Amber

by Elle Casey

  “No, actually, Paul joined us in our third year. He replaced a guy named Darrell who we didn’t get along with very well in the end.”

  “He’s on your first album, right?”

  “Yeah. We bought him out a long time ago, though. We don’t hear much from him these days. Haven’t in a while.”

  They bought him out like they want to buy us out. How adorable. I wonder if Darrell is as bitter as we are.

  “You have no idea what he’s doing these days?” I wonder how Red can so easily dismiss a fellow musician who helped his band find the fame and fortune they yearned for. Their first album was one of their best, according to my moms.

  “Nope. Not interested.” He plays with one of his rings, twisting it around and around. “So, how are your sisters doing?”

  “They’re fine.” I hope he doesn’t think I’m going to sit here and start telling him about our life at Glenhollow Farms. He has no right to know about that.

  “That’s nice. I was hoping we could meet them too.”

  “That’s probably not going to happen.”

  “Probably not?” He’s sounding hopeful again. I’ll give the guy one thing: he sure is determined. I wonder if I inherited that gene from him.

  “They’re pretty busy,” I explain, for some reason sparing him the truth that they just weren’t interested enough to bother.

  “Really? What do they do?”

  I guess I walked right into that one. Now I’m stuck giving him some private details I would have rather kept to myself. I sigh. “Rose runs an animal rescue clinic, and Em helps with our farmers’ market business.”

  “Fascinating. So Rose actually runs her own clinic? Or is she partners with someone else? A manager?”

  “She runs her own clinic. She’s not exactly a veterinarian, though; it’s a nonprofit organization.”

  “But she does medical care on animals? That’s excellent.”

  “She does quite a bit, yeah. She doesn’t do surgery; she has a vet who comes in to do that for her.”

  “Good for her. That’s pretty cool. I love animals.”

  Now I’m wondering if Rose got her love of animals from him. Are we both his daughters? Is she my half sister for real and not just in spirit?

  “Yeah.” It strikes me that maybe he’s seeking a connection to us like I keep catching myself doing with him. I’m sure he wonders if any of us is his daughter. Maybe that’s what the big interest in hanging out with me is; he’s just trying to solve the mystery for himself.

  “You were going to pay each of us ten million dollars,” I say, the words popping out of my mouth.

  “Yes. We’re still willing to do that.” He turns very serious.

  “But you don’t even know if you’re related to us. Who’s paying the money?”

  “We’re all chipping in and paying equal parts. All of us, even-steven, except for Ty and Paul, of course. Keith’s estate is participating; it was in his will.”

  “But that means somebody could be paying money out to a child or children who aren’t even his.”

  He nods slowly, leaning back in his chair. And then the waiter arrives to bring us our drinks, so the conversation stops for a little while. I move the tea bag around in the teapot while Red sips his coffee.

  “We are aware that because of the situation, some of us may be paying money into an inheritance that we really have no connection to, but it doesn’t matter.”

  “Why doesn’t it matter?” I can’t help but be fascinated, especially when the concept of parting with millions of dollars for a stranger is so alien to me. Hell, I can’t even afford another plane ticket right now.

  He looks at me, and I swear his eyes start to fill with tears. “Because we all loved your mothers equally.”

  “I . . .”

  I stop right there because I don’t know what to say to that. I never considered our situation from this perspective before. My sisters and I always figured this offer was some sort of apology for being shitty fathers—a payoff. None of us ever connected it to our mothers directly.

  “I hope you believe that,” he says. “They were very special to us.”

  I try not to get bitter and angry over his words, but it’s impossible. I have to clench my jaw shut to keep from saying anything rude. Instead, I pour some of my tea into the waiting cup.

  “You’re awfully quiet. Are you this way all the time?”

  I shake my head, almost laughing. If my sisters could see me now. “Not really.”

  “Ty told us that you were pretty talkative with him.”

  I shrug. “I suppose you could call me that on a normal day.”

  “But today is not a normal day,” he says softly.

  “Not even close.” I take a sip of my tea, suddenly not able to look him in the eye.

  “I wish I could say something to make this easier for you.”

  I put my cup down and face him. “With every word you say, you make it more difficult.”

  “I get it.” He drinks more of his coffee and looks around the room. “You know, when you get to be my age, you look back on your life and you think about the things you did and the choices you made . . . and you wonder how many of them were the right ones and how many of them were wrong.”

  “I’m sure everybody does that.” I’m just trying to be nice, because I don’t think most people made as many bad choices as these men did. They’ve had all the money they could possibly need and then some for a long, long time, so they can’t claim financial hardship as their reason for not being involved in our lives. It was a clear and present choice they made: We don’t want kids or women in our lives. The end.

  “One thing I do know that wasn’t a mistake . . . ,” he says, stopping and waiting for me to respond.

  I’m being led down a path but I can’t see the destination, and I’m not sure I want to either. But to not respond would be rude. “What’s that?”

  “Spending all the time we did with your mothers. We had them with us for two years, and it was the best time of our lives.” He stares at me earnestly. “If you look at our music, at the things that we wrote in that two-year period, you can see it . . . hear it. Everybody can. It was our best stuff.”

  “That was a long time ago.”

  “Yeah. Twenty-seven years.”

  “I’m sorry things didn’t work out between you guys.” I mean it, too. I think my mothers are as sad as he seems to be.

  His smile is wistful. “Yeah, I wonder what today would look like for me if I had done things differently back then.”

  “Well, I can’t imagine you’d be happy living on a hippie commune in central Maine.”

  He smiles sadly. “Don’t be too surprised. I seriously considered it a few times in my life.”

  I don’t know if he’s joking around, but I can’t help but stare at him, trying to read his expression. “Yeah. Sure.”

  “You don’t believe me, do you?”

  “No, not really.”

  He shifts in his chair, leaning toward me. “How much do you know about our relationship with your mothers?”

  I squirm in my seat, uncomfortable with the direction this conversation is headed. But I can’t not answer him. My sisters would kill me if they knew I got this close to actually finding some answers and chickened out.

  “Not a lot. I know they were with you for a couple years, having a great time, and then they got pregnant and had to leave.”

  “That’s it? That’s all the detail you have?”

  “Pretty much. And this is the story we just got recently, mind you. My entire life, I never knew that they had any kind of relationship with you at all. You were a face on an album cover; that’s it.” I was mad at my moms for keeping the Big Secret from us for about a day. Then my sisters and I realized . . . they had no choice. They did the best they could at the time. They were told moms and kids weren’t a part of the plan, and they believed that to be true too.

  I watch as several emotions cross over his features. He loo
ks surprised at first, then angry, and finally . . . sad. He stares down into his coffee mug. “I get it. That was probably the smartest thing for them to do.”

  “I think so too.”

  He looks up at me. “Why’s that?”

  “Because . . . could you imagine what that would’ve been like for us? To grow up knowing that we had fathers out there who were touring the world, having a big party, and believing they were ignoring us the entire time?”

  He grips his coffee mug hard enough to make his fingers go blotchy white. “That’s not how it was. We didn’t do that.”

  I sit back in my seat and stare at him. “I’m pretty sure it is how it was . . . or how it would have been if our moms had tried to stick around. But it’s all water under the bridge now. We’re fully grown women, and it doesn’t matter.” I want to say, You can’t hurt us anymore, but that would be a lie, as I’m finding out in this moment.

  He stands up and rubs his hands on his jeans and turns sideways. I think he’s going to take off, but then he changes his mind and sits down. He runs his hands over the top of his head and scratches his scalp a little bit. When he looks up at me, he seems tortured.

  “I’m telling you the truth when I say that I loved your mothers. All of them. Still do. And I wouldn’t say a negative thing about them because I respect them. I know how strong they are, and I know how smart they are too, and that they did what they thought they had to do as mothers. But I want you to know that you don’t have the whole story. You don’t know some things that maybe you should know.”

  I shake my head. I will not be manipulated into forgetting the truth—and that is the fact that, after twenty-five years, these men had no trouble finding us. If they did it two weeks ago, they could have done it twenty-five years ago too. There’s no excuse for staying away. “I know everything I need to know. I’m sure of it.”

  He smiles sadly. “You’re stubborn, just like your mother, Barbara.”

  I consider that a compliment. “I’ve heard that a few times in my life.”

  “She was such a hoot.” He relaxes into his chair with a faraway look in his eye. “She always made everybody laugh. And nobody gave her any sass either, because she’d shut them down in a second.”

  “She’s pretty much the same now.” I’m proud of my mom. I love who she is.

  “I’d give anything to see her,” he says wistfully.

  “She’d probably give anything to see you too.” I shrug. It’s not a lie. She cries over his stupid album covers, still to this day.

  He looks down at his hands in his lap. “I wouldn’t want to mess up your life by showing up out of the blue.”

  “I wouldn’t want you to do that either.” Finally, we agree on something. It’s so very sad.

  Our conversation dies out, and we just sit there in silence sipping our drinks. I pour more tea from my teapot, even though I’m not going to drink it. I just want this to be over, but I don’t have the lady balls to stand up and walk out. Either that or I’m too curious about what’s going to happen next to miss out on it.

  “You said something last night about Ty,” Red says. “And I talked to Lister after, and he said that you mentioned knowing some things about the band and what’s going on.”

  He waits for me to respond, and I’m not going to be a child and give him the silent treatment. “Yeah. So?”

  “Do you feel like sharing any of that with me?”

  I shrug. “Yeah, sure. That’s an easy conversation.” I’m actually relieved to know this is what we’re going to talk about now. That dream I had with Ty looking so dark is still haunting me. Maybe I’ll be able to exorcise that ghost before I leave New York.

  “So, what do you have to tell me?”

  “Well . . .” I square myself in my seat, preparing to deliver my potentially unpleasant ideas. “I just met Ty yesterday, so it’s not like I’m an authority on the subject, but it seems pretty clear that he’s not fitting in with the band from your fans’ perspective.”

  “But we have no control over that.”

  I frown at his naïveté. “Of course you do. You have complete control over it. The problem is you’re doing all the wrong things.”

  He seems amused. “And what would those things be?”

  I don’t care if he’s mocking me; this is my chance to tell him some hard truths that he needs to hear. I’m doing it for Ty. And my moms. They’d want Red Hot to be the best it can be.

  “To start with, when your fans boo him when he goes out onstage, you don’t say a word about it. That’s not helping at all.”

  “We found out a long time ago that giving in to hecklers or troublemakers only makes it worse.”

  “When was the last time you tried it?”

  He thinks for a few seconds and shrugs before answering. “Twenty years ago, maybe.”

  “Well, hello . . . it’s 2017. Times have changed. You guys . . .” I laugh, unable to continue, because this is a totally pointless conversation. I’m talking to a man who has a mullet, for god’s sake.

  “What? Finish what you were going to say. Please.”

  This is not as easy as I thought it was going to be. I’m about to hurt his feelings. I should be happy about this, but I’ve lost a lot of the scorched-earth fervor I had before I came out here. “You guys don’t change with the times. And I know that this is your thing or whatever, but there are some things that shouldn’t stay stagnant.”

  “What do you mean we don’t change with the times?”

  I look at him closely to see if he’s messing around, a ghost of a smile haunting my lips, but when he seems totally serious, I stop grinning. “You do realize that you still wear your hair and clothes the same way you wore them twenty years ago, right?”

  “Yeah, but that’s part of our image.”

  “No, that’s you living in the past. Being stagnant.”

  He shakes his head and sits back. “You don’t understand how the rock ’n’ roll business works.”

  “You’re right . . . I don’t know how the industry works from the inside, but I sure as heck know what it’s like from the outside, from a fan’s perspective. I am part of the listening public, you know.”

  “You listen to our music? Are you a fan?”

  I let out a long breath. “I’ve been listening to your music since I was in utero. It’s not like I had a choice. But honestly, no, I’m not really a big fan. You guys are just too . . . old-school.”

  “But old-school is cool.” He gives me a charming smile.

  “Yeeeaaah . . . And sometimes old-school is outdated.” I can see my insult hit its target because he flinches.

  Now I feel bad. “I don’t mean to be rude. I’m sorry. My moms didn’t raise me to be like that. But you asked, and I’m just being honest with you; you guys could use a serious update.”

  He nods absently, finishing off his coffee and pushing the mug away. His body language tells me he’s totally disregarding everything I just said. Oh well.

  “I have a proposition I’d like to put your way,” he says after a few moments of quiet contemplation.

  “I already heard your proposition, and I told you . . . we’re not interested.”

  He waves his hand, brushing away my comment. “No, not that proposition. Something else.”

  “Oh. Well, what is it?” I know for sure that I’m going to say no thank you to whatever it is, because I want no further contact with these people, but curiosity has me listening anyway.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Red leans in, resting his bejeweled hands on the tablecloth, fiddling with the silverware by his plate as he delivers his proposition to me. “As you mentioned before, we have a bit of an image problem and some issues with integrating Ty into the band. This is not news to us. But what you don’t know is that we’ve got a new deal on the table with another label that we’re real happy about for the most part, but they’ve mentioned some of the things that you have.”

  “The need for an update?”

&n
bsp; His mouth twists before he answers. “Pretty much. We’re not exactly comfortable with the idea, but that’s not the worst part of it. The worst part is that the person they’ve assigned to handle that updating process is a complete wanker.”

  I almost laugh but manage to keep it in. “What does that have to do with me?”

  “There’s room in our contract for negotiation. What would you think about helping us out? On a temporary basis, of course. Very short-term thing.”

  “I don’t think I’d be interested in that.” I’m not even sure what he’s talking about, but it doesn’t matter. No way am I working anywhere near these guys.

  “Maybe not, but hear me out.” He sits toward the edge of his chair, quickly becoming more animated. “Like you said, you’re part of this new generation. You’re younger, and you’re not really into the old-school thing. Add to that the fact that you know our music. You said you’ve been listening to it since you were born.”

  “Since before I was born,” I clarify. Our mothers are fond of telling the story of using Walkman headphones on their bellies so we could learn the lyrics to Red Hot’s songs before we could form words.

  “Yes, exactly. And that’s cool, because we need somebody who really knows our music, backward and forward, like you said Ty does. And I know your moms are fans.”

  I roll my eyes. “To call them fans would be the understatement of the year.” If they found out I turned down a job with the band, they’d probably shoot me.

  “Cool. So, you’ve grown up in a household that had Red Hot playing, right?”

  “Always in the background of my life. Always.”

  “See? You get us. I mean, you get the music, anyway. You don’t get us, which makes sense because we’re just these old guys, you know, hanging on to the past. Stagnant. So you could do us—and Ty—a real solid, help us out, just, you know, update our image, get our gigs going again for the younger generation.”

  Now I understand what he’s trying to say. But I still don’t see why I’m the one who’s receiving this proposition. I’ve already told him I’m not interested, and surely there are a hundred other more qualified people than me out there in the world.