Grace said, “You know what always bothered me?”

He did not reply.

“Your running away. It doesn’t happen very much – a rock star just giving up like that. There are rumors about Elvis or Jim Morrison, but that’s because they’re dead. There was that movie, Eddie and the Cruisers, but that was a movie. In reality, well, like I said before, the Who didn’t run away after Cincinnati. The Stones didn’t after Altamont Speedway. So why, Jimmy? Why did you run?”

He kept his head low.

“I know about the Allaw connection. It’s just a matter of time before someone puts it together.”

She waited. He dropped his hands away from his face and rubbed them together. He looked toward the security guard. Grace almost took a step back, but she held her ground.

“Do you know why rock concerts used to always start so late?” Jimmy asked.

The question threw her. “What?”

“I said…”

“I heard what you said. No, I don’t know why.”

“It’s because we’re so wasted – drunk, stoned, whatever – that our handlers need time to get us sobered up enough to perform.”

“Your point being?”

“That night I nearly passed out from cocaine and alcohol.” His gaze drifted off then, his eyes red. “That’s why there was such a long delay. That was why the crowd got so impatient. If I had been sober, if I had taken the stage on time…” He let his voice drift off with a “who knows” shrug.

She didn’t want excuses anymore. “Tell me about Allaw.”

“I can’t believe it.” He shook his head. “John Lawson is your husband? How the hell did that happen?”

She didn’t have an answer. She wondered if she ever would. The heart, she knew, was strange terrain. Could that have been part of the initial attraction, something subconscious, a knowing that they had both survived that terrible night? She flashed back to meeting Jack on that beach. Had it been fate, preordained – or planned? Did Jack want to meet the woman who had come to embody the Boston Massacre?

“Was my husband at the concert that night?” she asked.

“What, you don’t know?”

“We can play this two ways, Jimmy. One, I can pretend I know everything and just want confirmation. But I don’t. I may never know the truth, if you don’t tell me. You may be able to keep your secret. But I’ll keep looking. So will Carl Vespa and the Garrisons and the Reeds and the Weiders.”

He looked up, his face so like a child’s.

“But two – and I think this is more important – you can’t live with yourself anymore. You came to my house needing absolution. You know it’s time.”

He lowered his head. Grace heard the sobs. They wracked his body. Grace did not say a word. She did not put a hand on his shoulder. The security guard glanced over. The receptionist looked up from her magazine. But that was all. This was a hospital. Adults weeping were hardly foreign in this environment. They both looked away. A minute later Jimmy’s sobs started to quiet. His shoulders no longer shook.

“We met at a gig in Manchester,” Jimmy said, wiping his nose with his sleeve. “I was with a group called Still Night. There were four bands on the roster. One of them was Allaw. That’s how I met your husband. We hung out backstage, getting stoned. He was charming and all, but you have to understand. For me the music was everything. I wanted to make Born to Run, you know. I wanted to change the landscape of music. I ate, slept, dreamed, shat music. Lawson didn’t take it too seriously. The band was fun, that’s all. They had some decent songs, but the vocals and arrangement were totally amateur. Lawson didn’t have any grand illusions about making it big or anything.”

The security guard was whistling again. The receptionist had her nose back in the magazine. A car drove up to the entrance. The guard headed outside and pointed toward the ER.

“Allaw broke up a few months later, I think. So did Still Night. But Lawson and I stayed in touch. When I started up the Jimmy X Band, I almost thought of asking him to join.”

“Why didn’t you?”

“I didn’t think he was that good a musician.”

Jimmy stood so suddenly that he startled Grace. She took a step back. She kept her eyes on him, still searching to make eye contact, as if that alone could keep him in place.

“Yeah, your husband was at the concert that night. I got him five tickets in the front pit. He brought some of his old band members with him. He even brought a couple backstage.”

He stopped then. They stood there. He looked off and for a moment Grace feared that she was losing him.

“Do you remember who they were?” she asked.

“The old band members?”

“Yes.”

“Two girls. One had this bright red hair.”

Sheila Lambert. “Was the other girl Geri Duncan?”

“I never knew her name.”

“How about Shane Alworth? Was he there?”

“Was that the guy on keyboard?”

“Yes.”

“Not backstage. I only saw Lawson and the two girls.”

He shut his eyes.

“What happened, Jimmy?”

His face sagged and he suddenly looked older. “I was pretty wasted. I could hear the crowd. Twenty thousand strong. They would chant my name. They would clap. Anything to get the concert started. But I could barely move. My manager came in. I told him I’d need more time. He left. I was alone. And then Lawson and those two chicks came into the room.”

Jimmy blinked and looked at Grace. “Is there a cafeteria in this place?”

“It’s closed.”

“I could use a cup of coffee.”

“Tough.”

Jimmy started pacing.

Grace asked, “What happened after they came in the room?”

“I don’t know how they got backstage. I never gave them passes. But all of a sudden Lawson comes up to me and is all ‘hey how’s it going?’ I was happy to see him, I guess. But then, I don’t know, something went really wrong.”

“What?”

“Lawson. He went crazy. I don’t know, he must have been higher than I was. He started pushing me, making threats. He shouted that I was a thief.”

“A thief?”

Jimmy nodded. “It was all nonsense. He said…” He finally stayed still and met her eyes. “He said I stole his song.”

“What song?”

“ ‘Pale Ink.’ ”

Grace could not move. The tremor started moving down her left side. There was a flutter in her chest.

“Lawson and that other guy, Alworth, wrote this song for Allaw called ‘Invisible Ink.’ That was pretty much the only similarity between the songs. That part of the title. You know the lyrics to ‘Pale Ink,’ right?”

She nodded. She didn’t even try to speak.

“ ‘Invisible Ink’ had a similar theme, I guess. Both about how fragile memory can be. But that was it. I told John that. But he was just out of his mind. Whatever I said just pissed him off more. He kept pushing me. One of the girls, she had this really dark hair, was egging him on too. She started saying they’d break my legs or something. I called for help. Lawson punched me. You remember the reports that I was injured in the melee?”

She nodded again.

“I wasn’t. It was your husband. He hit my jaw, and then he jumped me. I tried to push him off. He started shouting how he was going to kill me. It was, I don’t know, the whole thing was surreal. He said he was going to cut me up.”

The flutter expanded and grew cold. Grace was holding her breath. This couldn’t be. Please, this just couldn’t be.

“By now it was just so out of hand, one of the girls, the redhead, told him to calm down. It’s not worth it, she said. She pleaded with him to forget it. But he wasn’t listening. He just smiled at me and then… then he took out a knife.”

Grace shook her head.

“He said he was going to stab me in the heart. You remember how I said I was stoned out of my mind? Well, that sobered me up. You want to sober someone up? Threaten to stick a knife in their chest.” He went quiet again.

“What did you do?”

Had she spoken? Grace wasn’t sure. The voice sounded like hers, but it seemed as though it’d come from someplace else, someplace tinny and distant.