Headlights(45)

Marianne and Noel bringing me back to life, Josie the final eventual piece.

I fell in love with music again, with dancing, with life.

And then.

Sitting in the mudroom with a box of funeral handouts. The closets, the pantry, refrigerator, washing machine full. Everything full and ready to move forward as always.

But they were gone. And I haven’t put on a record since.

They’re gone.

The files on the floor in front of me, blurred in my vision.

I can’t understand how any of us are supposed to find the will to carry on when carrying on just means surviving, and surviving just means somehow keeping your lungs breathing and your heart beating through every loss, through every heartbreak. Surviving means just staying here longer to feel it more. Again and again, losing everyone you love. Until you’re the one someone else is mourning.

“Here You Come Again” playing, a song Marianne and I danced to a hundred times before, that Rose loved before that.

I’m on my feet. I don’t want this music, I don’t want these memories. This stupid fucking machine spinning this thing round and round, and this house that has never cared what I want, that has tortured me from the moment I first stepped through its doors, if in nothing else that it brought me more happiness than I ever deserved and then ripped it all away.

I remove the record from the turntable, slip it back in its sleeve, and shove it on the shelf.

Upstairs, another thump, footsteps, running now. A crash.

I swear, take the stairs up two at a time, my heart racing again, racing as always, and I follow the steps to the end of the hall. The lights glowing up here. Pulsing, on and off.

A slow creak as the door at the end of the hall opens.

The room with the trunk in it. Three doors down and across the hall from my childhood room. Always the one with the most of this stuff going on. Sounds of feet going in and out all night, whispers. Marianne and Noel of course never heard it.

I go to my room, the one I still haven’t slept in since I’ve been back, and grab a key from the desk drawer. I cross the hall, the lights glowing, dim. I get to the room with the trunk. The trunk with all the lives of all the former owners of the house until my parents. The one I still haven’t opened and haven’t transferred their things into.

The lights glow in here too, over the antique four-poster bed, side tables, armoire. The trunk, large enough for me to lie down in if I wanted to. The whole place buzzing.

There’s something on the bed.

I take a step forward, and another. Someone’s left a book here, or actually two. My mom’s old paperback copy and the plastic-wrapped first edition Noel later got me.

Both of them The Shining.

I’ve never opened either, never read it. I watched the movie once, but it was hard for me to get through, given … everything. I forgot I put them here, after the funeral. Not sure what I thought, maybe that even if I couldn’t bring myself to open the trunk, maybe I could make some kind of offering. Or maybe I just couldn’t look at them anymore.

“We are not doing this,” I say again.

I leave the room and lock the door behind me.

Downstairs, the record is somehow back on the turntable, spinning. Dolly’s voice carries through the house. The fire pops in the hearth. Another murder could be coming any day now. We’re probably running on borrowed time. All these names. These relationships, histories, connections … I just have to make the right one. All these files before me, and I know there’s something I’m missing. Something right in front of me.

There’s got to be something.

Files, bite marks, maps, notes, photos. All of us caught up in this thing, spinning round and round like the record under the needle.

I open the files and get back to work.





12



I’m standing on a mountain pass, wearing cowboy boots, my nice jeans, a pearl snap, my cowboy hat. All black. A red bolo. The sun glints off the snow on the granite ridgeline, the Rockies surrounding me on all sides. The wind blows, harsh, and cold. Lee Hazlewood plays, from somewhere. Everywhere. Echoing up from the sheer canyons to the mountaintops. “Your Sweet Love.”

The sky an impossible blue, the craggy granite ridgeline rising and falling around me. The clouds hovering below. It’s just the peaks and ridges up here. Just the sky and me.

I look out over the great windy cold expanse, and I feel …

Something warm, solid, in front of me. I turn back.

Hannah Lawrence is here, a foot away.

The wind whips her hair over her face. She’s wearing a red dress with little orange and yellow flowers on it. There are no bruises on her.

She’s so beautiful, eyes bright, cheeks and nose a little red from the cold. It hurts, looking at her. Too much feeling. Makes no sense. She’s— “You gonna ask me to dance?” she says.

She doesn’t wait for me to answer, takes a step forward.

She steps in close, and I don’t think. I just reach out. I take her in my arms. The only heat up here, her and me.

She smells like ponderosa pine. She smells like something I’ve dreamt of before. Dreamt her before. Is that possible?

And we’re turning, turning, together.

I’ve never seen anything so beautiful as this view, these mountains.

I’ve never felt anything like … Her. In my arms.