A Song for the Road by Kathleen Basi (classic literature books txt) 📕

The small crowd applauded politely when she finished. More people were arriving. She should go, but now she was wound up. She’d never sleep until she bled off some energy. She embarked on a set of improvisations on simple folk tunes. “Shenandoah.” “Simple Gifts.” “Suwanee River.”

When she looked up again, the lounge was full. She saw Dicey, casual in a flowing sweater and sweats, sitting at the nearest table with a tumbler full of what looked like cranberry juice and a bowl of peanuts. She had her phone trained on the piano. Keep going, she gestured.

Miriam obeyed. The requests kept coming; she got sucked into a stint of 1980s pseudo-karaoke with a crowd of tipsy women on a girls’ weekend.

But after an hour and a half, her brain was shutting down. Dicey came up as she started stacking her music to put back in Blaise’s satchel. “Bedtime already, Lounge Lizard?”

“More than,” Miriam said, yawning. “I’m two hours past.”

“That is lame,” Dicey said. “You know that, don’t you?”

“Says the woman who slept half the day in the car.” But her mouth quirked. Dicey made her feel like she was with Talia again: the irrepressible spirit, the need to stay on her toes.

“I don’t suppose I could interest you in a regular gig?” asked the lounge manager, a trim woman in a blue suit.

“Sorry,” Miriam said. “One engagement only. I’m just passing through.”

“Too bad. Where ya headed?”

“Oh … just a road trip.”

Dicey peered at the woman’s name tag. “Athena. That’s great. Named after the goddess of wisdom.”

“And war,” Miriam added. Dicey frowned at her.

“The wisdom is knowing when not to make war,” said Athena. “What’s the reason for the road trip?”

It was too late at night for that conversation. Miriam said, “Who needs a reason?” at the same moment Dicey said, “She’s honoring her husband and teenagers who died.”

Miriam’s muscles locked up; Dicey’s eyes widened as she realized her error.

“Wow.” Athena shook her head. “Teenagers? That’s so sad. But at least you had them for a long time. My cousin miscarried at thirty-five weeks a while back. She was a real mess.”

Dead silence in the lounge. Miriam sucked in a slow, deep breath, focusing on the weight of the locket against her breastbone. Teo wouldn’t want her to lash out. No matter what kind of asshat thing was said to her.

She pasted on a smile. “I’m turning in,” she said, grabbing Blaise’s music satchel.

Dicey caught up with her in front of the elevator. She wrapped her arms around Miriam from behind. “I’m so sorry, Miriam.”

“Sorry about that woman being clueless and insensitive? Or sorry for presuming you had any right to tell my story for me?”

“Both,” Dicey said quietly.

Miriam sagged. She hadn’t realized just how starved she was for human contact. She could feel the younger woman’s embrace in her calves and her toes and the center of her brain. Lonely, her body cried out as they stood there, rocking. I’m so lonely.

“I don’t think she meant it like that,” Dicey whispered into her shoulder. “Most people are just too caught up in their own tragedies to realize when they’re making other people’s worse.”

Miriam stiffened and shook her off. “What do you know about tragedy?”

It was grossly unfair, perhaps even cruel. Nobody hitchhiked at thirty-two weeks pregnant, let alone slept outside with nothing but leaves to keep her warm, unless she had tragedy to spare. And Dicey had just as much reason to be angry at Athena’s tactlessness as Miriam did. Talking about miscarrying at thirty-five weeks, in front of a pregnant woman? Who did that?

But Miriam was too sore on her own behalf to sympathize much. She was sick of pretending she wasn’t angry and bitter, and Dicey was not her daughter. Not her responsibility.

Dicey took the verbal blow with her arms hung at her sides, but the brown eyes stared back with a quiet certainty beyond reproach. “Everybody’s got tragedies,” she said softly.

The elevator dinged, the doors whooshing open to the sound of Muzak, the pathetic approximation of music meant to offend no one, which therefore offended everyone.

Just as Miriam had offended Dicey. She ought to apologize, but her nerve endings reeled from the sudden loss of human contact. She could still feel the younger woman’s hug warming her back. She craved that touch more than she wanted to admit. It was hard not to be charmed by this girl who had Talia’s vibrance, Talia’s zest for life, with none of the baggage.

“No heart,” Talia had accused her.

Miriam shuddered. Had Talia thought about that fight in the last moments of her life? Regretted it?

How she longed to slip these new memories she was making with Dicey over her memory of Talia. To bury the misunderstanding that must now remain forever unresolved, and pretend she had never lost her daughter at all.

No. No! Why invest in this trip at all, if that was to be the outcome? She needed to put Dicey on a bus. Tomorrow morning, Miriam would refocus on the reason she’d embarked on this trip in the first place. Alone.

“Come on,” she said wearily. “Let’s just get some sleep.”

 15

Saturday, April 30

Cincinnati, Ohio

SHORTLY BEFORE NOON THE next day, Miriam found herself on a shaded metal swing, looking across the Ohio River at the south side of the Mason–Dixon line while Dicey bustled around her. Miriam still wasn’t sure how it had happened. She’d gone to sleep intending to put the pregnant woman on the first bus headed west this morning, with or without apologizing for last night. Preferably without.

But by the time she woke up, Dicey had the whole day laid out: the best time for a video shoot, where to put Miriam, how to set up the shot. Dicey was like a freight train when she got going. It didn’t even occur to Miriam to ask when they’d decided to start making videos.

Besides, her conscience seemed more verbal when well rested. Maybe by the time the afternoon bus left, she’d manage to apologize.

The crowds on the riverfront streamed