Tristan was asleep when the plane landed in Florence. It took three good shakes from the flight attendant to bring him back to life. It was six o’clock Providence time and closing in on midnight as he stepped off the plane. Phoebe would be eating dinner with her family, Tristan thought. There hadn’t been enough time to tell her why he had to leave so suddenly and hoped the note would help in the preservation of the friendship. What he now knew about his mother’s death and the secret life she had led was reason enough to take Damian’s offer; this was his last and only chance to know the truth about who his mother was. If Damian’s claims held any water then everything his father had told him about his mother’s life had been a lie, a lie to protect something much greater than he could understand. The truth was waiting for him in Florence and he knew Phoebe, Reese and Court would all understand once they read that letter.
Tristan grabbed his duffle bag, reached for the map Torrance had faxed to him in his back pocket and hailed a cab outside of the airport. She said she would be waiting inside the café on Eighth Avenue for him when he arrived. Something about Torrance alluded Tristan and everything he had known to be true about his mother’s life and death changed the day she moved to Providence. It had been a long, confusing six months of conflicting evidence but it wasn’t until Damian showed up with photographs that Tristan began to believe that his mother had lived a double life. The loss of his mother at such a tender age muffled the potency of any memory he could conjure of her. Those that did remain consisted mostly of how her hair smelt and the way his back would tingle when she ran her fingers through his thick blond curls. He couldn’t recall much more than what would be triggered by certain perfumes and smells, but even those things began to lose their influence as he grew into his teenage years. He had always wondered about his mother’s death and if what his father had so coldly reported to him was the truth about her life. But this curiosity and disbelief came more from the fact that Hayden Martin lied for a living and to his son on many occasions. Tristan was not the only one with doubts; many of Providence’s socialites who ran in the same circles as the Martin family were confused by the closed casket viewing after they had been told Evelyn Martin had died of asphyxiation. But with money comes power and Hayden Martin maintained both in the small town of Providence, Rhode Island; his word was bond and if he wanted the world to believe Evelyn Martin had died of asphyxiation it would have been in his power to do so.
The streets of Florence were drenched in silence as Tristan paid the cab and walked a block to the café. The doors of the café stood tall and thin, looming over him in the shadows of the street as if it were a guardian of something sacred and holy. It was difficult for him to believe anything would be open this hour of night but as he pushed through the doors he saw a sea of faces turn through a cloud of hovering smoke, some greeted him with smiles, while others turned away disinterested. A thin, dark man took the stage. He sat on a stool behind a mike and waited. He closed his eyes and bowed his head as if to pray, the audience was captivated and with bated breath seemed to lean forward just an inch in their seats as if to hear the prayer fall from the man’s lips before it reached heaven’s floor. Tristan set his bag down and slid into a seat next to the window in the back. The thin man lifted his head, brushed the hair from his face and picked up the acoustic guitar beside him and began to count to four. The sound following this young singer’s allusive prayer shocked Tristan and as the music began to engulf the café he realized that he was smiling, smiling; perhaps for the first time in a very long time. The man behind the mike was none other than Jesus Christ because the music that he commanded from that guitar juxtaposed with the voice that poured out of his body was without a doubt a heavenly sound and unlike anything Tristan had ever heard before. Tristan closed his eyes and felt his body move without command. Perhaps his mother, too, had once sat and listened with her eyes shut tight to some guitarist singer who was wooing every soul in the place. He felt nearer than he had ever been to the memory of his mother in that smoke filled café; he felt as if home had found him here.
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