Chapter 29
CHAPTER
TWENTY-NINE
Adam glanced at his phone when it rang. So much of his life was conducted through a text that when his phone rang, he really paid attention. Momma sat on the screen, and Adam looked away from his spreadsheet to swipe on the call.
He tried to talk to his mother every week, no matter what he had going on, and he realized that today was Friday and he hadn’t called yet.
“Hey Momma,” he said, leaning back in his executive desk chair. “I’m sorry I haven’t called yet. Been real busy this week.”
“We’ve been keeping busy down here too,” she said.
“Yeah, what have you got going on?” he asked, because the more his mother talked and the less he did, the better the call would go for Adam.
He loved his mother, and it had actually been his dad who’d told him to call her once a week and keep her updated with everything in his life.
It had been good advice, because Adam knew he could always go to his mom for anything he needed.
“Ellie’s going to have another baby,” Momma said. “Her and Paxman are so excited.”
“Oh, that’s great news,” Adam said, smiling at the same time he realized that his mother would want to know about his love life as well. That she’d likely called to tell him about his sister’s pregnancy—and to give him her standard lecture on his single status.
“Before you ask,” he said, as she started to say something. “I’ve started seeing someone.”
“You have?” Momma asked. “Oh Adam, this is great news.”
“Momma, don’t act like that,” he said.
“Don’t act like what? You never tell me when you’re dating until it’s really serious.”
“Name the last person I told you I was dating.”
“Exactly,” she said without missing a beat. “You haven’t dated anyone seriously in years. So this is huge.”
“Or maybe you just called me on a Friday afternoon with news about Ellie, and I knew you were going to ask me if I was seeing anyone.” He grinned, because he had his mother pegged. “Because you want to have grandbabies, one right after the other.”
“Well, you can’t fault me for that,” she said.
“Actually, I can, Momma. You had your three babies.”
“And it was very hard to get all of you,” she said. “Your father and I had to work really hard.”
Adam reached up and ran his hand over his eyes. He’d been going over logistics for an hour to make sure that all the lighting, the stage setup, the heating elements they needed, the instrument changes, and everything could be handled by him and Morris.
Country Quad said they had a whole team of people that they traveled with or worked with at stadiums, but this was no stadium tour.
They needed a few instruments and stools, lights and multiple cameras, as Harry had promised to livestream each of the performances to his own social media. He had subscribers that paid a monthly fee for exclusive content, and he was going to be live for them.
“Her name’s Joey,” Adam said. “She’s got a couple pictures of us that I can send you.”
“How long have you been seeing her?” Momma asked.
“A couple of months,” Adam said. “One of the guys in Country Quad; she’s his daughter.”
“Oh, Adam.” Momma let his name hang there, filled with disappointment.
“It’s fine,” Adam said.
“Until it isn’t,” Momma said.
“Yeah, but right now it is,” he said. “Listen, I wanted to ask you something.”
“Okay,” she said. “Is it about Joey?”
“No,” Adam said, he pressed his eyes closed. “I mean, maybe a little bit.” He blew out his breath and got to his feet. He needed more coffee to have this conversation.
“She asked me to go to church with her in a couple of weeks. She’s moving out. She doesn’t like to do things by herself.” That alone had prompted Adam to want to go to church, but he wasn’t sure if it was for the right reason or not.
“You used to love going to church,” Momma said. “When you were a little boy, you’d get up before all of us and start making pancakes, so we wouldn’t be late.”
Adam smiled to himself as he started making a new pot of coffee. “Did I really? I don’t remember that.”
“You really did,” Momma said, chuckling. “You used to get so mad at the twins, even when they were tiny babies, because it took me so long to get them ready to go.”
“Well, that’s because the twins are slow,” Adam said.
“Ellie had a lot of hair,” Momma said. “It would take me a while to get it done, that’s for sure.” She sighed a happy little sigh. “And you’d bring me a blueberry pancake that was barely cooked all the way through. I ate it anyway, because I wanted you to think I liked them.”
“Momma,” he said. “This is proof that I’ve always been a terrible cook. No wonder you kept chasing me out of the kitchen.”
“Oh, so you remember that?” Momma asked.
Adam laughed. “Yeah, that I remember.” He got out the sugar bowl and his favorite mug.
“Joey is a real good cook,” he said, pride moving through him for absolutely no reason whatsoever.
“She works at a bakery in the morning and a catering place at night, and she went to a year of culinary school in New York.”
“Mm, hm,” Momma said, and Adam knew she wasn’t listening.
“Yeah,” he said. “And then she got abducted by aliens and disappeared off the face of the planet for a couple of years.”
Silence for a beat. Then two.
“Oh, Adam, she’s pretty,” Momma said.
His heartbeat spiked, punching the back of his throat. “What do you mean? How would you know she’s pretty?”
“You said she was one of Country Quad’s daughters.”
“You Googled her?” he asked.
“She comes up with her daddy…though she looks pretty young in this photo.”
Adam had no idea what picture his mother had found, but his throat had turned tight, the words right there on the tip of his tongue, unable to be ignored. “Yeah, well, that’s because she’s pretty young,” he said.
“What do you mean?” she asked.
“I’m sure she doesn’t have a Wikipedia page,” Adam griped. “She’s younger than me, Momma, by quite a lot.”
“How much younger?”
“Why does it matter?” he asked. “She’s an adult.”
“Is she like, an adult last week, or like, an adult a year ago?”
“Momma, she’ll be twenty-three in February,” he said. “She’s been an adult for almost five years. She’s lived in New York City, for crying out loud.”
“Oh, okay,” Momma said, and that was that.
Adam wished things could be as simple for Otis and Georgia, but he also understood why they weren’t. He’d signed a three-year contract with Country Quad, and he wouldn’t be going anywhere. He’d have to see the Youngs for all of those days, even if he broke up with Joey.
Be real, he thought to himself. If this relationship ends, it’ll be because she doesn’t want to see you anymore.
How would that go when she had to see him just to show up to her own family’s events?
As the coffee started to percolate, he reminded himself that he was not her daddy’s personal assistant. He was the band manager, and Joey could choose to be as involved with the band as much or as little as she wanted to be.
So if they broke up, he wouldn’t have to see her. He still would, and it would be painful, because Adam could not imagine his life without Joey in it.
He suddenly wanted to ask his mother about love, but he figured he better stick to one topic at a time.
“So what about church?” he asked. “Should I go with her?”
“Oh, honey, you’re thirty years old,” Momma said. “You can decide for yourself if you want to go to church or not.”
“I’m actually thirty-one.”
“Right, so make your decision.”
If only Adam didn’t have to make so many, perhaps this one would be easier. “I want to go with her,” he said. “Simply because it would be easier for her, but I also want to go for the right reasons.”
“And what would the right reasons be, son?” Momma asked.
“I don’t know,” Adam said, feeling flustered. “A desire to feel the spirit, to hear the word of the Lord in my life?”
“Do you want either of those things?” Momma asked.
Adam thought for a moment, finding it very easy to say, “You know what, Momma? I do.”
“Great,” she said as if she didn’t care at all if he went to church or not, but Adam knew his mother had been down on her knees morning and night praying for him since the day he had been born.
“Then you should go. And even if you’re just going for her, God still might have something to say to you while you’re there. ”
Adam had never quite heard the voice of the Lord the way his mother did, but he didn’t want to argue with her either. He never had, and she’d always given him the grace and space to learn for himself.
“All right,” he said. “I think I’ll go with her then.”
“Well, that sounds wonderful,” Momma said. “And if I don’t have a picture of her in the next thirty seconds, I may just buy an airplane ticket and come up there so I can meet her in person.”
Adam laughed. “Momma, don’t do that,” he said. “You’ll be throwing a hip out on the airplane.”
“That happened one time,” Momma said, and Adam laughed again.
“She’s taken all the pictures on her phone,” he said. “So let me text her and get one. Can you give me ten minutes?” He glanced at the clock. “Might actually be longer, Momma; she just got to her second job.”
“She has two jobs? Adam Lewis Harmon, why are you letting your girlfriend work two jobs?”
Adam smiled and said, “Momma, if I could just have you tell Joey to let me take care of her, the world’s problems will be solved.”
“Does she not want you to take care of her?” Momma asked, the incredulity in her voice off the charts, like such a thing was so foreign she couldn’t even comprehend it.
“Momma, we’ve been dating for two months,” he said. “I don’t think she’s quite ready to take every dime I can give her.”
“Oh, well, I guess I can see that,” she said.
“You guess you can?” Adam teased. “The last woman I dated for eight months, mind you, and I offered to pay her cell phone bill once, and you lectured me for twenty minutes about not letting women take advantage of me.”
“Oh, it wasn’t twenty minutes,” Momma said, though it had definitely been twenty minutes—maybe more.
“All right, Momma,” Adam said, chuckling. “I gotta go. I’ll send you a picture real soon.”
“All right,” she said. “I love you, son.”
“Love you too, Momma.”
Adam let her end the call, and he poured himself a cup of coffee before he texted Joey to get a selfie.
I decided I want to come to church with you on Sunday. Is that invitation still open? I know you’re working right now. Just text me when you get a minute.
He took his coffee to the back window that overlooked the yard.
Darkness had started to fall already, as it was the second week of December, and winter had definitely come to Wyoming.
Adam found he didn’t mind it, but he pretended to be put out for Harry’s sake.
Joey loved winter, and that had only made him like her more.
His phone chimed, but he’d left it in the kitchen, and it took him an extra minute to feel like checking it. When he did, he found Joey had texted him back.
Yes, I can text you the address. They’re doing a Christmas service on Sunday, so we’ll probably want to get there early if we want to get a seat. It starts at ten.
That would be a long drive for Adam, but he got up early in the morning, and he didn’t anticipate it being a problem. The next text that had come in was the smiling selfie that Joey had taken the day she’d told her family that they were dating.
Adam grinned at the two of them, and he quickly downloaded the picture and sent it to his mother. He’d focused on church in the phone call, but now he typed out the second question that he’d been thinking about.
Do not freak out, he started. And don’t call me again. But how do you know when you’re in love?