Through the Fire by Donna Hill Page B

folks to spill their guts. Makes you feel good, don’t it? Keeps the light from shining on you, don’t it?” He stepped toward her, his nostrils flaring. “What about you, Rae? Huh? Why is it that you can’t hear the music anymore?”
    She turned away, away from the mirror that so easily reflected her soul. He was right. It was easy for her to throw out platitudes, wise counsel, and clichés. And it wasn’t that she didn’t believe them to be true, but they kept her from dealing with her own issues. “This isn’t about me,” she muttered weakly.
    He stared at her back, at her lowered head,and realization rose and stood between them. “Isn’t it, Rae? Isn’t this what you needed, what you were really after?”
    “What are you talking about? I—”
    “You and I are cut from the same cloth, Rae,” he said, moving up behind her and taking her shoulders in his hands. He felt her body stiffen beneath his fingertips. “You told me once about walking through the fire. Remember?”
    She tugged in a breath and nodded.
    “You pushed me through it…and you were on the other side—waiting. I’ll help you. If you give me a chance. If you trust me the same way you wanted me to trust you.”
    Slowly she turned to face him, looked up into his eyes, saw the sincerity, the need, the awakening. The walls of her chest tightened.
    “Tell me, Rae,” he said forcefully, fully turning the tables. “Tell me what stopped the melody.”
    “I… I.” She shook her head.
    “Tell me,” he said in a harsh whisper, knowing if she denied him this one thing he’d surely retreat to that dark, safe place and never return. Not again.
    “I…should have stayed…home that night.” Her voice cracked. “I should have stayed…”
    Bit by bit she relived that dreadful night that changed her life forever. Changed her forever. It was now her turn to face the bitter truth, to take his place in the core of the heat. She measured out the words inside her head, weighing each one. It was unlike her to surrender such large chunks of herself this way. Control by editing. Maintain the emotion, retain the control, and edit what you say. There was no way she would divulge her entire life story in one sitting. No way. Rae didn’t do that. Still, she felt uncommonly comfortable with him, comfortable enough to say more than she usually would.
    “All I thought about was me, what I needed,” she continued slowly, deliberately. “How important my work, my career was to me. And in the end I lost everything. All I had left was my music, my work. Ironic. But it’s not enough to fill the holes, the emptiness, no matter how hard I try.”
    “Yeah, you’ve said that, Rae,” he said, almost cutting her off. “But what do you meanwhen you said ‘I should have stayed home that night’? That’s the heart of it.”
    She kept her back to him once he started asking those questions, the ones that hurt. “If I hadn’t gone out, then my husband and daughter wouldn’t have gone to the store and gotten killed. Simple as that.” Never before had she dared to say the words aloud. And now that she’d shared the load with someone who truly understood, the weight of guilt and regret was lifted.
    “And that’s haunted you just like the thing with my sister,” he said, finally understanding the connection between the murder of her family and the dry creative well that robbed her music of its vitality, the way his own losses had. “That grief spills over into everything in your life, too, doesn’t it?”
    “Just like you, Quinn?” she murmured, looking at him now. “Mirror images. We both have our crosses to bear.”
    “I guess. All I’m sure of is that I can’t do this anymore.”
    “So what are you saying, Quinn?”
    He bent down to tie his shoe, a loose lace, but kept talking, then stood. “I don’t have anyeasy answers, Rae. I just know that it’s time for a change, and how that happens…” He shrugged. “It’ll come to me. But I’m