Face the Music: Beyond Jackson Falls Book 1

by Laurie Breton

  “Have fun at camp, brat. Don’t drown, and don’t get yourself arrested.”

  “Ha-ha, very funny.” But he grinned in spite of his mortification. The kid had Dad’s grin, the one that felled women like giant redwoods. In another two or three years, girls would be lining up at his door. Dad and Casey were in for quite a ride.

  “Okay, guys,” Rob said, opening the door of the dishwasher and placing his empty glass on the top rack, “out to the car. I’ll be right behind you.”

  With far more noise than was necessary, both kids raced to the front door, feet thundering on living room hardwood, Emma’s voice trailing behind her. “I call shotgun!”

  “Not fair!” Davey argued. “You get the front seat all the way home. I should get it on the way there.” The front door slammed, and she could still hear squabbling voices, but their words were no longer intelligible.

  Rob let out a big sigh, raised and lowered his shoulders. “Whose kids are those, anyway?”

  One corner of Casey’s mouth turned up. “They’re a couple of street urchins we found in the gutter and took in because we felt massive guilt over their pathetic plight.”

  “Right. Glad to know we didn’t contribute any DNA to the cause.” Leaning over her, he said, “Bye, wife,” and kissed her. Casey cupped his cheek, and the kiss went on a little longer than it needed to. Fifteen years married, and they still acted like newlyweds. It was sort of cute, Paige thought, once she got past the ick factor because he was, after all, her father.

  Casey ended the kiss. “Safe trip,” she said. “Precious cargo.”

  Rob tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “I’ll be careful. I better get out there before they kill each other. Emmy and I should be back in time for lunch.”

  Paige waggled a couple of fingers in his direction. “Bye, Dad. Have fun.”

  And he was gone, the house suddenly hushed. “Shh,” Casey said. “Do you hear that?”

  “Hear what?”

  “All that beautiful silence. I want to just stand here all morning and breathe it in. Isn’t it wonderful?”

  “It is,” Paige said, “but you’d never give up the craziness. Not for one minute.”

  “True. Now that you’ve figured out my secret, I may have to kill you.”

  Paige grinned and took another bite of scrambled egg. “Is this Davey’s first year at summer camp?”

  “Actually, it’s his third.” Casey plugged the sink drain, squirted in dish soap, and turned on the hot water. “He loves it. To get out from under Mom’s thumb for two whole weeks, to live in the woods with other guys his age, swimming and fishing and hiking.” She picked up a plate and scraped leftover breakfast into the rubbish, then dropped the plate into the suds. “To come home with smelly sneakers and poison ivy and nine hundred mosquito bites is his definition of heaven.”

  “Emma isn’t interested in going?”

  Dropping another plate into the hot water, Casey said, “That would be a definite no. Emma’s a very girly girl. I’m not sure where that came from. She certainly didn’t get it from me, because I was a tomboy all the way. But Emma hates bugs, isn’t keen on the idea of sleeping in a cabin in the woods, and prefers her swimming to be done in a civilized location.”

  “Like your backyard pool.”

  “Exactly.”

  “They’re both great kids, you know. You and Dad have done an amazing job with them.”

  “They have their moments, but for the most part, I think they’re keepers.”

  Paige concentrated on her breakfast for a time while Casey washed dishes. “You and Dad,” she said. “What you have is so real. So strong. I have to admit that sometimes, I’m envious. I’m not sure I believe in the whole happily-ever-after thing. But looking at you and Dad makes me think I could be wrong.”

  Casey rinsed a plate and put it in the dish drainer. “It takes work. You have to start with a strong foundation of love, and build on that. Without the love, it isn’t worth it. Without the work, the love can founder. Once it founders, it’s hard to regain your footing. So many relationships fail because people either don’t bother or forget to do the necessary work.”

  “You two make it look easy.”

  “In some ways, it is easy. It’s also a lot of work.”

  Toying with her food, Paige said, “Can we talk?”

  Casey gave her a game smile. “Of course.”

  “I don’t want Dad to hear this. He thinks I’m still fifteen. He freaks out over the smallest things.”

  “He loves you.”

  “I know. I love him, too. But I’m a grown woman, and he has a hard time with boundary issues.”

  “It doesn’t really matter that you’re grown. When you have kids of your own, you’ll understand. No matter how old your kids are, they’re still your kids. You still worry about them, still want them to be happy, still want to protect them. It’s a natural instinct.”

  “I don’t think I’ve ever told you this, but my mom’s motto, the one she lived by, the one she pounded into my head, was that men leave.”

  Casey withdrew her hands from the dishwater, dried them, and poured herself a cup of coffee. Taking a stool at the island beside Paige, she wrapped both hands around the cup. “Men leave?” she said.

  “She basically told me I needed to make sure I could take care of myself, because I’d never be able to depend on any man to stick around.”

  “Oh, honey. That’s so sad. And she truly believed this?”

  “She believed it, all right. She lived her life by it. And she made sure I was indoctrinated, too. She never got over Dad. There were other guys, over the years. Not many. But every one of them ended up walking away from her.”

  “Hmm.” Casey played with the handle to her teacup. “Do you think maybe some of that was her fault?”

  “Because she was always the one left behind? Yeah. I thought about that. Maybe she was pushing them away.”

  “I can’t really address your father’s relationship with her. You’d have to talk to him about that.”

  “But you were there. You saw them together.”

  “I did. Honestly, Paige, I don’t think your mother did anything to drive him away.” Casey picked up her coffee cup and studied Paige over the rim. “I think they broke up because he simply wasn’t that serious about her. He was that serious about the music. Danny and I were moving to New York, and he chose to go with us. So he broke things off with Sandy. He liked her. But he was ready to move on with his life, and there was no room for her to be a part of it.”

  “I always believed everything my mom told me. All of it. Sometimes, I think I’m just like her. Doomed to walk this earth alone. Especially since the mess with Ry. Now…I’m not so sure.”

  “Because of Mikey.”

  Of course Casey knew. Was there anything Casey missed? “Does Dad know?”

  “Your father refuses to entertain the notion. He still hasn’t gotten past what Ryan did to you.”

  She exhaled a hard breath. “We’ve been circling around each other ever since I came home. I keep telling myself I’d be crazy to even consider it.”

  “But?”

  “Tell me how this is possible. Not that long ago, I was heartbroken over Ry. Now I’m contemplating getting involved with a man who has more baggage than I do.”

  “Love,” Casey said. “It makes fools out of us all.”

  “I’m not in love.”

  Casey cocked an eyebrow.

  “Seriously. I haven’t thought that far ahead. I don’t even know if I’m in this alone. Maybe I’m imagining something that isn’t even there.”

  “Is that what you believe?”

  She closed her eyes. “No.”

  “So what’s holding you back?”

  “So many things. Like the fact that we live on opposite coasts.”

  “That’s nothing more than logistics. If what you have is worth holding onto, you work around that stuff. It’s easily resolved.”

  “We also don’t have a v
ery good track record.”

  “Sweetie, that was a dozen years ago. You were teenagers. It would be different now. You’re adults. Look at your father and me. We were in our thirties when we finally admitted that we loved each other. And what a ride that’s been. Who knows if it would’ve worked out if we’d been kids when we got together?”

  “Okay, but…we both just got out of bad relationships. Isn’t it too soon?”

  “None of that matters. It’s all trivial. What matters, the only thing that matters, is how he makes you feel. How you feel about him, how you feel about yourself when you’re with him. Does he enhance your life, or does he make it more difficult? External things change as time goes on. What happened in the past becomes ancient history. If he makes you want to be a better person, that’s what matters.”

  “He has so much baggage.”

  “He does. What about the amputation? Does that bother you?”

  “God, no.” She paused, gnawed her lip. “But it bothers him. He hasn’t said so, but I know it does.”

  “Men and their damn pride.”

  “Danny had post-traumatic stress, didn’t he?”

  “He did. I won’t lie to you. It was a challenge. And we didn’t know what to call it back then. More than a decade passed before we ever heard that term. He thought he was losing his mind. I’d heard mention of shell shock, which is what they called it during World War II. But I never connected that term with what Danny went through.”

  “Which was?”

  “Terrible nightmares. He’d thrash around, make awful noises in his sleep. He’d wake up crying and shaking. Sometimes the shaking would go on for a half-hour. I’d try to comfort him, but he didn’t want any comfort. He was so humiliated by it.”

  Paige waited her out.

  “Sometimes, I had to wake him up, because he thought he was back there. In the jungle. Fighting the Viet Cong.”

  She thought of Gunther, perched on his couch with that hunting rifle, and felt a pang of sympathy.

  “The sound of a helicopter overhead—sometimes it would send him right back there. He’d duck and cover, and all I could do was hold him, and rock him like a baby, and wait for it to pass.”

  “It must have been awful for him. And for you.”

  “It was. I was so young. I loved him so much, and it killed me to see him like that.”

  “I don’t know what to do.” It was the first time she’d admitted it. To herself. To anyone.

  “I wish I could help you with that, but I can’t. You have to figure it out for yourself. Weigh the pros and cons. As many of them as you can possibly know. If you think it’s too overwhelming, then walk away.”

  “Are you telling me to reduce it to logic? A laundry list? It sounds a little cut and dried.”

  “Oh, but I haven’t told you the secret yet.”

  “All right. I’ll bite. What’s the secret?”

  “The secret is that after you’ve thought it all through, after you’ve come to the most logical and practical conclusion you can come to, you’ll roll all that logic and practicality up in a ball and toss it over a cliff. Because the truth is that you were always going to listen to your heart anyway.”

  * * *

  YET ANOTHER SATURDAY night.

  Hadn’t Cat Stevens, before he changed his name and his religion and became somebody else altogether, sung a song about being dateless on a Saturday night? She tried to avoid as many of these family get-togethers as she could, but sometimes it simply wasn’t possible. As she lifted the cover from Aunt Rose’s crock pot, a burst of laughter came from the dining room, where the men were talking Red Sox. Some things never changed. In a couple of months, it would be the Patriots, and Superbowl predictions. Not everyone was a fan of the New England teams. Harley’d grown up in Georgia, and he was a big Falcons fan, so there was always a little good-natured ribbing that went on.

  She set the cover on the counter and ladled meatballs onto her plate, then moved on to the gargantuan bowl of pasta salad Colleen had brought. As she helped herself to an oversized serving, somebody draped an arm around her shoulder and planted a kiss on the top of her head. “Hey, there, Miss Muffet.”

  “Hey, Uncle Bill.”

  He was Casey’s oldest brother, so not technically her uncle, but in this crazy, intermarried family, nobody concerned themselves with that kind of technicality. Peering over her shoulder, he said, “Larding up for winter, are we?”

  She let out a snort of laughter. Her healthy appetite was the stuff of family legend. She’d inherited her Dad’s metabolism. She could eat enough food to feed twelve hungry men and still not gain an ounce. That fast metabolism came in handy when she was on the road, living on take-out food from greasy spoon diners and needing to fit into her stage attire every night.

  She turned and patted his slight paunch. “Pot, meet kettle.”

  “Ouch,” he said.

  Paige grinned, plucked an olive from her plate, and popped it into her mouth. She liked Bill Bradley. She’d always thought that behind those wire-rimmed glasses, he had the kindest eyes. “How’s Aunt Trish?”

  “Better. They have her on an antibiotic and some kind of steroid. She wasn’t happy about staying home tonight.”

  “I bet.”

  Trish was a powerhouse, as well as the world’s biggest busybody. Nobody within a twelve-mile radius went to the grocery store without Trish knowing exactly what they’d bought and how much change the cashier had dropped into their sweaty palm. Paige loved every bossy, interfering inch of her. Trish was recovering from a particularly nasty bout of bronchitis, and being sidelined from all the gossip must have nearly killed her.

  Behind her, footsteps entered the kitchen. The hair on the back of her neck rose, sending a tickle down her spine. Bill looked past her shoulder and said, “Michael.”

  “William.”

  Heat rose up her chest and spread across her face. Damned Irish complexion. Bill looked at her, at Mikey, then back to her, suddenly busy shoveling pasta into her mouth. And cleared his throat. “I just remembered there’s something I’m supposed to do in, uh…the other room.”

  And he was gone. Mikey moved to the crock pot, picked up a plate, and said, “Hi.”

  “Hi.”

  When had this awareness of him become so physical? When had she become so attuned to him that she knew, without knowing, when he entered the room? He was standing too close, and she took an involuntary step backward. In the living room, somebody cranked up the stereo. Dad had, as always, supplied the gathering with music. John Cafferty singing Tender Years. “How’s Gunther?” she said.

  He replaced the cover on the crock pot. The hair at the back of his neck needed a trim. She fought the desire to run her fingers through it. “I read him the riot act,” he said.

  “And how did that go?”

  He searched the jumbled pile of stainless for a fork. Turned and leaned his hips against the counter. “He’s damn hard to pin down,” he said, and dug into his plate of food.

  She said nothing. When he was done eating, Mikey dropped his plate into the sink and crossed the room to the refrigerator. He took out a beer, held it up in offering. She nodded, and he pulled out a second bottle, came back and handed one to her. “I’m sorry,” he said, popping the cap on his bottle.

  “For what?”

  “The other night. The gun. The whole shit show.”

  She opened her beer, took a long, slow drink. “You already apologized.”

  “There was no need of what went on. He knows better. He can drink, he can smoke weed, but he can’t do both together. The combination makes him crazy. It’s unacceptable behavior.”

  It was disconcerting, the way his eyes locked on hers and stayed there. “Do you?” she said. “Smoke?”

  He shook his head. “Never. Not my thing. You?”

  “No. Not mine, either.”

  He nodded. Said, “Beth’s still pissed off at me.”

  “She’ll get over it. She loves you.”


  He picked at the label on his beer bottle. “Not right now, she doesn’t.”

  “Of course she does. You just wounded her pride. Give her a little time to get over it. The teenage years are so hard.”

  Humor lit those dark eyes, although it didn’t quite reach his mouth. “You think?”

  Her face went hot again. She really should think before she opened her mouth. “I wasn’t talking about us.”

  “You want to sit outside? Dad has a fire pit out back. We can build a fire.”

  “Sure.”

  He grabbed a couple more beers from the fridge and they headed outside. In the back yard, a half-dozen Adirondack chairs were clustered in a semi-circle around the fire pit. Above them, the sky hung heavy with stars. The music, faint but still audible, followed them. She settled into one of the chairs with a beer while he lit a fire, feeding kindling to it until it caught.

  He sat in the chair beside hers and stretched out his legs. “You warm enough?”

  “I’m fine. This is nice.” On the river, a boat glided slowly downstream, motor purring, red and green navigational lights illuminating its pathway in the dark. “On nights like this,” she said, “I could just stay here forever. Never go back to California.”

  Mikey stretched out his legs and crossed his ankles. “You don’t have to go back.”

  “Oh, but I do. I have a life there. Friends. A house I adore. A band that’s waiting for me to come back to record the new album. Contractual obligations to the record company. A moral obligation to the fans waiting for the next concert tour.”

  “You don’t have to live in California to do all that. Look at your dad. Living here hasn’t slowed down his career.”

  “True.”

  Inside the house, the music changed to Springsteen’s Hungry Heart. “For years,” she said, “we played little dive bars. Bouncer at the door, cigarette smoke so thick I’d go home with a sore throat every night. Drunks tossing long-necked beer bottles at us on the stage. Dressing rooms that always smelled of piss. It was hot and stinky and sweaty and gross. And I loved every friggin’ minute of it.”

  “But you’re making a lot more money now. And millions of people are hearing your music.”