Chapter 4
[Ford]
As we sit around a large wooden kitchen table, one that looks new compared to the nicked one I remember as a child, my girls regale Stone and Vale with random stories.
Despite Winnie not getting a precious pink frosted donut, she eats a cake one with white icing.
“Come here, you little mess,” I tease, reaching for the crumbled stash of paper-thin napkins I’d grabbed at the bakery and shoved into my pocket. I swipe over Winnie’s mouth and pull back the napkin with a sticky purple smear on it.
“What’s that, Daddy?” Winnie asks, noticing the coloring of the napkin in comparison to her mouth.
“Oh, it’s nothing.” Still, I unfold the rumpled mess and silently read off the smudged name. “It’s an autograph.”
“C-A-D-E-N-C-E,” Zelle reads over my shoulder as she stands beside me, leaning into my arm, physically telling me of her fears through her closeness. She was afraid I wouldn’t return.
“What’s that spell?” Winnie asks.
Vale and I meet eyes over the table, and she speaks. “Cadence.” Her brows pinch, questioning the word.
“Cadence?” Zelle squeaks. “As in Cadence?”
“The singer?” Winnie’s awe-filled voice echoes her sister’s.
“What singer?” I ask, running my hand up Zelle’s thin back.
“Daddy,” Zelle drones. The number of eye rolls I get from my eight-year-old has me truly concerned about her future teenage years. How am I going to handle that time—alone—as a single father of three girls?
Puzzled, I glance at my sister again, wondering what I’m missing.
“Certainly you’ve heard of Cadence.”
“Enya’s sister,” I confirm. Long-legged girl in cowboy boots, plum lipstick, a woman who can down tequila like it was water.
That Cadence? Then, I think back to the Cadence I saw outside the bakery only an hour ago.
Wide-eyed, pale and panicked—and wearing my baseball cap—as I growled and stomped, worrying about my damn car.
A flicker of remorse sloshes in the pit of my alcohol-soaked stomach.
However, Vale doesn’t know the details of the vision I saw this morning, or the woman I met last night.
“Well, she’s that, too.”
“What do you mean, ‘that too’?”
“Daddy,” Zelle’s voice squeaks even louder. “Did you meet Cadence?”
“I met Cadence,” I answer, certain I’m still not understanding something.
“You. Met. Cadence.” Winnie drags out as she leans on her elbows on the table, her dark eyes as round as the donut she just ate.
“I met Cadence,” I repeat, looking back at my sister. What the fuck? She’s Enya’s sister. Big deal.
“I bet your daddy has met lots of famous people in his profession,” Vale counters.
“What’s a profession?” Winnie asks.
“His job.”
“Daddy doesn’t have a job. He’s a baseball player.”
“Winnie, baseball is my job,” I correct.
“Mommy says you play a game for money.”
“I—” My gaze meets Vale’s once more and I shake my head, dismissing my counterargument. I’m not having this kind of discussion with my five-year-old. “Let’s get back to Cadence.”
“When I look at you, all I see is pink. And I think. Could you love me?” Zelle sings.
I choke. “What the—”
“It’s a Cadence song,” Vale explains, watching me as understanding slowly dawns.
“Cadence,” I whisper. As in the Cadence. That’s Cadence only to you, mister. A singular name. A singing sensation. I stare down at the napkin now on the table. Her autograph since I forgot her number.
“Shit,” I mutter.
“You said a bad word, Daddy,” Winnie points out.
“I know.” But I didn’t know. I didn’t recognize her. Cadence. Doesn’t she typically have blond hair? The woman I met had light brown hair. But the cowboy hat and the boots. The sway of her ass last night and the song she was sing—
Another flash of memory comes to me. Songbird. Both the name of the song and the sound she made while singing it. I’d called her a songbird when she’d approached me and gone into a diatribe about whether the song was a funeral tune or a wedding anthem.
“Shit,” I mumble again.
“Daddy, you said it again,” Winnie chastises with a giggle.
“Your daddy is lucky Hudson isn’t here. He charges a dollar per word.”
Zelle’s brows lift. “A dollar per word?”
“For swearing,” Vale explains about her son and his famous swear jar.
Zelle’s mouth falls open as she glares at me. “We need a swear jar. I could be a billionaire.”
I glare at my sister before dropping my gaze to June sitting on Vale’s lap. With her thumb in her mouth, her eyes narrow at me once again. We’ve needed a swear jar for a long time, buddy.
I don’t typically swear—much—in front of the girls, but right now I’m off-kilter. Ignoring the swear jar request, I look back at my sister, almost begging her to clarify what I’m missing here.
“She’s Cadence,” Vale explains, reading my desperation. “The Cadence. As in Country Artist of the Year, and Grammy award winning darling of country music.”
Darling of country music?
“And Enya’s sister.”
I scrub my hand down my face, certain all the color has drained despite the heat in my cheeks.
“You’re a nice shade of pink, brother,” Vale teases.
All I see is pink. And I think. Could you love me?
How many times has Zelle played that song?
I’m so screwed.
I’m just going to have to avoid Cadence.
How difficult could that be?