I look between the two of them, trying to figure out if they’re kidding or not. They look pretty damn serious.
“Oh man,” Daltrey says, like he’s just realizing something. “This is going to be so cool for Rose—she’ll have a cousin around the same age as her. Someone to play with and get into trouble with, just like we all had growing up.” He laughs, jabbing his finger in the direction of Reed and Lennon. “Now we just need to get these two on the same page.” He looks back to me and the laughter dies on his face. “Cash? You okay, man?”
I’m swallowing repeatedly, blinking my eyes. For some insane reason, I’m pretty sure I’m about to start crying. And I do not cry in front of my brothers. We just don’t do shit like that. “Yeah,” I finally manage, my voice thick.
“What’s wrong?” Levi asks, stepping towards me and placing a hand on my shoulder. Damn, now I really might cry. “Are you and Sam…I mean, you guys are cool with this, right?”
“Yeah,” I say, not meeting anyone’s gaze. “It was a lot to take in at first. We were both pretty worked up. But now that we’re getting used to the idea we’re…you know. Happy.”
“Then why do you look like you’re about to fly off the handle?” Lennon asks.
I shake my head again, not sure how to say it. “I just…” I look back up at them, my eyes flitting over to Reed who’s standing silent on the perimeter, watching me. “I thought you guys might be freaked out.”
Lennon’s eyebrows come down. “Why would we be freaked out?”
“Because I’m clearly not cut out for this.” The words come out in a rush. “I figured you guys were going to be worried about it, that you’d think I couldn’t handle it.”
“Hang on,” Daltrey says, frowning. “Why on earth do you think you’re not cut out for this?”
I look at him, raising my eyebrows. “Because I mess everything up?”
“No you don’t,” Lennon says. “That’s stupid.”
“But—”
“And why,” Daltrey continues, “would we think you couldn’t handle it? You’re a big boy, Cash.”
“Come on,” I say, frustrated. “You know what I’m like.”
They just look at me, expressions blank. “What are you like?” Lennon finally asks.
I throw up my hands. “I’m the guy that screwed anyone I could get into my bed,” I snap. “I’m the guy who spent most of the last five years drunk off my ass. I’m the guy that got a DUI and—”
“That was a long time ago,” Reed points out quietly, his first words since I came in the door.
“Not that long,” I mutter.
“Yeah, but, Cash,” Daltrey says, his tone exasperated, like I’m missing something obvious. “That was before Wyatt.”
I shift on my feet, not sure how to respond to that.
“We all know how much you love that kid, man,” Levi says. “You’d do anything for him. And for Sam. Look at how much you were willing to change. Christ, Cash, you went to a shrink.”
“Yeah,” I agree, smiling in spite of myself. After I sabotaged things with Sam, I’d been willing to try anything to get her back. Including therapy. To say it had shocked everyone was a vast understatement—and no one was more surprised than me. I shake my head, trying to get back to the crux of my argument. “But I still—”
“But nothing. You’ll be the same with this kid, when it comes.” Lennon narrows his eyes. “Have you been really worried about this? That you won’t do a good job?”
I shrug, feeling more than a little overwhelmed by their response.
“Ah, don’t worry about it,” Daltrey says, slapping my shoulder. “Everyone freaks out about it. I sure as hell did. It’s a big deal.” He pauses, waiting for me to make eye contact with him. “But I know you’ll be fine, Cash. You will. You’ll be good at this.”
I blow out a shaky breath, the urge to cry hitting me again. Jesus, what is wrong with me? “Thanks. I really…thank you for saying that.”
“You don’t have to sound so surprised,” Daltrey says, laughing. “Did you really not think we’d have your back?”
My eyes flick up to Reed. “You seemed freaked,” I admit. “When I told you.”
“Of course he told Reed first,” Daltrey says to Lennon, rolling his eyes. “Those two will always think we’re the babies of the family.”
“I wasn’t freaked because I thought you couldn’t do it,” Reed says, his eyebrows lowered in confusion. “I was freaked out because you were freaked out. You’d just found out, Cash. I thought you were going to have a panic attack or something. I just wanted to keep you calm.”
“You didn’t…you weren’t thinking I’d be really bad at this?”
Reed blows out a loud gust of air, sounding annoyed. “Of course I didn’t think that. Jesus, Cash. You can do anything you want to do. I figured you knew that about yourself by now.”
I just shake my head, completely overwhelmed, and it’s quiet in the room for a long moment. “You want to rehearse?” Lennon asks, his voice gentle, and I feel a wave of relief wash over me. If I have to stand here for another minute, feeling like this—so overwhelmed by their confidence, so shocked by their unflinching acceptance of the idea of me as a father—I probably will cry. I know I should say something, should show my gratitude for their display of faith in me, but I can’t. I can’t think of a single thing to say to them, to thank them for what they just did for me. How can I ever explain to them what this feels like, to know that they think I can do this? To know that they trust me with something so big and important? I just don’t have those words.
But playing music with them? That I can do.
And, as I pull my guitar strap over my head, I have a feeling they already know exactly what I’m thinking, just how grateful I am, even if I didn’t say a word.
Will
I’m having a hard time getting my breathing under control. This horrible feeling—this sweating, sick-to-my-stomach feeling—lodged itself into my chest the minute I walked through the door and checked my voicemail. Just like always, I missed plenty of calls in the time I’d been out with Ruby, catching an early movie and dinner before she went in for the late shift. There’s one from Gwen, wanting to talk more about the HBO special. Another from Levi, something about scheduling details. A few from various suits and their underlings at the label, concerned about some trivial details I couldn’t care less about.
And then there was one from an unknown number. And that message is what has me feeling so nauseated.
I’m not sure what the point is in listening to it again. I basically memorized it after the fourth repeat listen. But I can’t seem to help myself. Hearing that voice, after so many years…
I sigh, pressing play once again.
“Hello, Will. It’s Rebecca. I…well. I guess there’s no way for this to not be awkward, huh? Can you call me back, please? There are a few things I think we should talk about.” She leaves her number followed by a long pause. “I hope I hear from you.”
And that’s it. I have no idea what she could possibly want to talk to me about. Lennon, maybe? But it’s been months since he went to see her and, as far as I know, that was the only contact she’d had with any of us.
I sigh, looking down at the number I scrawled on the back of an envelope. It isn’t a foreign number. Apparently she isn’t in France anymore. Which means I’m going to need a lot more whiskey before I deal with this.
I pull out a bottle of Johnny Walker from the cupboard, vaguely thinking about the way Ruby teased me when she saw it. “Jesus, Ransome,” she’d muttered. “That bottle probably cost more than my kitchen table. You too good for Jack Daniels or something?”
I wish I hadn’t dropped her off at work. Wish she were here right now, giving me a reason to ignore the message in my phone. I pour out a few fingers of the amber liquid, trying to work up the courage to enter the numbers she left.
You’re being an idiot, I tell myself. But the words don’t stop my fingers from shaking when I finally
press call.
“Will?” she says, like she’s been waiting to hear from me, and all the air seems to leave my lungs.
“Yeah,” I manage, my voice sounding gruff in my own ears. “Hey.”
“Hey,” she breathes. “How…um, how are you?”
Jesus. Are we actually doing this? Sharing pleasantries over the phone after eighteen damn years?
“I’m fine,” I say. There’s a long pause, and it occurs to me that she might be waiting for me to ask how she is. I curl my hand into a fist against my thigh. “Why did you call?”
She sucks in a quick breath and I can just see her face, the way her eyebrows would pinch together when she was upset about something. But when she speaks again, her voice is even.
“I wanted to let you know that I’m in the area for a while.”
There’s a sudden rushing noise in my ears.
“You’re in LA?”
“San Diego, actually,” she says. “For the week.”
I clutch the phone tighter, wondering why in the hell she feels the need to share this. To call me, after all this time and—
“And then I might be back, after that,” she goes on. “I have the opportunity to show some pieces at a gallery here, and I would need to stick around for a bit if it all goes through.”
“How long?” I ask, voice sharp.
“I’m really not sure. It would depend on how things go. A few months, at least.”
I release the breath I’m holding. Rebecca. Here. Less than three hours away. For months.
“Why are you telling me this?” I whisper, not caring that she can probably tell how hard the words are for me.
“I just thought you should know,” she says softly. “Because of…well, because of the boys.”
It feels like something hot and sharp is piercing me right through the chest at her mention of the boys. I’m not sure if it’s pain or anger or maybe some combination of both. All I know is that I don’t like it, don’t like to hear that word come from her mouth.
“What about the boys?” I don’t bother to keep the sharpness from my voice.
She’s quiet for a moment and, once again, I can clearly picture her face. She’ll be playing with a lock of her hair, twisting it around the tip of a finger. That’s what she always did when she was thinking. And I hate that I can remember it so easily.
“You know Lennon came to see me?” she finally asks and that hot sharp feeling doubles.
“Of course I know he came to see you,” I spit out, venom rising in my voice. “You think he didn’t tell me? You think I’m not the one that had to deal with the fallout? Jesus, Rebecca.”
“I didn’t mean…” she clears her throat. “Of course I’m not surprised he told you. I would have expected him to.” I draw in a deep breath, trying to get control of the anger coursing through me. But she isn’t done yet. “I assume you also know Daltrey wrote to me?”
“What?”
“I’m sorry,” she says quickly. “It wasn’t a big—”
“Daltrey wrote you?” The anger has gone out of me, replaced by nausea so strong I have to sit down, my head reeling. Daltrey, who’s barely said a dozen words to me since Europe, wrote to Rebecca.
“He did,” she says, her voice gentle. Maybe a little pitying. I hate the sound of it. “He was…he was pretty angry.”
I want to ask her what he said, to demand she tell me every detail, but I know I can’t do that. It’s Daltrey’s business, whatever he had to say to Rebecca. And he obviously doesn’t want to share those feelings with me.
“Look,” she says, her voice more matter-of-fact now. “I get that it’s probably really hard on everyone. That Lennon came to see me, I mean. I’m sure it opened up a bunch of old wounds and—”
“You have no idea,” I mutter, resting my head in my hands.
Her voice is pained when she goes on. “I’m sure that’s true. I can’t possibly know. And that’s why I wanted to tell you that I’m here.”
“Why?” I ask, still not understanding. “Why does it matter?”
“Because if the boys are reaching out—or lashing out or whatever they want to do—I’m going to be a lot closer.”
“You think I’m going to encourage them to—what? Come for a fucking visit?”
“No.” Her voice is strained and I can tell that I’m getting to the edge of her patience. “I’m not asking you for anything, Will. I just figure this might be a hard time for the boys. And me being here probably doesn’t help. So I just thought you should know. In case…I don’t know. Lennon was so upset that day. And Daltrey seemed really angry about things.”
“Can you blame them?”
“Of course not.” This time her voice is sharp. She blows out a loud breath. “It just seemed right. To call you. In case they need you, or you want to warn them, or something. I don’t know.”
In case they need you. Yeah, because that’s going to happen.
“Fine,” I say, desperate to get this over with, to end the call so I won’t have to hear her familiar voice anymore. “Thank you for letting me know.”
She’s quiet for so long I start to think she might have hung up on me. “You’ve done a really great job with them, Will,” she finally says, and I can hear the tears in her voice.
The riot of emotions is so strong I feel like crawling out of my skin. It’s hard just now not to think about the old Rebecca, the woman who loved us all so much. The woman who only ever wanted the best for her kids. I can hear that woman in her voice right now, hear her gratitude to me for taking care of them when she couldn’t. And it makes me feel sick. Not the least of all because I know I haven’t done a great job. Not even close.
But at least I was there. And I don’t want her gratitude for doing what we both should have done.
“I’m not having this conversation right now.”
“Okay,” she says, and I wonder if she heard my panic. “I’ll let you go. You, uh, can call me at this number. If you need to.”
I try to imagine a scenario in which I would need to call her. There’s none. Not now. But there have been plenty in the last eighteen years. And she wasn’t here.
“Fine. Goodbye.”
“Bye, Will.”
I end the call, clutching the phone while I wait for the sick feeling to dissipate, for my heart to stop pounding so hard. It doesn’t.
The press of guilt and anger in my chest is making it hard to breathe. I’ve always tried not to think about her—it did me no good and it always hurt like a bitch. I had loved her, more than I ever knew it was possible to love another person. And I missed her. Damn it, I had missed her. But I’d also been furious at her—angry that she couldn’t get it together, that she would put Lennon in that kind of danger. That she wouldn’t even try to get help, to get better for the boys. I used to beat myself up wondering if I could have done more, if I could have figured out a way to get her through it. And the guilt over that failure, that I hadn’t helped the woman I loved and then in turn took my children’s mother from them—it was hard to live with. Hard to know how inadequate I had been, first with Rebecca and then with our boys. I had failed them all, repeatedly. And the only way I’ve ever been able to keep going, to move forward, was to bury it all deep inside.
Now I can feel those protective walls cracking, feel the guilt and the fear and the anger and the hurt all rushing to the surface. I don’t know how to deal with it. There isn’t enough whiskey in this house, in the world, to battle these feelings back.
My phone beeps in my hand and I jump, looking down at it. A text, from Ruby. It’s slow in here, it says. Come sit at my bar and flirt with me so I don’t go out of my mind.
I breathe out, feeling something loosen. I’ve never believed in signs, never believed in fate, but maybe that’s just what this is. I feel like I might go crazy, sitting here alone for the rest of the night. In years past I would have thrown myself into work, thrown myself into the boys’ career. Maybe there might be a different way to deal, a diff
erent way to push through it.
I grab my keys, typing out a quick response. On my way.
* * *
Ruby wasn’t lying—the Purple Cat is dead. I find a seat at the end of the bar, watching as she delivers a tray of beers to a group at the back booth. She’s laughing at something they say as she looks up, meeting my eyes, and I see the moment that her smile changes. This one is just for me.
She stops at another table on her way over, checking in with her few customers, but her eyes keep flicking up to mine. I like it, feeling like she wants me here, like she’s checking to make sure I’m not going anywhere. I can almost let myself believe she needs me. And I don’t know why I want that so badly, for her to need me. I’ve never been very good at being there for the people that need me.
“Hey,” she says, coming to stand between my spread knees, her face even with mine from my position on the bar stool. My arms immediately go around her and she kisses me, once, on the mouth. “You came.”
“Missed you.”
She laughs. “Such a charmer.”
“I think you expressly told me to flirt with you.”
She kisses the end of my nose. “That I did.” She pulls back a little, her eyes narrowing. “You okay?”
“Yeah,” I say quickly, but my eyes dart away so I don’t have to meet her gaze. I can see her frowning out of the corner of my eye.
“Will?”
I close my eyes. “I’m fine.”
She steps out of the circle of my arms, crossing hers. “Bull.”
“Ruby—”
“So a thing you should know about me,” she says, taking another step back. “I don’t do lies.”
“Jesus,” I mutter, running a hand through my hair, a wave of exhaustion hitting me. It’s all too much. The message, the phone call. Everything it dredged up. “What do you want from me?”
Her expression hardens before she goes around the edge of the bar, leaning across the counter to look at me. I hate that she obviously feels like she needs to put a barrier between us. “You don’t have to tell me whatever is bothering you,” she says. “I’m not someone who’s going to push you to talk when you don’t want to—”
The Ransome Brothers_A Ransom Novel Page 19