Regrets Only (34 page)

“Wow,”
Jake said as they settled into a booth.

“Such
a sad day,” Marci agreed.

“Well,
yeah, that, too. I mean, obviously,” said Jake, opening a menu. “But I was
actually just wondering how long Dylan Burke has been in love with Suzanne.”

Both
women looked at him incredulously. “What?” he said.

“First
of all,” Marci said, glancing at Suzanne for support. “How is it that I can
talk directly to you about my feelings for forty-five minutes, using the
actual
words
for the feelings, and you don’t catch a word of it but you see two
people saying goodbye after a funeral and suddenly you’re Oprah Winfrey?”

Jake
grinned. “Oh, were you talking about your feelings the other night? Sorry, I
thought we were summarizing an episode of
The Hills
.”

Suzanne
smiled despite herself, and Jake ducked to avoid a menu aimed at his head. When
Marci regained her composure, she continued. “Second of all, where have you
been? Dylan’s been in love with Suzanne forever. Didn’t you see the way he
looked at her that night at our house?”

“What?”
Suzanne said. Marci was wrong. She had to be.

The
playful smile she’d been directing at her husband faded from Marci’s face. “I—you
mean—? Suze, I thought you knew.”

Suzanne
looked out the window at the sun reflecting off the nearby buildings, and the
brilliant blue sky beyond. He’d be up there soon, on his way to wherever he was
singing tonight. Maybe Marci was right, and maybe it still didn’t matter. Maybe
feelings were just a part of the equation, and they could either enhance
reality, or be destroyed by it. It certainly seemed the case for her and Dylan.

“No,”
she said quietly. “I guess I didn’t.”

Suzanne
knocked tentatively on the salmon-colored wooden door. She fidgeted with the
bouquet of flowers and tuna casserole in her hands and shifted her weight
nervously from side to side, the wooden floorboards of the aging front porch
creaking beneath her. Bonita Daniels’ house was near the end of a quaint little
street in Reynoldstown, one of Atlanta’s older city neighborhoods. The
craft-style houses dated back to around the 1920s, and each was painted a
different color. Single family homes were mixed with duplexes and even a couple
of quadruplexes, many with bicycles or scooters parked out front.

The
last three weeks had dragged by since the funeral. Suzanne had waited until the
initial chaos was over to come to pay her more personal respects to the woman
who saved her life. Dylan’s tour had been over for nearly a week, and she still
had not heard from him. For a woman in her thirties experiencing her first real
heartbreak, Suzanne thought she was holding up pretty well. She had resisted
the temptation to call him, as well as the very strong desire to let
lovelessness and joblessness keep her in bed all day. She was nearing the end
of her savings and needed to create work for herself soon, which wasn’t going
to happen if she were hiding in her bed.

Bonita’s
mother, Mary, answered the door, pulling Suzanne into a bear hug almost as soon
as she’d said hello. “Thank you for letting me stop in,” Suzanne said. “I hope
you don’t mind tuna.”

“No,
that’s lovely. Just lovely,” said Mary. “Chrysaline!”

“That’s
okay. Don’t pull her away from anything. I really just wanted to look in on you—”

“Chrysaline!
We have company!”

The
girl came into the room softly, a sharp contrast compared with her boisterous grandmother.
She wore a simple purple hoodie over a white t-shirt and jeans, with her hair
braided to each side. “I’m here,” she said.

“This
is Miss Hamilton,” Mary said.

Suzanne
held out her hand and Chrysaline shook it loosely. “Please, call me Suzanne.
Your mom helped me when—”

“I
know,” Chrysaline said. “She talked about you. She liked you. I’m…I’m real
sorry about what happened to you.”

“Oh,
gosh, no,” Suzanne stammered. “I’m fine, now. I’m sorry for your loss.”

Chrysaline
looked at the floor. “Thank you. She was a great mom.”

Mary
set out a plate of cookies and Suzanne sat at the kitchen table with the two of
them. She told them how helpful Bonita had been to her, how comforting. “I
could see right away what a great mom she must be to you,” she told Chrysaline,
who nodded and wiped tears. “And if she was my mom, I’d want to know that she
was a hero to someone.”

They
talked for a while longer, Suzanne probing about Chrysaline’s school and
interests, Chrysaline asking Suzanne what it had been like working at the High
Museum.

“I
went there on a school field trip once and I never wanted to leave,” she said,
with as much animation as could be expected from a fifteen-year-old who had
just lost her mother.

“You
like art?” Suzanne asked.

“You
kidding?” Mary interjected. “She’s so talented. We’re hoping she’ll get a
scholarship to art school. You should show her some of your stuff, Chrys.”

“Grandma,
stop,” the girl objected.

“Oh,
no, I’d love to see it. I’ve gotten back into painting recently myself,”
Suzanne said. “May I?”

Chrysaline
led Suzanne up to her attic bedroom, where she had hundreds of sketches, mostly
in pencil, covering every surface. A few were flowers and some impressions of
buildings, a stray seashell here and there. But mostly they were faces.
Beautiful, joyful, sad, pensive, and even haunted. All races and ages—from a
toothless baby in pigtails to a weathered elderly woman shelling peas in a
rocking chair. They were breathtaking.

“Oh,
wow. That’s all I can say. These are better than anything I ever did, even in
my college-level art classes.”

“Nah,
it’s just messing around,” Chrysaline said dismissively.

“Hush
up,” said Grandma Mary fiercely. “Girl, if you can’t stand up and be proud of
yourself, no one else will do it for you!”

Suzanne
began to see how Bonita Daniels had grown up to be such a formidable woman
herself. She turned back to the teenager, who was biting a thumbnail nervously.
“Chrysaline, you
are
going to art school, aren’t you?”

The
girl looked embarrassed. “I’d like to, but with Mamma gone…”

“Don’t
be silly. We’ll find a way,” her grandmother broke in again, this time trying
to be reassuring. Chrysaline shot her a mild smile, and for the first time that
afternoon Suzanne saw both women’s lips quaver.

Suzanne
turned her attention to the sketches, not wanting to intrude on their very
personal grief. She walked around the hot room the way she had seen so many do
at the High, hands behind her back, pointing reverently at some of the more
impressive sketches. She made what she hoped were encouraging comments about
their beautiful composition and Chrysaline’s obvious skill. After a few
minutes, Grandma Mary excused herself to go put the casserole in the oven, and Suzanne
followed her down the stairs to say goodbye.

Grieving
or not, Chrysaline had just started school again, and she probably had homework
to do and friends to see. Certainly she had better things to do than talk to a
stranger whose life had been saved by her mother. Suzanne promised to get her a
VIP tour of the museum as soon as she could, which genuinely seemed to delight Chrysaline.
As she walked to her car, Suzanne thought she would stop in and check on them
from time to time. It seemed like the least she could do to repay Bonita.

On
the car ride home, however, the seed of an idea began to take hold in her mind.
Maybe she could do more than she thought.

It
was nearly midnight the next day when Suzanne set out for Gatlinburg. She had
originally intended to leave earlier, but things had started cascading as soon
as she got home from Bonita’s house the evening before and started making phone
calls, and then continued all day. She had been absolutely shameless, phoning
in every favor she was owed, and a few she wasn’t owed, even from people who
had distanced themselves from her after the gala. Betsy Fuller-Brown had been
the most help, and even made a few calls to connect her with the right people.
But to pull her idea together, she needed more than money and connections. She
needed Dylan.

 She
knew it was probably unwise to get on the road so late, but she had been up
late the night before, making notes and doing research. When she finally fell
asleep, she’d slept in until 10:30, so even at midnight she didn’t yet feel
tired. She drove through the twenty-four-hour Starbucks for a Venti coffee with
two extra shots just to be sure.

“I’m
up all night,” Marci said when they spoke around eleven and Suzanne told her
what she was planning. “Call me anytime you need to talk. I sleep on the couch
because it’s too damn hot upstairs, so it’s not like you’ll be bothering Jake.”

But
she had not needed to call Marci, and might have been fine without the coffee,
but she sipped it slowly over a few hours anyway. Her internal wheels were
spinning too fast for her body to want to rest. There were so many things to
think about, so many details to iron out. She kept her old voice recorder next
to her in the car and dictated to it when things occurred to her. Ideas, people
to call, issues to address, and more ideas. Lots and lots of ideas. They seemed
to be snowballing on top of her original thought, picking up speed and power as
they rolled downhill, taking on a life of their own. It was thrilling.

Once
upon a time, it had been Chad who would collect all those stray thoughts and
put them into action. Now, it would just be Suzanne. She’d need help, of course,
which was why—or part of why—she was driving to the Tennessee mountains as fast
as her little car would take her.

Yvette
had been confused and a little reluctant to tell Suzanne where Dylan was,
earlier in the evening. “Look, Suzanne, I’d like to help you,” she said, “but I
don’t get involved with Mr. Burke’s personal life. If you want to talk to him,
call him yourself and he’ll tell you where he is.”

“Yvette,
I know it’s hard to understand, but this is important, and I don’t want to
intrude, but I have to talk to him in person. It’s a…it’s a girl thing,” she
finished lamely, kicking herself for saying it.
Jesus, Suze, who’s the
stalker now?

But
whatever she’d said had worked on Yvette, or at least made her decide that the
potential trouble she could be in with Dylan was likely less than the hassle of
dealing with Suzanne any longer. She confirmed what Suzanne guessed, that Dylan
was at the mountain house. She thought some band members who did not have
families to return home to might still be there as well, but beyond that she
wasn’t sure. It was good enough for Suzanne.

She
got to Gatlinburg by four a.m. She checked in to a hotel to sleep for a few
hours, but found that—whether from the caffeine or adrenaline—her body would
not stay on the bed. She paced fruitlessly around the room for a few minutes
before getting back in her car and driving up the long curvy roads to the
cabin.

For
the last hundred yards of the driveway, she drove slowly with her lights off,
not wanting to wake anyone on the front side of the house. She parked far away
and scaled a good bit of the walk to the house on foot. When she got to the
cabin, only a single light shone through the window from the kitchen. Through
the window on the side of the house, she could see that the coffeepot was on,
and this told her exactly where she’d find him.

She
tiptoed to the deck, where the pre-dawn morning air was chilly and moist. The
clouds that had hugged this part of the mountain all night were just beginning
to evaporate into the gray light of morning, which made the whole world look
like a black and white film. Fall was almost here, she realized. She wished she
had thought to bring a sweater. If she had thought much at all, though, she
probably would have come to her senses and would not be here. All she could do
now was see it through.

Despite
the poor visibility, she knew exactly where to find Dylan. He was out on the
furthest deck, where they’d shared a cup of coffee months before. His back was
to the house, and he did not move as she approached. She walked softly, not
wanting to startle him. She couldn’t tell whether he were looking out at the
mountains or even asleep. As she got closer, she saw that he wore a dark knit
cap and a hooded sweatshirt.

“You’re
up early,” he said, not turning around. The mountains beyond him hulked like
dark purple shadows as the sky surrounding them became a soft bluish pink.

“I’m
up late,” she said. “I drove all night.”

“Yeah?”
he said, his tone unreadable.

“Yes.”
She tried to sound sure of herself. She was anything but.

He
hesitated, and then said tentatively, “William okay with you doing that on your
own?”

She
was surprised to hear him come from this angle, until it occurred to her he had
no reason to know that she and William weren’t still dating. “William doesn’t
get a vote.”

“Oh,”
he said softly. She still couldn’t read him.