I needed her, and the one time I’d needed her, she wasn’t there.
“How long you known about the fire?” I was trying to piece together the timeline in my head.
She looked confused, shaking her head as she thought. “Daddy told me your place had burned down. But not until after college. After I’d moved back home. And I didn’t even think about it again until…well, I found the papers.”
I let her words hang heavy in the cab, mind tumbling down an exhausting road of what-ifs and whys.
“Guess there’s one thing you missed in that article,” I finally said.
“What?”
I nodded at the paper settled on the floorboard. “Check the date.”
She scrunched her nose, confusion bleeding across her face before she bent, the feathery wisp of paper—the very key—a portal to the worst night of my life. The night that changed everything.
“Says…” Her eyes began the article again. “In the late morning of August fourth, first responders were called to a mobile home off River Ridge Road after neighbors reported a fireball in the distance…” She stopped, tilting her head to one side like a confused little puppy. “August fourth.”
“August fourth.” My tone hardened with the reminder. “The dayyoudisappeared.”
TWELVE
Fallon—Ten Years Ago
I pulled the top notebook off a stack of old battered ones and opened it to the last page I’d been working on.
A song.
I’d been tossing the words around in my head for weeks now, my mind obsessing over this single arrangement of notes on my guitar until it finally seemed to be coming together.
I’d been playing around with songwriting since I could remember, a way to express shit I couldn’t otherwise articulate. But being with Augusta Belle had kept me so busy I’d hardly had a minute to write anymore.
We spent at least an hour or two together every day, and there were a lot of nights I found myself walking her home, creeping past her passed-out parents and warming myself next to her all night.
I felt like an old dog compared to all the beauty that surrounded her, but I’d grown not to care.
Augusta Belle didn’t care about any of that, so why should it bother me if I was holed up in a mobile home on the rougher side of town while she perched like a princess at the top of the ridge?
“Gave my heart to you, was all I had left to lose…”I wrote down a few notes in the lined margin before a familiar tap, tap, tap against my bedroom window jerked me from my thoughts.
“Fallon!”
I dropped my guitar on the floor and threw the window open without a second thought.
“‘S’wrong?” I wrapped my arms around Augusta Belle’s waist once she’d cleared the single-paned window. “I don’t ever lock it, and if you’re bold enough to face Chuck Gentry, you probably coulda waltzed through the front door.”
“I’m sorry for waking you.” Her voice was small, caged inside the emotion in her throat.
“Babe.” I hugged her into my chest, instantly alert. “What the fuck happened?”
“They’re fighting. It’s so bad, I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t even hear myself think anymore. I screamed down the stairs at them.” She swallowed, eyes brimming over. “I was about to stomp down the stairs and leave right out the front door, but before I could, Mama stomped up the stairs and…” She shook her head, fighting anger and pain. “Mama opened the door and started screaming about me bein’ at fault for all their fightin’, and then she…” Augusta Belle wiped at her temple, and for the first time, I noticed fresh blood pooling at her hairline.
“Christ, why didn’t you say something?” I launched off the bed to retrieve a cool washcloth before she clutched at my T-shirt, her tiny, red-tipped nails glistening in the dim light of the moon.
“Don’t leave yet.”
Her words slivered my heart in two before I pulled the shirt over my shoulders and balled it up, dabbing it gently at her head to locate and contain the wound.
“Do you think you need stitches?” I asked soberly.
