Last Safe Place, The by Ninie Hammon

away and Ty stuck his ear buds in and cranked up his iPod while Gabriella called to confirm their reservations at the Warwick New York Hotel. Gabriella could hear the earphone music, a small, distant sound. It was Withered Soul, of course. His father’s band. And Garrett’s.
    A sudden lump in her throat made it hard to swallow and her eyes filled with tears. She didn’t mourn Smokey, who’d been the bass player in her brother’s grunge metal band. But Garrett … the pain of her twin brother’s death still took her breath away.
    The melody and pounding rhythm was all she could catch from Ty’s ear buds. But she knew the lyrics of Night Screams, the song that had propelled the Vast Abyss album to gold, because she had written them. And all the other lyrics for the band’s music. She and Garrett had been a team, different sides of the same coin.
    Gabriella could look back now and see how dark their collaboration eventually became, that together the two of them tapped into a great well of despair and hopelessness that neither one of them could have found alone. But there was a difference between them she didn’t understand now any better than she ever had. Gabriella could walk away and leave it; Garrett’s whole life existed on the barren plains his wailing laments sang about.
    Some critics hailed the loneliness, desperation and anger of Withered Soul. Others deplored it. But none ever found fault with the quality of the music, the complexity of the chord structure, the haunting melody, Garrett’s piercing tenor voice and amazing keyboard performance. It was genius. He was genius. Beginning the moment he walked into Trombinos Music Store in the Galleria Mall in the South Hills of Pittsburgh two days after his eighth birthday, climbed up on a bench in front of the first piano he’d ever seen and started to play, his incredible talent was a fiery meteor that burned exquisitely bright. Then flamed out.
    Gabriella squeezed her eyes shut and tears slid down her cheeks. All the horror and fear of the past few days had ripped the scabs off so many childhood wounds. But not everything that bubbled up out of her childhood was horrible. The sweet, cleansing aroma of pine swirled around her. She could feel a damp mist on her face and a warm, golden glow shone through her closed eyelids. If she opened her eyes, she’d see Garrett’s gap-toothed grin. She’d hear his silly giggle and a rumble like—
    “Mom?” Ty’s voice. “Are you crying?”
    She reached up hurriedly and wiped her wet cheeks.
    “No, Honey. Not crying, just …” Ty’s face swam in the wash of tears, his features pinched, his brow wrinkled with concern. “I didn’t get a whole lot of sleep last night and my eyes are tired, watery.”
    She knew he didn’t believe her. What was it doing to the boy’s trust that she constantly lied to him and he knew it?
    “You know how much they charged me for this piddly little cup of Joe?” Theo eased himself into the chair facing her. “Three bucks! You b’lieve that? Just cause you in a airport and can’t go no place else, they allowed to mug you. Might as well club you brains out with a roll of quarters in a tube sock!”
    Gabriella opened her mouth to launch into her familiar refrain—that Starbucks coffee was always overpriced, no matter where you got it. That coffee was coffee. Adding a bunch of cheaper ingredients like milk and ice and sugar ought to make the brew cost less, not more. That you were paying for advertising and—
    She didn’t say any of those things, however, because she caught sight of a young black man with a Pirates baseball cap turned sideways on his head and full sleeves of tattoos all the way up both arms making his way to their table. He was decked out in full bore hip-hop. Baggy shirt, pants belted tight ten inches below his waist so the crotch hung down between his knees and his plaid underwear was plainly visible. He had an earring in his left ear the size of the Hope Diamond,