by Devney Perry
“I’m hungry.” He patted his stomach and walked over, pausing to look back at Quinn. “Do you think Dad or Jonas is a better singer?”
“Colin—”
“Your dad.” Quinn gave him a genuine smile and complete attention. She wouldn’t meet my gaze. “Don’t tell Jonas I said that, okay?”
“Cool.” Colin beamed, then looked up to me with absolute pride. My heart thumped—hard. There was nothing like seeing pride on your kid’s face when they were looking at you. “Bye, Quinn.”
“Bye, Colin.”
I put my hand on his hair, ruffling it as I steered him toward the door. My feet moved in a straight line, my shoulders square, as I fought the urge to look back.
Quinn hadn’t looked back.
So neither would I.
After the funeral, she’d be gone. And I doubted she’d look back then either.
“What kind of pizza should we get?” I read over the menu at Audrey’s, my favorite pizza place in Bozeman.
“Pepperoni?” Colin had his elbows on the table, his knees planted in the booth’s seat.
He’d been bouncing off the walls when we’d gotten home after the church rehearsal, and even an hour playing catch in the yard hadn’t mellowed him out. Ruby had told me he’d been hyper all day.
Mom had invited us over for dinner tonight, but I knew he’d be too wound up to sit through a meal and listen to adults visit. That and I didn’t want to be next door to Quinn. So we’d come out for pizza instead.
Most nights, I cooked at home, opting to save our disposable income for home improvements rather than restaurant food. But I hadn’t made it to the grocery store this week and there were times when I just didn’t want to be cooped up in the kitchen. Our normal routine was out the window anyway this week.
“I’m good with pepperoni.” I closed my menu.
“Can we get breadsticks too?”
“Sure.” I grinned as he took a long drink of his lemonade. “So how was swim—”
“Quinn!” Colin flew out of his seat and bolted toward the door, weaving past tables before colliding with her legs.
“Fuck,” I grumbled into my beer. Was this one of fate’s evil jokes? Was she going to be everywhere this week? From the corner of my eye, I watched as my son grabbed her hand and dragged her toward our table.
She waved. “Hi.”
“Hey.”
“I didn’t realize you’d be here. I saw your mom earlier and she said this was a good pizza place.”
Ahh. Not fate, but my mother.
I had no doubt that the minute I’d hung up the phone with her she’d marched over to the Montgomery house and suggested Quinn try Audrey’s before she left town.
“Want to sit with us?” Colin hopped into the booth, shifting toward the window to make extra room.
“I was just going to get mine to go,” Quinn answered at the same time I said, “She’s busy, bud.”
“Please?” Colin clasped his hands together and begged. “Please. Please. Please. Please. Please.”
Six pleases. The kid was desperate.
I stifled a groan and motioned to the open space. “Join us.”
“Are you sure?”
No. “Yeah.”
Colin fist pumped as Quinn slid into the space beside him and the waitress appeared. “You guys ready to order?”
“We’ll take a large Hawaiian and an order of breadsticks.”
“No, pepperoni,” Colin corrected.
“Quinn doesn’t like pepperoni.” I handed the waitress our menu. “Thanks.”
“You remembered,” Quinn whispered.
“How’d you know that, Dad?” Colin asked.
“Remember how I told you Quinn and I used to be neighbors?”
“Oh, yeah,” he drawled, then focused on Quinn. “What other kinds of food don’t you like?”
Strawberries. Sugar snap peas. And the worst offender . . .
“Bacon,” she answered.
“What?” Colin’s jaw dropped. “You don’t like bacon?”
“Nope. I’m weird, huh?”
“Super weird.” He giggled. “I don’t like string cheese.”
“But you like other cheese, like the kind they put on pizza.”
“Yep.” He swiped up his lemonade, sucking it down as he inched closer to Quinn. When a bead of condensation dripped from his cup, it fell on her arm and she just brushed it away. “Do you have any pets?”
“No pets. I’m not home very much so I think it would be kind of lonely to be a dog or cat living in my house.”
“I want a dog.” Colin’s big brown eyes drifted my way.
“Not until you’re eight.”
That was the deal we’d come up with. He could have a dog once he was eight and there was a chance he’d be able to share in the responsibility of a puppy.
“Can you do this?” My son set down his cup, then began rubbing his belly in a circle while patting the top of his head. He’d been working on it for months because Nan had told him that Quinn could do it as a child. Nan swore that was the moment she’d known Quinn would be a great drummer.
And anything Quinn could do, Colin wanted to do too.
“Hmm. I don’t know.” Quinn lifted her hands, patting her belly and rubbing her head. “Is this right?”
“No.” He laughed. “Like this.”
“Oh. Right.” She corrected the motion and his eyes lit up.
“You’re doing it!”
“Good thing you showed me how. I guess I forgot.”
“Will you teach me something on the drums?” Colin asked, eyeing the drumsticks Quinn had shoved in her purse.
“No,” I answered at the same time Quinn said, “Sure.”
Of course, Colin only heard her agree. “Yes!”
It was never going to happen, but I wouldn’t tell him that today.
I took another drink of my beer, then turned my attention to the window and the cars streaming by on the street. Watching Colin laugh and smile with a woman . . . it would have been fine if she was anyone else.
Anyone but Quinn.
The last thing I wanted was for him to be hurt when she left. And make no mistake, she was leaving.
I should have ordered the pepperoni. She might have excused herself.
It was only pizza, but I wished I didn’t remember her favorite type. I wished I would have forgotten how one corner of her mouth raised higher than the other when she laughed. I wished she’d stop talking to my son, making his whole goddamn day. She was learning things about my son his own mother didn’t know.
He couldn’t fall for her. I wouldn’t allow it.
But if I kicked her out of this booth, he’d hold it against me. This week had been hard enough, and I wouldn’t steal this moment from him.
Walker had told me she was leaving Monday. We only had to make it a few more days, then she’d be gone.
I just prayed she wouldn’t stay.
For Colin’s sake.
And for mine.
Chapter Seven
Quinn
“How are you holding up?” Jonas asked the second I’d answered his call.
“Fine.” I traced a circle in the quilt as I sat on my bed, legs crisscrossed. “How are you? How’s Kira and Vivi?”
“They’re good. I’m good. Worried about you, though. Why didn’t you tell me at the show about your grandmother?”
“I just . . .” I sighed. “I didn’t want it to be a thing. I needed to play and forget for an hour.”
“I get that.” Music was Jonas’s outlet too. “Want me to come out for the funeral?”
“No, that’s okay.” As much as I wouldn’t mind a friendly face, I had no idea how my family would react to one of my friends visiting when they were having such a hard time adjusting to my presence. “Thanks, though.”
“Change your mind, let me know. I can be out there in a flash.”
“Okay. Has Harvey been texting you this week?” Because the man hadn’t gone a day without pe
stering me.
“Feels like every damn hour,” Jonas grumbled. “He mentioned something about coming to visit.”
“Uh-oh.” Harvey’s in-person visits usually meant he’d convince us to hole up somewhere until the album was finished. Not something I felt like doing when I simply wanted to go home.
“He wants an update on the album, and I can’t give him one, so he’s frustrated, which makes me frustrated, which makes Ethan panic, which makes Nix twitchy and you—”
“Mad.” I gritted my teeth. “We just finished a tour.”
“I know. That’s what I told him. But we’ve always been an album ahead, or at least close. He doesn’t want us to lose momentum.”
Our philosophy had been to hit it and hit it hard. Who knew how long this ride would last? Since neither Jonas, Nixon nor I had anything pressing waiting for us in Seattle, why not capitalize while we were hot, blow crowds away and make a pile of money doing it?
But change was on the horizon. The brutal schedule we’d kept these past five years wasn’t sustainable. We’d been on the road more often than home and that just wasn’t going to work. Jonas needed down time with Kira and their daughter.
We’d spaced the shows on the last leg of our tour apart, giving him time to spend with his family. I wasn’t sure what the next tour schedule would look like. We had a month off, but what next?
The scariest part was . . . I didn’t care.
Something inside me had shifted lately, and I was drained. Weary. Lonely.
Nobody wanted to listen to music written by a mopey woman, including the mopey woman writing it.
“Have you written anything?” I asked.
“I’ve got three songs I’m toying with. They’re close, but I’m not quite ready to send them to you and Nix yet. How about you?”
“I wrote something last month that’s edgier than our normal, but I like it. Same as you, it’s not quite ready, though. And then I’ve been messing with something this week, but it’s too early. I need . . .” I closed my eyes. “I don’t know what I need.”
“Space. Time.”
“Yeah. I’m tired, Jonas.”
Maybe I hadn’t realized exactly how tired until I’d come here and stopped for five consecutive minutes. There was no tour bus to meet or concert lineup to follow. There were no dress rehearsals or press events. Here, there was only time to sit and wish the music would come.
Why wouldn’t it come?
“I’ve never had trouble like this before,” I confessed.
“Want some advice?”
“Sure,” I mumbled. Jonas had gone through a block a while back and had come out of it famously, writing some of our most popular songs. “Sweetness,” included.
“Don’t worry about it this week. Be there for your family. Take some time for yourself. Step away from it.”
“Easier said than done.” In a way, I craved this stress. Because if I worried about the album, I wouldn’t have to acknowledge the hole in my chest that had been there for a long, long time. A hole that fame and success and money would never be able to fill.
Laughter from outside caught my ear and I stood from the bed, padding across the room to the window.
Mom had set up the sprinkler on the lawn. It was hot today, the high forecasted to be in the eighties, and the kids were decked out in their swimming gear, even baby Bradley. The little ones were shrieking as they ran through the water’s spray.
Colin was the leader with Evan trailing close behind.
It was the picture of a mini-Graham and a mini-Walker.
“Thanks for calling,” I told Jonas. “I’ll let you know when I get back to Seattle.”
“If you change your mind and want me there on Saturday, just say the word.”
“I will. Bye.” I hung up the phone and set it aside, keeping my eyes on the kids.
Their bright smiles were infectious. I laughed along from behind the glass as Maya squealed and jumped over the sprinkler. She was wearing water wings, unnecessary but adorable, and her blond curls dripped down her back.
My eyes tracked Colin as he leaped over next.
He was quite the kid. Eating dinner with him last night had been utterly entertaining.
At the time, I hadn’t noticed the gleam in Eileen Hayes’s eyes when she’d suggested I try the pizza place. Looking back, I saw it now, but I’d been too anxious to get out of the house. Anything to avoid the dinnertime parade.
Mom and Dad had been receiving a slew of casseroles and covered dishes from church members the past few days. The visits started at five and lasted until around eight. People from the church would stop by to deliver a meal and pay their respects for Nan, then congregate in the living room and gab. Some faces I’d recognized. Others were new, and Dad hadn’t been eager to introduce me so I’d hidden in this room.
When Eileen had suggested pizza at Audrey’s, I’d jumped at the chance, especially when she’d told me it was within walking distance.
The woman was a con artist.
Though, eating dinner with Graham and his son last night had been surprisingly . . . effortless. Not because of Graham—he’d barely spoken a word—but because of Colin.
Damn, that kid could talk and talk.
There hadn’t been a moment of awkward silence because there hadn’t been any silence period. We’d shared a Hawaiian pizza and talked about whatever topic popped into Colin’s head. When we were done, I offered to pay and Graham had scowled, refusing a twenty-dollar bill. He hadn’t waved as I left. Colin had bear-hugged me goodbye.
I hadn’t spent much time around children, not since my babysitting days had come to an end at seventeen. Maybe I wasn’t half bad with kids. Maybe Mom’s gift for youngsters had rubbed off. Or maybe Colin made kids seem easy.
My mom laid out a blanket over the grass and sat down with the baby, adjusting the sun hat on his head. Maya ran over and grabbed her hand, trying to drag her up and through the water, but Mom pointed for her to run with the boys.
Maya pouted and turned away.
She probably got sick of being told to play with the boys. I knew that feeling.
Impulse hit and before I could change my mind, I ran to my suitcase and pulled out my swimsuit. I traveled with one in case there was ever a hotel along the tour where I’d want to swim. It was rare because I didn’t want to be mobbed by fans, but when my muscles were especially sore and I was tired, I’d risk the hot tub.
I put it on and tied the halter behind my neck, then ventured outside so Maya wasn’t the only girl.
I spent an hour running through the sprinkler with Colin, my nephew, and my niece. We laughed. We screamed. We played. And when I went inside to dress, the smile on my face was carefree. A corner of my heart was at peace, because for the first time since I’d walked off our jet, I felt like a part of this family.
Life would return to normal after I left. My father would go back to fussing over his flock. My mother would be busy helping my siblings with their children until she returned to school and taught a new class of kids. She’d call when she had time. I’d text when I remembered. Walker would say how badly he wanted to come see a Hush Note concert, but the timing would never work out. Brooklyn would resent her sister like she had for years.
And Graham would either continue to hate me or forget me entirely.
But maybe those kids would remember me with a smile.
They’d think back to the day their Aunt Quinn played in the sprinkler.
And for now, that was enough.
“Hi, Quinn.”
“Oh.” My steps stuttered as I walked into the sanctuary. “Hi, Dad.”
I’d expected to find it dark and empty, like it had been the other days this week when I’d come to rehearse with Graham. But the florescent lights were on overhead and Dad was at his pulpit with reading glasses perched on his nose.
He looked older there than he did at home. The brightness of the room brought out the speckles of gray in his sandy brown hair. He was still broad a
nd tall, like Walker, but there was a softness to his body that had come with age.
What day was it? Thursday. He must still run through his sermons on Thursday afternoons.
“I’m meeting Graham to practice, but we can find a different spot.”
“It’s fine.” He waved me forward. “I’m wrapping up.”
As he jotted down a note on his practice sheet, I crept down the aisle. We hadn’t been alone together yet. Mom had been our constant buffer.
“Care to sit?” He took off his glasses and motioned to the front row, joining me on the wooden pew. “I heard you singing yesterday.”
I knew we should have stuck with a traditional song. Damn it, Graham. I loved “Torchlight,” and the way we’d tackled it yesterday had given me goose bumps. But it wasn’t Dad’s style, and I should have expected him to ambush me. “And?”
“It was nice.”
I gave him a sideways glance. Nice? Was that code for wild? “Uh, thanks?”
“I liked ‘Amazing Grace’ too.”
And this was when he’d tell me how much more appropriate a hymn would be compared to a rock song. That stubborn streak he’d passed down to me flared. “We’re doing ‘Torchlight.’”
The power Dad had over what music I played and what music I sang was gone. The more he protested, the more I’d dig in.
“The congregation—”
“I don’t care about your congregation,” I snapped.
He sighed. “I’m only—”
“Can we not do this?” I stood from the pew. “Not today. Not this week. We had this argument nine years ago, and I doubt anything has changed. So let’s not fight.”
He stared at me for a long moment and I sensed an argument was on the tip of his tongue, but then he nodded. “All right.”
I took my seat again, letting my heart rate calm until it wasn’t thudding in my ears. As we sat there, side by side, the silence grew uncomfortable. Dad and I had nothing to talk about.
He could talk to anyone, a stranger, a friend, it didn’t matter. Dad had this knack for striking up conversation that never felt fake or forced.
I’d seen him charm a grocery store clerk in the time it took her ring up two gallons of milk and a box of garbage bags. I’d seen him sit and pray for hours with a man whose wife had just been diagnosed with cancer.