only children can, that he is gone. I fall against his shoulder. ‘No,’ I cry into him. Then he holds me as if there is nothing else to hold on to in that world. And for us, there isn’t.”
Maeve sighed, then closed her eyes. A smile as faded and wrinkled as the linen gown she wore crossed her mouth.
“Then?” I asked. “Then what? Did they take him? Where did he go? What happened?” I grasped her hand. My heart beat faster than when I had run the three miles that very morning; my limbs were alive. I wanted to sprint from here and find this boy for her.
Beneath Maeve’s eyelids, the rapid eye movement of the dreamer flickered. Then a tear, one small, oblong tear, leaked out beneath her left eyelashes, ran below the wrinkles of her eye and settled in the nest of her facial creases.
I reached for a Kleenex to wipe the tear away, and then thought better of it. For some reason it seemed appropriate to leave it alone, leave it for what it stood for: lost love. I sat quietly, anxious for more. After a moment, I squeezed her hand. “Then what?”
Maeve opened her eyes and stared at me. “You know, the oatmeal was cold again this morning and the—” She glanced at me. “Are you going to fix this or not?”
“Fix what?” I asked, my heart heavy.
“The incompetence. Bloody incompetence.” She rolled onto her right side, and the soft sound of sleep came through her lips.
I stood and rubbed my forehead, my eyes, then glanced up at the round, black-numbered clock across the room. Our time wasn’t up, but Maeve was gone into sleep. I sighed, wanting more of her story.
I started the car and leaned back on the seat, glancing at the clock: 8:45. No time for food—the tour meeting was in fifteen minutes. I turned the car out of the driveway and onto Main Street.
The light turned red as I pulled into the intersection; I reached for my BlackBerry, chewed on the side of my nail, then typed “Jack Sullivan” into the Internet search engine.
Neuroscientist and school principal were the first two results. I laughed; this was ridiculous. One does not punch in a name and find an address for a lost neighbor.
My fingers flew over the miniature keys as I scrolled farther down to the third listing and read: “The Unknown Souls Band with songwriter Jack Sullivan will be the opening act on March 4th at Chastain Amphitheater in Atlanta, Georgia—”
On the four-inch screen I stared at Jack and Jimmy Sullivan. Time slipped away like a river running backward, years reversed, and I was fourteen, desperate for the lost love from Mama, then Jack. I was waiting with an everlasting ache in the middle of my body.
I stared down at the picture of the Unknown Souls. A band stood with Jack and Jimmy, grinning in a grainy black-and-white photograph. Instruments and microphones were scattered across a bridge over a train track.
My breath caught deep in my lungs and stayed there—refusing to release in an exhale. My chest was gripped by the memory of his face, his hands, the way they splayed across the top of the bridge.
Suddenly a long, obnoxious horn blared behind me. I jumped in my seat, looked up to a green light.
My cell phone rang, and I grabbed it as I gunned the car through the light. “I’m going, I’m going,” I hollered to the truck behind me, whose occupant couldn’t hear me, but surely saw my waving hands.
“Pardon?” the voice on the other end of the phone said.
“Charlotte?”
“Yep, who are you yelling at?”
“Some impatient truck driver didn’t like how I hesitated for half a second when the light turned green.”
The truck came up next to me; the dark-haired woman in the driver’s seat flicked an obscene gesture with her middle finger and gunned the truck in front of my car. I slammed on the brakes to avoid hitting her. The leftover morning Starbucks, my purse and a pile of folders in the passenger’s seat flew toward the front of the car in a scattered array. I reached over in a futile attempt to grab at the flying objects and skidded to the right until my tires ran against the curb.
I jerked the steering wheel to the left, moving the car into the next lane. The gut-gripping sound of metal on metal filled my ears. I veered back toward the right and slammed on the brakes, stopping the car