Chapter Twenty-Four
Twenty-four
Mom’s hair and relationship status aren’t the only major changes in the last eight months.
In the morning, I slink downstairs just in time to catch her mid–quad stretch, warming up for her morning run.
I’m partially asleep, but I try to make a face that’s encouraging instead of completely shocked.
The array of vitamins lined up on the counter are a second surprise.
Losing Dad seems to have inspired some healthy changes in both of us.
Unfortunately, those changes don’t inspire much in the way of breakfast. The fridge looks like it was stocked by a distracted wellness influencer—I don’t mind that it’s healthy and protein packed; it’s just that it doesn’t make sense.
We have a bag of baby carrots, a block of tofu, lean ground turkey, two apples, organic ketchup, an avocado, low-fat cream cheese, and two flavors of high-fiber bagels.
I pop a blueberry bagel into the toaster and put on a pot of coffee, then sit down to eat.
A floorboard whines upstairs, then the thud of shuffling footfalls just before Kurt ambles in with a sleepy wave.
He scratches his belly through a paint-splattered T-shirt, yawning and assessing the contents of the fridge.
“Shit, was I high when I went grocery shopping last night?”
“I don’t know.” I quirk one brow. “Were you?”
Kurt’s laugh is like a barstool dragged across a dive bar. It sounds to me like a summer bedtime—Mom tricking me into brushing my teeth while I could still hear the band having fun downstairs without me.
“I wasn’t high,” Kurt assures me. His voice suddenly turns serious. “I’m about a year sober, actually.”
I set down my bagel, clapping the crumbs off my hands. “Like, completely sober?”
“No weed, no pills, no booze.” He pops one of each type of bagel in the four-slot toaster. “It’s been good. I feel ten years younger. Which, you know…” He coughs. “Makes me seventeen.”
I’m not sure of Kurt’s exact age, but he can’t have more than a year or two on Dad.
His beard is indisputably gray, but the silver strands on his head are mixed in with chestnut-brown ones.
One prominent wrinkle runs across the middle of his forehead, an inevitable side effect of his concentrated drumming face.
“Were those things a problem for you before?” I ask. “Weed, pills, booze?”
Kurt adjusts his glasses, eyes clouding over with a stormy memory. “I never saw a musician without some type of problem with something.”
My chin dips, skeptical. “C’mon. Really? Not even one?”
Kurt slowly shakes his head and looks around like he’s watching the room fill with ghosts. “We’ve all got vices. I’ve seen a lot of shit.” He grunts and scratches his head, lips tilted up.
The toaster pops, and I stop myself just shy of telling Kurt where to find the plates. He knows this place as well or better than I do. For a while, the only sound between us is the scratch of the butter knife against a toasted bagel face.
Then Kurt pulls out a chair and sits down next to me. “Your mom said you’ve been sober about three times as long as I have.” He bites into a bagel, and his bushy gray-black eyebrows lift, offering me the floor.
“No weed, no pills, no booze,” I echo.
He nods, impressed. “And you’re how old? Twenty-eight?”
“Twenty-nine,” I correct him.
“Well, congrats.” Kurt tips an invisible hat. “You’re twenty years ahead of every other musician I know.”
“Yeah, I guess.”
“I’m not guessing.” Kurt’s expression is serious again.
It’s not quite the concentrated drumming face, but there’s an intensity in his eyes that I can’t turn away from, a pinch of worry hanging in the dents between his wiry brows.
“I don’t wanna get preachy with you, kid,” he says.
“But I’ve been in this business for thirty-some years, played shows with a thousand different people, and not one of ’em was as talented or as good of a man as Ricky Pierce. ”
My throat constricts. He was a good man, wasn’t he?
“But,” Kurt goes on, “he sure had his demons, and those get tougher to evict if you let ’em stick around. I guess what I’m saying is…you’re a lot like your dad, kiddo, but you’re smart like your mom. Keep using that brain she gave you. It’ll getcha quite a bit further than your dad got to go.”
We don’t say much for the rest of breakfast. I feel like I’ve just received a prophecy, like Kurt read my palm. But this isn’t woo-woo. It’s genetics.
Mom returns from her run and fixes herself a bagel with a side of enough vitamins to constitute a trail mix.
“Should we make a plan for the day?” I suggest, trying not to wince at how much I sound like Renee.
Mom hums. She and Kurt exchange a quick, pinched glance. Suspicious. “Actually, we’d like to talk to you first.”
“You’re engaged.”
Mom lets out a long sigh. “No, Alice.”
“Oh.” I’m more relieved than perhaps I should be. “Then what?”
“We have some updates about the house. This house.”
My heart hits the gas. “You’re selling it.”
“Alice.”
“Sorry, sorry.” I sit on my hands as if they were the ones causing trouble.
Mom looks to Kurt again, and Kurt takes the cue, excusing himself for a moment.
He returns with a manila folder stuffed to its limits.
On the white tab are the words Outpost—Important?
My heart gives a little spasm; they’re written in Dad’s messy handwriting.
Kurt licks his thumb and flips open the folder. “Do you know how we got this house?” He’s looking at me.
“The band bought it shortly after I was born,” I recite. Dad told the story in all sorts of interviews.
“The band bought it,” Kurt agrees, nodding as he thumbs through paperwork. “It was owned by that separate LLC for a number of years…and then Songs for Alice went platinum.”
I flinch. Songs for Alice was released the year I turned two. It didn’t go platinum until I hit middle school.
Kurt folds his hands. He peers at me over his glasses. “At that point, your dad bought us out of our shares.”
I stare at Kurt, waiting for the next sentence. It doesn’t come. “Okay?”
Kurt spins the folder and pushes it across the tables.
He looks to Mom for her approval, and she nods, urging him on.
“The reason he did this,” Kurt says, “is because you were the only kid any of us planned to have, and if not for you, we wouldn’t have this album.
And that was around the time Ricky’s drinking was getting real bad.
We all agreed it made good sense that Ricky owned the place so if anything happened, if the band broke up or, well, y’know.
” Kurt’s throat bobs with a swallow. “He could leave it to you.”
I blink at him. At Mom. My brain feels like an overstuffed manila envelope.
“He left it…to me?”
My eyes take a lap toward the living room. There’s dust on the fireplace, the warm butter-yellow glow of the lamplight diffused through antique shades. My dust on my fireplace, I think. My lamplight through my antique shade.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“At first, we didn’t think you were ready.
” Mom rests one hand on Kurt’s thigh, a silent reminder of who we is.
“Then—well, we’ve been trying to tell you for a while now.
It’s just not the type of conversation to have over text or a phone call.
We wanted to make sure you got out here to see the house first before you made any decisions. ”
“Decisions,” I parrot. “Like…what? Sorry, I’m just…”
“You’re doing great, kiddo,” Kurt says. “You let me know if we need to slow down, but essentially, there are two big options.” He dips his chin, and his glasses slip down his nose at least an inch.
“You can keep the house. Mortgage is paid off. Just taxes and maintenance on this place, which…it ain’t free. ”
“Or?”
“Or we’ll buy it from you.” Kurt pauses, then adds, “And by we, I mean the band.”
“You’d buy back your own house?”
“It’s not our house,” he reminds me. “But it’s set up for us, and with all the new music we have to record, we sure could use it. And we’ve already gotten it appraised and can pay cash for what the place is worth.”
He sorts through his papers, then passes me the documents from the appraisal.
It’s like peeling back the film on the last year of my life.
My underwhelming inheritance, the one I assumed Dad had blown on booze, was only that small because I’m sitting inside the walls of the rest of it.
I could buy a place in the city and still have plenty of money left.
It’s not retire-at-thirty money, but it’s a rock-solid foundation to do anything I want to do.
“Of course, if you do choose to keep the house, the band would love to work out terms to use the studio, if you’re willing. It could be a pretty bit of recurring income for you, if that’s the route you take.”
My brain whirs like an old, overheated computer. This is way more data than I’m built to process. I rest my head in my hands, a little woozy.
“I know it’s a lot,” Mom says. “Which is why we wanted to tell you now instead of waiting until the end of the week. That was always our plan, to tell you once we had been here a day or two, but then of course the wedding threw a big wrench in that. But we knew there’d be questions about the house once you were here again, and…
we just didn’t want to keep it from you any longer. ”
“Right,” I say. But my voice doesn’t sound like me. I’m still processing. “Yeah, that…that makes sense.”
“And you can talk to us about it as much or as little as you want,” Mom goes on. “There’s not a right or wrong decision, okay? Just take your time. No rush.”
The words clang in my ears—no rush. They feel so out of place.
We’ll be rushing all week to get the house in wedding shape.
One thing at a time, I think, but when Mom and I head up to clear out Dad’s closet, I can’t squash the anxious flutter of a time crunch.
It’s hard to hold both at once, to move with drive and purpose as we sort through clothes and crates of Dad’s records, to make snap decisions about what stays and what goes knowing every small choice is building up to the final boss, the biggest keep or toss at hand.
What do I want with a house in Galena, so far away from anywhere and anyone I want to be close to?
But if Dad left it for me, did he want me to have it? To keep it? To do something with it?
At times like this, I wish I believed in signs.
Angel numbers on the clock. A cardinal landing nearby.
Whatever it takes to move through the grief, I support it, but it doesn’t work for me.
I don’t believe in it, but I understand it—that desperate search for something that will make it okay.
When I’m sorting through Dad’s record crates, I dip my hand into every record sleeve, hoping for a hidden note or some kind of clue from Dad that will tell me what to do with the Outpost. But there’s nothing—just records and dust.
Hey Dad,
Surprise! I’m a homeowner! But you knew that already.
Why didn’t you tell me I’d be inheriting the Outpost?
A heads up would’ve been nice, but maybe you wanted it to be a surprise?
Or maybe you planned to tell me—I dunno, some other time?
But then why didn’t you try to stick around to do it? I hate that I’ll never really know.
But let me backtrack here for a second and say this: Thank you, Dad.
What a gift. I’m so sorry for assuming you blew all that money on booze.
I feel like an asshole for that, but I hope you can forgive me.
I’m working on forgiving you, too. It’s easy to feel like you gave up on living, but I’ll never know what it was like to be you.
Maybe someday I’ll understand how it feels to decide that I’ve had my turn and it’s time to pass the dice.
Until then, it’s good to be back at the Outpost. I feel close to you here.
I sort of wish I came back sooner, but there’s no point in wishing that, is there?
What’s done is done. You’re gone, and I’m here, and I miss you all the time.
I love you, Dad. Whatever I do with this place, I’ll be doing it to make us both proud.
Love,
Your Dallas Alice