Page 71 of Songbird: Black Kite
Had I ever really been comfortable? Or had I just filled the house with groupies and fans and noise so that I didn’t have to think about how empty my life had been?
Suddenly, I found myself in desperate need of some sort of connection, something that I could claim as my own so that I didn’t feel like the last abandoned dog at the pound.
Grabbing a bottle of Maker’s Mark, I skipped the glass all together and headed for my study, needing to immerse myself in everything Wren one more time.
I hadn’t had a chance to look for any new letters lately; there was so much to do if we were going to pull off this concert this summer, and that didn’t even include all the other shit Mick kept coming up with for me to do. If I’d have known how much workI’dbe responsible for when I dreamed up my wholestart a labelidea, I might have reconsidered.
Sitting down at my desk, I pulled open the drawer and removed the stack of letters I’d been collecting for months now. Laying them out, I took a drink as I looked them over, admiring once again the delicate drawings she’d taken the time to decorate the envelopes with. Each feather was different, but looking at them, you could tell they were done by the same artist, even if she had improved every time a new letter arrived.
Starting with the first, I read the letters again, the words as familiar to me now as my own lyrics, Wren’s honesty and openness so refreshing and comforting.
By the time I’d gotten to the longest letter, the one she’d sent the year after she’d graduated, I was well on my way to drunk. This was the letter I had read the most often, not just because it was the longest one, but because it was the one that felt the most raw. That letter was filled with bitterness and resentment and a whole lot of rage.
That was probably why I kept coming back to that one; those emotions most closely resembled my own most days. Filled with angst that after everything I’d done, everything I worked for and sweat for and fuckin’ bled for...I was still here, basically starting all over again.
It might have been the booze, or it might have been the loneliness, but for whatever reason I did something that I’d never done before. Something I’d promised myself that I’d never do.
But I was a weak man, and so it was that shortly after midnight, after half a bottle of whiskey and a whole lot of self-pity, I opened my laptop and I googled Wren.
Chapter forty-one
Hawk
Present
“Whatthefuckareyou doing?” Alex asked, startling me as I crouched on the attic floor, buried up to my elbows in a box of letters. When I jerked up at the sound of his voice, I lost my balance and tumbled backward, spilling the box all over the floor.
“Motherfucker,” I growled, righting myself as fast as I could and starting to dig through the letters again. “I had a fuckin’ system, man.”
“A system for what, psychosis?”
“No, you dick. The letters. A system for the letters.” I didn’t even look at him as I began to sift through the pile, sorting out the envelopes I had already seen and placing them back in the now empty box.
“You know, when Harry called and said she was worried about you, I figured there was no way it could be as bad as she’d made it seem.” I could hear his sigh of disappointment, but still didn’t bother to look at him. “I was wrong; it’s worse.”
“Either help me out or fuck off,” I said distractedly, working to keep up a rapid pace.
I needed to find her next letter.
The moment I’d entered her full name into the search bar last night, followed by the city I’d pulled off the postage stamp from one of her envelopes, the internet had more than provided. Unfortunately, it hadn’t provided me with anything useful.
Almost instantly, my screen had been flooded with results, none of which appeared to be of a woman who, by my estimation, would be in her mid thirties by now.
It had taken a little digging—internet sleuthing was not in my skill set—but eventually I’d managed to find a photo, posted on someone else’s Instagram, of a pretty blonde woman with a wide smile and tired eyes.
It was the eyes that had fucked with my head, though.
Because staring back at me from the other side of my computer screen were eyes that I was all too familiar with.
The eyes that I kept seeing in my fuckin’ dreams.
My heart had raced as I’d stared at her, my fevered mind trying to fill in some of the blanks from that night that had haunted me for years. The more I tried, the more my brain had ached, completely unwilling to give up its secrets, the ones from that night that it still desperately held on to.
Not wanting to give up, I dug around in that account for a while, finding only the one photo of her, the woman I thought was Wren, before giving up and taking my drunk ass to bed.
If Wren Blackburn had an online presence, I sure as hell wasn’t finding it.
By the time I’d woken up the next morning, my sleep once again plagued by pretty eyes and a sense of loss, I was determined to actually track her down. There was only one phone number listed in Grand Rapids, an M. Blackburn with no matching address. When I’d called, I was told by a very angry woman that there was no one there by the name of Wren and then promptly hung up on.
