Belmont woke up in a cold sweat.
He was immediately inundated by the roar of Sage’s train pulling away, so it took him a moment to remember where he’d fallen asleep. It wasn’t the first time in his life that had happened. The end of high school had brought inescapable change. There was nothing he loathed more than having his routine taken away, which was why the road trip had been so hard at the outset. Before Sage.
An ache spearing into his throat, Belmont sat up, swiping the perspiration from his upper lip. He’d seen the inside of many strange motel rooms while trying to adjust at eighteen. What now? Where do I belong? Where have I ever belonged? Questions that had been easy to drown out by hiding behind a screen of chemicals. The people who partook of the same medication hadn’t seemed to belong anywhere, either. They were spooks that only came out at night, prowling along the street with one purpose. Forgetting. Stopping the flight of doubt from taxiing down the runways of their brains.
Yes, a lot of mornings had started with piecing together the night before in those days. Until one morning, when he’d woken to the world pitching and rocking beneath him. Not in a bad way. It had been the ocean waves beneath the boat where he’d passed out. Something about the constant rhythm had appealed to him. It was the never-ending routine he was lacking. Sure, the tide might change, but it always resumed, and the waves never stopped. There was nothing more constant than the moon, and it compelled the water to dance at certain times of the day. That surety made him feel less adrift.
Forgoing college—a move that surprised no one—Belmont had gotten a job on a local fishing charter in San Diego, but was quickly lured away by marine salvage. Retrieving long-forgotten valuables from the ocean floor had given him a sense of purpose. Finding things that were lost, the way he’d been lost in the ground.
That boat waited for him now, moored to a harbor dock in San Diego, which he’d paid for through the beginning of January. His crew was taking on side jobs until he returned. They depended on him, though. He’d been on the verge of turning Clarkson Salvage into a universally respected name, but…that life seemed so far removed from the present. From now. When he stood on the deck, it was Sage he thought about. It was Sage’s happiness he wanted to provide.
Sage.
Belmont shook off the blackness that winked in front of his eyes and dove on Sage’s scrapbook, finally remembering why he’d woken with a sense of urgency. A hum was building in the back of his mind, getting louder and louder, compelling him to open the book. So he did.
And his heart tried to rip straight out of his chest. Everything Sage touched turned to magic, didn’t it? Such detail. Her fingers had been right there, smoothing lace swatches and gluing sleek feathers. Even the way she cut pictures out of magazines was unique, with little zigzag patterns in the corners or fringe trimmed into the bottom. Every page had a different theme, all designed around a church, although the church wasn’t pictured, merely written in her artistic hand. He could imagine her searching church interiors on the Internet and planning a wedding to bring them to life. Some of the locations were in Cincinnati, Iowa, and New Mexico, places they’d stopped during the road trip.
Belmont forced himself to continue turning the pages, even though he simply wanted to bury his face in the scrapbook and hunt for her scent. Anything to feel closer to her. But he kept going, some intuition spurring him on.
When he came to the final page, he knew why. Knew why her leaving behind the scrapbook had seemed odd, when she’d clearly planned every detail of her escape from him down to the T. The way she’d found the perfect train station, ten miles from a major hub, so he couldn’t track her. The way she’d waited until the last minute to drop the ax. It was entirely possible he was grasping at straws, but maybe leaving the scrapbook in the Suburban was her signal to him that she was in trouble. His fingers traced the small string of pearls she’d used to outline the magazine cutout of a wedding dress. Such attention was paid to every aspect of the page, reiterating how out of Sage’s character it was to be forgetful.
That was enough for Belmont to keep going, to keep scrutinizing.
Belmont started to go back to the beginning for a closer look, but the final page felt thicker than the others. It was stuck to another one. A prickle went up his neck as he carefully pried the pages apart, very conscious that his blunt, work-worn fingers could wreck the delicate handiwork. He finally got them separated and released a pent-up breath…but he quickly sucked the oxygen back in when the page was laid flat.
There was no mistaking the difference between this design and the others. It was…dark. Everything on the page was black and brown. Harsh. Even the handwriting where she’d written the name of the church was blunt and uneven, as if she’d written it in the pitch black. Had she? Had his Sage worked on this part of her book while they were sleeping?
A torn-up sound left Belmont, his fingertip shaking as he outlined the crude brown strip of muslin, a dead, pressed flower, the scrapes of a coal pencil that depicted the steeple of a church. First Baptist Church of Sibley. Sibley. Where was that? He thought of that hint of the South that occasionally slipped into Sage’s speech and gained his feet, going out to the Suburban long enough to retrieve his luggage, along with the laptop.
Damn, he’d spent so much time resenting the electronic device with its never-ending need for updates and charging, but he was grateful as hell to have it now. He’d watched Sage and Peggy and Aaron’s fingers fly around the keyboard often enough that he could use it effectively and he thanked God for that, too.
As soon as he got the laptop booted, he opened a search engine and typed in the name of the church. When the search returned not only a Louisiana address, but a picture of First Baptist, relief hit him like a two by four. It was an exact outline of the one Sage had drawn in the scrapbook.
Belmont didn’t bother checking out. He showered, dressed, and went to find Sage.
* * *
Oh boy. It would really stink to die on Christmas Day.
Not that there were any presents to open or cards to receive anyway. No popcorn to string or hot chocolate to stir over the stove. What was she really missing? If she were back in California, she would most likely be sleeping late, snuggling into her pillow. She never actually slept when sleeping late. The pleasure was derived from knowing she could. That she would wake up to a clean apartment and be able to pick that day’s attire from her dress collection. Not a huge collection, just about twelve. Her favorite had always been the light beige one with the pattern of bluebirds.
The memory of the soft material billowing around her in the San Diego breeze made the stiff, heavy coveralls she wore even more unbearable. There was no California sunshine down in the mine, only black, stagnant air and the cloying scent of gasoline and dust. She could feel it settling on her skin and caking, could feel the granules of dirt slipping beneath her safety mask and making themselves at home while they scraped her flesh raw.
Beneath her, the huge machine juddered and coughed, the buzz so loud, she wore earplugs to protect her hearing. Instead she listened to her back teeth jar against one another, heard the sweat beads forming in her hair, the coughs build in her throat. She was being forced to live inside her head when she wanted the exact opposite.
She’d trained yesterday from morning until nightfall and signed liability forms that were almost enough to make her throw up, but she’d done it all with the knowledge she’d have Christmas off. At the very least, she would have a small reprieve. A chance to wrap her mind around the risks she’d acknowledged and would be taking for two months.
But there had been no break. Augie hadn’t met his production quota during the week, which meant everyone had been brought in for a full nine to five, including Sage. Now she stared into the darkness, the shaking machine illuminated only by the light attached to her helmet and the rapidly dimming industrial one hanging from the overhead crossbar. Her arms burned. The muscles ached so badly, she wondered how she managed to operate the controls, to keep the giant, churning piece of metal steady as it broke through the earth.
During her childhood, her father had been less frail, but never robust. She couldn’t even imagine him attempting this job with his current health. And no wonder he was ailing. If the physical effort didn’t burn someone out, the atmosphere alone would do it. The longer she stayed down there, the harder it was to fill her lungs with anything but sulfur-tinged air.
When the rumbling started above Sage’s head, her hands almost slipped off the controls, but she managed to turn them off, close her eyes, and listen. A crash sent her heart slamming up against her rib cage. Oh God. What was that? And wasn’t it ridiculous that the relief on her muscles took precedent over her fear of the mine caving in? She attacked them with her thumbs, massaging in circles, and waited for the radio at her hip to crackle with life. The foreman checked on her once an hour to get a progress report, and while she’d lost track of time, she was about due—
“Alexander.”
She pressed the Talk button with a wince. “Yes,” she answered. “What was that noise?”
A dead line of static. “Had a small cave-in up here. We’re working on getting it clear.” Voices in the background. Urgent but not panicked. “Might take a couple hours, so hang tight.”
Hours.
Her hysterical laughter bounced off the interior of the cave, which only served to highlight how eerily still and quiet it was. How damp and biting the air became once the machine was at rest. God, it was so dark outside the immediate light. She wouldn’t cry. She would not cry. She’d walked into this mission without blinders on, knowing it was dangerous. The alternative was her father hurting himself or worse, and she couldn’t allow that to happen. No, this two months of hell, followed by a lifetime of caring for her parents, was the price she paid for escaping to California. Allowing Augie to sink his claws in while she slept late in the sunshine. A part of her even believed those five glorious years had been worth it. But that belief was already starting to waver in the stark, black silence of the cave.
She unzipped her coveralls and dug into the neckline for Belmont’s shirt, which she’d worn like a cloak of armor, the Clarkson Salvage logo directly over her heart. Pressing the fragrant material to her nose, she curled up on the seat of the great metal beast and dreamed of strong arms and ocean waves lapping the shore.
* * *
Once Belmont had reached Sibley, it had been easy enough to track down Sage’s house. But he hadn’t liked the reaction he’d gotten when he’d asked for the Alexander residence. Hadn’t liked it one bit. He’d stopped a woman as she came out of the grocery store, a cake propped on her hip. At first, she’d given him that look he’d always found confusing from women. As if he’d done something to please them before he’d even opened his mouth. There was…expectation there. Moreover, he didn’t like the feeling that gratified expression gave him. As if he were being unfaithful to Sage simply by being in the midst of it.
When Sage looked at him in the same way, though? He loved it. The first time they met at Peggy’s rehearsal dinner, she’d helped him cinch his tie. For just a brief second, she’d laid her hands on his lapels and his heart had gone wild, rebounding off his ribs and spine, lighting up parts of his brain that had always been dim. And when she’d stepped back and smiled the most beautiful, honest smile Belmont had ever seen…he’d simply had no choice but to live for her. To protect her with his every single breath. His heart had made the decision, his mind and body had approved, and her happiness had become a necessity. There was nothing simple about what Sage made him feel. But the importance of her took no effort to describe. And it never wavered. She was the most important.
So when the woman outside the grocery store appeared to find something distasteful about Sage’s very name, he’d gotten tense. He’d remained that way on the drive over, and now, as he pulled up outside the poor excuse for a home, his eye started to tick. His esophagus burned and his gut joined in. No. He couldn’t have the right address.
There was trash everywhere, strewn about the dead grass like a parade had passed through. The single tree in the front yard was dead and gnarled, hanging down over the house like a skeleton, waiting to pluck out the residents. Windows were broken, the paint was discolored. It was the farthest thing from worthy of Sage he could have gotten.
“Dear God, let me be in the wrong place,” he murmured.
Belmont climbed out of the car and strode up the walkway, cats doing figure eights around his heels, yowling up at him like they hadn’t eaten in a long time. Absently, he reached into his pocket and withdrew the blueberry muffin he’d grabbed at a gas station, the one time he’d stopped out of necessity for fuel. He let it drop from numb fingers to the ground, the cats setting upon it right away…but suddenly he could only picture a hungry Sage and the world flickered around him.
He knocked on the door, and before it even opened, he wanted to reach up, grip the door frame, and rip the entire place to the ground. Sage wasn’t inside. It was just something he could sense in his bones. A man and woman answered instead. One of the man’s arms was draped across the woman’s shoulders, the other using a crutch for support. There was no question in his mind the woman had given birth to Sage, but the quality of her life had been chiseled into the lines of her face, erasing her daughter’s best qualities. Life, optimism, magic.
They both reeked of alcohol and a new perspective moved in front of his vision like a pair of reading glasses. Sage never drank anything but juice, coffee, or tea. She never appeared judgmental over his siblings choosing to drown their boredom or kill time by tossing back beer or whiskey; she simply sat by with her hands folded in her lap, smiling with bright, interested eyes as if nothing was wrong.
Everything about the scene in front of him was wrong.
“There something you need, son?”
Pride hit him at being called son, so fast, before he could stop it. No man had ever called him that. He pushed aside the unwanted feeling with determination. “Where is Sage?”
The two exchanged a glance, both of them listing to the right a touch. “Haven’t seen you around here before,” the mother said. “Do you mind telling us who you are? How do you know our little girl?”
That description stung him like a mosquito, because Sage was a woman. He’d tasted her and held her, so he knew. He started to give his name, but broke off when he looked over their shoulders into the house. Red fireworks bloomed in his vision at the complete disaster of it, denial thickening his voice. “My name is Belmont. I’m your daughter’s…” Sweat began to bead on his brow under their close attention. “I’m your daughter’s.”
A long silence passed.
“Oh, I see,” said the woman softly, pressing a hand to her chest. “Well, I’m Bernadette—Bernie for short—and this here is Thomas.”
Belmont managed a nod. “Was she here? Is she all right?”
“Yes,” Thomas said, speaking up for the first time. Out of nowhere, misery twisted the man’s expression, his body going slack against Bernadette. “No. She’s not really all right.”
The porch seemed to buckle under Belmont’s legs so fast, he had to grab the doorjamb for support, but the wood broke off into his hand, leaving him nothing. All he could do was stare at the splintered remains jabbing into the center of his palm.
He looked up in astonishment as the woman comforted her husband, crooning to him in his ear as the couple swayed back and forth. Somewhere their daughter was not really all right, and they were too wrapped up in each other and their haze of drunkenness to care.
Not really all right. Not really all right.
Belmont stepped into the house, his eyes tearing up at the smell, at the total denial that Sage had ever walked through this door at all. “It’s going to be fine. I’m here now.” He waited for their full attention. “I will make her all right. In this life, I don’t want anything more than to do that. Do you understand?”
He held on to his patience as Bernadette started to cry, followed by more mutual comfort between the two of them. And then he remembered what Sage had told him in the car, right before they’d reached the train station.
It’s too much, the way you rely on me. My father…he does the same thing to my mother. And vice versa. Depending on one another for support until they have no energy left to worry about themselves. Or desire to accomplish anything. There’s no encouragement, only excuses for what is.
On the heels of that memory came visions of himself crushing Sage in his arms, yanking her down into his lap, cornering her, and demanding to know why she didn’t feel well. How many times had he invaded her personal space, commandeering it for himself? Had she ever consented? No, no, she hadn’t. He’d taken her arms around his neck as a sign of approval, when it was just her nature to be kind. He’d forced her to be his…crutch.
“She’s down at the mine working,” Thomas said, the words muffled by his wife’s shoulder. “I couldn’t handle the machinery anymore, so she took my place down deep in the belly. I’ve caused her nothing but problems, my poor daughter, but I couldn’t do it another day. I couldn’t.”
Bernadette grabbed Thomas’s head, pushing his face into her chest. “Of course you couldn’t. No one blames you. No one.”
Belmont turned and dry heaved over the porch, the lack of contents in his stomach the only saving grace in that moment. That didn’t stop his body from trying to expel anything it could find, worry raking up his gut and twisting. He tried to brace his hands on his knees, but they slipped right off, sending him pitching forward.
His Sage was down in the darkness of the earth somewhere. There was no way to wrap his mind around the implications or reasons behind that fact. Not yet. Just then, there was nothing but cloying claustrophobia and total denial. They clashed together, battling for ground. Because he’d thought the idea of a closed space down in the ground was his worst nightmare, but having Sage down there was far, far worse.
“Where?” Belmont shouted.