Last Licks

When she came back downstairs, Sunny had on jeans and a less disreputable T-shirt. She left a note for her dad in case he came home before she got back, gave Shadow a quick pet, and headed out to her Wrangler. Luke lived in Levett, in a much more built-up area than Sunny’s neighborhood. The buildings and the people were much more crowded there. So were the cars. Sunny circled around several blocks before she found a parking space. She got out of her SUV and walked the rest of the way to her destination, a modest three-story apartment house. As a nod to the old colonial architecture, some of the windows were surrounded by make-believe plastic clapboards. The rest of the walls seemed to be made of rough-cast concrete. She got buzzed in through the front door and mounted the steps to the third floor.

Seems like a neat, clean enough place, she thought, looking around. Is this what a music therapist’s salary gets?

Luke stood in the doorway to his place, looking a little shaggier and more disheveled than usual. He’d ditched the corduroy jacket and mismatched tie, but he still had the pants—pretty wrinkled now—and the shirt, which looked as if he’d sweated right through it.

“I’m sorry,” he said when he saw her. “This was probably a stupid idea.”

“Well, I’m here now,” Sunny replied. “Let’s talk.” Luke held the door open for her, and she went into his place. It was a studio, on the small side and sparsely furnished. She saw a couch that looked as if it had been put together from a kit, and a spindly sort of modern chair, arranged on what looked like a piece of remnant carpet. One wall was the kitchen, with a sort of counter arrangement and a couple of stools. Around a corner was the sleeping nook, where Sunny could see the foot of Luke’s bed—it seemed to be made—with his jacket hanging precariously off the edge. She saw some very nice sound equipment and a lot of CDs but no television, and some low chests that probably held his clothes. A floor lamp and a spindly table lamp on an end table provided dim light.

When Sunny had seated herself in the chair, Luke made a big, swooping gesture, taking in the whole place. “It ain’t Scatterwell Castle, or whatever they call it, but it’s home.”

He dropped onto the sofa.

“We tried to catch up with you earlier this evening, but you were just a little bit ahead of us when we left.” Sunny paused for a moment, trying to figure out what to say. “I guess I wanted to apologize. That’s not the way people are supposed to talk—or act—around here.”

“Why should I be surprised at Alfred?” Luke asked. “He didn’t act much better around his uncle.” He took a deep breath. “It was hard to hear all that stuff.”

“About your friend?” Sunny said. “I’m sorry. I know that you liked Gardner, and he certainly seemed to like you.”

“Yeah. Liked,” Luke echoed and then launched into a seemingly unrelated story. “My mom died about a year ago. Something her potions couldn’t cure. I managed to get the word and return to the commune before she went. She gave me her book of cures”—he gestured to a battered spiral notebook sitting on the table—“and she finally told me something I’d been asking her about for years.”

He sagged back on the couch, looking at Sunny. “You know that saying, ‘It takes a village’? I was raised by thirty-seven people on the commune. But I never had a father. My mom had an ‘old man’ for a while, and especially when she was younger, she had a lot of, well, let’s call them overnight guests.”

“That must have been . . .” Sunny ran out of words.

“Weird?” Luke suggested. “Hard?” He shook his head. “Actually, it was just life. There was a guy in the commune, Paul, who was a carpenter and woodworker. He was what you’d probably call my role model.” Luke laughed. “He believed in doing a good job and not taking any crap . . . and he also loved to sing. He was really into music—got me my first guitar by trading a table he’d made for it. I can’t complain about my life. There was just one thing. Whenever I asked Mom, she always changed the subject . . . until she lay dying.”

“So who was he?” Sunny asked, afraid she knew the answer. Luke laughed—not exactly a happy sound. “That was the thing; she didn’t know. As far as she could narrow it down, he was one of two guys, fresh out of Yale, who were on a road trip. They crashed with Mom, got kind of wasted, and I guess you can fill in the rest.”