The Darling Songbirds

by Rachael Herron

  ‘Do you get seasick on boats?’

  ‘You know, I’m not sure.’

  ‘How can you not know?’

  She shrugged. ‘I think I inherited some of my dad’s fear of the ocean from him, maybe. I just never find myself on the water.’

  ‘Hmm.’

  ‘You love it, though?’

  He nodded. ‘My mom, she loved fishing. And boats.’

  ‘Did she have one?’

  He gave a short laugh. ‘No.’

  Carefully, Adele said, ‘Is she still alive?’

  ‘No.’ He stabbed a piece of hot dog with his plastic fork so hard she heard a tine snap.

  It was obviously a sore subject, so she changed it. ‘You were really good last night.’

  His eyebrows flew upward and she felt her cheeks heat.

  ‘I mean, onstage. You’re an amazing guitarist.’

  ‘Thanks.’ Nate shoved a fry into his mouth.

  ‘Really. Did you ever think about doing something with it?’

  He frowned. ‘I am doing something with it. I’m in Dust & Rusty.’

  ‘I mean, professionally.’

  He shook his head.

  ‘Who writes your songs?’

  ‘I write most of them. Mack has two.’

  ‘They’re good.’ She didn’t say it lightly. They were so good she could fix them up and sell them for serious cash if he wanted her help. Adele reached in front of him to snake a fry out of the basket. They were salty and hot and greasy and just right. ‘You ever think about selling them?’

  ‘The songs?’

  He sounded so shocked she laughed. ‘Yeah.’

  ‘They’re just country songs.’

  ‘Every country radio station in the nation subscribes to a service that guarantees them two new mega hits a week. That means there are a lot of songs that need to be written.’

  He palmed the top of his head, jerking back his ball cap an inch. ‘Those mega hits are crap.’

  ‘Most of them, yes. You could give them something good.’

  He took a long sip of his drink and then rattled the ice in the paper cup. ‘But I don’t want to.’

  ‘Fair enough. Did you and Hugh ever talk about bringing bigger bands in?’

  ‘No.’

  He was a man of few words, wasn’t he? Adele felt something spike in the back of her neck. Irritation, maybe, or frustration.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Why bother?’

  ‘Because it would bring in more money.’

  ‘That wasn’t the end goal for Hugh.’

  The spike was definitely frustration. It went higher, into her forehead. ‘But he let everything go. When did the café close, exactly?’

  Nate stared at the bobbing boat as if the answer could be found on board. ‘Five years? Six?’

  ‘Why did he let it close?’

  ‘It just wasn’t …’

  She jumped on his pause. ‘Wasn’t making money? Is that it?’

  ‘It’s not that easy, Adele.’

  Was that the first time he’d said her name out loud? She liked how it sounded on his tongue. ‘Tell me how it isn’t.’

  ‘It wasn’t just the money. It was a hell of a lot of work. Even with me working full-time for him, it wasn’t enough. I tried to take over the payroll, but Hugh insisted on being in charge of personnel. Staffing alone was a nightmare. The café meant four cooks, three waitresses, one prep cook and two busboys. The hotel meant an almost full-time receptionist, because in a beach town, someone’s always calling. It meant a full-time maid and a part-time one on the weekends. When he let those things go, it was just him and me and the saloon. And that was just right for a long time.’ He popped another fry into his mouth. It seemed like his version of punctuation.

  ‘Bringing in fun bands, popular local ones, bands that are going somewhere but are still low in their trajectory – that could really do something for the saloon.’

  ‘I’m sure you’re right. It would do something.’

  Adele didn’t understand why his words sounded so loaded. ‘What about trying it out?’

  ‘Look.’ He leaned forward, and the lightweight table skidded away from them more than an inch, kicking gravel as it went. He yanked it back, grabbing her drink as it wobbled, setting it carefully in front of her. ‘I’m just not sure what you’re after here.’

  ‘I’m just tossing out ideas – that’s all.’

  He made a growling noise in the back of his throat, and the two small children who were running past their table gave him a sideways look, as if he were something dangerous. ‘Ideas for what? For who?’

  Maybe he was dangerous. That would explain the electricity that seemed to be crackling off his skin. ‘For the saloon.’

  Nate set his hot dog on the table slowly. Deliberately. ‘For whose saloon?’

  Ah. That was it. ‘Okay. Hank told me you want to buy the place –’

  ‘He what?’ Nate’s voice stayed quiet but the intensity of it made it feel like a roar.

  ‘It’s not like it’s some big secret. It would have come up when my sisters and I sell, right?’

  ‘Yep.’

  So much intensity packed into such a small word. Adele took a sip of her drink and wished she’d gotten a milkshake instead. It would be good to fight a straw. ‘What if I can help? You know. What if I can help you fix things while I’m here?’

  A vein jumped in Nate’s forehead. ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘I’m sorry, I’m not being clear.’ How could she be clear? She felt nothing but confusion. ‘We let Hugh down so many times – what if we had the chance to right that wrong?’

  ‘He’s dead. You can’t fix dead.’

  Yeah, well, she knew that too well. How many times had she forced her mother to get a second, then a third, then a seventh opinion? The multiple myeloma that had killed her hadn’t been fixable. If it had been, Adele would have done it, at any cost.

  Nate stared at the water. ‘Are you selling or what?’

  ‘We’re selling. Of course we’re selling. I just want to be sure we don’t make a mistake.’

  ‘What? Like you’d take it all over? Nashville has the Bluebird and here we’d have the Darling Songbird Café?’

  She spoke through gritted teeth. ‘No. It’s the Golden Spike. Always has been.’ She didn’t mention she didn’t have a home to go back to. ‘We have no interest in the property.’

  He didn’t appear to have heard her. ‘What, make it into a coastal Dollywood, is that it? Darlingwood?’

  Would that actually be the worst thing that ever happened? ‘This is a sleepy town. Might do it some good to wake it up.’

  ‘Maybe we like sleepy.’

  ‘Maybe.’ She wiped her fingers with a napkin. She wondered if she had chilli on her face and then decided she could live with it if she had to.

  ‘Adele.’ Nate put on one of the fakest-looking smiles she’d ever seen. The corners of his mouth barely lifted and his eyes stayed dark. ‘I am … glad you’ve come to town. I know it’s – hard – to have this kind of upset in your life. It must be tough.’

  ‘Why are you acting weird all of a sudden?’

  His eyes widened. ‘I’m not acting weird. I’m just saying that I appreciate you’re in a rough spot.’ The bizarro smile got bigger.

  ‘And I’m happy to help you out in whatever way I can.’

  ‘Is this you trying to charm me or something?’

  Nate groaned and slumped into his chair.

  ‘Aha! It is! Let me tell you something, bucko. You suck at it.’

  ‘I don’t know why I even tried.’

  A tight spot in Adele’s back loosened. ‘I know the place is important to you.’

  He gave a short nod.

  ‘Want to tell me why?’

  ‘Nope.’

  The same two children ran back the other way, both of them carrying red cartons of fries, their mother chasing behind them.

  ‘Want to do it anyway?’

>   Nate looked up into the sky with such a look of concern that Adele followed his gaze in case something was falling towards them. Nothing was.

  ‘I followed a woman here.’

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘She needed rescuing.’ He stuck his fork into the hot dog detritus and laid his palms flat on the white table. ‘I didn’t get to do it. Then she died.’

  ‘Oh, sweet Patsy Cline, I’m sorry.’ The rescuer. Adele wondered if he’d always had to play that role or if it was something that had started as an adult.

  ‘It’s fine.’

  It obviously wasn’t, but Adele got that. ‘And you stayed.’

  ‘Fell in love with the place.’

  ‘Darling Bay does that to you.’

  ‘I worked at the marina doing odd jobs until Hugh gave me the bartending job.’

  ‘Why did he do that?’

  ‘What?’

  She knew it was rude. She knew she shouldn’t ask. It was wrong, and impolite and disrespectful. But the question burned inside her. Uncle Hugh had been a rescuer of people, too. There had been Old Stevo, the ancient hobo who rode the rails when he was sober enough to grab a freight car’s handle. Uncle Hugh gave him money, even though he was well aware Old Stevo just spent it on tequila in whatever dusty town he landed after getting thrown out of his boxcar. Then there was the tiny, thin young man – what had his name been? Rodney. That was it. He had been a raging alcoholic since the time he was thirteen. Uncle Hugh gave him a broom to push half-heartedly around the property, and the spare key to the laundry room. Rodney had slept on the floor on his good nights. On his bad nights, he fought people and landed in jail for a few days. He’d died after stealing Hugh’s old Pontiac and driving it off Piermans Bridge. And there was Donna, the drunk bartender. She’d been a sweetheart. She had a huge laugh and an enormous passion for high school football. She wasn’t even a local, but could talk Darling Bay High School stats with the best of the old men. Adele remembered Uncle Hugh and her laughing, just the two of them in the bar. She just didn’t remember many of her sober nights, not when Adele had been in town anyway.

  Her uncle had loved the drinkers. The addicts. He had a track record of exactly zero when it came to saving them, but he’d never stopped collecting them, just like he collected the buoys and cans and magazines in his apartment.

  So Adele asked the question, even though she knew she shouldn’t. ‘Are you an alcoholic?’

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Well, that was a first. Nate had felt the question in people’s eyes, sure. He’d seen it in their stares. One girlfriend thought he drank too much on a night when he’d had three beers. She’d broken up with him because of it. He’d just figured he’d been better off. Someone who worried that much might have driven him to drink just to prove a point. ‘Wow.’

  ‘Sorry. But I want to know.’

  ‘No one’s ever asked me that before,’ he said.

  ‘No?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Is that your answer?’

  He barked a laugh. ‘I don’t think you got the memo.’

  ‘Which is?’

  He needed to stop noticing how her eyes reflected the sun and actually sparkled, like sunlight on waves. ‘That it’s not polite to ask.’

  She squinched up her face in a comical scowl. ‘I forget about polite sometimes. And how people seem to think it’s important.’

  ‘Overrated, really.’

  She nodded. ‘You haven’t answered.’

  ‘I’m not an alcoholic,’ he said. God, it was refreshing to be asked, instead of just having everything he did be watched, measured against his bloodline. Once he’d been trying to fix a broken lathe in the arbour, holding a power drill over his head. The drill had slipped, falling on his eye and cheekbone. He’d needed two stitches just below his temple. For three weeks, as the bruising healed, townsfolk had avoided looking right at him. They used to look at his mom that way. That exact same way.

  ‘Do alcoholics lie?’

  He laughed again. Sitting next to Adele in the crisp ocean air felt like drinking ice-water after working outside all day. ‘It’s their specialty, I happen to know. But I’m not lying. I think I’d know if I were a drunk by now.’

  ‘How old are you?’

  ‘Thirty-five.’

  ‘And people know by then?’

  ‘Dog with a bone, huh?’

  She nodded, keeping her eyes on his. ‘I get that way sometimes.’

  ‘I see that. Yeah, I think I’d know.’ He paused, and then told her the truth, surprising himself. ‘I worry about it, though. In my head, I see it like a switch. On or off. Mine’s off. I don’t know what it would take to flip it on, though, so I’m careful.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘Damn, lady.’

  ‘Sorry.’ But her smile didn’t look sorry at all. ‘But how are you careful? I’m honestly just curious. You don’t have to answer.’

  Astonishingly, he wanted to. He had a method, and he’d always known he’d worry if his method got hard to maintain, which so far, it hadn’t ever done. Without touching it, he could feel the two-month chip burn in his front pocket. ‘I try not to drink when I’m upset. I never drink alone, although that would be easy to do, since I work in a damn bar. But I never have more than two drinks. And I never drink more than once a week.’

  ‘Lord. That’s the way people drink at church in Nashville. I’m not sure that even counts as drinking at all.’

  He shrugged. ‘I sleep better at night knowing I’m not flipping that switch.’

  ‘Probably makes you a good bartender.’

  ‘I’ve heard drunk bartenders pour heavier. Get more tips.’ He hadn’t just heard it – he’d seen it in action. The drunker his mother had gotten behind the bar, the more singles drinkers had slid her way. Tiny green apologies.

  ‘What about you?’ He’d never asked it of another person in his life, not even his mother. You didn’t ask the obvious, after all. ‘Are you an alcoholic?’ The answer was suddenly deeply important.

  ‘Nope.’ Her voice was clear. ‘I fall asleep after two glasses of wine.’

  The relief tasted like honey in his mouth.

  Adele drew her knees up and wrapped her arms around them. Side by side, they watched Dirk moving on the dock.

  The silence was more comfortable than it should have been. Nate could have sat there all day, watching the boats wallow in, heavy with their loads. Three kids biked past, obviously thrilled it was the weekend, and then two older men he recognised from the city council meetings walked slowly by. They nodded at Nate and Adele. Nate nodded back. Adele did, too.

  ‘So,’ Adele said, after they’d passed. ‘You take care of drunk people. That’s what you do.’

  ‘Good God, woman. Are you a shrink now? Did Hugh forget to mention that to me?’

  She shrugged. ‘Songwriter. You must know how it is. Songwriters, bartenders, therapists, aren’t they all the same thing? You don’t have to answer me. I know I’m pushing too much.’

  And he wouldn’t. It wasn’t like it had really been a question. Besides, what was the harm in it? Was anyone actually going to fault him for making sure Norma had gotten home safe after closing the saloon at night? There was that one time, when she’d left her front door open and a pot of water on the stove. If he hadn’t checked because of the open door, her whole house could have burned down. And Parrot Freddy would forget to eat if someone didn’t remind him to do it.

  Instead of answering, he stood up. ‘You ready?’ He bagged her empty paper tray with his and shoved them in the trash can next to the stand before walking towards his truck.

  ‘Hey,’ she said from behind him. Her voice was tentative.

  Nate opened her door for her. ‘You don’t have to apologise.’

  ‘Okay …?’

  He realised she hadn’t been about to. Damn it. Why did she tip him off balance so much? It couldn’t just be the way she looked in that denim skirt, could it? Because she looked incredible, but plenty o
f pretty girls came through town, and lots of them ended up at the saloon for at least one drink. Plenty of them wore short skirts that showed off shapely calves. He was used to pretty.

  She jumped in the truck, swinging herself up easily. Her rear end in that skirt swung right into the seat like she’d ridden shotgun with him a million times. Those long legs that ended at those strappy sandals distracted him so much he almost forgot which way to turn the key.

  Yeah, she was way past pretty.

  ‘I interrupted you back there,’ Nate said, as he turned onto Main.

  ‘Oh. I was just going to ask something about the saloon.’ Now she sounded hesitant, for the first time.

  ‘Go ahead.’

  ‘Do you ever host open-mike nights?’

  ‘Nope.’ Nate couldn’t think of anything worse. A bunch of locals with ukuleles and misplaced ambition didn’t sound like his idea of a good time.

  ‘They can be fun.’

  ‘I’m sure they can. If you like live karaoke that sucks. And songs that no one knows.’

  ‘Come on. Lots of people get their starts at open mikes.’

  ‘That’s like saying lots of people become pro-baseball players after playing third base in Little League. Doesn’t happen.’

  ‘Okay, even if no one is discovered, it can really pack people in. The people who want to play come in, they bring their families and friends.’

  ‘And those people bring their camcorders and get in the way while I’m just trying to sling drinks.’ Nate lifted one finger off the wheel as Skip Lemon passed them in the opposite direction in his perpetually clanging ice-cream truck.

  ‘Camcorders? Really?’ Her voice was amused. ‘So what you’re saying is that you haven’t had an open mike in the era of smart phones?’

  He could give her that. ‘I’ll admit it’s been a while. Technology might change but people don’t.’

  ‘Can I organise one?’

  Nate gripped the wheel tighter. ‘At my bar?’ Damn it. It was a kneejerk answer. It was, technically, her bar. It belonged to the Darling girls. It was no more his saloon because he worked there than the road was his because he paid taxes. ‘Shit.’

  ‘Yeah. At your bar.’

  It was nice of her. And he hated it. ‘Do whatever you want. It’s yours, after all.’