Read Music Makers for Free Online Page A

stashed something away for each grandchild when we were born, and it’s grown and grown. Like Topsy, I guess. Anyway, it’s there.”
    She almost laughed at the thought of money of her own. Her father had become a rather famous economist, had written books that were considered important to other economists, and he would be more than ready to advise her about wise investments of a new-found fortune.
    “All those years going to school, didn’t you come up with anything?” she asked after a moment.
    “A physics instructor, a pal, said Joey fell through a hole in the universe, into a parallel universe maybe. Of course, the family still thinks I conked him and buried him somewhere.”
    “They used search dogs. They’re trained to find bodies. The family knows that.”
    Others were beginning to come into the tavern, the noise level rose as someone put on twangy country music.
    “It’s a question of what to believe,” Nathan said. “The impossible, or the unthinkable. They prefer the unthinkable. Facing an impossibility is more than they can deal with. Would you believe if you hadn’t been there?”
    “I’m not even sure I believe in spite of being there,” she said, but the words did not carry the light tone she had intended. “It was impossible. And I have trouble with holes in universes. But people see and accept the impossible a lot. A weeping Virgin Mary, or a Christ figure oozing blood. Others. Reports from around the world say the same kinds of things.”
    “Images that bolster one’s core belief system, by their definition, are not impossible. It’s when you threaten those deep beliefs, shake people’s reality, that they’re forced to deny what they’ve seen and opt for rational explanations no matter how ugly or incredible.”
    “The family was hit by an earthquake off the charts as far as their realty is concerned,” she said after a moment.
    Nathan nodded. “Still keep the lights on day and night?”
    “I can’t shake it. I found that I couldn’t work in a cubicle. My first job. I was getting a stiff neck from turning every few seconds to make sure it was still open. I had to quit. Small enclosed spaces, dark. Still there.”
    “Elevators must be another kind of hell for you.”
    “Walking up and down stairs is good for the heart,” she said as lightly as she could.
    “Right,” he said. “Let’s order something to eat. Hamburgers, fries, undo all the good that stair climbing brought about.”
    Later, driving her to her motel, he said, “Ashley, I have to go back. Come with me.”
    She tensed so much she was almost paralytic, catatonic. “I can’t,” she whispered.
    “You don’t have to go inside. We’ll take a rope, tie it to my wrist, and you hold the other end, yank me out if . . . It can be a guide rope, a way out if the lights go off. That’s all. I want to see it again, measure it. I can’t get a picture of it in my head, just a black space, that’s all that comes. I have to see it again.”
    “Nathan, we agreed. We said we wouldn’t go there.”
    “I have to. Kids played in that cave for more than a hundred years. What was different that one time? They went over it inch by inch and nothing happened. Why that one time? I have to see it again.”
    He was staring straight ahead, his hands tight on the steering wheel as he spoke. “Maybe it happens periodically, even predictably, but no one had ever been there at the right time before. Was it something about us, the three of us, the configuration of our bodies or something? Joey sat down, remember? Was he in the middle, dead center? Is that what was different? I have to go. I’ll get a rope and a steel tape measure, measure the goddamn cave, make a map.”
    “Nathan, please, don’t. Stay away. Even Skipper knew something was wrong with the cave. Remember? He wouldn’t go in.”
    “I remember,” he said softly. “And we were going to find a fortune in gold. I remember.”
    They reached her motel where light shone