Page 136 of Free Heart
I let him.
The song is clearly set to repeat because it starts over yet again.
“I decided to try to drown their screams out, so I listened to the iPod Nano. It mostly worked. It was chock full of Christian rock songs, butthissong was on the first .mp3 file. I heard it first. I think it was her way of apologizing. She’d wanted toconnect with me, but couldn’t get through. She thought I’d be better off with another family.” He tilts his head, listening some more. “Jesus is great and all, but I don’t really want to listen to rock music about him, so I started listening to this song on repeat when the babies cried.”
“It’s emotional,” I murmur. “It always makes me feel sad.”
“Yeah.”
I wait a few more minutes to ask the next question, and the song loops. “Why today? Why for this car trip?”
Dan sighs, and he plucks at his sweater before answering. “When I was laid up in bed, the memories came in. I’ve talked to you some about it.”
“Yeah.”
“I remember my grandfather hitting her, and I remembered one night when she came into my room and got into bed with me. She was still crying, but she curled up around me like she wanted to keep me safe.”
“You didn’t tell me about that.”
“No,” he agrees, quietly. It’s like the air has gone out of the car.
“This song. It makes you think of that memory?”
“I think she didn’t know what else to do. She gave me up to protect me.”
“To save your life.”
Dan leans his head back and closes his eyes. “But no one saved hers.”
The song lifts and falls in the car again and again. We pull into the graveyard, and the gravel rattles beneath the tires.
He opens his eyes and shuts the song off.
*
Dan
The cemetery airis still. I want the wind to blow, to wash over us and whip away the heavy emotions that I don’t want to feel. I stare at the granite rock. It has her name on it.
Starla Marie McBride
1980 – 2007
Beloved Daughter
“She had a beautiful name,” Sejin says. His hands are in his pockets, and his expression is grim.
Beside her grave is another.
Ann Marie McBride
1958 – 1986
Beloved Wife
And another.
Marvin Ellsworth McBride
