PROLOGUE

February 9, 1964
6:17 p.m.

As Frances Wells pushed open the door to the small bedroom, she controlled the urge to scream.  The room looked as though a cyclone had recently ripped through it.  But cyclones didn’t often occur in small towns in upstate New York – and certainly not in February.

Frances took a deep breath and carefully controlled her voice.  “Sharon Marie Wells, what is going on in here?”

From the connecting bathroom a voice called out in reply.  “Mom, please do me a favor and press my black dress.  The one with the white collar.”

“What’s wrong with the green one you ‘just had to have pressed’ five minutes ago?”

“Mom, please – the black one – on the bed.”

Frances picked up the black dress.  She examined it with a critical eye, as she mumbled under her breath.  “The green one was good enough for the choir recital and that fancy-schmancy art show, but it’s not good enough for Mr. Paul McCartney?  And God forbid that Mr. McCartney should happen to see her in the audience with a wrinkle!”

As Frances headed for the doorway, carefully stepping over the carnage of discarded outfits that just wouldn’t do, her glance fell upon the large black and white photo of the Beatles taped to her daughter’s dresser mirror.  Paul’s face was framed with a large heart painted in Cutex #4 Persimmon Pink frosted lipstick.  The sight of the cherubic face smiling out at her made Frances raise one eyebrow.  Okay, so he was cute.  But why in the world didn’t his mother make him cut off some of that long hair?

A sudden ringing caused Frances to jump.

“I’ll get the phone, Sharon – you just keep getting dressed.  Joey will be here any minute.”

Once in the hallway, Frances caught the telephone on the third ring.  “Hello?. . .oh, yes, she’s getting ready now and – oh?. . .”

Glancing back at her daughter’s room, a frown wrinkled her brow as she spoke the words that would forever change their lives.  “No, she’ll be ready. . . .”

6:34 p.m.

Sharon Wells stood on the porch, anxiously awaiting the golden chariot that would carry her into the Emerald City.  She bit her lower lip and watched, with eighteen-year-old eyes that had never seen more than thirty miles in either direction.

As the Chevy Impala turned onto her street, Sharon held her breath, smiled, and then ran to meet her prince.

9:18 p.m.

Ed Sullivan strolled onto the stage and turned to his viewing audience, just beyond the red light in the CBS cameras.  He rambled on in that often imitated New York columnist voice, about how Elvis had sent a telegram wishing his next act well and how the city had been in an uproar that week over the arrival of the four lads from Liverpool. . . .and then for the very first time, he spoke the now immortal words that sent his teenaged studio audience and all those watching at home, into a frenzy:

“And now Ladies and Gentlemen. . . .THE BEATLES!”

LAST KISS

February 12, 1964

9:22 a.m.

The citizens of Middletown would long remember the memorial service for Sharon Wells, not only for the staggering number of people in attendance – almost every one of the small town’s twelve hundred residents were there in body or spirit – but for the sheer agony they would all endure.  In a community where everyone knew everyone else, family, friends, teachers, and neighbors mourned the tragic loss.  Middletown had never lain to rest the Homecoming Queen who was never coming home again.  Until today.

The sound of Muriel Jennings’ organ droned on and on as the standing-room-only crowd shuffled about restlessly, spilling out into the prayer gardens of the St. James Catholic Church.

But none were so restless as the two young men in the fourth pew on the right.

There was no denying that Joey Dade and Georgie Core, cousins and best friends since they were ten years old, were alike physically – tall, dark-haired, lean.  But inside the perfectly matched inkblot, the ink was slightly smeared.  One had lived most of the last eight years of his life in the huge shadow cast by the other.  And everyone who knew them, knew which was which.

9:25 a.m.

Georgie Core glanced sideways at the figure beside him.  Joey Dade’s eyes were rimmed red, his hair out of place, matted to his scalp uncharacteristically.  His left leg was in a cast, and beside him in the pew a pair of crutches leaned precariously, threatening to slip away and collapse onto the floor.

Georgie resisted the impulse to lean over and embrace his best friend, to comfort him.  He knew it wouldn’t do any good.  Nothing was going to change.  Their lives would never be the same and there was nothing he could do to alter that fact.  Georgie brought himself back to the moment at hand, willing himself to get through the memorial service, just as Sharon Wells’ father was taking the pulpit from Father Frank.

9:27 a.m.

Jack Wells moved to the front of the church as if he were in slow motion, his forty-three-year-old feet too heavy to lift.  Though he normally stood 5’11”, suddenly, before everyone’s eyes, he seemed to have shrunken to a shell of a man.  His coal black hair appeared to be a little grayer, his brown eyes a bit dimmer.  He opened his mouth and the words fell out slowly.

“I wish to thank everyone for coming today,” Jack began.

As his composure began to slip, the muscles that held Jack Wells’ jam in place tightened and released.

“. . .To many of you, Sharon was a friend, or a pupil, or a fellow member of the choir. . .“

Then it happened.  The calm that had been holding its own was sliding, getting away from Jack Wells.  His friends, neighbors, and family watched, holding their breaths and asking God to give him the strength to get through the next few minutes.

“. . .And even though I will never again hear her voice or see her smiling face, I will love her with all my heart and soul. . .until the day I draw my last breath.  She was my daughter – my little girl, and she always will be.”

Everyone watched, struggling with their own emotions, as Jack Wells stepped down to join his distraught wife, Frances, in the first pew.

From the front of the alter, Father Frank raised his arms for the benediction.  “And now, my friends, le us pray for the soul of Sharon Marie Wells. . . “

9:37 a.m.

The mourners began the long walk to the back of the church and out the double doors into the all-too-bright light of the February morning.

Sharon Wells’ young friends, comforting one another, filed past the fourth pew, unable to bring themselves to look at the two boys sitting there.  They had all been friends since they were in diapers.  They had been through grade school, high school, and now young adulthood together.  They had shared all of their “first” milestones of life together:  first crushes, first dates, first proms, and in some cases, first kisses.  But this new feeling of grief was something none of these young people had every shared before.  It was something none of them understood.  They didn’t know who to be angry with.  Who should pay the price for their loss?

So, unsure, they hurried by the young man who was driving the car the night Sharon Wells died and his best friend, without so much as a nod, following behind everyone else until. . . .

9:40a.m.

Jack and Frances Wells hesitated as they neared the fourth pew and the two friends sitting there, their heads bowed.  Frances leaned over ad embraced her daughter’s boyfriend, carefully skirting the broken leg, while Jack looked into the eyes of Joey’s best friend.

“The plaque. . . it’s very nice, Georgie.  Thank you.”

Georgie stole a quick glance at the small piece of wood nestled among the flowers, before looking back to the man standing only a few feet away.

He wanted to run

He wanted to scream.

He wanted to say something – comforting – appropriate –

But instead, he said nothing.  He sat there in the nearly empty pew feeling transparent, as if this grief stricken father could look through him and see his secret.

It was only a brief moment, but it felt like eternity.  Then the Wells family moved on.

Georgie turned to his right.  “It’s time, Joey.  Let’s get out of here.”

With a slight nod of his head, Joey struggled off the bench and onto his crutches.  He waved off Georgie’s offer of assistance.  With one last look at the alter, he began the long walk down the center aisle.

“It should have been me, Georgie. . . .me.”

Georgie watched a moment as Joey limped away.  Stepping out of the pew, he turned back to the alter, genuflected, and made the sign of the cross. . . from his forehead to his chest, from his left shoulder to his right.  And with his head bent, his face full of sorrow, he followed in his best friend’s wake.

February 15, 1964

10:04 a.m.

The old oak trees that lined the stretch of back road between Middletown and Newburg had grown together, as if reaching for each other over the top of the highway where they had eventually joined hands to form a canopy of tangled branches.

In the crisp, cold morning, the car carrying the two boys passed beneath the canopy and stopped at the site of the accident that had occurred only six days before. 

Joey Dade and Georgie Core stepped out of the car and walked the short distance without speaking.  Standing side by side, they stared at the old weathered oak – now black and charred – and the precipice beyond.  Neither could walk near the horrifying edge. 

Each stood silent, deep in their own thoughts.

After a moment, Georgie placed a bouquet of purple flowers at the foot of the mighty oak and began to nail the plaque to the tree – the plaque he had made with his own hands on one of those first nights when he could not sleep.

Both boys stared at the small piece of wood:

SHARON WELLS – 1964

Joey leaned forward on his crutches and removed a gold chain from around his neck.  At the end of the chain a half-heart dangled.  He stared at the heart for a moment as if saying a last goodbye to the small trinket that had been around his neck since he was fourteen and Sharon Wells had first placed it there.  He hung the chain on the edge of the plaque and, without a word, turned around and began to hobble back to the car, parked nearby.  Georgie soon followed.

As the boys drove away, a light snow began to fall.  Soon the white powder would all but cover the small plaque, making the name written there indistinguishable.