"As Fate Would Have It": Chapter 18

To never have sunlight on your face

A beautiful face without a name for so long … A beautiful smile to hide the pain

= Friday 10 March 2000 =

The next morning dawned sunny and peaceful. When Laurel emerged from her room, she was surprised to find all four of the Hanson brothers gathered in the lounge. Mackenzie had conned Zac and Isaac into helping him build a fort out of blankets and pillows.

"I thought you guys were going to be in the studio all day," she addressed Taylor, who was watching the activity from the couch.

"We have to wait until afternoon; someone else is scheduled for this morning. Besides," he said, "there’s something I need to talk to you about with the song."

"What?"

"Well, there are four voice parts, and only three of us."

"I’m not sure I follow what you’re getting at."

"I know this is totally unorthodox compared to what the band normally does, but I’ve already talked to Ike and Zac about this, and they’re cool with my idea. Would you record this song with us? It’s as much yours as ours for everything that you’ve contributed to it."

Laurel was rendered speechless by the gravity of the request. Would she record the song she co-wrote with Taylor Hanson with him and his brothers? How does one answer such a request?

"Do you plan on using it? I mean, maybe we should just omit one of the parts and rewrite the others to cover it."

"We’re not going to use it right now. I can’t say if we’ll ever use it. And as far as the four parts is concerned, I don’t want to cut anything. It sounds perfect the way it is. When we finished it the other night, it just felt perfect. I’m still riding on the high from it; it just feels so good to have come up with something so awesome. And I owe much of it to you, Laurel. Thank you. So, what do you say? Will you record it with us, just so we’ll have a recording of it, if nothing else?" Taylor threw in the puppy-dog routine again for good measure.

"Well…" Laurel toyed with the idea. "I would like to hear what it would sound like. I mean hear it hear it, not just hear it in my head. And it would be nice to know that my tribute for Joelle is real and tangible. All right, I’ll do it." Laurel was smiling as she said it.

"Awesome!" Taylor exclaimed. "Guys, she said she’ll do it." His brothers looked up from the blanket that had just collapsed on Mac’s head and expressed their excitement also. When Taylor and Laurel had presented the finished song for their approval the other night, they both had felt a certain spark from it. This song was destined to be great in some form, some day.

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"Okay Isaac, try that again, but this time draw out that last word a little more. And Taylor, try to hold the pitch; you were faltering a little," Laurel instructed. She couldn’t explain it, but she felt completely at home in the recording studio. She had been awestruck walking into the building behind the brothers. They knew exactly where they were going and had a confidence about the whole procedure that only made Laurel all the more incredulous.

They had been working for hours on the vocal parts when they finally were satisfied with what they had. It meant combining tracks of one part from one take and another part from another take, but the engineer behind the sound board was a wizard, and everything was put together in record time.

And Taylor insisted that Laurel have the final word on everything. They’d had another talk about Joelle while working on the vocal parts, and he knew better than anyone else outside of Laurel herself how much it meant to her that this be perfect in every way. She’d even had a turn or two to wow them with her musical ingenuity. For the past forty-five minutes they’d been trying different things, some of them so off-the-wall that even Zac had raised his eyebrows once or twice.

What touched Laurel the most was that Isaac never once mentioned the goings-on of the previous night, or made any move toward her that would make her uncomfortable. He seemed to come to terms with the fact that she couldn’t give him anything more than friendship, and determined to win her over in a non-romantic-interest way. During a short break, she pulled him aside and said, "Thank you."

"What for?" Isaac kept his voice low so as not to attract anyone’s attention.

"For not pressuring me into anything, and for being willing to be my friend even after everything I told you and the way I tried to brush you off last night."

"That’s what friends are for. I’ll always stick by you through the good and the bad. I’m just grateful that you’re still speaking to me after the way I behaved the last couple days. I have to admit, even I think I was going crazy about it at times."

After some more editing, all four finally were able to reach a unanimous choice from the innumerable takes they’d done. It was, in Zac’s words, ‘awesome in a weird-yet-not-weird way’.

"Hey guys?" Taylor yawned. "What do you say we call it a night and do the instrumentals tomorrow? I’m beat."

Isaac checked his watch. "I think that sounds reasonable. Let’s just get these last tracks down on tape so that we have them tomorrow."

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Less than half an hour later, they were making their way back to the hotel.

"Thanks, you guys," Laurel said in the car, "for letting me do this. It sounds so great already I’m starting to wonder if we should even bother with the instrumentals. Why don’t we just leave it a cappella?"

"Oh, no you don’t. Not after I slaved over it for so long," Taylor retorted. He tried to sound stern, but was grinning from ear to ear. It felt so good to have something to work with again that didn’t lead to frustration.

Just then, Zac interjected, "Do you mind? I’m trying to sleep over here."

"Just relax. We’re almost there," Isaac sounded as weary as his brother.

Moments later, they were at the hotel again, and making their way up to the uppermost floor. Security guards waved them through, noting that the Hanson brothers appeared to be much more enthused than they had been the previous days, especially Isaac.

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Zac made an immediate beeline for his bed without uttering so much as a "g’night" to Laurel and his brothers. Taylor headed toward the piano in the lounge, where he sat without playing. Isaac and Laurel followed the latter of the two. Laurel stretched out on the couch, while Isaac perched himself on the arm by her feet. Taylor turned to face them.

"So I take it you two worked everything out?"

"Yeah, as much as we can for now," Laurel told him.

"We’ve decided to be friends for the time being," Isaac added. "Besides," he said, looking at Laurel, "even if we had agreed on more than that, I would have an insane conscience overload from not being able to give you the time and attention that you deserve and that I want to give you."

"Well, thank you for that sentiment," she returned.

"It’s good to see the two of you able to talk to one another without going crazy or literally running away." Both Isaac and Laurel’s faces reddened in turn as Taylor mentioned their respective behavioral trends of the past week.

"Hey, I feel like singing." Laurel finally broke the embarrassed silence that had fallen.

"You just sang for how many hours and you want to sing some more? There are just some things about you that I will never get," Isaac said unbelievingly.

"Just humor me. After ten hours of the same song, I need something a little different. Otherwise I’ll have that one song running through my head all night and I won’t be able to sleep."

"What did you have in mind?" Taylor asked, relinquishing the piano bench to Laurel and hopping on the couch before Ike was able to claim it when she stood. This resulted in a brief play-scuffle, which she waited out before answering with a question of her own.

"You don’t mind something a little depressive, do you? I’ve had memories of Joelle running through my mind all night—" she stopped to wipe away a renegade tear "—and I’d like to do one of her favorites, although I don’t know if you guys know it or could come up with other parts. It’s ‘Wind Beneath My Wings’."

"Yeah, we know that one. We sang it almost every night after our grandmother died, before we wrote ‘With You In Your Dreams’," Isaac said softly. Laurel began to play, and took the melody as the three sang together, mourning their respective lost love ones. The harmonies Isaac and Taylor provided were amazing.

"…So I was the one with all the glory / While you were the one with all the strain…" Isaac found a new meaning to these words as he looked at Laurel and thought about everything they had each been through. His glory had caused Laurel unimaginable pain, yet she was such a strong and beautiful person because of and in spite of it all. "…A beautiful face without a name for so long / A beautiful smile to hide the pain / Did you ever know that you’re my hero / And everything I would like to be…"

At varying intervals, one of them would stop and listen to the other two; the music they made together was beautiful beyond description. At the song’s conclusion, Laurel whispered, so low that the brothers were hardly aware she’d spoken, "Thank you. Thank you for letting me do this."

Not a word needed to be said in reply; it could all be seen in the eyes of the young men beside her. Isaac laid a hand on her shoulder, tentatively at first, then more boldly.

Through every passing moment, I learn something new about her that just makes me love her more, he thought. I don’t want to lose her. But I can’t force her into anything she doesn’t want.

Sensing what his brother was thinking and feeling, Taylor discreetly slipped out of the room and down the hall to his waiting bed. Thus, Laurel and Isaac were left alone again.

"Laurel? Would you mind if I told you something that you might not want to hear?" The apprehension in Isaac’s request caught Laurel’s attention.

"What is it?"

"I love you. I can’t deny it, but if it’s what you want, I won’t act on it. But I need you to know that I love you."

Laurel was unable to respond; but the tears in her eyes said it all. She wished as badly as he that things could be different, that the past could somehow be rewritten to be much more pleasant.

"I’m so sorry," she whispered, "sorry that I can’t trust myself to feel the same, or even say that I do. I wouldn’t want to hurt you by saying so if it wasn’t true."

"I understand," was all he said. "You do know that you’re a hero of sorts to me, don’t you? I mean, to have come out of that situation as well as you have and still be able to sit here and talk to me… I don’t know how you do it. I know I never could if I were in your shoes."

"It’s not always so easy," Laurel confessed. "Like right now, I — I’m starting to feel the need to escape. Good night." She left him, once again, standing alone to watch her departure. Little did he know, when Laurel had said that she needed to escape, she didn’t mean just for the night.