ninety-six.

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APRIL 8th, 1994, SEATTLE, WA

      FOR THE FIRST time ever since working at DGC, Reagan was glad that people knew who she was. The whispers that had floated around her, regarding her as the wife to Dave Grohl, had once irked her to no end, but that day she was grateful for her reputation.

People kept their distance, halting the frequent knocks that usually rapped upon Reagan's office door. In the hallways, eyes followed Reagan but flitted away when she happened to look up. Everyone had seemingly taken ten giant steps back from her and for that, she couldn't have been more relieved.

Kurt's ongoing disappearance had not taken the forefront of each passing work day, but there was still plenty of hushed gossip going on about it, murmurs exchanged over cups of coffees and in the confines of cubicles.

Reagan knew what her coworkers wanted to ask her. They wanted to know the same things that her family wanted to know, the same answers that she could not give. It was as if she'd become a witness to an awful crime without any evidentiary support to what had happened. She was on trial under questioning with no idea what had even happened.

She was in the dark. The same as everyone else. Kurt was the only person who knew what was going to happen next. The power rested in his hands.

Walking back to her office from a bathroom break, Reagan kept her eyes level with the dark gray carpets of the hall. She smoothed her hands down the front of her pants, listening to the sound of her own breathing, whooshing in and out through her nose. She was afraid to look up, afraid to see the questioning gazes wheeled in her direction.

Half the time she wondered why she'd even shown up for work. There was, by all technicalities, a family emergency going on. But she'd made her way to DGC's office every day, forced herself to sit behind her desk and listen to tapes and make tedious phone calls and either crush the dreams of the bands she came across or make miracles happen for them.

Dave had encouraged her to go to work. It will keep your mind off of it, he'd insisted. That statement had turned out to be nothing short of a cruel joke.

If anything, Kurt was the only thing on Reagan's mind as she sifted through the stack of mailed tapes in front of her and reviewed footage of potential talent. In every lead singer's voice, in every grainy image of a guitarist skittering their fingers across taut strings, she saw Kurt.

Reagan committed every one of these up and coming bands to memory, stashing away individual members' names in the back of her mind.

Do you really want to do this? she wanted to ask them. Are you sure this is the life you want?

The thought made her stomach curl. Of course those musicians would answer 'yes.' They didn't know. Foreshadowing into a rosy future came easily for them, especially when their hearts were in the music.

Kurt's heart had been in the music too, as far as Reagan was concerned. And now he'd vanished because of it — he could have been strung out, dead in a ditch, living under a new identity. She couldn't begin to rationally guess which outcome it would be, but she did know that it had all started with the music.

She took a deep breath when she got to her office, shutting the door and pressing her back against it. Her fingers grazed the smooth wood as she pushed her hands down to her side, closing her eyes.

Reagan was living a nightmare. She wouldn't deny it any longer, or try to sugarcoat the truth with hopefulness and distractions. The bubbly, joyful world she'd been living in was crumbling, blackening as the sun that it orbited around vanished.

Was Kurt the sun? Reagan was sure that he wasn't. Dave and Gracie were the equivalent to her sun. But Kurt . . . he was the force of gravity that had kept them rooted. Everyone in Reagan's life had their assigned roles, from shooting stars to the cloudless blue sky that had hung overhead in her perfect world. Kurt had just happened to be the gravity.

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