Rifts and Refrains

by Devney Perry

  “Morning,” I said, announcing my arrival in the kitchen.

  “Good morning.” Mom was buzzing around, pulling out colorful, plastic bowls for cereal, much like she’d done when we were kids. Except there were wide swaths of gray in her blond hair now. When she smiled, wrinkles formed by her blue eyes. “How did you sleep?”

  “Great,” I lied, putting on a happy face despite my throbbing temples. Coffee. I needed caffeine.

  “Isn’t that bed comfortable?” she asked.

  “Very.” I nodded at the truth.

  It was nicer than the bed I’d had as a kid. It was soft. The blankets were warm and heavy. But it was strange to sleep in my old room without my twin bed. I’d woken up a few times, not exactly sure where I was.

  That didn’t happen when I traveled. Maybe it would take me a minute to remember what city I was in or where we were headed next, but I always knew I was in a hotel bed and could sleep.

  Last night, too many memories had played through my mind, and despite the cozy bed, I hadn’t been able to relax.

  “Would you like coffee?” Mom nodded to the full pot in the corner of the kitchen as she poured orange juice into three little cups. Were those for us?

  “Yes, please. I can get it.” The coffee mugs were in the same cupboard where they’d always been. Everything about the kitchen seemed the same. The familiarity was comforting.

  Maybe that was why I hadn’t slept. My room hadn’t been my room. Now it was for guests.

  I was a guest.

  “Would you like some?” I asked after filling a mug to the brim.

  “No, thanks. Your father and I gave up caffeine a few years ago. But I figured you’d want some, so I dug out the pot.”

  “Thanks, but you don’t have to do that. I can go grab coffee every morning.”

  “It’s no trouble.” She stared at me for a long moment. She’d done that during dinner too, like she was worried I wasn’t really here. Or maybe that I’d leave again and not come back.

  Her worries were justified.

  Though in all fairness, it wasn’t like they’d made an effort to visit me.

  Seattle was a long day’s drive from Bozeman, but the flight was easy. I’d offered to fly them out countless times and get VIP tickets to one of our shows. But there’d always been an excuse. There was always something happening with the church that kept them busy. Dad had to preach on Sundays. He couldn’t be at a rock concert on a Saturday night.

  The man didn’t take vacations, not even the Sunday after his mother had passed.

  “Where’s Dad?” I asked, sitting in a chair in the dining room. The table was set with three plastic green bowls, each filled with cornflakes.

  “He’s gone already. They had a men’s Bible study early this morning.”

  Thank God. I sighed into my coffee. A morning with just Mom would be much easier to handle.

  If Dad was at the church, he’d probably stay all day. Maybe Mom and I could go out and explore. It would be nice to spend a day with her. The last time we’d been alone together had been on our trip to Seattle when she’d driven me out to visit a college campus.

  A day alone might help me remember how it had been once, before the bitter resentment had driven me away and the awkwardness had settled into every phone call and text.

  “What’s all this?” I asked, waving a hand at the bowls. If Dad was gone, why were there three? “Breakfast?”

  “Yep. The kids will be here soon.”

  “Kids?”

  “Your niece and nephews.” She frowned, but it quickly disappeared. Apparently, I wasn’t the only one not wanting to rock the boat. “I watch them in the summer. It saves Brooklyn and Walker from having to enroll them in year-round daycare and summer camps. Plus, it gives me time with them while I’m on summer break.”

  “Ah.” We’d have to find another day to catch up. If there was time before I left.

  Mom was a first-grade teacher at the same elementary where we’d gone to school three blocks away. Dad’s church was only one block from home.

  My entire childhood had taken place in this quiet neighborhood. Other than trips to the grocery store, we hadn’t ventured out of our safe haven much. Everything we’d needed had been here and within walking distance.

  Even Graham.

  I pushed his name out of my head, not wanting to dwell on how cold he’d been yesterday or the fact that he had a son. Replaying it over and over again last night had been enough.

  Nan had told me about the boy. Colin. But knowing he existed and seeing Graham’s mini in person were two entirely different experiences. Colin was the evidence that Graham hadn’t waited long to find my replacement in his truck bed. I, on the other hand, had waited three years before dating, if you could call two dinners and lousy sex with an executive at my label dating.

  I hadn’t bothered much with men since then. They were a distraction and required energy I just didn’t have, not when I was pouring myself into the music.

  Nan had been hounding me lately to wade into the dating pool. Every week, it was the same question. Found a man who can keep up with you yet? I’d laugh, tell her no, and she’d change the subject, usually to tell me about whatever gossip was running through her canasta club.

  She had been the only person in my family who’d kept in touch regularly. The only one from home who’d seemed to miss me.

  “Nan used to call me on Mondays,” I told Mom, toying with the plastic spoon beside my coffee mug. “Every Monday. Did you know that?”

  Maybe that was the root cause of my headache. A heartache. There’d be no call from Nan today. For the first time in nine years, my Monday wouldn’t include her voice.

  “I know.” Mom sat down across from me. “She’d report to me each week and tell me how you were.”

  “You could have called me yourself,” I snapped, instantly regretting my tone.

  “I’m sorry, Quinn.”

  “No, it’s fine.” The phone worked both ways. “I have a headache and it’s making me irritable.”

  “I thought about calling you. Often.” Her shoulders fell. “The truth is, I think I forgot how to talk to you once you left. After the fight and everything . . . I wasn’t sure what to say.”

  During the fight, she’d said plenty. So had Dad.

  After I’d left the next day for Seattle, it had taken her three weeks to call me. We’d gone from daily talks to silence for three, miserable, hard weeks. The woman who’d been my hero, the one who’d walk me to and from school, who’d set out cereal for me each morning and who’d play with me in the evenings, had let me run away to college without so much as a check-in to make sure I was safe.

  Her silence had sent a message. It had broken my heart.

  If not for Nan, I might have hated Mom. But Nan, she’d had this way of bridging the gap. She’d never taken a side. She’d never spoken of the fight and the day I’d left. She’d simply asked about me and how I was settling into school. She’d made sure I had everything I’d needed and cash if I’d been running short. Later, when I’d realized that college wasn’t the right fit and found a job at a bar, she’d laugh at my stories of drunk patrons. She’d been overjoyed when Jonas, Nixon and I had started our band.

  Year after year, Nan’s Monday phone calls had made the anger and hurt I’d held against my family slowly fade.

  Now she was gone. She wasn’t there to hold us together.

  When I left this time, there was a real chance we’d all drift apart for good.

  An awkward air hovered over the table and stifled any other attempt at conversation. I sipped my coffee as Mom sat across from me, watching but attempting not to stare. The tick of the wall clock grew louder and louder as the moments stretched, until the front door burst open and little feet pounded down the hallway.

  Praise Jesus, the kids were here to rescue me.

  “Nana!”

  Nana. They called her Nana. It was so close to Nan that my heart squeezed. Nan had used her first nam
e as her grandmotherly title. Even Dad called his mother Nan, per her insistence.

  The kids came running but slowed when they spotted me at the table. They herded toward Mom, cautious of the stranger beside their cereal bowls.

  I stood and smiled. “Good morning.”

  They didn’t smile back.

  “Hey, Mom.” Walker came into the kitchen, carrying backpacks on each arm, one decorated with pink princesses and another with red and blue puppy cartoons. “Quinn.”

  “Hi, Walker.” I smiled.

  He didn’t smile back. “Their swimming suits are in here for lessons at two. Mindy has a meeting that might run late, is that okay?”

  “Fine.” Mom took the backpacks, setting them against the wall. “We’ll be here.”

  “Thanks.” Walker dropped a kiss to her cheek, then helped his children into their seats, kissing them as Mom poured milk into their bowls.

  Evan and Maya.

  They looked so much like Walker with his gray-blue eyes. They both had blond hair a few shades lighter than his sandy curls. Walker was the only one who had curly hair in our family. None of us knew where he’d gotten it from, but as teenage girls, Brooklyn and I had both coveted his curls, teasing him that they’d been wasted on a boy.

  He’d made them useful. Walker had caught the eye of every girl in our high school, especially when he’d stood beside Graham. Even two years apart, they’d been best friends and fodder for teen fantasies.

  My fantasy had become reality the day Graham had asked me on a date, despite Walker’s disapproval that his best friend had the hots for his sister. But he’d gotten over it eventually. Walker had been the only one in this house who hadn’t once told Graham and me that we were too young to know love.

  While Graham and I had been exclusive for years, Walker had been the playboy, stringing along girlfriend after girlfriend. But then he’d gone to college and met Mindy his junior year. Head over heels, that was how Nan had described it to me on one of our calls.

  And now his children had his beautiful hair.

  My fingers itched to touch the soft strands, but Evan and Maya would probably run away screaming stranger danger if I got too close.

  “What?” Walker asked, his gaze darting between me and his children.

  “They have your hair.”

  “Yep,” he clipped. “Have their whole life.”

  Which I’d missed. The unspoken reminder clung to the air.

  “I’d better get to work,” he said. “Be good for Nana, guys. Love you.”

  “Bye, Daddy.” Maya waved brightly as her older brother inhaled his cereal, saying goodbye with milk dripping down his chin.

  I took a seat at the island, watching as the kids ate breakfast and Mom fussed over them, until Brooklyn arrived.

  “Hi, Brookie, uh . . . Brooklyn,” I said as she handed baby Bradley to Mom.

  She didn’t return my greeting, speaking and looking only at Mom. “He already ate, but he’s been up since five thirty. He’ll probably need a longer morning nap.”

  “No problem.” Mom kissed his chubby cheek.

  “See you tonight.” Brooklyn kissed her son goodbye, then spun for the door.

  “Have a good day,” I said to her back.

  She kept walking.

  Nice. I was the bad guy, right? I clapped my lips shut so I wouldn’t remind her that I’d reached out plenty of times to say hello and all my voicemails had gone unreturned.

  Mom cooed at the baby, bouncing him on her hip. Did six-month-old babies eat cornflakes? That seemed young, but there was that third bowl at the table.

  “When is Colin getting here?” Evan asked Mom.

  As if Evan had conjured him with his question, the door burst open once again and running feet came our way.

  My stomach dropped when a familiar mop of brown hair came into view. It was going to be hard avoiding Graham if Mom was babysitting his son every day this week.

  “Hey, Evan.” Colin dropped his backpack on the floor beside the others before his eyes caught on me. “Quinn!”

  I gulped and waved. “H-hey.”

  My God, he looked like Graham. He looked so much like the boy I’d been friends with at seven. Then crushed on at twelve. Then loved at sixteen.

  Graham came down the hallway and my racing heart jumped into my throat. Why did he have to look so good? Why couldn’t he have grown a beer belly or a big nose over the past nine years? His white T-shirt stretched across his broad shoulders, and the sleeves fit tight around his corded biceps. His faded jeans hugged his strong thighs as they draped to his scuffed work boots.

  His jaw hardened when he spotted me, and those warm eyes turned to ice.

  What the fuck? What gave him the right to be so goddamn angry? He’d made his position clear all those years ago. He’d stood beside my parents after the fight.

  He hadn’t believed in me.

  If anyone got to be mad, it was me.

  Because I might have been the one to leave, but he’d abandoned me when I’d needed him most.

  “Thanks for watching Colin this week, Ruby,” he said, his voice gravelly and low and so frustratingly sexy.

  Damn him and his appeal.

  Mom ruffled Colin’s hair as he sat to eat his cereal. “My pleasure. He actually makes it easier. He and Evan will entertain themselves for the most part.”

  “Call me if there’s any trouble. I’ll be here around four.”

  “We’ll be here.” Mom nodded.

  “See ya, bud.” Graham bent to kiss Colin’s head.

  “Bye, Dad.”

  Then Graham was gone, not sparing me another glance, like I wasn’t even in the room.

  He only had to wait a week and I wouldn’t be.

  Avoid. Seven days and counting. Now that I knew Colin would be coming over each morning, I’d sleep late or find somewhere else to be. There had to be a coffee shop within a ten-block radius of the house.

  The kids seemed to inhale their cereal and were out of their chairs minutes later, begging to play outside.

  “You boys make sure to include Maya,” Mom told them, opening the sliding glass door for them to fly out. “Well, I guess we’ll do the dishes.”

  “Would you like me to hold him?”

  “Oh, uh . . . that’s okay.” She took the baby to the bouncer in the corner. “We’ll let him jump around.”

  “Okay.” I pretended like that didn’t sting. Had Brooklyn told Mom under no circumstances was I allowed near her baby? Was I really such a monster?

  Maybe that stagehand had been right. Maybe I was a bitch. Maybe Mom and Brooklyn were afraid I’d rub off on the innocent.

  “Can I help?” I asked as Mom opened the dishwasher.

  “No, we’re good. We’ll just play and have fun until the kids have swimming lessons this afternoon.”

  Outside, the kids’ laughter rang loud. Colin and Evan were chasing each other around the playhouse while Maya sat on a swing, kicking her legs.

  My God, Colin was like Graham. They had the same features. The same laugh. Nan hadn’t told me just how much son resembled father.

  Nan had been the one to call and tell me that Graham had a baby. A boy. Everyone, including her, had kept the pregnancy a secret. At the time of her call, I’d had an airplane ticket to fly home and surprise everyone for a weekend visit. I’d saved up for months.

  Then she’d called, and the minute we’d hung up, I’d ripped those tickets in half.

  And I’d spent the past seven years pretending like that phone call hadn’t happened. That Graham hadn’t made a child with another woman.

  A beautiful, sweet child who might have been mine in another life.

  My headache came roaring back with a vengeance as I stared at them through the glass. The caffeine and pain pills had kicked in, but the thought of an awkward day with Mom, around Graham’s tiny clone, was too much.

  “Mom, can I borrow your car?” I asked, turning away from the kids.

  “Uh, sure. Why?”
>
  Because I’m suffocating. “I just wanted to explore town a little. See what’s different.”

  “Well, I, uh . . . I need the car—”

  “It’s okay.” I waved my hand, already walking through the room. “Never mind. I’ll just take a walk.”

  “Quinn . . .”

  She spoke, but I was already dashing upstairs to get some cash from my purse and a pair of sunglasses. I swiped a black hoodie from my suitcase and tied on my favorite pair of Chucks. I shoved my drumsticks into my back pocket, then I was gone.

  The moment the door closed behind me, I let the air rush from my lungs. The tension in my shoulders eased with every step away from the house, and after a few blocks, the pain in my head was nearly erased. I wandered downtown, leisurely strolling up Main Street. Only two or three shops from my youth were still in business. Most had been replaced and renovated with kitschy stores geared toward the tourists who came flocking to Bozeman each season.

  My hometown wasn’t as rugged as it had once been. There was a primness to the quaint atmosphere, likely driven from the influence of outside money. But it was still home, peaceful and charming.

  The air was cool and crisp, not yet hot this early on a June day. I let the sunshine warm me as I walked up one side of the street, then down the other, exploring slowly until hours had passed and I steered my feet toward home.

  My phone buzzed in my pocket on the way, and I pulled it out to see a text from Harvey.

  Progress?

  “No, Harvey. No progress.” I shoved it away without a reply.

  I loved our producer, Harvey, but lately he’d been driving me insane with his constant check-ins.

  Once I got home, I’d lock myself in my bedroom and attempt to write something, anything, to appease him for the rest of the week. I didn’t need his stress on top of my own.

  The sidewalks were empty and I hummed a melody to myself, matching its rhythm to my strides. It was crude and I only had a few notes, but it was a start. While Mom was at the kids’ swimming lessons, hopefully I could tinker with it on the piano.

  I hummed it over and over, committing it to memory by the time I reached home.

  “Hello?” I called without a reply as I wandered to the kitchen.