Threads of Suspicion(17)
“You went to the academy, became a cop,” Evie guessed, “while she’s climbing her way up the music ladder.”
David nodded. “Maggie would joke that I was her fallback if her career didn’t catch fire. She’d marry me, be a stay-at-home wife, and I could bring home the bacon. We were talking marriage all the way back to the early days when I was in the academy and she was getting her first invitations to perform. But we wanted to wait until she knew how her career was going to go, until I had settled in with my job. We were going to be married when she was twenty-five, have kids by thirty—that kind of plan.
“So we got engaged. I’d be at her concerts most weekends. We were going to get married, have a long honeymoon during the three-month winter break when Maggie’s concert schedule was clear. We were planning the wedding. Well, she was.”
They both smiled, and he paused as their entrées arrived. Evie cautiously nudged the steaming lasagna bowl to the center of the plate, the cheese on top lightly browned. Her first bite confirmed her hunch—great lasagna.
“I was settled in as a cop by that point, while her career was beginning to take off,” David said, picking up the story. “I was so proud of her, how she was handling it all. It was new to the rest of them too, the fame, the growing crowds.” David passed his phone over to share more photos. “Their last concert in New York, backstage. Some of those guys have been around since the first days when it was college venues for the most part.”
Evie scrolled through the pictures. Maggie looked happy. The ones of Maggie and David—casual shots snapped by someone using his phone—showed a couple very much in love. You couldn’t duplicate that look in Maggie’s eyes, that expression, without a deep contented love resting behind it. Evie quietly returned David’s phone. What he’d been describing so far was right out of a fairy tale, friends in high school who stayed together as fame and fortune unfolded.
Evie looked across the table at him, knew the story was going to turn painful. “You and Maggie didn’t get married as planned,” she said quietly.
David met her gaze, sadly smiled. “No. We haven’t. Yet. A car crash on the way home from a concert late one night shattered my leg, meant hours of surgery, months of rehab. That wreck changed the course of our lives.”
He turned his lasagna bowl to more easily cut through the noodle layers. “I had dropped Maggie off at her home after that concert,” he continued, his voice reflective, “and headed back to my place. We were both still living in Chicago then. Traffic was heavy, there was a semi in the lane beside me, a car trying to merge in, roads were wet. Police reconstructing what happened concluded the merging car misjudged speeds, came into the lane of the semi, the semi braked hard to avoid smashing into the car, the trailer fishtailed, caught the back passenger-side bumper of my car—I would still probably have been okay at that point—but the van behind the truck came into my lane trying to get more room to slow down and crashed into me at speed. The car and I ended up partially under the truck trailer. It took over an hour for fire and rescue to get me out. I was conscious for most of it, able to actually call Maggie so she’d know I was okay and not to panic when she came to the hospital. I was heading to surgery for my leg but otherwise had my full faculties.
“Both our lives changed that day,” he said, looking over at Evie. “My daily job was no longer law enforcement, it was rehab. I fell more deeply in love with Maggie than ever, seeing how she handled those months. She pretty much set her career aside to be with me through the process.”
David spooned himself another helping of salad, then seemed to turn his account in a new direction. “I met a guy named Bryce Bishop while I was in rehab. He had a friend from the military learning to walk again, and Bryce was his rehab buddy, someone to encourage and fill in rest intervals with sports and life outside the world of physical therapy. I’d see them most days, and we three got to be friends. As the months wore on, I didn’t want Maggie putting her career totally on hold for me, so Bryce helped me bridge that gap—be the honest broker about how I was doing when Maggie called from some concert location. We both came to trust him as a good friend.
“Bryce is a strong Christian. He was comfortable talking about dying and what’s after that, that if God existed it was worth asking the questions and coming to a conclusion about it. I had a lot of time on my hands, I had come awfully close to death, and it’s always in the back of a cop’s mind. I started talking with Bryce about God, reading books he provided, thinking. We weren’t a religious family, and I’d never been to church. Maggie didn’t come from a church background either. So I’d watch videos of sermons with Bryce, talk over the questions they raised. It was a strangely captivating new world, this idea of God and angels and heaven and hell, a life beyond the touch-and-feel reality around me.” He paused a moment, took another bite.