They flew back to San Francisco on the same chartered jet, checked back into the Ritz-Carlton, and had five more days together there. Chase rented a house for them at Stinson Beach, where they hid out and saw no one. They spent long lazy days, walking on the beach, or making love and watching movies in bed.
Stephanie talked to Alyson again, and she was as unreasonable as Stephanie’s daughters had been, so she avoided Alyson after that, and put her on the back burner too.
And through it all, their relationship got stronger, and Stephanie was glad they had two weeks together to discuss their plans and how to deal with her kids, although Michael had continued to be supportive. It helped that he and Chase had met.
Everything blew up again when, in one of their futile conversations about their mother, Michael admitted to Louise that he was dating Chase’s ward. She went crazy all over again.
“For God’s sake, Mike, have you lost your mind too? What is it with you? What about Amanda?”
“We broke up.” Louise didn’t like her either, but at least she was respectable, in Louise’s opinion, not some country music singer who she assumed was out of a trailer park.
“So now you’re dating an eighteen-year-old Okie? Please tell me this isn’t happening to us. I feel like aliens took over our family when Dad died. You and Mom have gone nuts. What’s happening to you? This is straight out of a soap opera. Well, don’t bring her to meet me.”
“I wasn’t planning to,” he said in an icy tone. “I know better, with that razor mouth of yours. She doesn’t deserve that, and neither does Mom. Chase Taylor is a great guy, and I like him. And he’s wonderful to Mom, more than Dad ever was. That’s what we should care about, not all the rest. All the stuff in the press is bullshit.”
“Don’t talk about Dad like that. He was great to our mother,” Louise said in a fury.
“No, he wasn’t,” Michael reminded her. “And they almost divorced when you were a senior in high school. You know that as well as I do, so don’t tell me how great he was to Mom. He was never home. He didn’t want to be, and Mom ended up picking up all the slack for him, whether you want to admit it now or not.” She didn’t.
“I’m sure whatever it was that they fought over wasn’t such a big deal, since Mom went back to him,” Louise said hotly.
“She did that for us.” Michael kept the pressure on her, for the truth.
“Because she loved him,” Louise corrected him.
“I’m sure she did love him, but he was never there for her, or for us.” He was being brutally honest with Louise, but it resolved nothing. She continued to praise their father, and crucify their mother. She didn’t want to hear anything Mike had to say in her defense.
The battle raged on for the whole time Chase was in San Francisco, and eventually Stephanie stopped answering her older daughter’s calls and texts. There was nothing else she could do to protect herself, and Chase. They just had to weather the storm.
On Chase’s last day in San Francisco, they took a walk in the park, bought take-out sashimi afterward, and took it back to the hotel. They had spent a lot of time in bed all week. There was no question in either of their minds about the seriousness of the relationship. They just had to find a way to make it work, in both cities, and in spite of two of her kids. But she wasn’t going to let Louise or Charlotte spoil it for her. She wanted to protect the relationship with Chase.
Stephanie was lying in Chase’s arms, after they made love on their last night together, and talking quietly about when they would see each other again. She had promised to come to Nashville as soon as Charlotte went back to school, in a month. It seemed like an intolerable amount of time to both of them. And Stephanie knew she’d probably have to put up with Charlotte’s assaults about Chase while she was there. Stephanie was hoping to calm her down. She was usually easier than Louise.
“You can’t even imagine how much I’m going to miss you,” he said mournfully, as he rolled over on his side and looked at her. She kissed him then and snuggled close to him in bed. She loved feeling his warmth beside her at night, and she couldn’t imagine living without him every day either. They were deeply in love.
Stephanie took Chase to the airport when he left. She walked him into the terminal and said goodbye to him right before security. She was wearing dark glasses and a hat, which felt ridiculous to her. By the time Chase left, she was convinced that she was the luckiest woman on earth, and he said the same about himself. It was a match made in heaven, with the daughters from hell. He promised to call her as soon as he arrived in Nashville, and as always, he did. He was at home by then, and miserable as he looked around his kitchen. The woman he loved was nowhere to be seen. She was living three thousand miles away, and he had to get through the next month without her.
The day after Chase left, Charlotte flew home from Paris. She arrived from the airport angry, and stayed that way. She hardly said hello to her mother, when Stephanie picked her up and drove her home. From the moment she came through the door, she complained about being forced to come home, and was painful to be with. She wanted to be in Paris or Rome, or anywhere in Europe with her friends, not at home. And her mother’s relationship with a country music star was all the provocation she needed to be angry at her all the time, and attack her whenever she could, encouraged by her older sister.
It was the middle of the afternoon, but midnight for Charlotte, flying in from Paris. But she was young and had slept on the plane, so she had plenty of energy to attack her mother. Stephanie had made her something to eat, and they were sitting at the kitchen table, when Charlotte gave her an angry look. She had been barely civil until then, even if she had hugged her mother when they met.
“So where is he?” she asked as she finished her sandwich and favorite potato chips, which Stephanie had gotten for her, and pushed her plate away. The look she gave her mother was instantly confrontational. The gloves were off.
“If you’re referring to Chase,” Stephanie said calmly, “he’s in Nashville.”
“When did he leave? I assume he was here till I came home.” It was none of her business, but her mother nodded.
“He left yesterday. He has an album to record.” He was doing duets with another famous country music singer. And Stephanie acted as though her involvement with him was normal.
“Don’t you feel a little ridiculous being a groupie at your age, Mom?” There was a derisive tone in her voice Stephanie didn’t like. Whenever Louise called, hers was one of pure rage. Charlotte was subtler and younger, and didn’t have the guts to be as rude, but she was bad enough.
“I’m not a groupie. We’re dating.” It was honest. She was hiding nothing from her.
“You’re sleeping with him,” Charlotte accused her, with the self-righteousness of youth. Stephanie didn’t comment. “And in my father’s bed, I suppose.” Stephanie was instantly angry at her comment, but didn’t show it.
“It’s none of your business, Charlotte, but we stayed at a hotel.” It was a small town, and she would have found out anyway. Someone always knew someone who saw something who…she preferred to tell her herself.
It would have been infinitely worse if they had stayed at Stephanie’s home, no matter which bedroom they slept in. She was glad they hadn’t, and he had been wise enough to stay at a hotel. It was better for her too, not just her children. “That’s disgusting. Aren’t you afraid of what people will think of you? My father’s been dead for about five minutes.”
“Dad died six months ago, Char. And you can’t predict what will happen in life, or who will come along. I wasn’t going to date at all until I met him. And my dating Chase doesn’t mean I didn’t love your father. I loved him a lot when he was alive. But he’s gone now, which is sad for all of us. And now this happened. And six months is respectable. Some people don’t wait that long.”
“Decent people wait a year,” Charlotte informed her.
“Some people wait a year, some don’t. I waited five months. And you wouldn’t
feel any better about this if we’d waited another six months. Why exactly are you so angry, Charlotte?”
“You’re being disrespectful of our father,” Charlotte said with fury. “And look who he is and what he looks like. He’s a hillbilly, Mom!” Chase was a lot of things, but not that. He was a very sophisticated, intelligent, successful, incredible-looking man. Just different from their father, with his long hair, tattoos, and torn jeans.
“He’s just different from Daddy, Charlotte. And he’s a very cool guy. You’ll like him.”
“No, I won’t,” she said with a stubborn look. “And I hear Michael is dating his illegitimate daughter or something. What did you do? Double-date?”
“He came up from Atlanta with Amanda for a concert Chase invited them to. And Sandy is his ward. Her parents died. She’s two years younger than you are, and an amazing girl. And you never liked Amanda, so don’t act all holier than thou about her,” Stephanie warned her. Charlotte hadn’t spoken to Michael, she had heard it all from Louise.
“I think you and your sister are being incredibly disrespectful of me, and a man you don’t even know. I understand how sad you are about losing your father, and so am I. But I have a right to live too, and this is what I’m doing, whether you and Louise like it or not. And your father would probably be doing the same thing—dating someone.” After all, he did it while he was alive, she thought to herself but didn’t say to her daughter. “You wouldn’t like that either.”
“I doubt that, and he wouldn’t be dating some rock star with tattoos.”
“You never know.” Stephanie smiled at her. “Love takes you by surprise sometimes.” But Charlotte looked even more upset by what she said.
“Are you telling me you love him?” She made it sound like her mother had admitted to a crime, and Stephanie faced her calmly and looked her in the eye.
“Yes, I am.” She never lowered her gaze, as Charlotte got up from the table, left the kitchen, and stomped upstairs to her room. Stephanie kept busy with some projects at her desk, paying bills, and she was startled when Charlotte burst into the room.
“What the hell did you do to the living room? I just went to look for something, and I saw it. It looks awful.” It didn’t look awful. It looked different. Things had changed. A lot had changed, including her mother, which was the biggest and most threatening change of all. And the biggest change was that Stephanie was happy, which came as a shock to her kids since Chase was part of it.
“I moved some things around,” Stephanie said quietly. “I’m sorry you don’t like it.” She didn’t offer to move it back, and wasn’t going to. Charlotte stormed out of the room again then, and Stephanie heard crashing noises a few minutes later and ran down the stairs to see what had happened. Charlotte had tried to move the furniture in the living room, had knocked over a small table, and a large vase had crashed to the floor and broken. She was on her knees sobbing in a pool of water with the flowers all around her.
“Oh my God, what happened?” Stephanie asked as she ran to help her, and cut her foot on a piece of broken glass. Charlotte couldn’t stop sobbing, and just knelt there with a desperate look.
“I can’t remember how it was,” she kept saying over and over. She had tried to move everything back, and couldn’t get it the way it was before, because she’d never really noticed. She just knew it was different now. “You changed everything!” she screamed at her mother hysterically, as Stephanie bent down next to her and tried to put her arms around her, and Charlotte pulled away. “Don’t touch me! I hate you!” She sounded five years old as she said it, and there were tears in Stephanie’s eyes. This was all so hard. Charlotte ran out of the room then and left the mess. She didn’t see that her mother’s foot was bleeding—she was too distraught to be aware of anything but herself. Stephanie heard the door of Charlotte’s room slam, and cleaned up the mess herself. She felt suddenly guilty for the things she had moved around. But she had needed to do it for herself. Her children weren’t at home anymore. She lived there every day.
She threw away the pieces of the broken vase, put the flowers in another one, cleaned up the water, put the furniture back in order, and bandaged her bleeding foot. The cut wasn’t deep, it was just superficial. Charlotte didn’t come out of her room for several hours. It had been a tough first day home so far.
Stephanie talked to Chase quietly from her room later that night and then called Jean. She couldn’t call Alyson anymore, she was too upset that Stephanie was involved with Chase, so she would be no help about the kids, or support for Stephanie. Alyson had told Jean she thought it was shocking, since Bill had only been gone for five months. And what was she doing with a man like that? She needed to go out with someone like Bill or Brad or Fred, one of them, not some rock star.
“Why not?” Jean asked her bluntly. “You think Brad is so great, well, good for you. Fred sure isn’t. And Steph was unhappy with Bill for the last ten years. She looked like her soul was dead. Now she’s alive. Is that really what you want for her now? To be miserable again. Because I sure as hell don’t. The best thing that could happen to her was to meet a real guy who loves her, and she has. That’s good enough for me. And I don’t give a damn what he looks like, where he comes from, or how many tattoos he has. And if you love her as a friend and want her to be happy, that should be good enough for you too, and her kids. At least they have an excuse to bitch for a while, Bill was their father. As her friends, we have no excuse to beat her up. How can you be so narrow-minded, just because he works in the music industry and has long hair and tattoos? Who cares? I’d go for him in a hot minute, and maybe you would too if you weren’t married to Saint Brad.”
Alyson had been deeply offended by what Jean said and hadn’t spoken to her or Stephanie since, in about a week. Stephanie was letting her cool off and mellow out a bit, but Alyson really didn’t understand the broader world, or men who weren’t traditional or professionals and looked like Brad. She thought the whole world should be like them. And Brad and Alyson were fiercely loyal to Bill. Brad had told Alyson that he didn’t approve of what Stephanie was doing either. He thought it was disrespectful to the memory of Bill for her to be dating so soon, and he thought her dating Chase was in terrible taste. His narrow-minded views dictated Alyson’s, since she parroted everything he thought and said. She was the “perfect” wife, as Stephanie had been. But Steph couldn’t do it anymore, and didn’t want to. She had far more respect for Jean, who always said what she thought, whether Fred or other people liked it or not. Stephanie’s friendship with Alyson had just taken a heavy hit. But Jean was still there, rooting for her, an outspoken voice of reason, well aware of the compromises and courage it took to get through life.
Stephanie told her about the incident of the broken vase in the living room, and how sad she was about it when she saw how distraught Charlotte was. “Maybe I should have waited a while to start moving things around, but it was so depressing. It looked like Bill was going to come home any minute. It felt like Groundhog Day. Nothing changed, except he never showed up.”
“You can’t live in a tomb, Steph. You did the right thing. And the simple fact is you live here and the kids don’t. They want to breeze through here when they feel like it, pick up clean laundry and some cash, and find everything the same, particularly you, chained to the wall in your bedroom, waiting for them, even if they only show up for Christmas and Thanksgiving. Well, guess what, life doesn’t work that way. Particularly for you, with Bill gone. You have every reason to change things and move on and get a life for yourself. You didn’t have one with Bill. You had his life and theirs, and yours as their slave. Now you’re free. Use it. My girls aren’t much better about changing anything around here. The drapes in their old bedrooms were in shreds, so I replaced them last year. The girls had a fit when they came home for Christmas. And they’re twenty-eight and twenty-nine years old, for chrissake, and who cares what color the drapes are? They hadn’t been home in two years, since I go to Chicago to see them. But w
hen they saw the drapes, they demanded I put the old ones back immediately!” Stephanie felt better as she listened. She always did with Jean. She was so reasonable and practical, and took shit from no one.
“So did you change the drapes back?”
“Of course not. I’d thrown them away. But even if I hadn’t, I wouldn’t. You have to move forward in life. You can’t sit in the same place, unless you want to, that’s a choice too. But you can’t sit there because someone else says you have to, because your moving forward makes them uncomfortable. This is good for your kids, Steph. It tells them that no matter how much you loved someone, you have to move on. They do too. They can’t expect you to sit there and be buried alive with him. That would be really scary. And I’d be worried about you. They’re going to have to suck it up sooner or later.”
“Well, the girls sure aren’t ready to do that. It nearly broke my heart when I saw Charlotte sobbing in the living room, trying to move everything back. She was crying because she couldn’t remember how it used to be.”
“That’s my point. And pretty soon the new way will seem normal. And so will Chase if they ever give him a chance. So when am I going to meet him?” She understood perfectly that she hadn’t so far. They needed time alone together.
“The next time he’s out here, I promise. He wants me to come to Nashville when Charlotte goes back to school.” She sounded worried about it.
“And?” Jean could hear the hesitation in her friend’s voice. Stephanie was honest about it.
“Here, we’re kind of suspended between two worlds. We have nothing to do except be with each other, and we had a great time in L.A. But in Nashville he has a life, an empire to run, albums to record, rehearsals, concerts, a thousand things to do every day. He takes me with him, but I fit into his life, it’s not our life. I did that with Bill, and I don’t want to do it again. I’m scared to lose me. I become no one except some kind of appendage in other people’s lives.”
“You’re going to have that with any busy guy with a big career. Maybe Bill was particularly self-centered that everything had to be his way and about him, and Chase sounds like he makes a real effort to include you, for now at least. But he has a career, a big world, a huge, successful business. If I still cared and wanted a real life with Fred, I’d have to follow him around. Let’s face it, he wouldn’t be coming to Botox shots and the hairdresser with me. Sometimes you just have to accept that one person has a bigger life, and you have to go with it. Bill never paid attention to you, so you got lost in the shuffle. I don’t get the feeling Chase would do that, from everything you’ve said.”
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