Xo

the wound.
    “Doesn’t, uhm, you know, hurt much yet.” He studied an IV drip, probably morphine. He added, “And I’m getting some pretty nice pills after I’m out, the, uhm, doctor tells me. The doctor, you know.
    “I’m getting discharged tomorrow.” He had a loopy grin on his face and for once the smile wasn’t the least bit weird. “I thought I’d be here, you know, for a week. Maybe more than a week.” His eyelids dipped and Dance wondered if he was slipping off to sleep. They then opened once more. “A week,” he repeated drunkenly.
    “I’m glad you’re feeling better,” Kayleigh said. “I was pretty worried.”
    He frowned. Speaking slowly: “Didn’t bring me flowers, I notice. No flowers. Afraid I’d misinterpret it?” Then he laughed. “Joking.”
    Kayleigh smiled too.
    Edwin’s face grew somber. “Alicia … what was that all about? Did she go crazy? I mean, Alicia. What happened?”
    Dance said, “She was going to kill Kayleigh and plant some things she got from your house so you’d get blamed for it. She forged a note saying that Kayleigh wanted Alicia to front the band.”
    “She did that ? Killed Bobby Prescott too? And attacked your stepmother?” Edwin asked.
    Kayleigh nodded.
    Then, echoing the singer’s comments of a few hours earlier, he added, “She did it …” Focusing again. “She did it to be famous. Everybody wants that, I guess. It’s like a drug. Like writing Harry Potter, being Daniel Craig. They want to be famous.”
    Her eyes damp, Kayleigh whispered, “I don’t know what to say, Edwin…. What a mess this’s all been.”
    He tried to shrug but winced from the pain.
    “You didn’t need to come to the house, Edwin. I told you it was dangerous.”
    “Yeah,” he said, maybe being sardonic, maybe not quite grasping what she’d said. He was really drugged.
    “What happened back there?” Dance asked.
    He tried to focus. “Back there?”
    “At Kayleigh’s?”
    “Oh, at Kayleigh’s … Well, she told me about Alicia and the fire so I called the fire department but I couldn’t stop. You told me to stop, right?”
    “I did.”
    “But I couldn’t. I kept going to the house. When I got there I parked on the shoulder, so Alicia wouldn’t see me. I went through the trees and got to the house. The kitchen door was open and I saw Alicia by the stairs. She didn’t see me. I tackled her. She was really strong. I mean, you know, really. I didn’t expect that. The gun went off before I got it away from her. She jumped at me and I shot her. I didn’t think. I just pulled the trigger. I didn’t even know I got shot. All I remember is we were trying to put the fire out, you and me … and then I woke up here.”
    His eyes closed slowly then leveraged open and he looked at Kayleigh.“I was going to mail you something before I left. There’s a card. I was going to send you a card. There’s a present inside too. My jacket. Look in the pocket. Where’s my jacket?”
    Dance found the garment in the closet. Kayleigh fished through the pocket. She extracted a stamped envelope, addressed to her.
    “Open it.”
    She did. Looking over her shoulder, Dance noted the silly drugstore card with a mournful-looking dog on the front, the balloon above its head reporting, “I’m ‘Dog-gone’ sorry.”
    Kayleigh smiled. “And I’m sorry too, Edwin.”
    “Look in the tissue.”
    She opened the square of thin paper; inside were three small guitar picks. “Oh, Edwin.”
    “I got a deer antler in this pawn shop in Seattle. I made them out of that.”
    “They’re beautiful.” She showed them to Dance, who agreed.
    “I …” His eyes floated in an arc around the room and he remembered what he was going to say. “I sent them to you before but you sent them back. I mean, somebody sent them back. But if you want, you can have them now.”
    “Of course I want them. Thank you so much. I’ll use them at the concert. In fact, I’ll thank you in person for them there.”
    “Oh, no. I’m headed back to Seattle. I was packing up when Alicia called.” A wan smile.
    “Leaving?”
    “Better for you, I think.” He laughed. “Better for me too, you know. You think a famous star kind of likes you, then next thing some crazy people want to use you to assassinate a politician and some psycho’s stolen your trash to frame you for murder. Never thought being a fan could be so dangerous.”
    Both Dance and Kayleigh smiled.
    “Think I’m … think I’m … better