I stick a finger in Gretchen’s face and say with my teeth clenched, “I told you to shut up, Gretchen. Leave her alone, bitch. I’ve already warned you once, I will end you.”
“I don’t have time for this crap in my life, Kane. You need to decide what you want. I’m headed to Alabama to be with my family.” Oakley pushes past us and walks with her chin held high.
There goes my reason to live, my once in a lifetime person. She doesn’t get far before I’m right on her heels, “Oak, please wait. Give me five minutes, babe. Indulge me for one moment and then I’ll let you go.”
Oakley opens the door of her car and throws her bag inside. “Kane, look, I’ll be back tomorrow afternoon, I’m sure by then, I’ll be in a better frame of mind.” She slams her car door and faces me, “I need to get on the road.” She leans back on her fender, putting a hand behind her back.
“Oakley, I fall short of words to tell you how much you mean to me. All I know is that my life revolves around you,” I pull her to me and envelope her in my arms, “and nothing else matters.” I kiss the top of her head.
“I love you, Kane, but this thing with your mom has got me thinking. Sometimes, things in our life aren’t meant to stay the same. Most people don’t like changes in their lives, but sometimes it’s what they need. It’s how you handle the changes that makes up your character.” She pulls away slightly and looks up to meet my eyes.
“I accept change, Oakley, that’s all my life has been. Deb carted me from one tour bus to another before she dropped me on Ruby’s doorstep to start school. That’s never been my problem, where the problem lies with Deb is commitment. I loved Deb. I did everything I could for her to keep me on the road with her, but I had to go to school, and a good time was more important to her than me.”
I see the disappointment on Oakley’s face. She wants me to give Deb a chance. I understand why she thinks it’s important, but she needs to see my side of things, too. If the past is anything to go by, then Deb is only going to be here long enough to get clean or until the band gets off of their break. It’s been nearly a year, and I would have thought she’d already be gone, but of course this one time, she’s hanging on.
“I’ve got to go home, Kane.” Oakley looks down for a moment and then back at me.
I can see the disappointment, confusion, and maybe even regret in her eyes.
“Let’s talk about this first, Oakley. You can’t leave me without talking about what just happened. If you leave me, you have to promise you’re coming back, and promise we’ll talk about this.” I hold onto her hand.
“We can talk all of this out tomorrow, after I’ve had time to think about this situation, to think about us.” Oakley goes onto the tips of her toes and places a kiss so soft, so gentle on my lips then gets in the car and drives away.
My gut feels like someone has stabbed it with a hot poker and is sweeping it around. What can I do to make her see that my mom isn’t like her mom? Hell, my mom wasn’t ever around. Not everyone has an ideal family, but Deb’s never going to win a medal when it comes to mother of the year.
If having a relationship with Deb is the only way to make Oakley happy, I’m not sure that’s something I can actually do. Why can’t she just accept me the way I am, instead of trying to change me? This is the exact reason that I don’t do long term relationships. The girls can never be happy with you as you are; they always want to fix something. I always thought Oakley was different. I thought our relationship would be more than the circumstances surrounding us.
Heading back to my car, I glance up to see Gretchen sitting on the hood of my car. “Get the fuck off my car.” I pull her by her arm.
“Oh, did the princess see you for what you really are, Luther,” Gretchen throws her head back and laughs as she scratches my car with the ring on her finger.
“You bitch, look what you’ve done! You scratched it!” I’m not believing this shit.
“Oh, poor Kane. Now you’re starting to see what you get for screwing me over.”
“Why would you want someone who doesn’t want you back?” I shake my head in disbelief.
“I don’t want you, you bastard, I just want you to pay for treating me like a piece of shit.”
“Stay away from me and away from Oakley. You don’t know exactly who you’re messing with, but mess with my girl and you’ll find out the hard way.”
“Is that some kind of threat, Kane?” Gretchen has both hands on her hips, “Maybe, it’s you who doesn’t know who you’re messing with.”
“What do you hope to accomplish by being a bitch to me?”
“It’s not about what I hope to accomplish, it’s about revenge,” Gretchen curls her lip.
“Get over yourself, you psycho bitch. Just remember, for every action there’s a reaction and at the end the guilty always fall.” I get in my car. I need to get away from her before I’m hauled off to jail for throttling her.
I drive over to Ruby’s because I need the calm and sense of balance she can give me. I think she has perpetual Zen conjured; she never gets too upset.
I pull up in front of her house and see her in her herb garden. “How’s my favorite Mimi?” I ask as I get out of the car.
“Better than my favorite grandson. Looks like you have something on your mind.” She smiles at me.
I give her a kiss on the cheek, “How do you do that?”
“Do what?”
“Always know when something’s going on with me?”
“Son, you are like an open book. Everything’s written on your face and your shoulders are slumped.” She pats my shoulder. “And Deb called me.”
“Figures.”
“Why don’t you help me plant this lemon verbena and tell me about what’s wrong, and about Oakley.” She hands me a spade and motions for me to sit beside her.
“Why don’t you tell me what you’ve been told?”
“Now where would the fun in that be? You know that I don’t let what others tell me about you affect my judgment in any way. What Deb said and what you tell me is going to be completely different. Do you know how I know it will be two totally different stories?”
I nod at her to go on as I’m putting the plant into the hole I made. “Enlighten me, Mimi, you’ve always been my personal Yoda.”
Ruby chuckles. “You always loved Star Wars. I remember talking like Yoda when you were younger. It helped to get you to open up about Deb.”
“That and you being vertically challenged is what reminds me of him.”
“As long as it’s not because I’m old and green. Sad you look, talk you must.”
I love this little woman. “You know Clay and Oakley lost their parents a year ago, and Oakley’s still grieving. She wormed her way into going with me to see Deb today.”
“Wormed? You didn’t want them to meet?” She hands me another plant.
“No, why would I want Deb to ruin anyone else’s life?”
“Have you thought that maybe Deb did you a favor all those years ago?” Ruby asks, taking off her gloves. “Don’t get me wrong, I’m not making excuses for her, but let’s think about how your life would have been on the road.”
She stretches out her arms and then braces her hands on her back, bending backward a little, and I hear all her bones in her back crackle like popcorn.
“I would have been with my mom. Life on the road wasn’t bad,” I tell her.
“Yes, you would have been with Deb, but do you remember the first time you went to play outside with a friend? How you didn’t want to come in because you could run as fast and as far as you wanted? Tell me something, how big was your space on those buses?”
“It was tiny. I had to keep my stuff put away at all times, and I could only have one toy out at a time. Not that I had that many toys, there wasn’t much room. When I got here, I was scared to sleep in my own room because it was so far away from you and Pop.”
“Right, you were the neatest child I’d ever seen. You never made a mess and kept your stuf
f sitting in the corner of your closet.”
“I still like everything tidy, everything has a place and that is where it should be.”
“Well, it’s a good thing now, but back then you couldn’t be a kid when you were on the bus, you had to be a little man. And you grew up fast, watching those guys go through different women in each town. For a while, as a teenager, you kind of went through a lot of girls.”
“I don’t remember them having a lot of girls on the bus, but I do know that I knew about sex at four years old.” I shake my head. “I can’t deal with Deb, not right now. I can’t understand why Oakley wants me to.”
“That’s how you deal with obstacles in your life, too.” She waves for me to follow her into the house. “You seem to put people, your emotions, problems all into different corners. You take them out one at a time and when you get tired of dealing with them, you put them back. You can have more than one important woman in your life. Let Deb out of her corner, you’re no longer a little kid.”
“It’s not that I can’t have more than one important person, Mimi, I don’t want to get hurt any more by Deb. I’m done with her; I decided that on my sixteenth birthday. She had promised to be here and celebrate with me, but once again, she didn’t show.”
“Do you want to know why? Your pop and Deb never got along and when she left at seventeen to follow those guys in a band around, he had a fit. They had a huge fight and he told her to never come back here. She took that to heart for a long time. When she brought you back here so you could go to school, he told her she wasn’t welcome.”
I reach for the door and hold it open for her.
“Pop told her that she was leaving you and that was final. The only way she could live with us, is if she stayed clean and paid half the bills every month.”
“So, she didn’t try to get clean for me.”
“Do you think it’s that easy to get off drugs? She was an addict, Kane. She would show up here in the middle of the night, and every time Pop would send her on her way.”
Ruby’s given me a lot to think about, but it doesn’t change the fact that Deb left me to begin with. I think I need to head to Alabama because I have some kissing up to do.
20
Oakley
The drive back to Alabama seems to take longer than usual. I normally love the solitude, but today even the radio can’t help my mood. I’m not mad with Kane. I’m more or less concerned about his relationship with his mom. It’s upsetting that he has a mom, a mom that’s alive and wants to love him, and he’s totally disregarding her like she’s trash.
I would do anything in this world to have my mom back. Even if sometimes she wasn’t the best mom. She had her moments when she was distant and depressed. But, she was my mom and when she was having a good day, I was there to be with her. The days she was in bed and couldn’t get out due to being depressed, I understood it.
I want to understand Kane; I want to be in his life. But, Kane keeping the knowledge of his mom from me, hell from all of us, bothers me. It’s just unfathomable to me that he doesn’t want anything to do with her. Maybe if I go and talk to Deb by myself, I’ll have a better understanding.
I finally arrive at Crossroads—the ranch that my brother and Lizzie run for children with disabilities. I enjoyed volunteering here and helping these kids
I’m going to check in with Lizzie then go to see Bailey’s grandparents, the Jacksons. I hope that this can help get my mind off Kane, at least for a little bit.
The Jacksons are some of the best people I’ve ever met. Mr. and Mrs. Jackson practically raised Lizzie and her mom. When Clay and I moved here last year, they treated us like family. They insisted that we call them Granny and Papa and they give us a fair talking to, if they think we need it.
“Oakley!” Lizzie runs out of the house when I pull up. “I’ve missed you!”
Chico her puppy is yapping at her heels. Today, she has a tiny sweater on him.
“Missed you, too.”
She nearly squeezes me to death.
“Granny said for us to come right on over. She has Margie cooking us some dinner. Bailey and Cash are going to be there, and Bay said she has something big to tell us.” Lizzie picks up Chico and walks with me to my car, “You can drive. Chico likes to ride perched on my shoulder.”
“Does he think he’s a parrot or something?” I laugh. “What’s going on with Bailey and Cash? What’s the big news?”
“Heck if I know, but she has been moody as crap here lately. Ever since the wedding, there’s not much that doesn’t set her off.” Lizzie rolls her eyes. “And don’t start with Chico, he’s my baby.” Lizzie takes the dog off her shoulder, holding him up in the air and talks to him in her baby voice, “Aren’t you my baby? Yes, you are.”
Chico looks away, in what I would guess is embarrassment.
We chat non-stop to their house and catch up on what’s been going on.
“Well, I guess we might as well go in and see what all the hub-bub is all about.” Lizzie opens her door, almost before I get the car stopped and in park.
After we walk up the steps, Lizzie walks on in the house without knocking. “Hey, y’all!” Lizzie gives Granny and Papa each a kiss on the cheek. “How y’all been feeling today?”
“With my fingers.” Papa says, wiggling his fingers on both of his hands.
He has dementia, and sometimes he takes things literally.
“Y’all didn’t get a chance to meet my new baby,” Lizzie holds Chico up so everyone can see him.
“He’s the ugliest baby I’ve ever seen, kinda looks like a dog to me.” Papa says.
I can’t help but laugh because he always says what’s on his mind and doesn’t worry if it hurts your feelings. Lizzie said that before he got sick, he was the kindest man. Always doing for others and putting himself last.
“Aw, Papa, this is my new puppy. I just call him my baby,” Lizzie says.
“Oakley, come give me a hug, sweetheart. How’s college going?” Granny holds out her arms in welcoming.
“I’m loving my deaf studies class. I’ve learned so much already.” I tell her, walking over. Bending down, I say, “My other classes are okay but not near as much fun.”
“You’re taking a little time to have for actual fun, aren’t you?” Margie asks, coming over to hug me, too. “It can’t be all work and no play.”
“I’ve met some great friends already.” My cell phone buzzes in my pocket. I don’t bother checking it because it’d be rude.
“How about Quinn? Lizzie told us that he left for the Air Force and quit college. I bet you’re missing him already.”
“Granny, I decided that Quinn may not be the best choice for me. He wanted me to marry him and I’m too young for that.”
“Good girl, you finish your education. The hearing impaired community around here needs a good teacher.” Granny says with a feisty flair.
“I thought he gave you a ring and asked for you to wait until he got back to give him your decision?” Lizzie asks.
“He did, but I’m not in love with him and there’s no need in leading him on,” I say.
“That’s using your head, Oakley. You did the right thing.” Granny nods then takes a sip of coffee.
“So, are you dating one of those cute college boys then?” Margie wiggles her eyebrows.
“Um, not really.” I don’t want to get into it with everyone about dating Kane.
“You need to date and go out with friends, just don’t tie yourself down again so quickly. Live a little, Oakley.” Lizzie nudges me. We’re sitting by each other on the love seat.
I sigh. “I think I’ve got it covered.”
“Bailey and Cash will be here in a few minutes,” Granny says.
“Yes, she said she’s got a surprise,” Margie adds.
The front door opens and the couple in question come in with huge grins plastered on their faces. These two are the epitome of true love; you see it written all over their faces.
“H
ey, everyone. Oakley!” Bailey comes over and greets me with a kiss on the cheek.
“Spill it,” Granny says. “You’ve kept me waiting long enough.”
Bailey walks over and hands Granny and Margie each a small rectangular-shaped wrapped package. They both eye her suspiciously as they carefully unwrap their gifts.
Margie stares down and takes the photo album out of the box. She looks up at Cash and says, “Does this mean what I think it means?” She wipes away the single tear that has formed at the corner of her eye.
Cash nods while he walks over then puts his arms around her. “Yes, you’re going to be a grandma.”
Margie holds up the album that says Grandma’s Brag Book on the front. She looks over at Granny and says, “Addie, we’re going to be Grannies together. This baby won’t even have a chance, it’s going to be so spoiled rotten.”
Bailey had left college to take care of Granny and Papa when Papa got to be too much of a handful for Granny, but now Margie takes care of them. She moved in with the Jacksons a few months ago after Cash and Bailey got married.
“Why haven’t you told me?” Lizzie stands with her hands on her hips. “Bay, I’m so happy for both of you.”
“I’m going to be an aunt? Eeep!” I stand and cover my mouth. “I’m so excited.”
“Does Clay know about this yet?” Lizzie narrows her eyes at Cash.
“Um, well,” Cash rubs the back of his neck. “Yeah, I called him this morning. In his defense, I made him promise not to tell you, Lizzie.”
“Oh, he’s had it!” Lizzie crosses her arms over her chest.
“Lizzie, you leave that boy alone!” Granny wags her finger. “Well, let’s eat before it all gets cold.” She leads the way to the table where there’s enough food to feed an Army.
I got up early this morning, I wanted some time to think before the ceremony for Mom and Dad. Even with this being a little informal service in our backyard, the whole band shows up to pay their respects. Some of Bailey and Lizzie’s families come, too, plus Denise from the ranch. Bailey’s cousin, Mercy, is taking pictures of everything and will make a memory book for us. “The garden you planted, Oakley, is really doing well. You did a great job in honoring their memory,” Granny says.
Love Me ~ Through the Storm Page 12
