“No one ever found out?” Jack asked.
“No. Never. I always wished that I could at least have known what happened to her.”
“That’s got to be the hardest thing,” Jack said. “Not knowing.”
“No it isn’t,” Darcy said abruptly, startling them both.
“What’s worse?” Jack asked.
Ria, surfacing from memories of Simone, looked at Darcy’s face and was startled to find her expression cold and remote. “I don’t want to talk about it,” Darcy said stiffly. Darcy, who would talk about anything to anyone, who lived in a state of perpetual good cheer, was suddenly and completely withdrawn.
Jack, though he didn’t move, seemed to almost physically retreat. An uncomfortable silence descended over the copter. For a long time they flew in the silence, listening to the suddenly loud noise of the rotor, looking out the windows at the featureless dark below.
Lupe finally broke the deadly silence. “Ria,” she called over her shoulder, “would you sing something?”
Ria didn’t want to sing, not in the mood she was in, but anything seemed better than the silence, and she and Paul had made a home-going song traditional long ago. Paul liked to say that the songs were charms against receiving further calls, and though he meant it as a joke, it seemed to work, and Ria suspected that everyone halfway believed in it.
Simone’s cliffside lament was still running through Ria’s mind. It was in French, which she knew only Darcy would understand, but the others were used to hearing her sing in languages they didn’t know, and it was the right song for the moment. A song for the dead, and there had been so many dead, of late. So many that Ria could not find it in her heart to sing any other sort of song.
“That sounded sad,” Lupe said, when the song was finished. “What does it mean?”
Ria started to answer, but Darcy spoke first. “A fisherman’s wife, standing on the shore… no, the cliffs above the shore. Is that right, Ria?”
Ria nodded.
“…Looking out on the ocean and mourning the loss of her husband at sea.”
“I’ve heard something like that before,” Lupe said. “In Spanish, though. It was sad, like that one.”
Ria thought there must be a song like that in every language. Why had Simone chosen to record this particular one? Ria wondered if it had some special meaning for her; if it had reminded her of someone she had loved and lost. More likely, of course, it meant nothing; Simone might well have selected it simply because she liked the tune.
Ria picked another of Simone’s songs at random, a bright original piece in English, and as she sang she saw everyone around her relaxing, settling into the home-going routine. Darcy seemed to feel better; her black mood had passed. When the song was finished they all fell silent, too tired to talk, but now the silence was a kind one, and Ria drifted in quiet comfort until the copter touched the ground.
In her room at the station house, Ria sat and stared at the digital, willing the minutes to pass. She kept expecting Paul to take her hand and turn her physically away from the readout. Paul had always smiled at the way she watched the clock, had never really understood the frightened anticipation she felt, heart pounding and chest tight, as she waited for the next call. It had been the same for her before they climbed Everest, before she jumped from a plane or got into a submarine; a gnawing fear that almost consumed her. In the end she’d treasured those experiences, had voiced them in song, but she would never have done such things without Paul. Unlike her, he’d thrived on the danger, lived for the exhilaration. He was someone, Ria thought, who could not live without it. Just as he could not turn down a chance to travel to the stars.
Ria looked at the clock again, then deliberately turned away. She must distract herself, as Paul usually did for her; she knelt to open her guitar case and lifted out her old battered instrument. She played a few chords, her fingers awkward with exhaustion, and sang a few words, but stopped. Her throat was too tight for song; her voice, usually so true, couldn’t seem to find the notes. She’d felt the same the first time she’d tried to perform Simone’s music after the singer’s death.
She’d meant it to be a memorial of sorts. She remembered it so clearly, standing in the spotlight on the coffeehouse stage, guitar in hand, singing from her heart. And she remembered how the image of Simone, crumpled on the rocks in the fog, had flashed so suddenly in her mind that she’d faltered, forgetting the notes. Desperately she’d scanned the crowd, looking for someone to focus on. Her Granna had always told her to do that if she lost her concentration, to focus on one person and tune out the rest. And when she found her focus, it was Paul.
She hadn’t really known him then. She’d met him before at the station, knew he was in rescue, but they were on different teams with different schedules, and their paths had not often crossed. Ria remembered how he’d sat before her that night, watching her steadily, listening with a delighted recognition that told her he knew the song well. With that the music had come back to her, and she’d shut out the rest of the audience, so as to sing for Paul alone.
Ria rested the guitar on her lap, eyeing the pile of sheet music and printouts in the corner of the room. Her own music, without a completed piece in the lot. She’d had visions of greeting Paul with a brand-new song she had written herself. But now there wasn’t time; Paul would be home any day now. She tried to imagine where he was now. Still on Ruby’s surface? Not likely; the crew was probably back on Aurora by now, boosting for the string and for home.
The phone rang, startling Ria out of her conjecture. She thought it was the alarm at first, and she dropped her guitar and headed for the door, but then turned in confusion. For a moment she couldn’t remember where she’d left the phone, and when she found it on a shelf she knocked a stack of disks and sheet music to the floor. She stepped back out of the mess, turning on the receiver. Her grandmother smiled at her from the phone’s screen.
“Hello, Ria.”
“Granna? Why are you calling so late? Is anything wrong?”
“Oh, dear. Is it late there?”
“Three in the morning. No, three-thirty.”
“Well, you’re still on shift then, aren’t you? When do you get off?”
“Four.” Ria was sure that Granna knew that. Granna was like Paul sometimes, always trying to distract her from clock-watching. On the screen her grandmother looked bright and cheerful, dressed in red, with her hair knotted up in a scarf. She had a book of music in her hand and a mandolin in her lap. Ria wondered vaguely what time it was in Galicia, where Granna was now, but was too tired to figure it out.
“Is Paul home yet?” Granna asked.
“No. Still out on Aurora.”
“Oh, too bad, I wanted to show this to him as well. Look what I’ve found!” She waved the music book at the screen, but Ria couldn’t make out any of the words. “A set of music by Luis Garcia,” Granna said happily. “I saw him play once, did I ever tell you? Listen.”
Granna propped the book on a stand, lifted the mandolin and played a few bars of a mazurka. Ria closed her eyes for a moment, listening. The music took her back, took her back so far. To when she was ten years old, a nervous stranger in her grandmother’s house after the death of her parents. Watching with fascination as her grandmother dug through boxes of old printed music, watching Granna in the music room moving from instrument to instrument before selecting the one she’d play. Just watching at first, watching and listening, till the music caught hold of Ria and she picked up a tin whistle to try her first fumbling notes.