Lost Melody (29 page)

“What about Hank? Where does he fit
into your plan?”

“I can’t be with him right now. I have
to get my head on straight first. If I don’t do it while I’ve got
the courage, I probably never will. He’s got to finish the album,
and they’re going on tour soon. In January or February, I
think.”

Cathy’s eyebrows shot up.“So soon? He
just got back.”

“Yeah. I don’t know how they’re going
to get the CD out so quick, but that’s what they’re planning. I
think Uncle Jonathan is going to tour with them.”

“So, Hank's going to be on the road
anyway?”

“Yes. And while he’s on tour, I’m
going to find Melody Ravenswood.”

“I wish you all the luck,
girlfriend.”

Chapter
Twenty-six

She waited until late Friday afternoon
to seek out Hank, hoping the video crew would be long gone by the
time she reached the farm. Telling Hank about her plans would be
hard enough. She had no desire to do it with a camera in her
face.

Hank let her in—though he didn’t
appear too happy about it. She followed him into the living room
where he muted the television and plopped onto the sofa.

“Where is everybody?” she
asked.

“Took the weekend off. It was either
that or resort to murdering each other.” His weak smile suggested
he wasn’t kidding. After spending weeks with them, she understood.
Tensions sometimes ran high and though ideal in many ways, the
close confines of the farm didn’t allow for a lot of personal
space.

“Sounds like a good idea.”

Silence descended between them. Melody
glanced around the room. A squashed juice box sat under a chair,
and children’s books were stacked on every flat surface. Her gaze
landed on Hank. He leaned on the arm of the sofa, one ankle crossed
over his knee, staring at the silent television.

She wrung her hands. What had she
expected, anyway? There was no one here so he had no need to
pretend everything was all right between them.

“Hank.”

He looked at her. The blank expression
on his face almost sent her running. He wasn’t going to make this
conversation any easy for her. Okay, then.

“I came here to tell you
something.”

“I’m listening.”

“I’ve been doing a lot of thinking
lately, about us, about me…my life. I have no right to ask you to
wait for me to get my act together, but I wanted you to know I’m
working on it. I’ve made some changes, and some decisions. I’ve
taken my name back. I’m Melody Ravenswood again. I’ve changed it on
everything. My bank account, my driver’s license, everything. And I
have a plan.”

Silence.

“Do you want to hear my
plan?”

“Does it end with you marrying
me?”

She wished she could say it was a
certainty, but she couldn’t. Instead, she opted for honesty. “It’s
my goal.”

He nodded. “Okay. What’s your
plan?”

The longer she talked, the
hotter his blood boiled. He ground his teeth and forced himself to
appear calm on the outside.
Hear her out.
Don’t jump to conclusions.

“So…that’s my plan,” she concluded
with a sigh.

Seriously? She calls that
a plan?
He stared at her and silently
counted to ten. Exploding in a fit of rage wouldn’t get him
anywhere.

He cleared his throat and
willed his voice to a conversational tone. “What about us? I didn’t
hear anything in your plan about us being together while you work
through your issues.”
Not one single
goddamned word.

“I need to do this by myself, Hank.
When we’re together, I can’t think straight. It would be too easy
for me to hide behind our relationship, use it as an excuse to
ignore everything else. I can’t see anything else when I’m with
you.”

He stood and paced across the room,
keeping his back to her while he tried to rein in his anger. She
might as well have taken a kitchen knife to his gut. His stomach
cramped and his knees threatened to give out.

What if she didn’t come back? What
would he do then?

An invisible band tightened around his
chest, and he fought to bring air into his lungs. He had to reach
her, make her see what she was doing.

He faced her. “I’m proud of you for
taking the steps you have. Taking your name back is big. But
please, don’t do cut me out of your life. I want to be there for
you, but I can’t help you if you leave.”

She stood, but as if an invisible
barrier separated them, she remained across the room, cold and
distant.

“I’m sorry. Please don’t think you
don’t matter. You do. More than anything. I love you, and I want to
be your wife.”

He ran a trembling hand through his
hair.

“You’re everything to me,” she said.
“Can’t you see? I have to do this for myself, for us. If I can’t
learn to live with who I am, I’ll never be able to live with who
you are, who we would be together.”

His heart knocked against his ribs.
What could he do to convince her to stay? There was only one thing
he could think of. Desperate, he laid his last card on the table.
“What if I quit? Retire. I can after the ‘Melody’ tour. I’ve been
thinking about if for a while. I don’t need the money. I need
you.”

She shook her head, and his heart
sank.

“You told me once you couldn’t change
who you were. You can’t give up your music any more than you can
give up breathing. I won’t ask you to try. All I'm asking is you
give me some time to figure out who Melody Ravenswood is before I
become Melody Travis. I don't want to begin a new life with all my
past hanging over my head. I need to understand what happened to my
family, what happened to me.”

He stared at her, searching for a
crack in her veneer. But she’d made up her mind, and nothing he
might say was going to change it. He tucked his hands in his
pockets in an effort to appear casual, as if she hadn’t just gutted
him.

“So this is it? You’re
leaving?”

She took a single step toward him, and
he took an answering step back.

“Please try to understand.” She held
her hands out to him, palm up. “I’ll be back, I promise. I love
you.”

“How long? How long am I supposed to
wait? I don’t understand why we can’t see each other while you get
yourself together.”

“
I’m coming back. I don’t
know how long it will take me, but I
will
be back. I know I don’t have any
right to ask you to wait, so I won’t ask. But I
will
beg. I’ll plead. I’ll get on my
knees if I have to.”

He closed his eyes and took a deep
breath. “I told you once, and I'll say it again so you know it
still stands. When you’re through running and hiding, I’ll be
waiting.”

Chapter
Twenty-seven

Hank felt like he was on autopilot. He
ate because he had to. He worked because it was all he had. He
tried to sleep, but his mind inevitably went back to the last time
he saw Melody, and sleep eluded him. He lost count of the number of
nights he walked the fields or sat under the big oak in the
backyard until the sun painted the eastern sky. One day bled into
the next, an endless cycle he could neither speed up nor
stop.

Through Jonathan, he learned she had
left town, but if her guardian knew where she had gone, he didn’t
say, and Hank didn’t ask. He concentrated all his flagging energy
on his work. There were only a handful of tracks still to record.
He cursed his decision to record “Melody” last, wishing it had been
the first, or sometimes wishing it would go away completely. For
years, he had anticipated the day he would record that one song,
and now it hung like a crippling stone around his neck, dragging
him down into an abyss of loneliness and despair.

In the final week before tracking
“Melody,” he sequestered himself in his office. Words and notes
flowed from his soul, through the electronic keyboard, and to the
computer program that transcribed his creation into sheet music. In
the past, his music had kept him sane, but these days, he turned to
out of desperation, purging the crippling emotions in the only way
he knew how.

Two weeks of
hell.

Musicians hired for the background
work crowded the small studio. Hank studied the daily chart in his
hands. Today would be the usual complete run through before
breaking the song down into its various parts.

“No. This is wrong,” he said,
interrupting Randy’s read-through. “‘Melody’ was never meant to be
sung this way.”

All eyes turned to him. He pushed away
from the wall, more sure of his decision since he’d made the first
move toward implementing it.

“What do you mean?” Randy asked. “We
discussed the process and everyone agreed on the
schedule.”

“I changed my mind. The original
recording was one track, and this one will be, too…at least for the
piano and vocals. I want everybody out. I’m going to do the song
one time and one time only. You can record whatever you want for
the background, but the primary track is a single take
only.”

“Hank, do you think that’s wise?”
Randy asked.

Wise? No.
“It’s the only way I’ll do it.”

Chad rose from his position on the
floor. “Okay, everybody out except BlackWing, Randy, and Sir
Jonathan. Everybody else clear out, take a break.”

When the room emptied, he turned to
Hank. “Don’t we have a say in how we record the song? We have a lot
riding on the CD, too, you know. We’ve been here all summer,
working our butts off and putting up with your foul mood for most
of it. Where do you get off making these kinds of decisions without
us?”

Chad had a point, but “Melody” was
Hank’s song. He knew he was right—he just needed to make them see
it, too.

“Okay, you decide. Let me do it my
way. You can stay in the control room and listen. If you don’t
agree with the first take, I’ll do it your way. What have you got
to lose? If I get it on the first try, we all get out of here that
much sooner, maybe a week instead of two.”

Hank waited while they put their heads
together and discussed his proposal. When they reached a decision,
Chad stepped forward.

“I hope you know what you’re doing,”
he said. “You have one shot to get it right. If it’s anything less
than perfect, we start over, and you do it until its right.
Agreed?”

“Agreed. But if I get it the first
time, I’m out of here. I’ll leave it up to the rest of you to
finish the tracks any way you see fit. I trust your
judgment.”

Randy sent for the sound technicians
who checked and rechecked the mic and equipment.

“Do you want a click
track?”

“No. I’ll sing it live.”

“Okaaay,” Randy said, clearly
skeptical.

Hank took his place at the
piano. He pushed everything but the song from his mind.
One take. One last chance to make her
see.

Randy cued him from the control room.
“Ready when you are, we’re recording in three, two,
one.”

He closed his eyes and absorbed the
complete silence for the span of a heartbeat. The melody came to
him, sweet and haunting. His love for Melody filled his heart until
it overflowed. The piano keys were cool to his touch. Love spilled
across the keys and his heart sang.

There was nothing in his world but the
music and his love for the woman he had lost. He played as though
in a trance. Eyes closed, his fingers flew across the keyboard,
bringing the melody to life.

His fingers slipped from the keys, and
his shoulders slumped. The piano wires quivered their last, and
silence once again filled the room. He opened his eyes and turned
to the control room. “Am I done here?”

In that breathless moment, Hank
understood the plight of the accused awaiting the jury’s verdict.
Life or death. Which would it be?

Jonathan’s eyes met his through the
glass. His lips edged up in a faint smile and delivered his verdict
with a nod of his head. A measure of relief flooded his system.
Jonathan knew or at least suspected what he had just done. In the
poker game of life, he’d just gone all-in.

Randy’s voice came through the
speaker. “You’re done.”

Pushing the piano bench back, Hank
stood and faced the men on the other side of the glass partition.
“The orchestration is on the computer in my office. I’ll call in a
few weeks.”

He left the barn, stopping long enough
to pet Betty Boop and kiss her on the head. He climbed into his
pickup and drove away. Cool air blew from the dashboard vents, cold
against his sweat-soaked skin. He drove along the winding Farm to
Market roads of North Texas, and with each passing mile, he
breathed a little easier. Finding freedom in action, he turned
toward the airport.