Bluestone Song

by MJ Fredrick

  God she didn’t want to do this, but she needed to. She needed help for Linda. She got out of the car and unbuckled Jonas as Trinity approached, looking fresh and pretty in a floral T-shirt and white shorts, not looking the least bit pregnant.

  “I thought you’d forgotten about me,” Trinity said. “You don’t usually take Linda to school.”

  “No.” She picked up Jonas, who was fussy from the change in his routine, and held him a little closer than usual, the counselor’s suggestion ringing in her head. “We just had some drama last night. In fact—can I talk to you?”

  She wished she knew this young woman better. God, she hated opening up to anyone, but particularly a stranger.

  “Sure.” Trinity’s blue eyes were wide as she turned to follow Beth into the house.

  “I’ll get him fed, then make some coffee.”

  “I’ll feed him, I don’t mind. But I can’t have coffee, and don’t you need to sleep?”

  “I don’t think I could sleep if someone paid me right now.” She unlocked the door, set Jonas in his bouncy chair, and opened her cabinet looking futilely for something Trinity could drink. “I may have some juice.” She opened the freezer and found some fruity concoction Linda had begged for, then never drank.

  “That’s fine.” Trinity entertained Jonas, distracting him from his tummy. “He’s such a sweet fellow, isn’t he? It was brave of your sister to keep him.”

  Brave, or selfish? She knew the answer but didn’t want to say it aloud. “I don’t know what I’d do without him.” She couldn’t stop the catch in her voice.

  Trinity straightened. “Beth, what is it?”

  “Linda’s drinking.” Best to say it straight out. “I came home last night and she and her friends were drinking and—well, if I’d come home any later…” She shook her head. “With Jonas sleeping in the other room. I need to get help and I don’t know how. She’s just like our father.” Beth set the pitcher on the counter and closed her eyes. “I don’t know where I went wrong.”

  “Oh, Beth. Oh, honey.”

  The next thing she knew, Trinity’s hand was on her back, then her slim arms were around her, and Beth was crying—no, sobbing—into this stranger’s arms, holding onto her like a lifeline. It felt so nice to be comforted, soothed by another woman, something she hadn’t known in—God. Ever. She tried to stop, tried to pull away, but the strain of the past two weeks wouldn’t let her. Only Jonas’s fussy grunts gave her the strength to straighten and pull herself together. She wiped her face on her sleeve and tried not to notice how she’d rumpled Trinity’s pretty top.

  She busied herself with appeasing Jonas, then offered Trinity a watery smile. The young woman was looking at her with such concern, she almost lost it again.

  But no. She needed answers. “So. Tell me. What can I do?”

  “What have you tried to do?”

  Defensiveness tightened her stomach. Whatever she said would be the wrong thing. She’d made so many poor choices with Linda. It was too late to fix them. “I’ve told her not to. I reminded her what our father has become because of the drinking. I remind her of her responsibility to Jonas, to her decision to keep him. I can’t understand why she wanted to keep him so much and now doesn’t have anything to do with him, if she can help it. She’s just like our father. I don’t know what mistakes I made that she can’t love her own baby.”

  “You didn’t,” Trinity said in her soothing voice. “You did the best you knew how in an impossible circumstance. I know how hard it had to be, to make that choice. I’m going to tell you something only my family and Leo know.”

  Beth stiffened. “I don’t need to know any of your secrets.”

  “This one you do. I gave up a baby for adoption when I was in college.”

  Beth dropped onto a nearby stool, suddenly too weak to stand. Miss Perfect Preacher’s Daughter had given up a child? “God, Trinity, I had no idea.”

  “I should have told you sooner, when I knew you were going through with the same decision. It’s not something easy to talk about, though, with a stranger.”

  Beth gave a dry laugh. “I do understand that.” Her gaze fell to where Trinity idly played with Jonas’s hand. “How do you feel about it?”

  “It was the hardest thing I ever did. The only thing that would have been harder would have been keeping her and trying to raise her.”

  “The counselor at the school told me it’s not too late to give him up.”

  Trinity drew in a sharp breath. “Are you kidding me? She said that to you?”

  Beth didn’t take her gaze from the baby. “I can’t imagine being without him. Yes, he makes things more—challenging, but I love him. I wish Linda did, enough to give up the drinking.”

  “Have you looked into Al-a-Teen or anything like that?”

  “I knew it was a problem, but never so much as last night. God, Trinity. She had no shame about it. And the boy she was kissing, it wasn’t Jonas’s dad.”

  “Is Jonas’s dad in the picture at all?”

  Beth shook her head. “His mom won’t let him be. She says he has a future. What about Jonas’s future? How can he grow up secure when his mother has no more pride than that?”

  “Because he has you.” Trinity reached across to take Beth’s hand. “If I’d had the support Linda has, I would have been tempted to keep my baby.”

  “Maybe I give her too much support, let her off too easy.”

  “Maybe. There’s a balance. You have to find it. Why don’t we start this way—make a list of the household responsibilities. Make a chart of the hours in the day and when you’re at work and she’s at school. Maybe something visual will help.”

  Beth nodded, and removed her hand from Trinity’s to pull a notepad from the drawer next to the sink. “But how do I trust her when I go to work at night? How do I trust her to go to school in the morning? She told me she’s going, but she’s skipped three days already.”

  Trinity’s expression tightened. Of course she wouldn’t like that—she spent her days caring for Jonas so Linda could make up her classes. “We’ll just make sure she gets there. I’ll do what you did this morning—I’ll get here a bit earlier, and drive her to school myself.”

  “I wish I could take her and Jonas to work with me. At least there’s less of a chance of her getting into trouble.”

  “Let me see what I can do. While you make that list, I’m going to see if there’s an Al-anon meeting for you. Did you ever go to one when your dad lived at home?”

  She shook her head.

  “Then this could be a really good thing.” Trinity saluted her with the juice glass. “We’ll get it figured out.”

  Beth woke to find Trinity gone, and Linda at the counter with her head bent over her homework, Jonas in his bouncy chair nearby, cooing happily. Linda didn’t say anything as Beth shuffled into the kitchen for a glass of water.

  “What do you want for dinner?” Beth asked.

  “I’ll make myself something. Trinity’s coming by in a little bit to pick me and Jonas up.”

  Awake now, Beth spun to face her. “Why?”

  “Because apparently my big sister ratted on me and I can’t be trusted alone with my own son.”

  “You weren’t alone with your son. That’s kind of the point.”

  “I’m not going to get pregnant again.”

  God. Beth hadn’t even thought that far. “So, what, you just figure your reputation’s ruined anyway, so why not try another guy?”

  “I was just feeling good. Feeling pretty. You know what I mean.”

  “So you’re going to let him in your pants because he makes you feel good about yourself? What’s wrong with making yourself feel good?”

  Linda shoved her books away in disgust, eliciting an alarmed cry from Jonas. “God, Beth, I don’t want to talk about that!”

  “That’s not what I meant,” Beth said, her face heating. “I mean, why can’t you feel good about yourself for something other than being pretty? For being smart?
For being brave?”

  “I’m not smart or brave.”

  “Are you kidding me? You decided to go ahead with your pregnancy and raise your baby while finishing school. That is brave.”

  “That is me not knowing how to make a decision,” Linda countered.

  “Okay, I get that. And I know it’s hard. But you passed all your classes while you were pregnant—the only thing keeping you in summer school is the missed days. That couldn’t have been easy, passing with so much on your mind. But we do need to talk about your choices, Linda. Your choosing to drink, for one. Your choosing to invite people over here when you know I won’t be here. Your choosing to drink also endangers Jonas. What if something happened and you weren’t able to get to him, or carry him, or you passed out? As much as I love him, he’s your child. I said I’d help, but he’s your responsibility. You need to think about it.” She drew in a deep breath. She’d debated mentioning what the counselor had said, but decided to go ahead, to see Linda’s reaction. “Ms. Bellows said it’s not too late to give him up for adoption.”

  Linda’s face remained impassive. “It would solve a lot of our problems.”

  If the girl had taken a knife from the drawer and stabbed her with it, Beth couldn’t hurt more. Where had she gone wrong with this child? Why didn’t the girl have compassion?

  “You could do that? Now that you know him and love him, you could give him away?”

  Linda’s gaze snapped to hers. “I don’t know. I don’t know what I could do. We’re just talking hypothetical here, right? Something Ms. Bellows suggested. Not something you want to do.”

  “Something I don’t want to do,” Beth countered. “Something I can’t even consider doing.”

  Linda’s eyes narrowed. “So you were just testing me.”

  “I suppose I was.”

  “Lovely. No one trusts me anymore to know what’s right and wrong.”

  “You haven’t shown us you know. So where is Trinity taking you?”

  “To Quinn’s. I’m going to bus tables while she and her fiancé play mommy and daddy to Jonas.”

  Beth opened her mouth to protest, but she had asked for Trinity’s help. And Linda wouldn’t get in trouble with all those eyes watching her.

  Beth set her glass of water on the counter next to the sink. “I’m going to get ready for work.”

  Quinn’s place was more crowded than ever. Maddox had lost some of his joy in playing the last week, knowing Beth wasn’t there to hear it. Okay, he’d been impressed when she said she missed hearing him play. Well, he missed her, too. He missed seeing the swing of her long black ponytail, the curve of her bottom when she bent over to deliver drinks, missing watching her eyes flash when she argued with her boss.

  He was surprised to see Linda here tonight, wielding a tray and clearing tables, her posture sullen, her choppy hair falling into her face, her dark-painted lips carved in a permanent pout. Okay, he could understand her being resentful. Her mother had died when she was young and her father had abandoned her. But damn, her sister had busted her ass to make life as good as she could for the little brat. Couldn’t the kid see that?

  Had he been such a pain in the ass when he was a teenager? He didn’t think so, but maybe he should call his mom to apologize, just in case.

  During a break, he stood beside Linda at the bar while he ordered a pop and she unloaded dirty glasses and empty bottles.

  “Is that for my benefit?” she asked.

  “Is what for your benefit?”

  “You ordering a soft drink. Aren’t country singers supposed to drink beer and whiskey?”

  “Not this country singer.”

  “Why not?”

  “Tired of not being in control.” It was only partly true, skimming over the memories of his dependence on the bottle, and his battle to get past it. He liked his life so much more now, but the pull was still there, to lose himself in the drinking. Being here, playing in the bar, was like a test. So far he was passing. His longing had shifted to something else.

  “What do you know about not having control? You’re rich and an adult and you can do whatever you want.”

  He snorted a laugh at that. “Right. I have a boss just like everyone else, and he wants me to be somewhere else.”

  “Yet here you are.” She walked over to the soft drink dispenser and poured him a drink.

  From the corner of his eye, he saw Quinn open his mouth to shout at the girl, but Maddox held up a placating hand and the other man backed off. Linda poked a straw through its paper wrapper and plunged it in the icy glass.

  “True. I guess you could say it’s my rebellion.”

  “I thought you running off to Nashville was your rebellion.”

  He lifted his eyebrows at her. “Beth tell you about that?”

  “Not really.”

  He took a sip and sat back on the barstool. “I wasn’t much of a student, so wasn’t expected to go to college or anything. My parents had set aside some money, though, and I gave myself four years, like college, to see if I could make it.”

  “Did you? In four years?”

  He shook his head. “More like eight. I worked as a bus boy before I became a carpenter, building roofs all day, then playing all night, only to get up to do it again.”

  “You must have really wanted it.”

  He studied the ice in his glass for a moment. “Not so much wanted as needed. It was like a hunger, and if it didn’t get fed, I wasn’t pleasant to be around.” That hunger had vanished the past couple of years. He’d only begun to feel it again here, now. He wondered if he’d just been too well-fed until he’d come back here. “Anything you feel that way about? Like you’ll explode if you don’t do it?”

  She considered a moment, then shook her head.

  “Well, I don’t know whether to be sorry for you or glad for you. Is there something you want to do? Maybe something you thought you might be?”

  She glanced down the bar to where Trinity and Leo were playing with Jonas in his car seat. “No.”

  “Never? Not when you were a little girl playing?” He’d known he wanted to sing since he was fourteen. He couldn’t imagine not having some kind of dream.

  “Do you think I’m a bad person?” she asked abruptly.

  The question surprised him. “No, I just think you haven’t figured a lot of stuff out yet. Why?”

  “Beth said the counselor said it’s not too late to put him up for adoption.”

  Maddox’s stomach dropped. Why had Beth told her that? He would have sworn such an action would destroy Beth. “Are you thinking about this?”

  “I don’t know. It would make life so much easier, and you know, until I saw his face, I was going to give him up. I’d signed the papers and everything. But then I—couldn’t.”

  “And you can now?”

  She pushed her hands through her hair in a gesture that was just like Beth’s. “I didn’t know how hard it was going to be. The social worker told me, and Beth told me, but he was so cute and tiny.”

  “It would break your sister’s heart to send him away now.”

  Linda shook her head. “I don’t know. I mean, why would she have told me if she hadn’t been thinking the same thing?”

  That gave him pause. “Maybe to give you all your options. I don’t know. But I know she loves that little guy.”

  Something softened in her face. “Yeah, she does.”

  He noticed she didn’t say she did, too. Without another word, she picked up her empty tray and swung back through the crowd.

  Chapter Five

  Beth’s hand hovered above the mouth of the blue mailbox before she released the envelope and let it drop. The first thousand was on its way to her father. She hoped that kept him safe and far away. But, God, that money could have helped them out in so many ways.

  She’d finally returned her brother Adam’s call, since he’d repeated it, and had dismissed his concern, saying she and Linda and the baby were just fine, casually inviting him to come
meet his nephew, knowing he never would. She hadn’t tried to call Joey.

  She continued to be indebted to Trinity, who watched the baby during the day and in the evenings now, while Linda bussed tables and earned a few extra dollars. Beth didn’t ask for any of the money, but stopped buying diapers and formula, which meant she had a little more to send to her father sooner.

  She’d almost gotten used to the shoes she was forced to wear at the casino, thanks to the moleskin another waitress had shown her. She didn’t think she’d ever get used to the pinching, though it only happened when Maddox wasn’t around. How anyone else knew he was there for her, she wasn’t sure. But even though she’d told him not to come back, he showed up. And her traitorous body wanted another kiss—and more.

  What surprised her was that still, no one had recognized him. Sure, he didn’t wear a hat, but he was popular enough that people had seen him without his hat. Not often, but…she kept thinking of the one music video he’d done where he was rolling around in the sheets with a pretty young actress. She knew what he looked like without his hat, and his shirt—and she was pretty sure he hadn’t been wearing jeans, the way the sheets clung to his hips.

  Okay, maybe she knew why people didn’t recognize him. Women, anyway.

  Goodness. She wished he hadn’t come back and awakened her libido. She didn’t have time for this.

  Everything had been in such a jumble since the night she’d gone back to his place. Beth hadn’t had time to think about Maddox and The Kiss, until he showed up at the casino at about one in the morning, looking delicious. She acknowledged his presence with a nod, but didn’t approach as she hurried among her customers.

  “You should start letting me drive you over, then come pick you up,” Maddox said when he walked her out to her car.

  “No sense you spending all that money on gas,” she replied. “Besides, I was thinking it’s not really necessary anymore. No one’s been bothering me.”

  “Because they know you have someone watching your back.”

  “Really, it’s not necessary anymore.”