Chapter 14
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
PATTY
I don’t know what I expected from the Williams homestead, but it’s not this stampede of children rushing Lou in Christmas pajamas.
“I haven’t seen this many blonds since I was in Sweden,” I mutter.
Lou tilts her head. “When were you in Sweden?” She barely gets the question out before the kids crash into her, screaming her name.
Stupid, Patrick.
I expect her to drop it, thronged as she is, but she holds my eye even as the little streaks of mayhem beg her to hold them.
“Twelve or thirteen years ago.” I try to leave it at that, but her eyes spark, so I add, “For that band I worked with.”
She narrows her eyes, looking me over before turning her head to dole out kiss after kiss.
I try to count their heads, but they’re little blurs of mayhem, like human chickens. Are there four? Five?
“Auntie Lou!” one little girl squeals as Lou scoops her up. Then another bigger girl and a younger boy bang on her legs, waiting for her to grab them too.
“Sadie! Eloise! Atticus! My babies!”
Two older children—a girl of maybe eleven and a boy a year or two younger—hold back, like they’re trying to be cool but wish they didn’t have to be.
I wave at them, and they wave back. Then the younger ones run into the house, screaming that Auntie Lou is home. Lou bounces over to the older kids and wraps them into huge hugs, every bit as affectionate as the ones for the younger kids.
“Gracie, Wyatt, you are way too tall! How are you, my little geniuses?”
They give their answers—they’re both good, both happy to see her—and then she links their hands and points at me.
“This is my friend, Patty.”
Wyatt laughs and then instantly stops himself, as if he knows it’s bad manners to laugh at someone’s name. Which it is.
“Patrick,” I correct with a small shake of my head at Lou. “Good to meet you, Wyatt and Gracie. Especially Gracie.”
Wyatt drops his jaw. “What? Why her?”
“She didn’t laugh at my name,” I say with a smile.
Gracie beams. She looks the most like her aunt of any of the kids, but that could be because she’s older. Or maybe because the others looked more like a blur than anything.
Lou grins at her niece and nephew. “Come on—let’s feed Patty to the wolves.”
They all flash wicked smiles, then turn and run across the long paved driveway, up the porch stairs, and into the house.
And like they’re leading me on a leash, I follow.
“Auntie Lou is home!” Wyatt calls as we walk into the warm, inviting home.
Faint Christmas music bounces around the exposed rafters. Wide-plank hardwood floors lead from the entry into a living room, where I see a stone fireplace, a huge fake Christmas tree that hasn’t been taken down yet, and bookshelves lined with biographies, history books, and classic novels. Gracie and Wyatt guide us past the living room, so I don’t have a chance to look at the family photos hanging on the walls.
“Where’s WinWin?” Lou asks as the kids pull us through a hallway and into the kitchen. “That’s what the kids call my mom,” Lou says to me, looking over her shoulder.
“WinWin,” I chuckle under my breath.
“I don’t think you’re young enough to call me that,” a voice like rich leather says behind me.
I freeze. My childhood crush, one of the greatest country artists of all time, is standing right behind me, hearing me say something dumb about her nickname.
Stupid, stupid Patrick.
She’s a beautiful woman, a couple of inches taller than Lou, but with her same light blonde hair, almond-shaped light denim eyes, and lean build. But while Lou is a blazing bonfire—intensely bright and hot, drawing people in with her light but with enough sparks to keep them from getting too close—her mom is the steady glow of a fireplace, with a slower burn and lower, more enduring heat.
She holds out a hand a little longer than Lou’s, and I take it, trying not to be starstruck.
I knew some big names in my day, but Winona Williams wasn’t just a name. She was an icon … and my idol. I feel all sorts of awkward meeting her like this, unprepared, after saying something so dumb.
Especially with her very pretty, very fiery, very amused daughter watching.
“I’m Winona,” Winona says, her smile crinkling her eyes.
“Patrick,” I say. “Good to meet you, ma’am.”
“Patrick,” she repeats, keeping her gaze on me, her eyes catching on my jaw before jumping back to my eyes.
I duck my head, hoping the movement is subtle.
“You look very familiar.”
“I have one of those faces, I guess,” I say, growing hot beneath the collar.
Lou and Winona swap a glance and then laugh.
“No, you most definitely do not,” Winona says.
Then she steps away from me to wrap her arms around her daughter, and her hearth fire roars brighter.
“I am so happy to see you!”
“I missed you, Momma,” Lou says, hugging her mom tight.
And when her dad and sisters appear moments later, Lou embraces them all, looking so happy, it bursts out of her like fireworks.
The warmth on her face is so real, so unguarded, it throws me for a loop. If she resents her parents as much as she claims, she hides it well.
When Lou introduces the rest of her family, I see her dad studying me even more than her mom is.
“Patrick, these are my sisters. Nora,” she says of the older one, “and June,” she says of the younger, who looks college-aged.
They’re both variations on the same theme as their mom and sister.
Her dad has most of his short blond hair. In a pair of black Rag & Bone jeans and a black short-sleeved button-up shirt, he has a Bruce Springsteen aged rocker kind of look, although he’s gotta be a decade and a half younger than the Boss.
Wade Scott was the lead guitarist for Winona’s backing band for nearly fifteen years, although they weren’t together for those first few years.
It’s clear he’s lived harder than his wife, but it’s also clear that he loves his family very much, based on the way he puts an arm around Lou and trains his protective eyes on me.
“Nice meeting you, Patrick,” Wade says. “What do you do?”
“I’m the monitor engineer,” I say.
“And the bodyguard,” June adds, waggling her eyebrows in a way that tells me she saw the photo.
Wade gives me a confused look, and Lou rolls her eyes at June before answering.
“You know how tour speculation is, Daddy. He was helping me get custom-made IEMs, and then there was a fan incident where pictures made it look like something it wasn’t. So rather than add a bunch of rumors to the tour, my social media manager reposted the picture with a tag about how good bodyguards are hard to find, or something.”
“It said, ‘Not all bodyguards are heroes, but mine is,’” June says.
I grimace more than I should, and Lou does, too.
“Is that really what it said? That is so lame,” she says.
I nod, while Wade, Winona, and their daughters laugh.
Screams of “He hit me!” and “She’s breathing my air!” come from the kitchen, and Nora shakes her head.
“Who is their mother?” Lou teases.
“More like, ‘Where is their father?’” Nora grumbles as she leaves us for the kitchen. “If he’s out splitting more wood because it makes him feel like a man’s man, I’m gonna grab that axe?—”
What she’s gonna do to her husband remains a mystery, as she’s already rounded the corner before she finishes. The rest of us follow.
Huge windows let in tons of light, making the kitchen look even more welcoming than it already is. I do a lot of cooking at the bar—nearly all of it—and I love a good kitchen. This one fits the bill, with a large farmhouse sink, butcher block countertops, and a beautiful old gas range.
“I hope y’all woke up hungry,” Winona says. She and Wade hold hands as they walk ahead. “We made a spread fit for a queen.”
Lou hangs back a couple of steps, and I say in a low voice, “But is it fit for a Queenie?”
She snorts. “Wow. I didn’t expect puns from you.”
“I’m a man of many layers,” I say.
She eyes me right before we get to the dining room. “Prove it,” she says archly.
I duck my head, not letting her see me smile.
We spend the next couple of hours with Lou’s family. Her assistant, Alicia, gets up and joins us, and soon, she and June are fast friends. When the driver wakes up, Winona insists he come in the house, too.
“I know what those tours are like. Catered bus food you stock up on at every stop is fine and all, but nothing beats a home-cooked meal.”
“Or fresh air,” Winona adds.
“Or space to move around,” Nora says, shaking her head like trying to rid herself of a memory.
“Or not having to hear that incessant drone of the engine?—”
“I loved the sound of the engine,” Wade says. “It was calming.”
Winona chuckles, a wry, yet wistful look on her face. “Yeah, it did have a way of lulling me to sleep after a long show.”
“Not that you needed it,” Nora says. “You always slept like the dead the second you got onto the bus. I don’t remember a lot of those tours, but I remember you crashing hard after every show.”
I spot the way Wade’s eyes turn to his wife, but for her part, Winona doesn’t do more than shrug. “Performing can take a lot out of a person.”
“Or it can recharge them,” Lou says, a hint of that spark I know so well flashing across her face.
“That, too,” her mom says with a smile. “Your battery looks full, Lou Lou. Now, why don’t we have breakfast, and you can tell us all about it?”
An hour later, Winona is giving us all a tour of the house and the yard, and introduces us to the goats, chickens, and horses in the barn.
She shows us a second barn right off a grove of orange trees—except it isn’t a barn at all, but rather a high-tech recording studio with huge skylights and a gorgeous Bechstein A192 grand piano that makes me ball my hands into fists to keep from lunging at it.
Winona’s eyes drop down to my hands, and she gives me a knowing smile, but she doesn’t acknowledge it, for which I’m thankful.
During the tour, she peppers Lou, Alicia, and me with questions (Jimmy goes back to the bus to call his wife). She’s so happy for her daughter’s happiness, it causes a pang in me. Have I ever been that happy for someone else? Sean? My dad?
Although, it’s not like they’ve had the kind of luck someone celebrates …
But if they did—if Sean got drafted into the NHL—it’d be the happiest moment of my life. I’m not so far gone as to pretend otherwise.
I shake my head, pushing the thought aside. Hope is for fools. Hope makes you think you can fix what’s already broken.
Man, I need an outlet. That piano is calling my name.
Eventually, Wade and his son-in-law take the kids out to ride horses, and Lou and Alicia join the Williams women on the porch, leaving me with a desire to check in on my own family.
A stab of guilt almost stops me—I’ve left them once again to hold down the fort while I’m out chasing my dreams—but there’s something about seeing Lou laughing with her family, seeing the love and support so clear on all their faces.
The guilt shifts, turning into something else—something I can’t name.
So I dial the bar.
“Donegal’s Bar,” Dad’s familiar voice says. He was raised in the South by fully Irish parents, so he has a hint of a lilt that makes that unnamed pang intensify.
“Hey, Dad, it’s me.”
“Patrick!” he says in a cheerful voice. In the background are the clinks of glass, the hum of voices, and the scrape of stools and chairs on the wood floor—the soundtrack of my life for years now. And hearing it from afar, I find I like that soundtrack more than I thought.
“I’ve missed you, my boy.”
There it is.
The feeling.
It’s not only homesickness, but that feeling of missing pieces. Dad, Sean, probably Rusty too, if I think about it. I don’t let many people in, but those three? I’d trust them with my life. And Ash, by extension.
“You too, Dad,” I tell him.
“How are you?”
“You know me,” I say, hoping my voice sounds its usual gruff self and not choked up. It’s been a couple of weeks. What’s to get choked up about?
“I do,” Dad says. “How’s the tour? How’s Lucy?”
“Good and good. She’s the most natural performer I’ve ever seen,” I say, keeping my head down and walking circles in the thick, rich green grass. “You’d never know this is her first tour.”
“It sounds like she’s got the right man on her side.” He pauses, and I overhear snippets of another conversation before he comes back to ours. “Does she know about your past experiences with touring?”
I could almost chuckle at how boldly he asks this. My dad doesn’t hold back, and although he doesn’t know Lou personally, I can tell he’s already protective of her.
“She knows enough.”
“By whose standard?” he pushes.
“Mine,” I say. “It’s enough.”
“All right, then. Where are you now?”
I give him a quick rundown of where we are and where we’ve been, but I can hear how busy he is in the background. So I change topics before he runs out of time.
“How’s Sean?”
“Good,” Dad says, a hitch in his voice.
“What?”
He pauses, and anticipation swells in me.
“He’s gettin’ some good buzz. Word is, a team is scouting him.”
Adrenaline courses through me, and I look up as if my dad is right in front of my face. But he’s not. No one is. It’s just me, the loblolly pines, and the peals of laughter from the Williams women.
“A team? An NHL team?”
“That’s right.”
I close my eyes and say a silent prayer.
“I wish I could be there.”
“You’re where you need to be,” he says, and I have to clear my throat. Does he really believe that? “You know, your mom called after Sean’s last game. Said she’d been watching all season. Asked after you boys.”
I internalize a groan. She calls a couple times a year, always with some story about how this might be the tour that makes things for her. I blocked her after my accident, so I get my updates from Dad. And even Sean.
I wish they’d both block her, too. No one needs this.
“Let me guess. She said she’s coming back and then vanished again?”
“No,” Dad says, and I hear clinking in the background. “No promises. No drama. She’s been quieter the last few times we spoke. Just thought you should know.”
“Don’t let her back in, Dad. We’re better off without her.”
“Don’t you worry about me. Take care of yourself, Paddy. I miss you.”
I sniff. “You too, Dad.”
We end the call, and wave upon wave of feelings hit me, too strong to fight off. Hope for Sean crashes into me like the tide while frustration over my mom’s call threatens to pull me under at the same time.
But hope is the more dangerous emotion.
If I hope and nothing happens, my guilt will be ten times—a hundred times—worse than the excruciating pain of possibility.
What if Sean gets drafted?
What if I didn’t destroy his life?
What if he doesn’t, though? And what if I did?
I plunge my hand into my pocket, the flash drive I always carry with me suddenly heavier, like a lead weight. It’s too much, this emotion. I need it out .
Hoping Winona and Wade will forgive me, I make a beeline for the barn.
It’s time to get my hands on that piano.
When I sit down at the bench, I hold my breath in awe. The Bechstein is a beast of precision, a masterpiece of dynamics and sustain.
And I go full Beethoven on the thing.
When my fingers hit the keys, it’s with a pounding determination. It’s been—what—two and a half weeks since I last played? In piano terms, that’s an eternity. If I keep playing for too much longer, my hands and wrists will cramp quickly.
But it’s such a stunning machine. The piano we have in the bar is a Boston baby grand—suitable for a bar, but it lacks the richness, depth, and resonance of a truly exceptional instrument. And now, after playing this classic Bechstein, I doubt I’ll ever be satisfied with the responsiveness of another piano.
I don’t run through a single song but rather bits of everything that comes to mind—reflections of the emotions I’ve been suppressing. Not just since Lou walked into the bar, but since before my mom split. Since the accident. And maybe even before that.
I don’t cry, not because I don’t feel, but because that’s not how I show emotion.
This is.
My fingers dance over the keys like a storm, each note a drop of regret. The chords slam down like fists, pounding out guilt in the hollow of my ribs. Shame weaves through the melody, creating a flaxen cord that strengthens with every refrain. It weighs me down, slowing my fingers and making my head droop closer and closer to the keys.
But then sunlight peeks through the skylight, casting golden beams that fall on my hands, burning through the cords and letting them drop to the ground. And now, my fingers move freely again, but they don’t fly or dance. They pull the music out of me, tug at a longing in my heart that’s too stubborn to come out without a fight.
My hands are persistent, though, and the longer I play, the more something inside me splits open, and the yearning pours out in a slow, aching reverberation—a cry so soft, yet so earnest, it could make the heavens themselves weep.
“Patty,” Lou whispers behind me.
My hands fly off the keyboard like it’s on fire, slamming into my thighs so hard I half expect scorch marks on my jeans. I could kick myself for leaving my heart wide open like that, so raw and unguarded, for anyone walking by to see. To hear .
Reluctantly, I turn my head.
“I had no idea.” Her whisper almost makes me flinch.
I’m too raw to school my features, so I feel the way my forehead screws up and my eyebrows pull together in worry. “What?”
She comes over to the piano, and I scoot to the side to make room for her on the bench. She looks at me, not with judgment.
But with awe.
“It’s in your soul, too. The music.”
Her words sink deep. But it’s the word “too” that reaches to my core. “You knew I went to music school.”
“You dropped out. I assumed it was because you didn’t care.”
“I cared too much. I had too many thoughts and aspirations and too little humility.”
She gives a quiet laugh, looking at my fingers as I return them to the keyboard like she can’t believe what they’re capable of. I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t gratifying.
“Who could teach you anything?”
I exhale a laugh. “A lot of people could’ve taught me something if I’d been willing to listen.”
I start playing Rachmaninoff’s Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini .
It’s a favorite of mine, carrying that same thread of longing I was caught expressing only a minute ago. But rather than shut it down the way I always do with an audience, I let myself feel it all.
This is the first—and maybe the only—time I’ll let myself admit that I’m not just playing for what was lost. Not just for my family. Not just for their hopes and dreams. Not even just for mine.
Lou makes me want to stop living in the past. She makes me want more .
More of what, I’m not sure I’m ready to admit.
Not even to myself.