Lacy turned on her side to face me. “Why did you break up with Claire anyway? It’s not like she did anything she hasn’t done before.”
“Yes, well it’s one thing when it’s with half the town. It’s a little different when it’s my kid brother.” Bracing myself to be bold, I wiped a curl of hair away from her cheek and let my thumb linger in a gentle, sweeping caress. “They hurt you that night too, Lace. You didn’t expect me to ignore that, did you?”
When my hand fell away, Lacy bowed her head and shrugged. She picked at her fingernails for a few moments, then stared past me toward the tool shed at the end of my yard. “You want to know why I came down that night?”
“I do. If you want to tell me.”
“I guess you know by now that Mr. Porter hooked me up with a producer that he’s friends with up in New York. I was supposed to go up there to cut one of my songs.”
“But Jerry and Grace wouldn’t let you go,” I supplied, indicating that I did know the story.
She nodded. “I was going to run away and go by myself. When I saw you out on the porch, I thought you were Kevin. I was going to try and talk him into going with me.”
My heart ached for this girl and all the misery she had endured in the span of twenty-four hours that weekend, part of which was my fault. I couldn’t worry about that right now. Laying blame on anyone or anything other than Fate was fruitless at this point.
“He wouldn’t have gone, Lace. He’s a selfish little brat for trying to come between you and your music. You were right to stand your ground.”
I hadn’t meant to sound so vehement, but she looked grateful for my understanding and agreeing with her position. “Too bad it doesn’t matter now,” she said, her lips curling into a melancholy smile. “The opportunity is gone. Kevin wanted me to be stuck here so I wouldn’t leave him, and now I am. Daddy’s going mad with grief. I can’t leave him like this.”
I started to bring up the noticeable changes my father and I observed in the living room. The glaring lack of anything “Grace” was disheartening and worrisome. When Lacy looked on the verge of tears again, though, I bit back my questions. Whatever motivated her or her father to do such a thing was undoubtedly a coping mechanism I would never understand, and right now she needed my comforting instead prying.
All Lacy’s hopes and dreams were disintegrating before her eyes. She’d lost her mother, her lifelong best-friend-turned-fiancé, and now it seemed she was losing her father too. She could kiss her career goals good-bye right along with him, for Lacy would be noble and stay for as long as Jerry needed her. Lacy—the sweet, optimistic, joyful girl I’d always known—could hardly see a future worth clinging to through her fog of despair.
“It’s alright, Lace,” I said softly, taking her hand and giving her fingers a comforting squeeze. “Jerry just had a bad night. You shouldn’t take to heart anything he said while he was drunk. You know that. And just wait—we’ll all gather for Christmas dinner tomorrow, and once we’re all together doing something a little bit normal again, you’ll feel better. I know it’s going to be hard without your mom there, but just all of us being together again the way it’s always been will help.”
“You think so?” she asked, looking at me with reluctant, skeptical hope.
“I do.”
We drifted into an amiable silence that lasted until we both decided it was cold and wanted to go back in. Before parting ways in her room, I stopped at her bedroom door on the way out. “Lace?”
“Yeah?”
“About your dad… If he gets worse, or if something happens that you can’t handle, you know I’m always here for you if you want or need to talk, don’t you? You can come to me with anything.”
She hesitated for just a moment before finally saying, “Thank you, Nick. I’ll remember that. I feel much better now than I did before you came out on the roof with me.”
“Anytime, Lace.”
Lacy
Despite Nick’s optimism, Christmas dinner was just as hard as I anticipated. To my relief, daddy’s hangover didn’t prevent him attending the gathering. On the contrary, he seemed uncharacteristically sociable considering the blatantly tense and melancholy mood, despite everyone’s best efforts to feign merriment. It did hurt that he sat at the table in such a place so he wouldn’t have to face me, but I could bear that snub as long as he was making progress.
My relief was short-lived, however.
Later that evening, after helping Rhonda clean up the mess from dinner, I decided to work on a song I hadn’t touched since before momma died. Though I had practiced playing quite often over the past weeks, this was the first time I had been moved to write. Encouraged and inspired by seeing my father out of his ghastly sanctuary, I sat at my piano with a pencil and staff paper.
As I alternated between scribbling notes and then playing them, I was so absorbed with my creation that I didn’t hear my father enter the living room. I had just stopped playing a few stanzas to insert an embellishment to the score when he cleared his throat.
He leaned against the door-frame separating the kitchen from the living room. Sipping from a small glass half-full of amber liquid, he stared in the general direction of my shoulders, as usual. He took a few steps further into the room, and I caught the familiar whiff of alcohol.
“Stop playing.”
“I’m sorry, Daddy. I didn’t know it was bothering you.” I quickly gathered up my loose pages and pencil and slid them into a folder. “Do you want to watch television with me? We haven’t done that in a while.” I made my way over to him. “I could make some popcorn, or a bowl of ice-cream and-”
“I want you to take a break from your music for a while,” he said, before taking another sip.
“I don’t under-”
“You do it just to torment me!” His breath came hard and fast, and his face turned red from the force of his words. “You do it just to torture me,” he said again, more softly.
I took a step closer and tried to hug him. He let me slide my arms around his waist but didn’t return my embrace.
“Daddy, I’m worried about you. I love you, and I want you to get back to yourself. I need you. I can’t do this alone.” When he still didn’t respond, I hurried on. “I miss you, Daddy. I miss the way it used to be before momma died, when you used to love me.”
His hand moved, and I held my breath as he began gently stroking my hair down my back. “I just miss your momma,” he whispered, his voice cracking. He sobbed and lowered his face to the top of my head, crying. “I just miss her so much. It doesn’t help that you…”
His hand slid down low to my waist, slowly, and then back up again. Drawing in a deep inhale, he nuzzled his cheek against my hair. One hand went to the back of my neck, and he kissed my cheek. His lips hovered by my ear, where he whispered, “It doesn’t help that you wear her perfume. Maybe if you cut your hair, maybe then you wouldn’t look so much…” His grip on my waist tightened, and he took a slow, deep inhale. “Jesus.”
He shoved me away so suddenly that I almost fell. I stumbled backward and put a steadying hand on the end of the sofa, where I stared back at him, shocked and hurt by his abrupt rejection.
“Go to bed. And no more piano until…” He visually searched the room as though he expected to see some hourglass designated for clocking his grief, and thus could give me a finite amount of time in which our lives might return to some semblance of normalcy. He failed, though, for he lifted the glass back to his lips and emptied it in one swallow.
“Until when, Daddy? I need my music. You know that. I’m sorry if it reminds you of momma, but I can’t get through this without my music. That’s all I have left in the world now. Please, Daddy, please don’t make me give that up too.”
His gaze drifted over me and then back to the glass in his hand before he turned and headed toward his sanctuary. “Go to bed, Lacy, and don’t come back down here again tonight.”
Lacy
To make good on his threat that I not
play my piano anymore, the next morning I woke to discover daddy had wheeled the instrument into that dreary shrine in which he now exclusively lived. He came out of his new living quarters to find me standing in the living room, staring in a despondent daze towards where my piano had sat in the corner of the room less than twelve hours ago. As if nothing of consequence had been said or done the night before, daddy turned the skeleton key in the bedroom door to lock it.
“Mornin’. Where’s breakfast?”
He hadn’t eaten a single meal with me since momma died. He always waited until I wasn’t around or snacked in the middle of the night. Had he forgotten the French toast fiasco? Had he forgotten that he’d acted as though I didn’t exist for weeks on end now? Had he genuinely lost his mind?
“Well,” he continued, when I couldn’t overcome my bewilderment enough to answer him, “I guess I’ll just pick something up on the way to work.”
He grabbed his briefcase from the roll-top desk by the front door, where it hadn’t been touched since the eve of my mother’s death a month ago. Without a word or a second glance—how much progress could I reasonably expect, after all—he started out the door.
I finally came out of my shock. “I’m glad you’re finally feeling up to going in to work, Daddy, but… today is Sunday. The office is closed on Sunday.”
“I’m just going in to catch up on a little paperwork. Don’t wait up for me tonight.”
And with that, he was gone, not to be seen or heard from again until the next morning. Thus, became our daily routine.
Though I was glad daddy was working again, his absence only widened the gargantuan gap between us. He would leave in the mornings before I rose, and wouldn’t return until it was so late that most nights I had a hard time staying awake waiting up for him. The main difference now that he was working again was that he usually came home drunk, or working hard to achieve that end, whereas before I didn’t have to worry as long as he was locked away in his shrine.
To anyone on the outside, it would appear that daddy had finally snapped back to himself. Rhonda even commented as such the following weekend, when we were on the way home from our weekly Saturday morning trip to the market together.
“I’m so glad Jerry seems to be pulling through finally. He had me and Andy pretty worried there for a while.”
“He still stays out so late, though, Rhonda,” I said cautiously, contemplating confiding in her for the first time.
“He’s an accountant, honey. Tax season is just around the corner. This is always his busiest time of year. He let himself get so behind on work these past few weeks that it’s a wonder he makes it home at all.”
It was true that daddy did tend to work later during the tax season, but he’d never came home staggering drunk at midnight even on his latest nights. Before I could remark on this, Rhonda added, “And besides, he hasn’t pulled another stunt like last weekend when Andy and Nick found him drunk down at Kenzie’s bar.” Only because I hadn’t asked Andy to go looking for him since. “I wouldn’t worry, honey.”
Just the mention of Nick made the hair on my arms rise. I knew he was still on his school break, yet I hadn’t seen him since Christmas day, and I had so hoped he would be home this weekend. I knew I could confide in Nick, and he would really listen.
“Where is Nick anyway? He usually comes home on the weekends,” I said, trying to sound casual.
“That’s right, you haven’t heard. Nick and Chris found a house to rent. They’ve spent the week packing up their dorm room and moving in. You haven’t been speaking to Kevin or I’m sure he would have told you by now.”
“Oh,” I simply said.
When we reached the house, Rhonda stopped the car and reached across the seat to take my hand. “Kevin misses you, Lacy. Whatever foolish thing he’s done, and I won’t ask because it’s none of my business, you need to know something: Some people with a heart not nearly as big as yours are capable of forgiving far worse than anything I can imagine. I wouldn’t be saying that if I didn’t think that you and Kevin belong together. Your mother thought so too, God rest her soul. It’s your decision, though, and because I love you both, that’s as far as I’m going to stick my nose into it.”
Suddenly, I felt the urge to break down and tell Rhonda everything that had happened, from that night with Kevin, to now with what was going on with my father. “Rhonda, can I tell you something?”
“Sure, honey.”
“Hello, ladies,” said Andy, pulling open the door behind Rhonda unexpectedly and grabbing a few bags of groceries from the back seat. A moment later, Kevin appeared on my side of the car to help, and just like that, my moment of confession was gone.
I had successfully managed to avoid having a real conversation with Kevin since that first morning back at school. During Christmas dinner, I had busied myself helping Rhonda in the kitchen before and after the meal while the men watched a movie on television. We didn’t share classes at school, and since I now rode the bus instead of riding with him, avoiding him was literally effortless.
This time I wouldn’t get off so easily and, truthfully, I missed Kevin so much that I didn’t mind. I yelped in surprise when he came up behind me, where I helped Rhonda unload grocery bags piled up on the kitchen counter. He leaned over my shoulder to say, “Hey, gorgeous.”
I instantly warmed. This scene was like rewinding history to the days before tragedy and betrayal had wreaked mayhem on our lives. Before, I would have been up in Kevin’s room that very second doing homework and taking a break to kiss every so often. Or he would’ve been at my house listening to the stereo in my room, or listening to one of my latest musical masterpieces in the making, all while planning our wedding.
Nostalgia filled me nearly with tears. I turned to fully face Kevin, giving him a weak smile. “Hey there to you too.”
“I’m going to go help Andy bring in the rest of the bags,” said Rhonda, as she headed back outside.
Once alone, Kevin studied me, as though he weren’t sure if he should speak or not. A lock of his dark, silky hair fell over his forehead, and I tenderly swiped it away, missing the feel of his nearness.
“Lacy-”
“Kevin-”
We laughed for a few seconds, something else I hadn’t done in so very long. Anything from me that might have resembled a laugh over the past few weeks had been so phony and forced that a genuine laugh brought a lump to my throat.
“Wanna go up to my room and talk?”
“I still have groceries in your mom’s car.”
“It’s cold enough outside that they’ll be alright for a few minutes.”
“Okay,” I decided.
Kevin guided me upstairs to his bedroom and closed the door behind us. He hadn’t made his bed, and a few dirty clothes were lying about—nothing I wasn’t used to. While he picked up the mess on the floor, I straightened up the covers and then sat on his bed, waiting for him to join me.
“I used to tell momma the only thing I knew I was going to hate about being married to you was that you’re a slob. You know what she used to suggest I do to fix that?”
He grinned and came to sit beside me. “Make me sleep on the couch?”
“She said if I didn’t wash your socks or underwear until you didn’t have anything clean to wear, then you’d be putty in my hands. And if that didn’t work, then make you sleep on the couch.”
Kevin took my hand and gently stroked his thumb over my knuckles. “It’s going to happen, Lacy. You may still be mad at me now, but you know it’s still going to happen, don’t you?”
He was right. I couldn’t picture the rest of my life without him in it, and I didn’t want to. “I know.”
“I’m sorry. You can call me an idiot if you want to.”
“Okay, you’re an idiot,” I conceded.
He smiled and kissed the back of my hand. “Don’t give up on me, Lacy.”
“I won’t give up on you if you won’t give up on me.”
“So, we agree-
”
“On everything but my music,” I said quickly.
“It’ll come between us, Lacy. Why can’t you admit that it’s a possibility?”
I stood up to pace in front of him, never wanting to pull my hair out more at any other time in my life. “Because I know me. And because I love you and I wouldn’t let it change me. Why can’t you believe that?”
“Lacy, it already has changed you. You’ve stopped writing the music you loved, the beautiful songs that came from your soul. The kind of music your mother wrote and loved. Now you only write what you think you might be able to sell.”
“That’s the point, Kevin!”
“No, it’s not. There’s always going to be something or somebody new for you to compete with. You’re always going to be in a fight to keep yourself in the spotlight. It’s going to change you.”
“Kevin, I promise it wouldn’t happen to me. You know me! Have you ever met someone more responsible and levelheaded in your life? And how can you stand there and say you think I’ll sell out? That would be like me saying six months ago that I knew you were going to-”
I stopped myself short of saying something so cruel he might never forgive me.
“Go ahead. Say it.”
“I don’t want to,” I said with my head bowed. “I just want to forget it ever happened.”
Kevin stood up and pulled me to him. “I know. I do too.”
“I keep seeing it in my head,” I said through my pool of tears. “And all I can think when I see it is that it was supposed to be me. You were supposed to be there for me, but the one time when I really needed you and didn’t just want you, you were with someone else.”
I sagged against him, sobbing as the tears rained down my cheeks. He wiped them away before planting the softest kiss on my lips.
“I love you, Lacy. I don’t know what else to say except I’m sorry. And that I swear it’ll never happen again.”
I cupped his jaw and couldn’t believe what I heard myself say next. “I love you too, Kevin. Can you make me forget? That night? Everything?”
Breaking Lacy (Nick & Lacy Book 1) Page 8
