“Who are you?” I finally asked.
She looked completely taken aback by the question. As if no one had ever asked her that before.
I was losing it.
“Did you want that or not?” she asked, her eyes dropping to the record again. She was shifting from foot to foot as if it was hard for her to stand still, impatient. Ready for me to be gone. She confirmed it by adding on, “I’m about to close up.”
It was noon on a Monday. Since when did the music store close at noon on a weekday? When school let out for the day, the kids would be streaming in here for lessons. Eventually, the college kids escaping their dorms would come hang out, trying to be hip while they argued music and instruments, and Elana would laugh at them like some royal princess in a salon in Paris in the twenties.
Then I remembered Elana wasn’t there anymore. Maybe they didn’t have anyone to teach the lessons either. Maybe this woman, with her honey-colored eyes, didn’t even know how to play an instrument. The hints of Elana in her may not have rubbed off instaves and clefs and keys. Still, she had enough of Elana’s Spanish heritage for it to hit me that she must be Elana’s granddaughter. The one who’d spent weeks of her summers here while I’d been away at camp. The one Elana calledCariorCariño. The one I’d never met and, yet, been more jealous of than anyone else in my life.
“Are youCari?” I found my voice finally.
She stilled, the restless energy flowing through her all but leaving her body. Her squint deepened as if trying to figure out why I looked familiar, and I fought the urge to pull my sunglasses back on.Wearing them indoors was even more ludicrous than wearing them in the rain.
After staring for so long I thought she’d figured it out, she cast her eyes to the ground and moved behind the counter as if putting the old wooden surface between us would somehow block out the words I’d thrown at her.
“Only my grandmother called me that,” she said, emotion filling her voice, and I immediately felt like a jerk. Elana was gone, and I’d just shoved it in her face.
“My name’s…” My voice disappeared as I realized not only did I not want to say my name to this person if she hadn’t yet identified me, but that Elana wouldn’t have left the box to me under anything but the name I’d first been introduced to her as.My given?very Irish—name from a mother who spoke every form of Gaelic out there. Elana had still called me it even after I’d asked her to stop. Not only had she refused, but she’d given me a two-hour lecture on heritage and family.
The woman in front of me smiled. It was a small smile, as if she wasn’t used to giving her full one, because I had a sense that her full one would have lifted her cheeks right up into her eyes and made them shine with glitter and happy dust. Even so, it was still a smile, and it pulled me right back out of memories of Elana to the present.
“You forget your name?” she asked, and then she put her hand in front of her grin as if she was embarrassed she’d made a joke.
I shook my head, put the record down on the worn wooden countertop, and stuck out my hand. “I’m Cormac.”
Her eyes widened slightly. “Oh.”
She took my hand, and the moment our skin touched, I swear to God, a portal to another world opened somewhere behind her. It sucked me right in with an energy that only a transdimensional corridor or a black hole could create.
I didn’t give a damn anymore about a box from Elana, or my sister who was ready to burst, or my parents whohad long ago forgotten the things that were important to me. The only thing I cared about was followingCariinto that black void and hoping I never came back.
Tristan
HOLDING OUT FOR A HERO
“Somewhere after midnight in my wildest fantasies,
Somewhere just beyond my reach,
There's someone reaching back for me.”
Performed byElise Lieberth
Written by Pitchford / Steinman
Cormac was holding my hand ina way that said he didn’t want to let go, and that startled me almost as much as the energy zinging its way through my fingertips. It made me pull my hand back and wipe it again on the rag I’d brought down with me from the studio, frustrated at the interruption, and the lack of light, and the fact that I hadto get back to thehouse before we were late for our appointment this afternoon.
The man in front of me looked familiar as if I should have known him. As if I’d met him in another lifetime. But I could have sworn Grams had told me I hadn’t met him when she’d started a pile for “Cormac”after the heart attack had scared her into getting her things in order. She’d said his name with that mischievous grin she wore when she was keeping a secret she couldn’t wait for you to figure out. Her twinkling eyes stabbed at my heart from the memory.
It wasn’t fair.
I shouldn’t have had to lose her too.
“Right. Cormac,” I said. “I’d almost given up on you. I left a message with your parents several weeks ago.”
He nodded. “I’ve been… out of town, and when I got back, it was at the bottom of a pile of messages they left.”
