The Darling Songbirds

by Rachael Herron

  Nate cleared his throat. ‘Want a beer?’

  She laughed. ‘No, thanks. I think the sun’s nowhere near the yardarm, whatever that means.’

  ‘Hey, I run a saloon. No judgement. And look, you can still stay here.’

  She looked around the upper patio. ‘Where? Half the place has no roof, the other half is falling apart.’

  ‘My room. Last one standing.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I’ll grab a bag and clear out for you. I just put clean sheets on the bed today.’

  ‘No way,’ she said. ‘I’m not kicking you out of your home.’

  Nate shifted and planted his hands on his knees. ‘I’m sorry, who owns the property now?’

  ‘That doesn’t make it my home.’ Home was Nashville. Wasn’t it? The thought was so confusing it swept everything out of her mind except a blind feeling of dread.

  ‘I’ve got a boat.’ Again he didn’t meet her eyes. ‘Down at the marina. A sleep-aboard. I’ll head there for a few days, while we get things sorted here.’

  We. A muscle unkinked in her neck. ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Yep.’ He stood, unfolding to his full height. His shoulders were so wide they blocked the sun’s glare.

  CHAPTER SIX

  As much as their mother’s death had been foreseen – the terrifying chemo, the useless radiation, the longer goodbyes that meant everything and helped nothing – their father’s death hadn’t. Tommy Darling, healthy and in his prime, dropped dead of a massive heart attack.

  The Darling Songbirds had been in New York, prepping for Madison Square Garden, the first stop on their biggest-ever tour. They’d booked forty-two shows around the globe, every single one sold out. The girls weren’t opening for anyone, not anymore. They didn’t need a bigger bill as a draw. No guest spots by Carrie Underwood. No Garth Brooks popping on stage to help them out.

  This was it.

  And their dad had very strong feelings about how the girls had made it. ‘Your mama got to heaven, and she started singing. Up there, they listen better than they do down here, and they started asking her what she knew about music, and she started pullin’ those strings, and that’s why we are where we are today.’

  We. He’d always said we when talking about the Songbirds. The tabloids had accused the sisters of being daddy’s darlings, of living for his dreams, but even in that they’d gotten it wrong. All four of them, the girls and Tommy, they’d always done it for Mama, for Tommy’s darling Katie, the songbird who’d been too sad to find her voice, the original Darling girl who’d lost her life before she had a chance to see her baby birds truly fly. The tabloids pulled the metaphors along as far as they could (babies with no mother in the nest, Katie flying to heaven alone) but the truth was that the girls had never been lonely, not once, not until Tommy got that look of surprise while standing on the stage being built at Madison Square Garden. He’d had a mike in one hand and a cup of Dunkin’ Donuts coffee in the other. He dropped the coffee and that’s what Adele remembered most from that moment – the way the coffee splashed across the stage and then back up, onto her cowboy boots and up her sisters’ jeans. They’d all laughed a little at their father, a known klutz.

  Then he’d fallen, and he hadn’t gotten up.

  The next night, Adele had made them go onstage.

  No one else was there to do it. They’d never bothered to hire a stage manager – their father had been their stage manager since they’d first won that family band contest at the Tennessee State Fair. Sure, they had reps and two agents, and they had a production crew and a stage crew who were the best in the business. But both their parents were gone. That made Adele the oldest.

  ‘I can’t,’ Molly had gasped around sobs that morning. ‘I won’t.’

  ‘Lana? You know we have to.’

  Lana had just shaken her head and parted the curtains of the sterile hotel room on the thirty-sixth floor that looked down at Times Square. Lana hadn’t cried yet, and Adele knew she wouldn’t, not for weeks. Maybe months.

  ‘Come on,’ Adele said. ‘He would want us to.’

  ‘Don’t you dare,’ said Molly. ‘He wouldn’t.’

  Adele heard the air conditioning kick a notch higher, which didn’t make sense, since she was freezing. They all were. She could see the goosebumps on Molly’s arms, and Lana’s shoulders were hunched forward as she stared out the window. ‘This is what he worked for.’

  ‘We all worked for it.’ Lana shrugged. ‘Now he’s dead.’

  ‘So we give up?’

  Lana rounded on her, the drapes scudding closed like heavy clouds. ‘He died yesterday. Give us a fucking break.’

  ‘We don’t get one of those.’

  ‘Oh?’ Lana’s eyebrows were high. ‘The show must go on? You’re going to push that shit on us? Now?’

  Adele’s legs felt hollow. ‘You bet your ass it does.’

  ‘Let us bury the man.’

  ‘It’s too late to refund eighteen thousand people. We could have pulled the plug yesterday, but not today.’

  Lana’s face was white except for the two red spots high on her cheeks. ‘Did you actually just say “pull the plug”?’

  Wrong words, they were all the wrong words. ‘Forty-two cities. Ten weeks. We can do this. Daddy put this all together – he’s never been more excited about anything, ever. You know that. We get up there tonight, we show the world we’re stronger than they ever knew. We sing for him. We sing for Mama. They’re together for the first time in six years. Tonight they can watch our show together – you think that’s not the one thing they’d both want?’

  The thing was, Adele believed her own words. So did her sisters – she could see it. Molly turned over on the hotel couch, her shoulders shaking. Lana stormed out of the room muttering something about the vending machine.

  That night, they went onstage. The normally dazzling lights were brighter than ever, and reporters with their press badges were packed so tightly against the edges of the stage Adele thought they must be holding it up. They were all there, waiting for them to fail. For the girls to fall apart in front of God and everyone else.

  And they did exactly that.

  Molly fainted, collapsing in the middle of ‘Wait Till Your Father Gets Home’. On a stage where everything was vibrating with noise, even with her back turned as she sang stage left, Adele felt the thunk of it travel up her legs. There, right where their father had fallen, lay Molly, bleeding from the head.

  Lana – who had been slow and sluggish for the last hour, as if high on something – dropped her mike and rushed forward. Molly was coughing then, her lids fluttering. Lana held Molly’s head in her lap as the flashbulbs beat against their skin.

  And Adele kept singing.

  It was unforgivable.

  Wait till your father gets home, just a little longer now.

  I swear to the moon above, he’ll be home soon, my love.

  She knew – later – she should have shut down the show. Three words: ‘Cut the sound.’ Those three words would have killed the show – and the tour – as dead as their father.

  Idiotically, she’d thought she could still fix it. Molly would stand, and Lana and she would hold their sister up and finish the final lines together. He’ll be home soon, my love.

  But they didn’t. She sang the last line as two paramedics in blue raced across the stage. The lighting wobbled, and for an impossible moment, Adele tried to remember what the next song was.

  Then she knew: the show was over. The tour was done, before it even really started.

  ‘We’re sorry.’ She apologised to the world. She didn’t know until later how much those few sentences had destroyed her sisters. They were played on national media, over and over: Molly flat on the stage, Lana darkly furious, Adele apologising. She should have been hiding them, folding them under her wings, protecting them. Instead, she’d shoved them onstage, and in doing so, she’d broken their wings, snapping each one. The Darling Songbirds were done. ‘We’re so sorry,
’ she said.

  Adele heard people in the audience crying. She touched her ear jack but heard nothing but a low whistle. A reporter at her knee shouted something at her. He had tears streaming down his face, and Adele couldn’t quite figure out why.

  The chime of Adele’s phone lifted her out of the memory, or the dream. She’d lain down to nap, and now she was panting, sweat dripping at her hairline. She was confused for a moment until she remembered where she was – in the bartender’s borrowed bed. Light was still coming in through the parted curtains, but just barely – she could see pink and orange in the sunset-lit clouds.

  The chime was a text from Molly. Finally. Root beer floats? I only liked Coke floats.

  Adele smiled. That was right. Oh, yeah.

  Remember when I was on that diet when I was fifteen? And I only liked Diet Coke floats?

  With sherbet, because it was low-fat.

  Disgusting. How’s it going there?

  Also disgusting.

  ??

  Adele fell backward on the bed, holding the phone above her, trying to ignore that the whole room smelled like Nate – like woodchips and soap and something spicy, like cloves.

  This whole place is awful. The hotel is wrecked. Fire, mould, termites, ruin. Basically every single plague of the Bible has landed between rooms two through twelve.

  Seriously?

  And Uncle Hugh was a hoarder. Again, she wondered if they’d triggered that change. Guilt tasted like acid at the back of her throat. No point in sharing the worry with Molly, though. I’m going to have to hire a backhoe to dig his apartment out. The café looks like it’s been closed so long we might have been its last customers. The saloon is open, but barely.

  Shit.

  Yeah.

  Well, if anyone can fix it, it’s you.

  Adele felt a weariness settle into the base of her bones. I guess. Where are you staying, then?

  The bartender’s room is the only good one.

  You kicked out the bartender?

  He offered!

  Is he hot?

  Adele’s thumbs hovered over the phone’s keyboard. She shouldn’t answer it truthfully, that the guy could make the polar ice caps melt just by hitting them with that dark stone-coloured smoulder.

  OMG I knew it.

  I didn’t say anything!

  You paused. That’s all you needed to do. What’s he like?

  Oh, Molly. Always on the lookout for love, and finding it more often than not. She just didn’t pick the right ones. Ever. He’s rude. Ugly. Super old.

  Bull.

  She looked around the room. It had only taken Nate a few minutes to pack a duffel bag of jeans and shirts and whatever it was in the small bathroom that smelled like cloves. He’d only taken one of the two guitars with him. He’d left a Martin, an old one, that she was dying to try. She’d propped her own guitar up in its case next to it.

  Let’s leave it at this: his name is Nate and he plays guitar.

  You’re doomed.

  Adele laughed. You like the bad boys, not me. Speaking of which, how’s Rick?

  An asshole, like all the others. I’m off men forever.

  For a week. How long are you on board this time? Adele didn’t even know where her sister was, which ocean she was currently in. Her whereabouts changed so fast, it didn’t even warrant keeping up on it anymore. One week Molly would be in Alaska, watching icebergs calve, the next, she’d be pulling in to port in Puerto Rico, dispensing eating advice to people who would nod agreeably and then ignore her completely, hitting up the buffet tables like they were about to starve to death. Molly said being a dietician on a cruise ship was like being an abstinence counsellor at an orgy.

  A week. We hit Sicily and then head to Greece.

  I hate you.

  You should. It’s not snowbirds this time – it’s some singles hook-up thing. Younger and cuter.

  Adele couldn’t even imagine the trouble Molly could get up to on a cruise like that. Use protection.

  Oh, stop. What time is it there?

  8 pm. I think. After Nate had handed over his room key, Adele had looked around the room for something to do. Usually that something was easy to find, even in a hotel room. Adele could always find something to clean, to straighten. The amount of satisfaction she got from making pictures hang perfectly straight was almost physical. Once, in a room in Miami, the air conditioner had stopped working, and she’d fixed it with just a bobby pin and some Scotch tape.

  But Nate’s room was perfectly clean. It was orderly, too, but only because he didn’t seem to have many possessions. He had an old PC laptop on top of the small desk, and the guitars. In the drawer next to the bed was a single pair of earplugs, still in plastic wrap.

  Who was this guy?

  Adele had given up trying to figure it out and had gone down to the marina and hiked out to the headland to say hello to Darling Bay. It had been a family tradition when she was little, back when both her mother and father were alive. If Mama was feeling bright enough, they’d hike all the way out, all five of them, her father carrying little Lana, her mother picking flowers and leading them singing old country tunes, Johnny Cash being her favourite. When they got to the point where the cliff jutted out and the wind blew stronger than anywhere else, where they could see the whole town, they stopped. They all waved hello. That’s the town your great-grandfather built. Look at it now, all twinkly and perfect.

  The memories had made her heart ache, but sweetly.

  Still following Darling tradition, she’d gotten a burger at Roper’s, sitting outside and watching the seagulls fight with the fishermen coming in with their catches. With a full belly, she’d come back and collapsed onto room one’s creaky old bed (she tried not to imagine the way Nate might have made it creak). She’d napped almost a full three hours.

  Her phone pinged in her hand again. You have to go down to the saloon.

  She texted back, And do what?

  Have a beer with the cute guitar player.

  I should be working. This isn’t a vacation.

  Right now? Come on. When is your next song due?

  Adele touched the tip of her nose. Molly was a human lie detector. Not for a month.

  Plenty of time for you to sell the place and plenty of time for you to have fun.

  Not that much fun.

  I meant in the sack.

  I know what you meant.

  Doing the dirty. Gettin’ busy. Knocking boots. Get it on.

  Adele felt her cheeks heat as she tried not to laugh. She wanted to say, ‘I love you. I miss you. I need you here with me.’ But she and her sisters were careful not to talk like that. It hurt too much. We’re not all like you, Molly.

  More’s the pity, too. Hey, I’ve got a client in a sec. Go get ’em, tiger.

  Xo.

  U too.

  Adele sat up. She looked down at the black shirt that was stained from where she’d dropped mayonnaise on it from her burger. Should she change? No. It was just the saloon she’d grown up in. She shouldn’t care what she was wearing.

  But then she swapped the dirty black shirt for a clean white one and ran a comb through her hair, cursing herself as she did. Come on. Concern for her appearance didn’t mean anything except that she was courteous to others.

  That’s what she told herself, anyway. She couldn’t quite figure out an excuse for why she felt compelled to slick on the pink lip gloss that one record exec had told her made her look like an angel about to fall, so she just pressed her lips together and stopped trying to come up with one.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  ‘So. When were you planning on telling me?’ Hank Coffee sat at the saloon, twirling a coaster between his fingers.

  Nate frowned and slid a Mountain Dew down to Angela Murphy who didn’t drink but liked hearing Parrot Freddy’s travel stories as much as she liked stroking Ethel’s vibrant wing. ‘Telling you what?’

  ‘About the girl.’

  ‘What girl?’

  Hank sn
orted. ‘I’m halfway tempted to keep going with this, to see how long you’ll pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about, but I have this weird feeling you could keep it going way longer than I would find amusing.’

  ‘Possibly.’

  ‘So?’

  Nate raised one eyebrow and remained quiet.

  ‘Okay, I have to say it, huh? Fine. But you’re totally buying my next beer.’

  ‘Sure.’ Hank never had more than one anyway. And Nate wasn’t going to say it.

  ‘Adele Darling.’

  Funny, her name had always gotten to him. When Hugh had talked about his nieces, the Darling Songbirds, Nate had always thought Adele’s name was the prettiest. The most songbird-like. Turned out he was right. He didn’t need to see the other ones in person to know that she had to be the easiest on the eye out of the defunct group. That fall of honey hair, those eyes that looked bedroom-ready even when she was just standing there, asking questions he didn’t want to answer.

  ‘What about her?’

  Hank slapped his coaster on his knee. ‘I knew it!’

  ‘You don’t know crap.’

  ‘She’s back in town to take over the saloon.’

  ‘No way.’ It was a knee-jerk response. She was in town to sell. She had to be.

  ‘Then what? Are her sisters coming?’

  ‘I didn’t ask her family’s itinerary.’ Nate lifted a hand at Mack, the drummer in the band.

  Hank twisted, looking behind him, as if hoping to find Adele there. ‘But that’s what she’s doing, right?’