Page 40 of Doc Rock
I will love you forever.
Sie.’
Ford crumpled the note and sank to his knees. He didn’tnoticethe tears that were pouring down his face as all hefeltwas his heart ripping in two.
Leaping to his feet, he tore the room apart. Most of her things were stillthere. Her guitar, her notebooks, her mobile phone. Only a few of her clothes and her handbag were gone.
“Fuck,”Ford screamed at nothing and collapsed to the floor.
Donnie found him two hours later, sitting on the carpet, staring at the wall.
“Ford. What’s wrong?”Concern flooded his voice.
“She’s gone.”Ford held the note out to his manager.
Donnie crossed the room and took it. Silently reading it, before he muttered,“Shit. We should report her missing to the police.”
“She’s not missing. She’s left me. Those are two very different things,”Ford spat.
“Did something happen between you?”Donnie asked gently.
Ford yelled,“Nothing fucking happened. This morning, she woke up in my arms, where she was meant to be, and this afternoon, she’s gone.”
Heknewit wasn’t Donnie’s fault, but right now, his friend and manager was the only one he had to shout at.
“What can I do?”
“Nothing.There’s nothing you can do.”Ford’s head sank into his hands, and he did something that he had never done in front of a grown man before. He sobbed.
Donnie sat on the floor next to him and put an arm around his shoulder. Ford leaned into his side, letting his friend comfort him for a few minutes.
Finally, Ford wiped his eyes on his t-shirt and said,“I need a beer.”
“Are you sure that’s a good idea?”
“I said, I need a fucking beer. Okay,”Ford snarled, his upset turning to anger.
When Ford drank, it numbed the pain hefeltfrom Sie’s absence, but as soon as he sobered up, the pain came back, so he drank some more.
Midnight Thunder was committed to an extensive tour in the US starting four months after Sie left him, so they needed togeta new guitarist to replace her.
They rang Ryan, who auditioned for them six years ago. Luckily for them, he was happy to drop his current wedding band and tour with Australia’s most successful band.
When Ryan joined them, the whole energy of the tour changed. It went from a band working hard to ensure their success, to sex, drugs, rock and roll and excess.
Every show elevated their status, and by the end of their American tour, they needed to increase the size of the venues they performed at to keep up with demand. As a result, they added fifty more dates to their schedule.
Ford lost himself in the drugs, but every groupie who came near him he rebuffed, not yet convinced that Sie wasn’t going to come back. Every girl hesawwith long, dark hair made his heart skip a beat, butit wasnever her.
They wrote another album, using the lyrics that Sie left behind in her notebooks, and swept the boards at the Grammy Awards.
Each year, their fame grew, but he never stopped looking for Sie. He finally broke, and even though heknewshe didn’t want to be found, he hired a private investigator to look for her.
The report shattered his heart a little more. The day she left him in the hotel was the last day that Maisie Harrington had ever been seen.
She didn’t open a bank account.
She hadn’t taken out a credit card.
