by Elle Casey
Ty looks up at him, furious. “She can take all the time she needs. Nobody is going to rush her into anything.”
I wave the tissue at both of them, my heart breaking into a thousand pieces. Staying is what I want to do more than anything in the world, but I realize now how selfish that is. The band was fine until I showed up. They were packing stadiums with fans, touring the world, and making money hand over fist. The press wasn’t making up horrible rumors about them that could jeopardize their future contracts with new labels. I can’t just think about myself here; I have to do what’s right for the band, or I won’t even be worthy of working for them.
“I don’t need any more time. I’ve decided. I’m going home.”
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
I leave Ty in Lister’s office, telling him I need to go to the bathroom, but instead I just go. With my heart breaking, I exit the building and jump into his car, telling the driver to take me to the Four Seasons. I rush up to my room, throw my new clothes into the shopping bags they came in, and go back downstairs. I ignore the phone calls coming to my cell as I get into the car with Mr. Blake driving.
“I’d like to go to JFK, please.”
He glances at me in the mirror but does as I ask. I cry all the way there. I make it to the ticket counter to claim my seat on the next and only flight out, which leaves in forty-five minutes. The universe has spoken; I was meant to leave now.
I make it through security, but I’m forced to abandon all my delicious-smelling lotions. It makes me cry all over again.
I don’t remember much of the flight; it passes in a blur and I’m too numb to think about what happened. The only thing that goes through my mind over and over again is that I’m a failure. I don’t have what it takes to be in business in the city. The farm is where I belong. I wish it made me feel anything but completely depressed.
It doesn’t take long to get from Manhattan to central Maine. I take a taxi back to the house, paying for it with some of the cash I have left in my wallet. It reminds me that I never paid José for the haircuts.
I send a text to Lister before I arrive home. Please pay José the hairdresser for all of the haircuts for the band. I promised I would pay today. Ty will give you the address.
I send another text to Lister two minutes later. I forgot to tip the concierge, James, and the guy who is always in the elevator, Jeremy. They’ve taken really good care of me. Could you please leave them a tip? I’ll pay you back.
I shut my phone off and sleep until I arrive at the farm.
The car drives me right up to the porch, helping me avoid the crowds of people who are camped out at the end of the driveway. I’m glad to find that my mothers have put their foot down and at least insisted on some privacy.
I walk in the front door but find the house empty. I drop my things on the floor and go into the dining room, sitting down in one of the chairs and resting my head on my folded arms.
I don’t even realize I’m sleeping until a hand on my back jolts me out of a hazy dream.
“Amber? Honey, are you okay?”
I sit up in a daze. Sally is standing over me.
“Sally? What are you doing here?” I look around and realize where I am. For a moment, I’d forgotten that I came home.
“I live here, sweetie,” she laughs as she strokes my hair. “You look really sad. What happened?”
The door bursts open, and Em enters with Rose at her heels. They both have big grins on their faces until they see me. Their smiles are quickly replaced with looks of surprise and then worry.
“What happened? Why are you home?” Em asks.
“Oh my goodness, something happened,” Rose says, rushing over. They gather around me, touching me, stroking my hair, leaning over and kissing me.
I can’t stop the tears. “I decided I needed to come home. I’m done with New York City. It’s not the place for me.”
Em takes the seat on one side of me and Rose takes the other. Sally disappears out the front door.
“What happened?” Rose asks. “Just tell us.” She reaches up to play with my hair. Em does the same thing on my other side. This is what we always do; when one of us is sad, we play with her hair and talk to her until she can work out the problem. It’s very relaxing and helps us form a connection while we unload our sorrows. I don’t think it’s going to work this time, though.
“Do you remember a guy named Darrell who was with the band in the beginning?” I ask.
Em stands up all of a sudden and runs over to our record collection. She pulls out the album that has his picture on the front. She puts it down on the table.
Now I see the resemblance. I knew I’d seen him before. “Yes, that’s him.”
“He’s not with the band anymore, though, right?” Rose asks.
“No, but he wants to be. But the band doesn’t want anything to do with him, so they’ve been shutting him out. So he decided to try to blackmail them through their lawyer, and when that didn’t work, he went to the reporters and told them everything.”
“Everything? Like what?” Em asks.
“Well, lies, actually. He’s telling them that the band knew about us all along and abandoned us, but that’s not true.” I look at my sisters, so sad that we have to go through this. “They didn’t know. The band manager kept the information from them. They were trying to respect our mothers’ choice to be done with the rock ’n’ roll lifestyle. They had no idea they were walking away from women who loved them and children they had fathered. It’s so unfair.”
Both of my sisters cry with me. The door opens and all three of our mothers come in. They take one look at us and come over. We all stand together in a circle, hugging one another.
There are many, many tears, and then one of us snorts accidentally. It starts somebody laughing, and that laughter becomes contagious. Then we’re a mess of tears and laughter. Eventually, we move into the living room and collapse onto the sofa together. We don’t fit; it’s not big enough for six women, but we squish ourselves in anyway.
“What on earth are we going to do with ourselves?” Barbara asks when we finally calm down and can breathe again.
“I don’t know about you guys, but I hear there’s going to be a concert in New York City next week, and I’d love to go to it,” says Sally.
Everybody looks at her. “What are you talking about, Sally?” Carol asks.
She grins, pulling something out of her apron pocket. It’s a piece of paper all folded up. She reads aloud from it. “Red Hot. Hell’s Kitchen. Tickets on sale at the door. Welcome back tour. Intimate venue. Show starts at nine.” She folds the paper and slides it back into her apron.
I shake my head. “No way. I’m not going back there.”
Barbara pats my hand. “It’s okay, sweetie. You don’t have to go back if you don’t want to.”
We sit on the couch like that for ten minutes, until our mothers start complaining about their legs falling asleep. It’s only three in the afternoon, but I’m exhausted. As soon as I’m untangled from everyone else, I go up to my room and fall into a deep sleep with Rose on one side of me, Em on the other, and a pile of border collie puppies in every crack and crevice between us.
I dream of Darrell yelling that I’ve ruined everything, and then I dream of a band I love—playing music I know by heart—but every time I try to get their attention, they turn their backs on me.
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
My phone shows eighteen missed calls, all from the same number. When I’m alone and the last puppy has been deposited in the laundry basket that is his temporary home, I press the green button on my phone.
“I was starting to think you were never going to return my calls,” Ty says. “Are you okay? Where are you? I went to the hotel, but they said you checked out.”
“I’m sorry. I’m home at the farm. I needed to get away, and I’ve been sleeping. I was exhausted.”
“I get it.” He sounds as sad as I feel. “Trust me. I want to fall into a coma myself after
that meeting at Lister’s place.”
“Is everybody angry at me?” I cringe, waiting for his answer.
“No. Why would anybody be angry at you?”
“I don’t know. If I hadn’t come to New York, none of this would’ve happened.”
“If that dick Darrell hadn’t stuck his nose into everybody’s business, none of this would’ve ever happened. You are not the problem, Amber. He is.”
The phone goes silent. I can’t think of anything else to say.
“Please come back,” he whispers. I hear the pain in his voice, and I really want to make it go away, but I can’t. This is a problem I cannot solve, and it’s killing me.
“I can’t,” I say, crying silently.
“Is it because of me?”
“No. You’re the only reason I’d want to come back.”
“I thought you were enjoying working with the band.”
It almost hurts to admit this. “I was, actually. It just . . . stopped being fun, I guess.” I can’t tell him the truth, that I loved every minute of it. That would be selfish.
“It’s just a momentary setback. Lister is going to be lucky if he keeps his job after this.”
I sigh. I’d love to hang on to the hope he’s offering, but it’s all just an illusion. “I think you guys live a life that is full of temporary setbacks.”
“What do you mean?”
“You always have somebody who wants to get into your business, who wants a piece of you. There’s always somebody who doesn’t care about your privacy, or wants to learn dirty secrets about you so they can spread them around the world.”
“That’s the price we pay for fame.”
“I know. But I think that price is too high for me. I don’t want to be famous. I just want to be me.” I thought I wanted to be a businesswoman in the city too, but when it comes at the cost of destroying my family, the price is too high.
He’s quiet for a long time. When he finally speaks, his voice is hoarse. “You’re leaving me.”
I feel like I’ve been stabbed in the heart with a sharp piece of glass. “I’m not leaving you. I care about you very much, but I’ve only known you for a few days. You’ll get over it.” He deserves to be with someone who loves that life of being hounded, of having news articles written about her, who doesn’t take it personally when her family is attacked. I’m too sensitive to be that person for him. When someone attacks my family, I want to attack back. I’ll end up in jail or worse.
“I won’t get over you. I’m telling you, I won’t.”
The piece of glass that lodged in my heart isn’t going anywhere. I’m afraid it’s going to be a permanent part of my body now. “Ty, I have to go. This is too painful for me right now.”
“Can I call you later?”
I should tell him no; it’s not fair to lead him on. But I don’t have the strength to do that. I keep picturing his eyes, and how dark they can be sometimes. And I remember those home movies, and how badly that little boy wanted to play guitar, even when people were making him miserable. “Sure. Call me later.”
I hang up the phone and go back to sleep, all alone in the bed this time. I can’t wake up and face reality. Not yet.
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
I have no idea what time it is when I wake up again. My cell phone is dead. The light outside my window is dim, suggesting it’s either early in the morning or nighttime. I haven’t heard our rooster crowing, so I’m betting it’s the latter.
I wander into the bathroom to pee and take a moment to brush my teeth. My hair looks like crap, but nobody in this house is going to care. As I reach the top of the staircase, I hear voices down on the main floor—deep voices. I slowly go down the steps, holding on to the railing. The lower I get, the more familiar those voices become.
When I reach the bottom I stop and my jaw falls open. My living room is full of people, and they’re all looking at me.
“Amber.” Mister Bigger-Than-Life himself, Red Wylde, is standing in the middle of our living room. My mothers are beaming, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen them look so happy. Cash is sitting in the recliner with a beer resting on his belly. Mooch is on the floor, feeding a puppy with a bottle. Paul is on the couch between Rose and Em. And Ty is standing off to the side, isolated from the rest, but now the center of my attention.
“What are you doing here?” I ask him.
He shrugs. “We took the jet.”
Red takes two steps toward me. “Amber, we need you to come back.”
I hang on to the railing with two hands, shaking my head. “You don’t need me.”
Red goes to take another step, but Ty stops him, holding up a hand. When I’m ready to race up the stairs, overwhelmed by the idea that all these people flew to Maine to talk to me, I stop for the man before me; Ty reaches the bottom stair and takes my hand.
“I know you’re exhausted, and this is probably the last thing you want to see right now, but we felt really bad about what happened to you and wanted to apologize.”
“In person,” Mooch says loudly. The puppy he’s supposed to be feeding starts squealing. “Sorry, sorry, little guy. Geez, you’re hungry.”
I try to smile at Mooch’s silliness, but my cheeks tremble with the effort. I bite my lip to keep from crying.
“We really do want you to come back. You were in the middle of doing great things for us, and it’s already making a difference. Look.” Ty unlocks his phone and presses a few buttons, holding it up for me. The big headline is impossible to miss. Red Hot is back and hotter than ever. It’s a perfect photograph of the band as they’re standing outside the hair salon. They do look great, I have to admit. I take his phone so I can get a closer look. I can’t help but smile. I’m proud of myself. I did good.
“You did that,” Red says. “And we know you have other plans for us. Come back and make them happen.”
I give Ty his phone. “This is all very flattering, but I have things I need to do here.” My heart is hammering in my chest. I want to hope so badly, but my brain won’t let me. My brain is rational, realistic. It’s telling me this is too big a risk to take.
“We can cover for you,” Carol says loudly.
“Not that we don’t love you to pieces,” Sally says, “but your presence here is not needed. Not for the farm to function, I mean.” She reaches up to tug her braid. “I mean, don’t stay here just for us.” She looks at Barbara. “Help . . . I’m screwing this up.”
My mom walks over and stands next to Ty. “Baby, you need to be happy. You’re not happy here on the farm. You know it and we know it. Go be who you are in the city.”
“But . . . what about the farm?” I ask. “My bees?”
“Smitty can take care of the bees,” she says, stroking my hand. “He knows this farm like the back of his hand, and he’s already asked if we need help.”
Good old Smitty . . . the boy next door who we’ve known since early childhood. It’s kind of crazy that I never thought about him taking over for me. Of course he’s perfectly capable, there’s no question about that.
“Come back,” Ty says. “You can stay at my place. It’s a lot more private than that hotel. Nobody will be able to bother you there.”
Hope keeps beating away at me, demanding to be let into my heart. “They’ll just be waiting for me outside the studio, or the hair salon, or wherever else I go.”
“You get better at avoiding them with more practice. And we’ll work with specialists who can help you come up with ways to deal with them, answers to give them that will satisfy them so they won’t harass you.”
“People like that exist?”
“You bet,” says Paul. “I had to have several sessions with them.”
“We all did,” Cash says.
“Even me,” Ty says. “It’s not easy, but you can find ways to make it bearable. The rewards are so great. I know you were enjoying your time in the city. Let me show it to you. Let me show you the fun parts of living in New York.” He pulls me down to th
e ground floor and hugs me, whispering in my ear. “Just give us a real chance. That’s all I ask.”
Barbara puts her hand on Ty’s shoulder and looks up at him, silently asking him for a moment. He nods and steps aside.
My mother stands before me, placing her hands on my cheeks. She kisses me on the forehead. “Baby girl, it’s time for you to leave the nest. We love having you here, and you are an amazingly fun, lovely, intelligent person we love to be with. But the farm is not the place for you right now. You can come back whenever you want, but you need to spread your wings and fly a little bit.”
I start to cry. “What if I don’t want to?”
She nods in understanding. “You want to. You just need to be honest with yourself. We’ve seen it for a long time, but we also knew you weren’t quite ready to go. You’re ready now. We release you from any obligations you feel you have toward the farm or your family. Go with our blessings.”
I take a deep, shuddering breath. “There’s a lot of really rude people in that city.”
“Yes, there are. But there’re also a lot of really great people there who care about you very much.” She looks briefly over her shoulder before coming back to me. Her voice drops to a whisper. “Don’t make the same mistake that I made, okay? Take a chance on life. Don’t let those mean people scare you away from your future.”
I think about it for a while, and then I nod. She’s right. I know she is. Hope explodes in my chest, now joined by the rational part of my brain. This makes sense. I might be out here, living in the sticks, wearing cotton and hemp, but that doesn’t mean I need to be intimidated by people who live in the city, wear three-inch heels, carry microphones around, and make up lies. I’m not going to let these people scare me. I need to learn to follow my own advice. And if my moms say I’m not needed for the functioning of this farm, then I’m not going to argue with them.
“I think I can handle it for two weeks.”
Red comes over and stops just next to my mother. “We were kind of hoping we could convince you to stay for longer than two weeks.”
