“Precious memories,” agreed Grey. “Right, time to get my girls home.”
Within minutes of leaving the farmhouse, both Jesse and Melody were sound asleep in their car seats. The roads were quiet and, as they drove back to the beach house, Jake and Lori kept their eyes peeled for fireworks. Both of them agreed it had been a perfect day and one of Maddy’s best parties.
“She’s already planning for New Year’s,” revealed Lori with a smile. “They’re planning on being back up in New York and she wants us all there.”
“Lord help us!” laughed Jake as he turned the truck onto E Lake Drive. “That girl takes this party planning seriously.”
“She certainly does,” agreed Lori giggling. “And, like your tours, they’re always a success.”
“True,” conceded Jake.
When they reached the house, Jake carried the two sleeping children down the hallway to their bedrooms. Leaving Lori to get them into bed, he went back out to the truck to fetch his guitars. On a whim, Jake left his acoustic guitar case in the sunroom before taking the rest of his gear down to the basement. Spying Melody’s half-sized guitar on its stand, he smiled, proud of how well she was progressing with her lessons.
As he climbed back up the stairs from the basement, he remembered that his phone had buzzed earlier. When he hauled it out of his jeans pocket, he saw he had a missed call and a message from Rich’s sister. He opened the message. Her words stared up at him from the brightly lit screen, “Police called me from Gatlinburg. Rich’s car has been found. No sign of him. On my way up there. I’m worried. Will call when I know more. Maria.”
Stumbling up the last couple of steps, Jake wandered through to the sunroom, numb to what he’d just read. Missing? Rich? It didn’t make sense.
“You ok?” asked Lori softly from behind him.
“Yeah. No. Fuck, I don’t know.”
“Jake?”
“Rich is missing,” said Jake, wincing as he said the words out loud.
“Missing?”
He nodded, “Maria messaged me a couple of hours ago. The police in Gatlinburg have found his car but there’s no sign of him. She’s on her way up there.”
“Gatlinburg?” echoed Lori, looking confused. “What’s he doing in the Smoky Mountains?”
“Ending the pain,” replied Jake, his voice barely more than a whisper.
Without another word, he walked across the room, slid open the patio doors and stepped out into the darkness.
Goosebumps prickled on Lori’s skin as she stared after her distraught husband. Sensing he needed his own space, she let him go but her heart was screaming at her to go after him. In an effort to keep busy for a few minutes, she wandered through to the kitchen, cleared out the cool box that she’d brought back from the BBQ, wiped down the countertops then fetched two beers from the refrigerator. Her mind had rehearsed what she was going to attempt to say to Jake to console him as she had straightened up the kitchen but, as she wandered back through to the sunroom, her stomach lurched. Chills rattled through her as she recalled Rich’s words before he’d left Melody’s birthday party. Had he hugged her and held her a little longer than usual when he’d said to her to take care of Jake? Reflecting on it, he had.
A cool breeze was blowing in off the ocean as she carefully made her way across the soft sand to where she could see Jake sitting. He had his knees pulled up and his forehead resting on them, his hair falling loosely over his face.
“Hey, rock star,” she said softly as she laid her hand on his shoulder. “Mind if I join you?”
He looked up and smiled, not his usual Power smile but a sad wistful smile.
“Why are you assuming the worst here?” asked Lori as she sat beside him. “He might have gone into the mountains on a hike. Maybe he’s planned to be gone for a few days.”
With a sigh, Jake reached out and put his arm around his wife’s slender shoulders. “I hope I’m wrong,” he said quietly. There was silence between them for a few minutes as they both gazed out at the ocean, watching the gentle waves roll in then glide out into the moonlight.
“When we were on our way between Nashville and Raleigh, we passed a signpost for Gatlinburg. Rich told me a story about going camping there as a kid with his dad and his uncle. He told me about a view from near the top of a mountain that looked out into a valley. The only way to see the valley was to climb the mountain, follow a ledge round and only then could you see it.”
“That still doesn’t mean he’s gone and done something stupid.”
“Things have been getting to him. We suspect he’d been doing drugs on the last leg of the tour. On our days off, he’d stay in his bunk and drink. I tried talking to him. Tried using some of the techniques Jethro helped me with. Jethro tried talking to him too. We all did. He was in a really dark place. Still blaming himself for Gary’s death. Blaming himself for screwing things up with Linsey. I thought I’d maybe got through to him. The last week or so he seemed more like his old self but, as he told me the story about that hidden valley, he said that was where he wanted to die. Said he wanted his last view of this fucked up world to be watching the sun set from that ledge.”
Tears were running down Lori’s cheeks as she listened to her husband’s words. When she looked up, his cheeks were wet too.
“I’ve just called Maria and told her what I’ve just told you. She’s still a few hours away
