Page 94 of Night Songs

To cope with the panic, she trained me to imagine a safe place. And when this didn’t work, to imagine Micah’s comforting presence in these new panic-inducing situations.

But while Micah had once been a source of comfort and stability, now it was more complicated. When he was around, I pretended everything was fine, clenching my teeth the entire time. It took so much energy thatI would be exhausted afterward and have to make an excuse to escape and rest.

On Christmas Eve, Hess prepared the full Southern feast that I usually looked forward to every year. I moved the food around and took a few bites to make her happy, but something about the glossy richness of the food, like a staged photo from an old-fashioned cookbook, made me want to gag. It was a quieter meal without the flurry of grandchildren and a wine-drunk Phoebe making everyone laugh, but it wasn’t stiff. I participated well enough, and I got Micah on a glassblowing tangent that lasted a good twenty minutes, eating up most of the time.

Late that night, after they had both gone to bed, I snuck downstairs with the hope of spending some time in the basement where I did my research. But I found Hess sitting on the couch in the dark, the only illumination the warm light of the Christmas tree.

“Honey, come sit with me for a minute,” she said, unsurprised.

I obeyed and snuggled under a blanket next to her.

“You know, your mother hardly ever slept. She said she didn’t like to waste the time.”

I didn’t know where this was going. “I usually sleep fine, I just couldn’t tonight. Maybe it was all the wine.” I smiled playfully at her, but she didn’t return it.

“I’m going to tell you something I should have told you a long time ago.” Hess took a deep breath and placed her hands in her lap.

“Okay.” I was on edge now, but I also couldn’t wait to hear what she would say.

“When your mother and I first met, she told me that the women in her family were cursed to die at 33. I didn’t think she really believed it then. Your mother was always making up stories for her songs, so I thought it was just something from her imagination. I didn’t realize it was real for her until years later.”

The wording “real for her” wasn’t lost on me. “Okay,” I said again, pretending to be bewildered.

Hess looked up at the ceiling and then back at me. “During her last tour in 1982, a few months before her death, she withdrew into herself, stopped sleeping or eating, started recording these secret songs. One night she collapsed onstage, and we had to cancel the rest of the tour. She told me it was the curse, and of course I told her it wasn’t real. I wasn’t around when she was experimenting with drugs, but Martha was and… she said it seemed like she was using again.”

Secret songs?I hadn’t come across anything about secret unreleased songs.

“About a week before she died, I went out to run errands for your mother, and when I came back, you were both gone. When I tracked you down at my cabin a day later, it was empty. Then I heard your little voice coming from the trunk in the living room. It was locked, and the key was missing. I had to drive to my nearest neighbor to get bolt cutters to slice through the metal padlock. When we lifted you out, you were so pale. You could barely stay awake. At the hospital they said you were severely dehydrated and in shock. You were too scared to speak for fear that a monster would hear you. It took you a while to tell us what had happened, and even then, it was hard to know what was real.” She took a deep breath. “I thought someone had come and kidnapped Lou. Stolen her car. So I filed a missing person’s report with the police.”

I saw the room lined in wood, my mother’s terrified face, the dark space of the trunk.

“She showed up at the cabin a week later looking terrible and acting strange. She wouldn’t tell me where she’d been. I was furious with her but I also wanted to get her help. She refused. We decided it was best if she left you with me while she went out to California to shoot her movie.” She knitted her brow. “She was trying to do what was right.”

She turned away and quieted. “Two days later, I got the call from the police in Santa Barbara about the crash.” She paused. “I will always regret not being there for her when she needed me.”

I took this in. The memory from the cabin wasreal, and my mother really had believed in the curse. I wasn’t insane.

It also meant that Hess had lied to me years ago. “So all this time, you knew what had happened in the cabin—when I asked you about it after Martha’s funeral, you acted like you had no idea, but you knew.”

Hess grimaced. “I know. I’m sorry. You had such a small fragment that I thought it was better not to dredge it up. What good could come from you reliving such a terrible time?”

“But you don’t get to make that decision for me. We’ve talked about this.”

“I was trying to protect you—”

“Well, it backfired. A few weeks ago, I remembered what happened at the cabin when she took me there. She warned me about the curse.”

Hess’s face went stricken. “What do you remember?”

I recounted it for her, and as Hess listened, her face remained grave. “That must have been terrifying.”

“It might have been less terrifying if you’d been honest with me.”

Hess closed her eyes, and I knew she was trying not to cry.

“Were you telling the truth when you said you didn’t know her real name?” I asked accusingly.

“Yes, I promise.”