Page 65 of You Can Make Me
I looked to Walter and back to Dane.
“I can’t guarantee he won’t say anything, but I know he wouldn’t intentionally hurt you.”
“I know. You wouldn’t be with him if he was a hurtful person.”
I’d only spent a few days with Dane, but we must have trauma bonded for him to put so much trust in me. There was something celestial about him, supernatural kinda. Maybe it was the carnival, maybe it was just the fact that he was older than me but still appeared to be a young man. He’d lived through such a monumental time, and as a result, held so much knowledge of the past in his mind. He was a history book come to life, the personification of a time that happened before I was born, and yet to him, it was a few months ago. He wasn’t jaded by age. His memories weren’t tarnished by time.
All of a sudden, Cooper’s playing became more insistent, and his humming turned into full-throated singing. The song, Billy Joel’s “You Can Make Me Free,” wasn’t one of his biggest hits, but the words, the sentiment…a better song couldn’t have been written for the two of us.
Cooper’s singing voice wasn’t showy or fancy, but it was smooth and honest. He played and sang as if he were alone somewhere, in his own world. I was grateful that this wasn’t yet another thing he would struggle with after his injuries. He was so brave. He had no idea.
I didn’t think I could love him any more, but the depths of his strength continued to amaze me. He revealed more of himself every damn day. I worried my old man heart couldn’t take much more. As he sang, I knew. We had the kind of love people wrote songs about. This extraordinary man, so handsome, so strong, had made me laugh, cry, and fall deeper than I’d ever thought possible. He’d given me a new lease on life, and my heart was going to have to be strong enough to take it.
When he finished, we all clapped, but Cooper didn’t turn to face us.
“Baby?”
He still didn’t move.
Dane sat beside him and noodled on the keys. “Billy Joel opened for us when we played in New York. Must have been…seventy-four? ‘Piano Man’ was hot, and he didn’t like it much, having to open for a bunch of hippies from California. I did always like that tune ‘New York State of Mind.’”
I held my breath as Cooper slowly turned his head to stare at Dane.
Dane grinned and started to play the aforementioned song.
“That’s one way to do it,” Walter muttered. “Want another beer?”
Sixteen
Cooper
I prided myself on being able to spot liars and kooks as a reporter. Not that they weren’t worth interviewing, but you had to go into a conversation with an unreliable narrator with a certain finesse. I knew to take care with the mentally ill and their families, how to tell their stories with dignity and respect.
When I interviewed Dee Dee Miller, just hours before my assault, I’d had a sneaking suspicion that there was far more to his story than I’d had time to dive into, but I hadn’t gotten the sense that he was suffering from any sort of mental illness. Before we’d even finished, in my mind, I was working out ways to get Gene to arrange for more face time with him.
“Nineteen seventy-four?”
“Mmm, yeah. I think. It was the tour for Tess’s fourth album. I played double duty on that tour; an opening set, then the local support acts would play, and then I played in her band. It was a lot, but I loved the challenge.” He shrugged. “You can look it up.Walter taught me how to swim through the internet, you know, on his fancy typewriter.”
Dee Dee grinned at me, and the twinkle in his eye dared me to ask the question.
“You’re not Dane Donovan’s son, are you?”
“It depends,” he said, playing the tune to a song I knew very well, “Our House” by Crosby, Stills, and Nash, and he seemed intimately acquainted with it. “Are you asking as Cooper, the man who’s seeing my husband’s best friend, or the reporter, Cooper Harris?”
“I don’t know if the reporter still exists.” My voice broke as I spoke. “If you’re asking whether I will keep what you tell me confidential, the answer is yes.”
“Good, because I have a lot of things to tell you, things you need to hear for your own good. But there are people I need to protect. I have your word that you won’t speak of what we discuss this night outside of our circle?”
Black spots appeared in my vision. I felt as if the ground had just fallen away, and I was a second from plunging into the abyss. “I swear.”
“Good. Hey, Walt? Are the suits dry?”
“Yeah, babe. You guys want to swim?”
My heart dropped into my stomach, and I looked to Denny in alarm.
He gave me a sad smile. “Sure. We’d love to.”
