She was staying with one of her aunts in Georgia.

I’m not a betting man, I worked too hard for my money.

[Smiles weakly]

But if I’d known what was happening, I would have put money on him walking offstage after our last gig in LA and going direct to Georgia.

He didn’t.

He went home.

That being to his and Lyla’s pad.

In LA.

You didn’t ask, and maybe you already guessed, but in the days after Lyla took off, no one in the band, including me, manned up to try to reach him.

It’s no longer about the problems with the band.

This is Lyla and Preacher, or a Preacher without Lyla, and we already know he’s got something eating at him, without Lyla to balm that hurt…

[Draws a long breath into his nose]

And not one of us even attempted to make an approach.

He wasn’t inviting that but…

[Lengthy pause]

Still.

It took me two days to go see him after the tour was over, and I went because Tom had come to me and this was the “later” I keep mentioning.

This was when he told me all this shit was going down.

I was tweaked way the fuck out.

Lyla’s disappearance from the end of the tour had been noticed. People were whispering about it. Our PR folks were getting calls.

But it wasn’t that.

Lyla wasn’t there from the very beginning of the band.

But it felt like she was.

[Shakes head]

Straight up, those two were such a unit, there was a fade where one ended and the other started.

They came together.

They belonged together.

They were meant for each other.

So much so, I can goddamn conjure in my head the vision of her standing at his side, holding his hand and leaning into him as he stood beside Tim’s dad’s truck and told me I was a rock star.

I can conjure it as a memory, like it happened just like that.

We couldn’t be who we were without her.

And I do not hesitate in sharing, I didn’t think Preacher could exist without her.

So, I go see him at his place in LA, yeah?

[Drums fingers uneasily on arm of chair]

And I figure I first got the battle of him opening the door to me.

But he does.

Right off.

I then figure he’s gonna look like shit. Haggard. Sunken eyes.

[Scoffs]

It’d only been two days since the tour ended and this was Preacher McCade.

But I’d dramatized all this in my head, the band up in the air, Preacher removed from us, Lyla gone.

This is Armageddon, man.

The end of days.

[Tucks chin in his neck, then rights head]

He was not haggard with sunken eyes.

[Dips ear to shoulder, rights head]

His gaze was dead.