lara replies. “At first, I couldn’t finish it because it was all … it was too close. But it’s wonderful, Mari. Truly.”

Mari feels her throat go tight, her eyes stinging. “Thank you.”

There’s another pause, and Mari rushes in to fill it. “I’m in New York right now for some promotional things and meetings with my publisher.” She laughs, drawing a line in the condensation on the glass. “They’re being very polite, but I’m sure they’re all really thinking, ‘Is this bloody woman ever going to turn in her second book?’”

She will, one day, she’s sure, but it’s hard to imagine anything following the success of Lilith Rising. Readers are bound to be disappointed, but it’s more than that holding her back. It’s that ever since that awful, stormy night when she finished Lilith Rising, whatever voice was inside of her seems to have gone silent.

“You’ll get there,” Lara replies. “The follow-up to Aestas was the hardest album I’ve ever written, but it was finished, eventually.”

Mari has listened to it, Golden Light, Silver Moon, and she’d liked it, but it didn’t have the magic of Aestas, something she suspects Lara already knows.

“Maybe,” Mari offers, hesitant. “Since I’m in the States, and you’re in the States—”

“No.”

It’s soft, but also completely unyielding, and Mari stands there in that phone booth, watching as across the street, a laughing couple walks hand in hand, their collars turned up against the cold.

“Mari, what happened that night … I’ve never forgiven myself for it. I never will. But the thing is … I think you have. I think you think it was all worth it.”

Anger spikes her blood, her fingers curling around the receiver. “Aren’t we both in a better place now? Would we have any of what we have if you’d had the baby, if Pierce had kept dragging us around, if—”

“We could’ve just left, Mari,” Lara says, her voice tired, like they’ve been having this argument for hours instead of minutes. “That night, I believed the same thing. That it was the only way. But I realized a few years ago that we weren’t trapped. That’s just what you told yourself to make it seem like you didn’t have a choice. But you did, Mari. I did. We can’t take it back, but I can’t sit across a table from you, or on a sofa with you, and pretend like what we did wasn’t terrible, just to make you feel better. And that’s what you want from me.”