Chapter 28 #2
The driver’s side door pops open and my dad swings down. His truck is lifted so high that he has to navigate a four-foot drop.
It might be April, but he wears his trademark white shirt with the pearl snap buttons tucked into blue jeans and a massive brass belt buckle.
The seams on the front are picked out in gold thread.
The man’s a walking poster for bling, because the gold thread is just the start.
He’s got fringe. Embroidered flowers. Metallic studs.
More is always better in Dad’s world. His suspiciously dark hair is swept back from his face and you just know he’s thinking: Alright, Mr. DeMille, I’m ready for my close-up.
He pauses on the sidewalk, looking up at us.
“Not Garth,” one of the ladies says. She sounds disappointed.
“Billy Rae?”
He grins when he spots me, arms outstretched for a red-carpet reunion. “Darlin’! I missed you.”
That’s my cue.
“Hope you told the Maldives.” I stand up slowly. Jack’s arm falls away from me, which makes me mad. Dad’s already ruining my afternoon and he’s just arrived. “Wouldn’t want them feeling unappreciated.”
“You got a moment for your old man? If you folks will excuse us?” He gives a thousand-watt smile to the group assembled on the porch.
They mostly smile back. I mean, Slate glowers, while Dee looks as if she’s about to hand him some snapdragon seeds. People are too friendly here for their own good (with the exception of Slate).
“Walk with me,” I say. “We can talk over at the rectory.”
“The rectory?” Dad looks amused. “Is that for real? The guy in your song?”
I’ll take difficult questions for a thousand bucks, Alex! I don’t look at Jack, who doesn’t follow me down the steps.
I start walking toward the rectory, leaving Dad’s vehicular monstrosity behind us for folks to gawk at, mostly because I don’t know what to say. Which isn’t a problem as Dad holds up the conversation all on his own.
By the time we reach the rectory and I sit us down on the steps by the church side door, he’s launched into The Pitch. The studio is locked down. Backup vocals scheduled. Just needs me to “slide on in” and knock out a few verses for the Christmas album.
“I’m not doing it,” I tell him, not for the first time.
He doesn’t hear me. Or chooses not to. He keeps going, talking about family legacy, about how my voice will “elevate the whole damn thing.”
“I said no,” I repeat, louder this time.
Yeah, you heard me.
I take a breath before he can start talking again. “I’m not always fine, Daddy. I know that’s what you want me to be. Tough-as-nails, keep-truckin’-through-it Dixie. But I’m tired. I’m hurting. I’ve been broke and broken down and stuck in a small town and living in a preacher’s spare room.”
His eyebrows rise at that one.
“But I’ve got things happening. My things. I’ve got songs going viral. I’ve got—hell, maybe I’ve got a future. And whether I do or I don’t, it’s gonna be mine. Not yours.”
He shakes his head. “I just thought that maybe when you sign with that label, you’d keep an eye out for a spot for your old man. I ain’t saying I’m outta juice yet. I just—I want in. Somewhere.”
He isn’t just trying to pull me into his world. He’s scared I won’t let him into mine.
I pull out my phone. “You want a project? Watch this.” I queue up the video of the choir’s third-prize-winning performance.
My daddy stares at the screen. Then he laughs, hard. “They’re awful.”
“They’re also kind of amazing,” I point out. “They’re trying and you can’t buy that kind of raw joy in a studio. They don’t care about sounding perfect because they’re having fun.”
Dad’s still chuckling, shaking his head like he’s watching the world’s funniest blooper reel. “Honey, that poor woman in the front row sounds like she’s gargling gravel. And the kiddo on the end isn’t even in the same key as the rest of them.”
“That poor woman has been in the choir for thirty years,” I snap. “And Toby’s ten years old and shy as hell, but he shows up and he tries. Which is more than I can say for some people.”
The dig lands. Dad’s smile falters for just a second before he recovers.
“Now, sugar, don’t get all defensive. I’m just saying—”
“You’re just saying what you always say. That anything that isn’t Nashville perfect isn’t worth doing. That small towns are where dreams go to die. That I’m wasting my time with people who aren’t gonna make me famous.”
I’m on my feet now, pacing because sitting still feels impossible. “But you know what? These people? They’re not trying to use me. They’re not asking me to be something I’m not. They just… They like me. For me. Crazy concept, right?”
Dad’s face softens, and for a second he looks like the man who used to braid my hair before school instead of the walking country music cliché he’s become. “Dixie, baby, I know you think I don’t—”
“Nope.” I hold up a hand. “You hold that thought because you came here looking to save your career. To ask me to be your backup singer on some Christmas album nobody’s gonna remember next year.
But I’m done being your get-out-of-jail-free card, Dad.
I’m done being the thing you use to prove you’re still relevant when your own stuff stops working.
And I’m done playing it safe, hiding behind your name instead of making my own. ”
Dad’s quiet for a long moment, and when he speaks again, his voice has lost that performative quality it usually has. “You really like it here, don’t you?”
“Yeah,” I say. “I really do. Although to be fair, I’m also really broke and at first it was the best of a bad set of options.
So what if you didn’t do the same tired album?
What if you rewrote something, made it fresh?
Used real people like the choir instead of studio singers?
You could do a whole Southern gospel send-up—like you did with ‘Jingle Bell Dash.’”
His eyes light up the way they did every Christmas Eve growing up when he’d rewrite a carol just to make us all laugh. “You think they’d go for that?”
“They’d love it. You just have to meet ’em where they are.”
I hand him my notebook—full of scribbles and half songs. He flips through until one catches his eye.
“Oh, now this,” he says, tapping the page, “this right here is gold.”
He clears his throat and begins to sing, low and slow:
“God rest ye merry, gentlemen, but don’t you take your ease,
The missus has a list so long, it’s bringin’ grown men to their knees.
You’ll brave the mall, the gift-wrap stall, the store with seventeen cheeses—
O tidings of Black Friday panic and deals so barely legal!”
He looks up at me. “You wrote this?”
“You get full credit for inspiring the cheese.”
He cackles. “Darlin’, that’s a hook if I ever heard one.”
He sets the notebook down and pulls out his phone—the newest model, with a rhinestone-studded case that screams “midlife crisis but make it country.”
“I’m not stupid. I’m transferring you some cash.” He doesn’t look at me. “Let’s unstick you from this town and get you out of the spare room. You should have told me.”
I groan. “No.”
“It’s already happening,” he replies. “I just need help with this damn Venmo-CashApp-Zelle-whatever-the-hell thingy. I tried to send money to your Aunt Rita last week and accidentally paid a man named Dante in Kansas City.”
“I am seeing the preacher,” I blurt out.
“Dixie—”
“He’s not the punch line to a joke—”
“Dixie.”
“I really like him.”
“Point is—” he stabs at his screen “—I’m not taking no for an answer. Consider it a producer’s advance. Or a tax refund. Hell, call it Christmas money if that makes you feel better. You pick.”
I look at him—really look at him—and see past the tan and the charm and the ridiculous shirt that cost more than most people’s rent. He’s not trying to control me.
This time, he’s just trying to take care of me the only way he knows how.
Which, let’s be honest, has always been throwing money at problems and hoping they go away.
I hold out my phone. “I could use your help with this. Can you read it?”
He sure can. In fact, he reads it twice.
“Well, show me the money,” he says finally. “We’re gonna have two stars in the family.”
So here’s the thing. A producer for a record label just called my agent.
They want to sign me and I’ll have studio time and production support, a PR team and tour support.
It’s a two-album deal, with what they’re calling a “small” financial advance.
Their definition of small and mine are worlds apart—I could live on that money for a year or more.
“Congratulations,” Dad says, downloading the contract on his phone because of course he is. “You want me to take a look at this for you?”
I laugh, because there’s no stopping him. “Yeah. Obviously, my agent’s going through it, but I’d like to know if you have suggestions.”
I hear the door behind us open and close while Dad’s brainstorming a list of questions to hit my agent with. They’re actually good questions, which is annoying because I want to stay mad at him.
Jack’s standing behind us. “Are you okay?”
Not a chance. I can’t deal with this right now. He’s dressed for a memorial service I’d forgotten all about—dark suit, crisp white shirt, black tie—and it somehow manages to make him look both hot as hell and completely untouchable. He’s 110 percent minister and 0 percent my Jack.
“A genuine minister?” Dad asks. He sounds amused.
Well, yeah?
Jack keeps his gaze on me. “You can go in the house, you know. If you want some privacy.”
“No problem.” Dad winks at Jack. Actually winks. “We’re about to get Dixie out of your hair.”
Jack holds out his hand. “Jack Carter.”
Dad bounces to his feet. He’s shorter than Jack by a ridiculous degree and looks like a peacock preening its tail feathers. “Hank Pearl.”
They exchange some pleasantries and then Jack smiles at me. It’s not his usual smile. It’s tighter, less happy. “I’ve got a memorial service. I’ll be done in about two hours.”
Dad laughs. “This is your boyfriend, the preacher? I know you said he existed, but I really thought you’d made him up.”
Jack looks at me, calm as ever, but I can see he’s not happy.
I’ve been so busy thinking that I can’t fit into his life here in Wickham Hollow that I never thought about it the other way around.
Does he fit into my Nashville life? We’re pieces from two different puzzles and there’s no forcing us together in a way that genuinely works.
“Jack’s my boyfriend.”
Dad barks out a laugh. “Guess it’s good y’all already answered the wedding question.” And then, when we both look at him blankly, he sings, “‘She’s not one of those girls who says yes to a preaching man.’”
He’s freaking quoting the opening line to my very first song about Jack, the one I wrote when I didn’t know him at all. The one where he was a dream, and maybe a good one.
“Dating a preacher!” My dad’s way too amused by this. “Did she tell you she got a deal?”
The corners of Jack’s mouth pull down.
“It literally just happened and it’s not definite,” I say quickly. “I haven’t signed anything.”
Dad laughs. “You’ve been chasing this record label for years. I’d say the signature is just a formality, wouldn’t you?”
“Congratulations.” Jack brushes a kiss on my cheek and then turns to go back inside. From the robes and the number of cars now flooding the parking lot, the memorial service will be starting soon. “I look forward to hearing it.”
“Dixie, tell me you’re not thinking about staying here,” Dad says.
Jack freezes.
Yeah. He heard that.
But he recovers quick and goes inside. The door bangs shut behind him.
“You should capitalize on this preacher thing,” Dad says. “Get him in some photos, maybe a music video. Strike while the iron’s hot.”
Not happening.
I yank my phone out of his hand and run into the church. “Jack!”
He’s headed for his office. I speed up and tug on his sleeve. “Listen to me!”
I know from looking at his face that he’s hurt.
“You turned everything we did into a song? You’re about to put out an album about us? Everything we did was just some kind of creative writing exercise for you?”
“It wasn’t like that.”
He gives me a look. He’s not buying what I’m selling.
“It was just business,” I try. “Not personal.”
“Yeah.” He holds up a hand. “It was very personal, Dixie. I’m your boyfriend and I want to support you, but you’re not letting me matter. I’m just a punch line.”
“I didn’t know Hank—my dad—was going to just show up here.”
He lets me change the subject, but he’s still not happy.
“Why wouldn’t he? You come and go all the time. You won’t make plans or talk about a future—and clearly you haven’t made room for me in yours.”
“Jack—”
“You didn’t tell your dad about us.”
“He didn’t need to know—”
“Because you didn’t think it mattered.” I hate the hurt on Jack’s face. “Tell me this, Dixie. Are you embarrassed by me?”
I stare at him.
It’s not that.
“Because I’m not embarrassed by you,” he continues. “I’m proud of you. You’re an amazing person with an incredible talent, and I’ll support you however you do or do not want to use that talent. I love you.”
He tosses those three words out there.
Boom.
Just oh, and yeah—I love you.
I don’t know what to say and we both know it.
He kisses me on the cheek and walks away.