Chapter 17
SEVENTEEN
It’s been the better part of a week, and I can’t get that call out of my head.
I hear it in the truck. I hear it at a family dinner, with a grandbaby on my knee and my son halfway through a story I miss the end of.
I know Josie’s watching. She’s always paying attention but giving me the grace to work through the thoughts going through my mind.
It’s not that I think about him on purpose.
He turns up when I least expect it. A red light.
The stretch of dark road between the studio and home.
The half second before sleep, after I’ve kissed my wife goodnight.
For thirty years, he’s watched me from the sidelines, which was where he needed to stay.
Now, I’ve opened myself up to hearing his voice because there’s no way to stop him from calling in.
Even if Bex tried, something tells me Sterling would find a way.
The call isn’t the only thing weighing heavily on me this week.
There was the morning Noah pulled me out to the water tower to paint over my daughter’s name on the side of it, under a word I won’t repeat, Nick in his scrubs helping me do it.
We all agreed not to tell Paige. I don’t know if I agree, but it is what it is.
What good comes from telling her? It would only hurt her feelings.
Ever since our first live video, any clip Paige posts goes viral.
I’m told this is a good thing as it boosts our marketability.
Ben says we now have people calling and wanting to pay us to advertise.
So, even though I’d like to stop with the live broadcasts, we can’t.
It’s putting money in my producer’s pocket and building a solid foundation for her career.
I’m not taking that way from Bex. She had an idea, knew how to execute it, and now it’s thriving.
It still blows my mind that people call-in and tell me about their lives and trust me to give them back something useful, and I do, and as it turns out I’m good at it.
Really good at it. Until it’s my turn. Every night this week I’ve driven home from being good at dishing advice and sat in my driveway, unable to take one word of my own guidance.
Tonight a woman calls about her father. He walked out when she was a kid and she hasn’t heard from him since.
Now word’s got around that he’s sick, and she wants to know if it makes her a bad person that she feels nothing.
I tell her no. She doesn’t owe a stranger her grief because they share a last name and DNA.
The nothing she feels is an answer too, and she’s allowed to.
I hang up a hypocrite.
The numbers keep climbing while I come apart underneath them. Paige shows me a chart I pretend to follow. Bex fields another call from the station across the country that wants to carry us. The better I get at falling apart on the air, the more stations line up to buy it.
It’s no different when it comes to writing music. The more melodramatic, the better the sales. People thrive on your pain and your angst. People are sadistic, and yet I keep feeding the beast.
Bex catches me before I’ve got my jacket on. She hasn’t been in Beaumont long and doesn’t know the half of who calls the show or why, but she’s been in the booth with me enough weeks to know when I’m not feeling it.
“You’ve been somewhere else all week,” she says. “Two shows now. I don’t need to know where, but I need you back before the mic’s hot, because the audience hears. They need to know the man on the other end of the line is going to give them his best.”
“I’m fine,” I tell her. “It’s just been a long week.”
“Sure.” She eyes me warningly but doesn’t push it.
“Whatever it is, leave it at the door before the next one. That’s the job.
” She goes back to her board. I could tell her she’s wrong or that she can’t tell me what to do because I’m the star—this is my studio, my soon to be satellite station—and I can end it anytime I want.
I keep my mouth shut. Bex is my business partner and she has every right to call me out on my bullshit.
She doesn’t know it’s one of the callers, the older man.
She doesn’t know it’s my father on the other end.
If she did and if she knew the story, Bex would block him.
All I have to do is say the word. She screens a hundred voices a week, and to her Sterling is one more that she’s heard before. That’s the only mercy in any of this.
I don’t go straight home. I drive out to the lake. The road empties the farther I get, the streetlights thinning until it’s just my headlights and the black water off to the left. By the time I turn, in I’ve half talked myself out of coming but continue anyway.
My mother’s place sits back off the water, where it’s quiet. The porch light’s on and so is the lamp in the living room. I hesitate until she opens the front door, leaving me no choice except to go in.
The radio’s off when I come in, which is how I know she heard the show. I stand in her small living room, looking at the walls. Every square inch is covered with photos of my kids and grandkids. She loves them and they love her.
She’s in her robe with her hair down and her reading glasses pushed up on her head. For some odd reason, she looks smaller here. Not so full of life. Maybe living at the lake isn’t for her.
“Tea?”
“Yes, please.” I keep looking at her walls, knowing full well I don’t spend enough time out here. “Do you like living out here?”
“It’s fine.”
“Fine,” I repeat. “Would you like to live in town?”
“I don’t need you to buy me a house, Liam.”
“We have Linda’s old place out back.” Linda was our housekeeper, years ago. When she retired, we didn’t replace her. “It has a private drive and entrance, and you’d be closer to the kids.”
“Maybe,” she says as she brings me a cup. I’m not a huge fan of tea and would prefer something stronger, but I’m not about to ask her if she has anything to make this Irish.
My mom sits down at her small table and takes a sip. I sit across from her and don’t sip. I just hold the hot mug in my hands.
“He’s getting bolder.”
“You heard it,” I say.
“I heard it. He’s more desperate. With him those were always the same thing.”
“You don’t have to listen to him. You could turn it off. Nobody would blame you.”
“And miss my son? I’ve heard every show since you started. I’m not letting that man cost me more than he already has. He’s taken enough of me from you. I won’t allow him to dictate how I spend my nights.”
I don’t know what to say to that, so I drink it, even though I don’t like it. To hear my mother say she’d rather listen to her ex-husband’s voice than turn me off means a lot. Means more than I could probably tell her.
“I thought about going back to California for the winter, but I’m thinking about the offer you gave me this evening. I would like to be closer to the babies, and I don’t want to miss any milestones.”
“The house is yours. Just say the word. I will need a little notice though so I can get someone in there and make sure it’s clean and whatnot.”
My mom smiles. “I know your wife; it’s clean.”
I don’t disagree with her. I finish my tea, make sure her windows are locked, and tell her I’ll see her later.
On the porch, she holds my face in both hands a second, looking into my eyes.
Years ago, we lost any affection we used to share.
I refuse to move and lean into her touch.
“I said my piece the first time and I meant it,” she says.
“I’m not going to tell you to call him and I’m not going to tell you not to.
But don’t lie awake over a man who never once lost sleep over you.
He’s the one who owes. Not the other way around. ”
“I know.”
“You came out good,” she says. “In spite of the both of us. Go home to your wife and your daughter.”
I still don’t go straight home. I let myself into Ralph’s through the back, chairs up, floor mopped, the neon out front throwing pink across the empty stools.
I pour two fingers of whiskey and make my way to Mason’s stool, always vacant when the bar is full of patrons.
Most of the time I don’t look at it. Tonight I can’t look at anything else.
Aside from Josie, Mason was the only other person who knew what it was like to grow up with Sterling as a father.
Actually, Michael knows as well. He and Mason were there when I’d show up in the middle of the night because I couldn’t take it anymore.
The Powell’s never once told me to go home. They never turned their backs on me.
Not like I did Mason all those years ago.
One time, when we were kids, my father caught me coming in the front instead of the back and put that same hand between my shoulder blades and walked me down the hall to my room without a word.
Mason stood there in the foyer, watching.
He never said a thing about it. The next day, he waited for me out front, and as much as I wanted to ignore it all, he pulled me into a hug.
That was Mason.
I take a sip.
If it was just me walking out at eighteen, I might forgive my father.
But this man took his animosity, his anger, and his need to be better than everyone else and rejected Josie when she was pregnant with my son.
My father could’ve helped her. He could’ve given her money, provided them with a home.
Instead, he shunned her and made her feel like she wasn’t worth the pavement he walked on.
He had every chance to tell me. He knew where I was and how to get ahold of me and he still chose to keep my son a secret.
“What do I do, Mason? When he asks to see me? To see our family?”
He’d tell me a man on a phone is still the man who made my life hell. You took from my unborn son, and you made his mother feel less than.
Mason would tell me to listen because words don’t cost anything.
I could listen. I already am. Do I owe this man anymore of my time?
The ice machine kicks on in the back and startles me. I catch myself alone in a closed bar, talking to an empty stool. Mason would have laughed at me for it, then poured me another and let me keep going. But he’s been gone since before I ever came back. Hell, he’s the reason I came back.
Josie and Noah are the reason I stayed.
I leave the whiskey where it sits and cut the lights behind me.
On my way home, I stop at the stop sign and realize this was where Mason died.
It was raining that night, and he never stood a chance with the semi-truck barreling down the hill.
This isn’t my normal way home and I wonder how I ended up here.
I look to the right, there used to be a cross staked into the ground, his first marker.
I don’t remember when it stopped being there, but it’s gone.
Unless you know about Mason’s accident, you would never know that something horrible—life altering—happened here. His death destroyed this town.
Josie’s still awake when I walk in. She greets me at the door with a long hug. “Your mom called to tell me you’d gone out to see her.”
I hold her in my arms. “I’m okay,” I tell her.
“I know because you’d tell me if you weren’t.”
I nod and kiss the tip of her nose. “I stopped at Ralph’s too, so if you hear from Noah, and he calls you about a ghost leaving a whiskey glass on the bar top, it was me.”
“I’m sure he will look at the security cameras. Your mom also told me you offered her Linda’s old place.”
Another nod. “Are you okay with that? I know I should’ve asked you.”
Her hand caresses my face. “I am. Paige likes having her around, and honestly, I’d rather her be here where we can look after her and she can be near family. Especially as the holidays approach. Plus, the triplets are about to turn one. She’s going to want to be here for their party.”
I lean in and kiss my sweet, gorgeous, and understanding wife. “Thank you and I’m sorry for not checking with you first.”
“It’ll be good for everyone,” she says. “Are you hungry?”
For her, I am.
“Nah, let’s go to bed.”
She takes my hand in hers and tugs me behind her. I follow her up the stairs, pausing at Paige’s door, I raise my hand and knock. Josie gives me a “what are you doing?” look.
“Yeah?”
I open the door and find Paige on her bed, with a book in her hand. I like seeing her like this, no phone, no laptop. “I just wanted to let you know how much I appreciate you and everything you’re doing for the show. Mostly, I want you to know that I love you.”
Paige beams. “I love you, too, Daddy.”
Josie peeks her head in. “I love you too.”
“But you don’t appreciate me because I didn’t load the dishwasher?”
I raise my eyebrow at her and Josie shakes her head.
“I appreciate you, even when you don’t do your chores.”
“I love you, too, Mom.”
We bid her goodnight and shut the door.
In our room, Josie changes into a vintage 4225 West T-shirt. It won’t be on long, she knows this, and I think she secretly does this because she knows she’s driving me crazy. I palm my cock through my pants to show her what she’s started.
“Don’t tease me, Rockstar.”
“Teasing you is the last thing I would ever do.” I lock the door and turn on the sound system. “You have to be quiet.” I beckon her toward me. She saunters over, with her lower lip pulled between her teeth.
So dangerous.
So sexy.
And knows exactly how to get my thoughts off my father and put them where they need to be . . . on her.