“I went and got it when I split last night. Fake ID. I even saw Kellen from Allegiance to North come into the Vault. But he wouldn’t know me like he knows you.”
“The tape was there,” says Caleb. He’s looking from it, then back at Val, back to the tape. And I think he’s not grasping what suddenly I feel like I know, what is kind of making my brain melt . . .
“I knew you were having a hard time,” said Val, “and I didn’t want to overwhelm you, so I thought if I just got in with the band, then I could tell you over time, so that when I did, you’d already kinda know.” She sniffs hard.
“Know what?” Caleb asks, his voice caught in his throat.
Val continues like she hasn’t heard him. Maybe she rehearsed this in the long dark and needs to say it in order. “And when I saw things getting crazy last night, partly I was mad about the gig and stuff, but partly, with that Jason guy on our tail, I had to make sure . . . make . . .” She chokes up. Presses her mouth against her fist.
“Go ahead,” I say.
Val looks at the tape, wiping at her eyes. “Make sure we could hear from our dad again.”
Caleb gazes at her. “Our dad . . .”
And suddenly everything is different.
Val tries to speak again but she can’t. Her rail-thin frame quakes. She rubs at her eyes almost angrily. I get up and kneel in front of her, and for a few seconds she lets me hug her. Then she pulls away, wiping at her nose.
“You never could have known,” she says, crying. “He never knew. Eli. He didn’t know about me, ever.”
“You’re . . . ,” Caleb stammers. “My sister.”
“Half sister,” she says, and her eyes track up to Caleb, wide, clear, guard completely down.
“Really?” he says.
I punch him in the shoulder and hiss, “Yes, really.”
“Oh my God, okay.” He reaches over and rubs her shoulder stiffly.
Ugh, boys sometimes. I clear my throat and when he looks at me I motion with my eyes. He gets it, and wraps her in a hug. She sinks into him, while I burn the last silly shred of jealousy.
He pulls back after a minute, and Val smiles at him. “Weird huh?”
“Weird,” he agrees.
“Eli and my mom started hooking up on that last big tour,” she continues. “She was actually engaged to Kellen at the time, but she was also engaged to heroin, and she and Eli used to get high together. It’s all so completely gross to talk about.”
“You don’t have to,” I say.
“I want to, though,” says Val. She takes a deep breath and continues. “Kellen found out, and that was part of what destroyed that tour. Eli and my mom shacked up in New York for a few months, just using together, and sometime along in there, I happened. Didn’t turn out too bad, considering the drugs. They broke up, no surprise, and Eli moved back to LA and Mom moved back to Princeton. Mom, and her addiction, are convinced that Eli was the love of her life. After a few months apart, she was going to go see him and try to make up, tell him about me, but the doctors wouldn’t clear her to fly. And then he died. She blamed herself, felt like she should have taken better care of him. Like she ever could have. And so, especially when the supply would run dry, that would give her an excuse to blame me for just about everything.”
I’m crying, too, now. And feeling like an idiot. Not that I could have known. But still.
“When did she tell you all of this?” Caleb asks.
“She told me years ago. She doesn’t have a very good filter, especially when she’s using, which she manages to keep out of sight . . .” Val’s voice lowers. “Most of the time. She also told me never to tell anyone. But she told me all about Eli, her great lost love. She even told me about his other kid.”
“You knew about me. Why didn’t you get in touch sooner?”
“I’ve been watching you for a long time. And I knew you didn’t know about him. I could just tell. But then I saw your freak-out, those tweets . . . I felt sure you’d found out. So I came. The timing was good. Mom had tracked me down in Ithaca anyway, and I needed somewhere else to go.”
Val pauses, wiping her nose. Caleb just looks blown away.
“I know it’s a lot,” says Val. “I know . . .”
Caleb shakes his head, like he’s returning from far away. “It’s okay.” He hugs her again.
When she sits back, I ask, “How did you know about the tape location?”
“One of my mom’s stories, the ones she loves to repeat whenever she’s in a stupor, is the time she went record shopping in the Village with Eli and he found a copy of a particular album that he’d always wanted, only they were out of cash at the time. So Mom went back, and . . . God knows what she did to get that record, but she brought it home and surprised him. I guess he was really excited. But it must have been some fight when they broke up, because Eli stormed out and never came back for any of his stuff, even his records. So, his collection ended up at our place, including the copy of that dead-baby Beatles record. I’ve been looking at that cover all my life. Freakin’ disturbing. But, anyway, I got the reference right away.”
“Val, geez . . .” Caleb searches for what to say.
“Don’t worry, bro,” she says, cleaning off her face with the dirty sleeve of her sweatshirt, then surveying the stains of tears, snot, and eyeliner. “Okay,” she says. “This is getting gross. Want to watch this tape?”
We put it in the camcorder, still set up but hidden behind the TV, and after a moment of blue screen, Eli appears again. It’s a weirdly similar scene, this time a blue bathroom instead of green, a red T-shirt instead of black. His movements are twitchy and he’s got a cigarette between his lips.
“Allll right,” he says around the cigarette as he positions the camera. “Spent the bus ride today putting these lyrics together. It still needs a second verse, but it’s almost done. Man, these songs have been coming so easy, finally.”
He starts strumming guitar, same as last time, and now sings:
Somewhere you are dreaming
While I’m chasing silly dreams
Learning firsts in everything
While I am stuck repeating,
the same . . . old . . . mistakes
Can you miss someone you never knew?
Do you feel the space I should have occupied?
I’m watching from a distance
Trying to hear you through the breeze
When you laugh, when you cry
I want to know why . . . but I’m too far
Living in Exile . . . without you
Living in Exile . . . without you
The guitar rings in the hollow bathroom when he finishes. When Eli finally looks up at the camera, there are tears.
“Travel day tomorrow,” he says, “but I’ve got the other songs dialed in.”
There’s a knock at the bathroom door.
“Okay then.” His smile at the camera is tender, genuine. “More from the next show.”
The video clicks off. Caleb keeps staring into the blue. He blinks. I wonder if he will have tears too. Then he shakes it off and asks the obvious question: “Where was the next show?”
“We can search, or check Matt’s shirt,” I say. “But, then what do you want to do?”
Caleb and Val lock eyes. “What do you think?” she asks.
Caleb glances at the blue screen again. “I told Kellen I’d let him know if we found anything else. . . . But then Randy said some interesting things about Kellen on the way home. I think there’s more to all this than we know. So . . . keep the tape to ourselves, for now.”