In the Midnight Rain (41 page)

"No sex?"

He blinked, and it was then that she realized he was dead on his feet. She laughed. "Blue, darlin', how long has it been since you slept?"

He rubbed his forehead. "A really long time."

"I figured." She came down the steps and held out her hand. "If the word sex didn't catch your attention, you're a long way gone."

He didn't move, only looked at her, her hand in the air. And then, he kissed her, the kind of hungry, starved, lonely kiss of a man who was sure everything was lost. She put that flying hand on his shoulder, and took the box from him. He simply collapsed around her, his head on her shoulder, his arms tight. "Ellie, I didn't even know how lonely I was before you came."

"Me, too, Blue." She kissed his cheek, and laughed softly. "Would it be okay if you took that ring out of the box so I could see it? If you really don't want to put it on my finger, that's okay, but I want to see what you picked."

"Oh! Yeah." He took the box from her and opened it, shyly. "I didn't see you in diamonds, Ellie. There's so much life in you, like rubies."

Ellie got blurry eyes as she took it out of the box and started to put in on her finger. "No," he said, "Let me.

It fit perfectly. She admired it with a faint smile.

"Do you like it?"

"Yes. It's beautiful." She flung her arms around him, carefully, because he was so fragile and so tired at that moment. She closed her eyes and smelled the bourbon on him, and the orchids in his hair, and the scent of earth on his neck. When she opened her eyes, he was still there. "I can't promise to live forever."

"Me, either."

"It's not always going to be wild passion and nights on the roof."

"Once in a while on the roof is all a man needs."

Ellie held on, irrelevantly thinking about the endless circle that was a ring. Or maybe it wasn't irrelevant at all. Somehow, the circle had turned and taken her to Gideon, where she had needed to go.

Somehow, she loved him. And somehow, he loved her back. All the excuses and defenses she'd used to shield herself fell away. She raised her eyes. "I fell in love with you the minute I first saw you, Blue." Her voice was serious. "And every day that went by, I loved you a little more. That scares me to death."

He touched her cheek. "Green seasons, Ellie. This is one for us now. When it comes time, if we have to, we'll sing the blues." He paused. "I'll sing them for you if you sing them for me."

And Ellie hated to cry, but there was no stopping her tears over that. "Okay," she said, and holding the ring tightly in her palm, she flung her arms around his neck and let him catch her close. He hugged her, tight, and Ellie buried her face in his shirt, suddenly faint from what she'd come close to throwing away.

After a long moment, she caught her breath and said, "I warned you I'd end up slobbering on your shirt."

"And I told you then that I wasn't going to mind." He kissed her, sealing it, kissed her and kissed her and kissed her, and Ellie felt lightheaded with it, with all the things that had happened to her since she'd come down the road and seen the finger of God above the trees.

"That's enough, you two," Geraldine called from the kitchen. "Come on in here and act like civilized people for ten minutes."

Ellie didn't think Blue would be awake for ten more minutes, but she'd find him a comfortable place to crash. She tugged his hand, but he held back for a minute. "You didn't tell me about Gwen," he said.

"I forgot."

"She threatened my life, by the way."

Ellie laughed. "Really?"

He nodded, looking at the house. "That's gonna be the most spoiled baby that was ever born."

"There's worse things."

"Yeah," he said, and allowed himself to be pulled toward the house. "I reckon there are."

The Lovers

June 4, 1969

Dear Diane,

I am sorry to tell you James died yesterday. This envelope was in his pocket, ready to be mailed to you. I thought you'd want to have it.

Marcus Williams

~~~~

June 2, 1969

Dear Diane,

I got your letter a few days ago, and I just want you to know how much it meant to me to get it. To know you're doing okay and the baby is so sweet and that you can take good care of her until I come home.

All I can think about now is how much I love you. I thought it would get better, you know, after I hadn't seen you for a while. I thought I could stop thinking about you. But I dream about your smile. It wakes me up and I just ache to be with you, and then I'm remembering all those days we did have, when it was just the two of us, alone and naked and in love. I think about it a lot. I think about that wholeness, and I know it made you mad, but I'm so glad that time made a baby. If love makes children, ours should have made twenty.

Make sure she isn't afraid to be who she is. We'll take her someplace that it won't matter. Where she'll never be ashamed to be our child, but will wake up every day being glad.

I love you, Diane. I could say it, write it here, a thousand times and it wouldn't be enough. I felt you coming my whole life, and there you were, right in front of me, and I knew the first minute I saw you. The very first minute. You knew it, too. Take care of yourself for my sake. I can't stand to think of anything happening to you. I love you.

I love you.

I love you.

Kiss Ellie for me. (Sorry, I have to agree with your mama about Velvet. Let's call her Ellie.) Tell her that her daddy loves her.

I love you.

James

22

F
ourth of July dawned as wet and sloppy as any day Connie Ewing could remember. She woke up to rain patting against her windows, and the sound made the knot in her ease a little bit. She'd always thought of Bobby dying on a rainy day like this. He'd loved rain, and it made her happy to think it might have been raining in the jungle the day he died.

But the weather made the group a more somber one than Connie had hoped. They held up their umbrellas, wishing for everything to be over, moving from foot to foot, trying to be respectful, but all looking forward more to the coffee and potluck coming after than they were for this.

Well, maybe not everybody. Rosemary stood arrow straight beneath her black umbrella, her face closed and quiet, her shoulders rigidly straight under her dark dress. Next to her was Gwen, all dressed in black. Connie wished she still sang—it was a day for the blues, somehow. Especially those long, deep, mournful notes Gwen had done so very well.

Marcus sat under the awning, dressed in a dapper black suit, along with Alisha and the boys, all shined up like new shoes. He was the master of ceremonies, of course. It was his project, this memorial, these heavy black slabs of sorrow that would help them remember.

Remember.

Connie spied Blue, finally, and he was dressed up, too. Formally, which she'd never seen, and next to him was Ellie.

Ellie, James's girl. It was so plain, now that she knew. It had to be hard for Gwen and Rosemary and Marcus to even look on that face. Hard, but joyful, too. Connie watched her as the names were being read, one after the other. Forty-two of them. Ellie stared hard at the stage, her face wet, and plainly not from the rain. She and Blue held hands, tightly.

Connie stood there even after all of it was done. Shauna had offered to stay, but Connie sent her on. "I'll come on in a minute," she said, and Shauna left her to it.

With a small, pierced breath, Connie moved close to the slab and put her fingers on the name. Robert Makepeace. Bobby.

She closed her eyes and called up a picture of him that day, that day they'd all been saying their goodbyes. A sunny summer day, so much unlike this one, and the whole group of them waiting at the Greyhound station—Connie and Bobby, Rosemary and Marcus and James. She tried to remember seeing Ellie's mother there, that little slip of hippie child, and she could see them there, both girls, but she couldn't see Diane saying good-bye to James in any meaningful way.

What she could see was Bobby. His eyes, such clear eyes, with such a wealth of love in them. The sun shining off the nutmeg color of his hair, hair that she reached up to touch, letting it run through her fingers because she knew it would all be gone the next time she saw him. He smiled at that. "It'll grow back."

And Connie kissed him. Put her mouth against his, and felt a swell of a love so pure, so sweet, so clear that it could never be sullied. She had not known then that there would never be another moment like that—or at least there had not been another up to now—when she'd feel such an uncomplicated thing for another person. She knew, too, that it would have changed if he'd come home to her, if they'd married as they'd planned.

Standing now, with her fingers in the gouge marks of his name, she remembered. Remembered breathing his breath, dreaming him in her, holding his body close.

And it seemed, for a moment, that it was not a memory. Hair brushed over her brow, hair that smelled of a shampoo—Breck—she hadn't thought of for thirty years, and a ghostly mouth pressed hers. And a soft, sweet sense of lightness, of completeness, rushed through her, all through her. Bobby himself.

She dared not move, for fear of losing the magic of the moment. She stood with her hand on the letters, his hair in her face, her heart filled with pure, sweet, uncomplicated love, and into the day came a sound.

A deep, rich, woman's voice, as clean and clear as it ever had been, singing a capella, "Hearts and bones and blood in a tangle ..."

Connie smiled and fell into the sound, knowing, somewhere in her, that Bobby heard it, too. That James could hear his mother sing it for him, but mostly for Ellie, who'd somehow stumbled into their secrets and their sorrows and set them all to rights, simply by being, by needing to know the past and the truth and all the sorrows.

As Connie stood there, the sun broke through a tiny hole in the clouds and touched her face. Connie opened her eyes and smiled. A finger of God, her mother would say.

She laughed and moved toward the music, toward the one place in the world Mabel Beauvais might still sing, toward the hall where the people would be gathered, looking at the lives that had been lived, and were being lived. Now, even in their sorrow. Now, even in their joy.

At the door, a man she didn't know, a long tall drink of water who looked like Sam Elliot in the old days, swung aside, tipping his hat to her. "Well now, darlin'," he said, his eyes glittering. "Don't believe I've had the pleasure of your acquaintance."

He even talked like Sam Elliot. Connie inclined her head and held out her hand. "Connie Ewing," she said, and for the first time since she could remember, she gave him her smile. The real one.

For a real man.

EXCERPT FROM

Hearts and Bones,

a
BIOGRAPHY OF
M
ABEL
B
EAUVAIS

by Ellie Connor Reynard

EPILOGUE

The mystery of Mabel Beauvais remains one of the most puzzling in music history. How could such a well-known person simply walk from the face of the earth, never to be seen again?

Some say she went to Paris, and there blended into the postwar rebuilding. Some say she must have gone to a large city and faded into the working-class world—maybe Los Angeles.

Some say she died.

There is no answer to the mystery today—perhaps some future music historian will be luckier than this one. Perhaps the mystery will be solved only when the bones of a woman are found in some unlikely place. Perhaps we'll never know.

But the facts of her disappearance matter far, far less than the power of her life and music. She fell in love, and bore a child, and poured all those passions into a song that will be remembered for all of time. She bulldozed barriers for women in music, and women of color in the public eye, but even more—her work, her passion, gave a legacy to the blues that can't ever be forgotten.

LOOK FOR THESE NEW RELEASES:
Hearts and Bones
, and
The Best of Mabel Beauvais
, digitally remastered CDs from Workhouse Records.

~~###~~

For my husband Ram,
who has a heart made of music.