Until the Truth Comes Out by Melanie Summers

The Concert Under the Comet was set to take place just as Hale-Bopp reached its closest distance to Earth. There had been some concern all week that a bank of clouds might ruin the show. But thankfully, they drifted away that morning, allowing the stars—and the single streak of light that would get twenty-thousand rock fans out into the Mojave Desert on a cool spring Saturday night—to show themselves.

But it wasn’t only the comet they’d come to see (all of them either wildly rich or beautiful enough that someone with money would shell out eight thousand dollars for a single ticket). It was the lineup of stars. The biggest names in the music industry were there, several of whom would take the stage together for the first and last time. It would be televised around the globe, making it bigger than the original Woodstock. More important than Live Aid ‘85. Filled with more star power than a Vanity Fair Oscar party. It was a tribute to a dead legend. The rise of a new star. The end of innocence for one lost teenager. It would be the greatest reconciliation of any celebrity couple in history. Or it would be their demise. Those last two things would remain up in the air until morning.

The location was a well-guarded secret. It had to be if they were going to keep the riffraff away. The riffraff could watch via pay-per-view for a whopping $49.95 (the highest priced pay-per-view event up to that point in time). The record label executives, production team, and cable provider were certain the riffraff would be all too happy to pool their cash so they could say they’d been a part of it when they got to work the following Monday. They were right.

Two hours before sundown, the audience would be brought to the location in a steady stream of air-conditioned buses, limousines, and town cars. The lights would go up. The music would play. People would cheer themselves hoarse and drink and dance and sing along (most of them off-key, depending on how many drinks they had). When they’d go back to Las Vegas, their drivers would turn on the heat for their now-chilly, exhausted passengers. The drivers would be relieved they weren’t rowdy and out of control. Instead, they were dead quiet as the shock of what happened lingered.

That afternoon, five-month-old Elliott (who always went straight to sleep in the car) dozed through the long ride under the bright afternoon sun. Later, when the sky grew dark, his mother, Claudia Crawford, would point up at it and tell him about the comet, knowing he wouldn’t understand, but hoping it would somehow leave a faint imprint on his fresh, new mind. Claudia would give the performance of a lifetime that night. She was the only woman who’d been part of The Vows, but she wouldn’t play with them that evening. She would go on alone for reasons the audience wouldn’t understand until after.

Claudia had planned to leave little Elliott back at the hotel in Vegas with her very reliable French nanny. Only the nanny went out dancing the night before and never came back, so Claudia was forced to bring him to the desert and leave him in the care of two teenage girls she barely knew. But everything would be fine. Elliott would be safely tucked away in a holiday trailer nearby with the girls watching over him, and Claudia would only be gone for forty-five minutes. An hour tops.

But of course, that’s not what happened. Things ran late, as they do at these events, and she ended up leaving him for the better part of two hours. By the time she returned to the trailer, it would be empty.

Before long, she would find herself groping her way through the impossibly dark desert, screaming his name, gripped by a panic that only fills a parent whose child has vanished. It would occur to her that she might never again hold her baby. Never press his chubby cheek to hers, never smell his neck, never hear him laugh again. She might never hear him speak his first words or watch him take his first steps. What if he never got to do those things? What if he was already dead?

Her knees would give out, and she’d slide to the cold ground, and she’d be disgusted at herself for letting her emotions overwhelm her. She’d be hauled to her feet and ordered to keep going by the last person on earth she expected to help. Although her companion was only there because her child was missing too.