Free A Shred of Truth by Eric Wilson Page A

smoke?” He tapped his pack on his wrist, extended it my direction.
    “Been a year and a half. Things’ll kill you.”
    He put the pack back, tugged on his goatee. “You know, you’re bigger than your brother.”
    “Just looks that way.”
    “Johnny Ray’s in there and Sammie too. Get on in.”
    “I’ll do that.”
    “Door’s unlocked.”
    “Hey.” I ordered my fists to loosen. “No hard feelings?”
    He lit another cigarette and studied the glowing tip. “You talk to your brother for me.” Then he turned and propped both elbows on the railing, hiding his face from me.

    In the darkened hallway, the walls glistened with autographed photos and certified gold albums. I stood at the thick glass, watching my brother belt out the chorus to his new song. He stopped once to discuss vocal arrangements with the producer in the booth, then closed his eyes and faced the suspended mike again.
    Even through the hall speaker, his intensity reached my ears:
    It’s true you left me years ago, travelin’ long dark roads.
But in my heart we’re not apart, I’ve been livin’ with your ghost.
Your love, it’s always been here, faithful to the end.
In these eyes there’s no surprise, because an angel’s what you’ve been
.
    I’d never known him to use religious symbols in his lyrics before, and I wondered what this new direction indicated. As he repeated the chorus, the words seemed prescient, strangely fitting.
    But in my heart we’re not apart, I’ve been livin’ with your ghost …
    For most of my life, I’d pushed my mother’s absence to the back corners of my mind. There was no replacing the loss of a parent. Sure, the past year had reconnected me to her in ways I never imagined, yet the unveiling of her secrets also had led to hard truths about my biological father, the abuse I suffered as an adolescent, even the bond I shared with my brother.
    Johnny seemed to be processing similar things through his music.
    A hand on my shoulder snapped me back to the present. I turned to find Samantha Rosewood, slender and frail looking in the corridor’s shadows.
    “Sammie. Didn’t hear you come in.”
    Accentuated by honey-colored hair, her hazel eyes trailed up to mine.
    “You okay?” I asked. “What’s going on?”
    Her gaze slid off to my brother in the studio. “Doesn’t he sound good? Try as they might, they just can’t manufacture that kind of conviction.”
    “Where’ve you been? You haven’t answered my calls.”
    She faced the glass.
    “Hey,” I urged. “Did you get my messages? Is something wrong?”
    “It’s Miss Eloise,” she said.
    Miss Eloise: Sammie’s lone remaining grandparent, a gentle woman whose medical issues had been an increasing cause for concern.
    “Is she …” My breath caught in my throat.
    “She passed during the night.”
    “Sammie, I’m sorry. Have you told Johnny Ray?”
    Sammie moved her head up and down. “The funeral-home director left this afternoon, and I went over to the shop. Johnny was so sweet, even offering to sing at the memorial.”
    “He’s a good man.”
    “He told me you were off on another of your escapades.”
    “Escapades? Actually I was …”
    “You were what?”
    “Never mind.”
    She scanned my face. “What is it?”
    I shook my head. I knew it was her nature to try to take on my burdens, and that was something she didn’t need at the moment.
    “Did she go in her sleep?” I inquired.
    “Peacefully, yes, thank the Lord.”
    “I’m sorry.”
    “It wasn’t totally unexpected.”
    “Still.”
    Never one to wallow in emotion, Sammie laid a hand to her heart, and her eyes bored into me with a brief unguarded look. “Thank you.”
    She was alone, I realized. On her own. After she’d lost her parents to health problems a few years back, she used her trust fund to further her education—as stipulated by her father—and to volunteer regularly in the community. On a more personal level, she shared her parents’ sprawling Tyne