by Emerson Rose
“Unless what, Daddy?”
“Unless you want to have the camp on the mountain instead of at its base. I own most everything up here. You could build on my land for free and purchase it when you start making a profit down the line. There’s a small lake not too far away that would be the perfect spot. The only drawback I can see is getting the kids up here.”
I stare at him in disbelief with half a sandwich in one hand and my other hand hanging limply at my side. How can such a wonderful man be hidden away from the world on a mountain? I think I might be falling in love and not only with him, but with Adley. They are everything I never allowed myself to dream I would have one day.
7
Gage
Why in the hell am I offering to help her build a damn summer camp on my mountain near my home? For six years, I’ve been doing everything humanly possible to keep people away from us and to keep away from people.
Over the years, I have bought more and more acres of land on the mountain until the upper third of it is mine. I’ve installed security cameras high in the trees all around my house to make sure no one wanders onto our homestead, and now I’m all, hey, why don’t you bring a million kids and their families up here so they can regularly invade my privacy?
I’ve lost it. This woman is affecting my common sense. I lay awake at night thinking of ways I can make her life easier. What can I do to make her happy? I want her to stay here with us. I can’t stand the thought of her moving out and opening her camp on another mountain or in another state.
But I can’t bring myself to move past first base. It’s an irrational fear I know, but I’m afraid if we go any further, it will make what we have seem more solid, more permanent. More painful to lose when she leaves.
I want her in my world, but she’s just starting out with big dreams and her whole life ahead of her. And I’m a thirty-five-year-old hiding from society on a mountain with my kid and more baggage than any woman wants to deal with.
I want her, but I want what’s best for her more, and I can’t help but think that’s not me.
8
Clover
When my parents died, I considered myself cursed. I believed in my heart that I would never find true love or have children because of the terrible thing I did. And I was right, until now.
Boys never liked me much growing up, and the few who did were assholes that took advantage of my longing to be loved. It was after I was almost raped in high school that I realized men were only interested in one thing, and it wasn’t my personality.
“Clover? Hey, you in there?” Gage says waving his hand in front of my face.
“Yeah, sorry, that was… That was so nice of you.”
He jerks his head back in surprise. “You say that like it’s unusual.”
“It is. I mean, not for you, of course. That’s not what I mean. It’s a very generous offer. Are you sure?”
“No, you’d better grab the offer while the offer is still on the table.”
“What? Wait, are you serious?” I’m confused now. I’d thought he was offering to help.
“I’m kidding. Of course, I’m serious. Maybe having a little traffic up here will do us some good. Socialize this little girl here,” he says tussling Adley’s hair.
“What about people recognizing you?”
“I didn’t say I’d be helping at the camp. I stay on my land, and you keep your rug rats in your camp. Besides, people have forgotten all about Apollo Mercury. They think I’m dead, and it’s best that way.”
“Why?” I say raising my voice louder than I had intended.
“I screwed a lot of people when I dipped out of the music scene, people like that aren’t forgiving. Nobody benefits from me exposing myself. I’d have weirdos camping out in the woods trying to get a picture of me to sell to the tabloids. They’d have headlines like Apollo Mercury is Bigfoot, or better yet the Abominable Snowman. They’d exploit you and Adley by splashing us all over the newspaper with some crazy story about being abducted by aliens and set free in the mountains.”
“What about the music? Don’t you think your fans deserve to hear you play again? I think fans would be sympathetic to the reason why you left. Nobody can be angry at a mourning widower.”
“My music has been forgotten, the fans are older now, and I’ve had more than my share of time to mourn. I don’t want to talk about it anymore. Leave it alone,” he snaps.
“Daddy,” Adley says with a gasp hearing her father’s tone.
“I’ll be outside for a while if you need me.” He walks to the front door where his coat is hanging on a hook, and his boots are lined up under it. He throws on the coat and steps into the boots without tying them. He exits slamming the door with a loud bang.
“Gosh, he never gets mad like that.”
“He’s hurting, sweetheart. I think your daddy misses being a musician, and he thinks nobody will accept him if he tries again. I think he’s wrong.”
“Ya never know till you try. That’s what Miss Kitty always says.”
I lean over and kiss her forehead. “We need to help your daddy try.”
“Okay,” she says sounding excited.
“When he comes back, we should be in the music room. Maybe he will come in and play his guitar?”
“He used to play for me a lot. Then he stopped when he taught me how to play. Now all he wants to do is teach me stuff and not play. It sucks.”
“We are going to change that.” I sound more confident than I feel. Gage has a stubborn streak, but he also has a soft spot for Adley. I can work with that. “Come on, let’s go rock out until your daddy comes back inside.”
“Listen to this,” Adley says strumming the cords of her electric guitar with a tortoiseshell pick. She plays well for a child her age. She has definitely inherited her dad’s musical talent.
“That’s awesome. Do you think you want to be a musician when you grow up?”
“I dunno, maybe. I like the guitar, but Daddy’s always trying to make me play the piano. He says I can go to school in a big city and learn to be a piano player. I don’t think I wanna do that.”
“What if you could go to a big city and learn to be a really great guitar player? Would you want to do that?”
“Yeah!” Her eyes light up, and she violently whips the pick up and down the strings like a rock star.
“Hey, hey, hey, who’s shredding a guitar in here? You know we don’t play like that.” Gage enters the music room as I’d hoped, drawn in by the sound of his daughter playing. The stern expression on his face and the fearful one on Adley’s is not what I was hoping for, however.
I wanted him in a good mood, so I could convince him to play for me. “She was giving me a quick celebratory rock out.”
“Celebratory? What are we celebrating?” His voice has an edge to it that I don’t like, and there’s a sinister energy about him.
He chooses a bright blue electric guitar from one of the mounts on the wall and strums it lightly.
“Going ta music school for guitar stead of piano,” Adley says with a little too much attitude. Oh no, no, no. This isn’t how I wanted this to go.
“Oh really? Who’s going to send you there for that?” He’s tuning the guitar not looking at either of us. It’s making me nervous.
“Clover did. She thinks I’m good at guitar.”
He nods his head slowly while he works not saying another word.
“We were chatting about her favorite instrument to play, and she seems to prefer the guitar.”
“That’s because I told her she’s more suited for the piano.”
“Why is that?”
“Because she’s a lady, not a damn rock star.”
Something’s not right. I can’t put my finger on it, but his underlying anger is rattling my nerves.
“Gage? Maybe we should go and watch something on Netflix or take a walk?”
“No. You wanted to hear me play, and I’m going to give you a little concert.” From the sound of h
is voice, I don’t think I’m going to like his concert very well.
He bends down to plug a cord into an amplifier and rips his fingers across the strings filling the room with an ear-bleeding note. I grab my ears and watch as Adley moves closer to me where I’m sitting on the floor.
She removes her guitar handing it to me frantically as if it might burn her if she keeps ahold of it. She crawls into my lap and presses her face into my chest as her father plays the most disturbing piece of music I’ve ever heard.
He tears through the notes popping a string and running his fingers up and down the neck playing so fast his hands are a blur. I can feel Adley trembling against me, crying maybe. I can’t tell with the noise of the guitar.
He ends with a horrible twang and one final shriek up and down the neck. When it’s quiet again, he is panting and sweating from the effort. He stands towering over us like a monster holding a weapon, a weapon he used to punish us for caring about him.
That I understand, but his sweet, gentle daughter never will. She will never know the pain losing her mother caused him or the guilt he carries with him every day believing that her death was his doing.
I need to get to the bottom of that, but for now, calming Adley is my priority. I stand, and she clings to me sobbing into my sweater. Suddenly softening and coming out of his rage trance, he tries to reach for her, but I turn my back on him shielding her body from his hands.
His face contorts with pain, and tears fill his eyes, but I don’t feel sorry for him at this moment. I feel sorry for Adley. She just saw a side of her hero that she should never have seen.
I exit the room and carry the scared little girl upstairs to her room and close the door behind us. I walk to the bed and put my knee on the mattress before falling onto my side still clutching Adley close.
“Why is Daddy so mad?” she whimpers.
“I don’t know, honey. I think he’s trying to sort through some feelings. Sometimes grown-ups act stupid when they’re hurting inside.”
Her grip on me loosens, and she backs up until we are nose to nose. “Daddy’s hurting? Why?”
“I think he misses your mommy.”
She sniffles and lowers her eyes. “That’s sad.”
“Yes, honey, it is very sad, so we have to cut him some slack.”
Her gaze returns to mine. “Cut his what?” she says her voice laced with fear.
“It’s an expression. It means we have to allow him to act like a jerk for a little bit until he’s feeling better. I’m not saying what he just did was acceptable, scaring people is never the right thing to do, and he knows that. I’m sure he will apologize, just give him time.”
“Okay.” Her voice is small and afraid. She loves her father, he’s all she’s got in this world, and although that’s good, it’s also not enough. She needs friends, family, socialization, and other people to turn to when she has questions or feelings to sort out.
Gage needs to expand his minuscule world to include other people for his daughter’s wellbeing. If he doesn’t, she’ll end up walking around on eggshells forever worrying about upsetting the only person in her life.
I roll away from Adley and grab a few tissues from the nightstand next to the bed and hand them to her. “Here you go, wipe your tears and blow your nose. How about I read to you for a while, and then we can go downstairs and make something to eat.”
“What about Daddy?”
“I’m sure he will be better by then.” She doesn’t look like she believes me. “If he’s still grouchy, you stick with me. Things will be okay, I promise.”
She nods, and I choose one of her many Harry Potter books and begin to read about Hogwarts and magic wands and spells until I glance down and see I’ve read her right to sleep.
Remembering what Gage said about her sleeping hard, I slide my arm out from under her head without disturbing her and go downstairs to find him.
He’s nowhere in the house, and I suspect he’s at the chopping stump in the woods. It’s where he goes to escape when he knows he can’t go far, which is always thanks to his daughter.
I write a note to Adley letting her know I went to look for her dad. I wrap up in all of my winter gear today. The temps are dipping again, and the wind chill is frigid.
I follow his footprints on the path and hear him before I see him. It’s a rhythm of him standing the chunk of wood on the stump, a step backward, the ax hitting the wood with a crack followed by two pieces of wood thumping to the ground and Gage picking them up to toss them in the growing pile.
I step into the clearing when he’s bent over, and he doesn’t see me, but he knows I’m here. “I can’t go back to being a musician. Adley is my life now, and I won’t risk being sucked into that lifestyle again,” he says with his back still turned.
“I understand.” I do. I get it now. He thinks that if he hadn’t taken Constance on tour with him and made her miss her OB appointments, she would be alive today. And that may be true, but he wasn’t the only person in that relationship. Constance could have refused to tour while she was pregnant. She could have arranged OB check-ups while they were traveling. It’s never just one person’s fault.
“Then why all the questions about my music and the fans?”
“I don’t know, I thought you might want to try again.” I walk around to face him, but he continues to work listening to me talk while he chops. “You know, you could record music here on the mountain and put it out under another name.” Swing, chop, split, thump. “Nobody has to know it’s you. You can perform anonymously. It might be therapeutic.” Swing, chop, split, thump. “I think that when you’re given such an extraordinary gift, you shouldn’t waste it.” Swing, chop, split, thump. He straightens up and looks me in the eye before setting up his next piece of wood.
“It’s a nice idea, but people are ruthless when it comes to figuring out a mystery. If anyone even suspected it was me, they would hunt me to the ends of the earth to prove it and expose us.” He returns to his work. Swing, chop, split, thump.
“Do you still love music?”
“Of course, it’s in my blood.”
“Then you need to incorporate it into your life somehow. Even if it’s just a little duet project with Adley, you need to do it for your soul.”
He stops working and wipes his brow with the back of his sleeve. “I can’t.”
“You’re punishing yourself, and you shouldn’t be.”
“Who are you to judge whether or not I deserve to be punished? I wanted my wife with me on tour. I was selfish. I was afraid I would get too drunk or too high and slip up. I wasn’t strong enough to tell the band to fuck off, and that I’m going back to my hotel alone to sleep. I had to have an excuse. I had to have Constance there with me, and that caused her to miss important appointments. Don’t you see? My weakness caused her death. Adley is growing up without a mother because I was worried about keeping my dick in my pants.”
“That’s admirable but not something to be ashamed of. You wanted your wife at your side. She could have made arrangements to see an OB while you were on the road. You can’t blame yourself for her death. She was as much responsible for her health and the pregnancy as you, maybe more.”
He takes a deep breath and holds it for a moment before letting it go. “Clover, I know you’re trying to help, but you don’t understand.”
“Make me understand then.”
“Being a rock star is insane. Always on the road, a different hotel every night, women throwing themselves at you, drugs being pushed on you, and ridiculous amounts of alcohol, all at my fingertips. I got lost for a while, and I almost cheated on my wife. I was hooked on pills. I needed something to wake me up in the morning, something to calm my nerves during the day, something else to help me sleep at night. There was someone there to give me whatever I wanted whenever I wanted it twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.
“When Constance got pregnant, it shook me up. I didn’t even want to have the baby at first. And then I used my
wife and unborn child as an excuse to go straight. All the guys in the band hated her. They thought it was her reining me in. But it wasn’t her calling the shots, it was me. She didn’t know what I was into. When she showed up, I went cold turkey with the drinking and drugs. She thought it was normal for me to come straight home after a show, and she never understood why the guys didn’t accept her.”
“Okay, so that’s a little shitty, but it still doesn’t make you responsible for her death.”
“There was a woman whose name was Calista. She was a groupie who had it bad for me, and one night when I was particularly fucked-up, I almost slept with her on the tour bus. If we hadn’t blown a tire, I would have. When the bus swerved off the road, a picture of Constance fell from my bunk onto Calista’s face, and I freaked out. I knew I had to do something so I called my wife and begged her to come be with me. She thought I was so happy about the baby that I wanted her to tour with me all the time when, in reality, I was an asshole coward who needed a fucking babysitter to keep his vows. The ultrasound appointment she missed because I begged her to come to Europe right away was the one that would have diagnosed her placenta previa. They would have put her on bed rest immediately in the hospital, but she was on a plane over the Atlantic Ocean on her way to me instead.”
“Ultimately that was her choice, Gage. She chose to come when she did and skip that appointment. Sure, she wanted to be a good wife and hurry to you when you asked, but she could have gone to the doctor first. Stop beating yourself up for something that isn’t your fault.”
He yanks the ax from the stump and turns his back on me to sit there. He drops the ax in the snow and buries his face in his hands. I can’t tell if I’ve gotten through to him or if he is tired of arguing with me about it. He has believed this for so long, I’m sure it feels like the truth. I have to keep telling him otherwise until he realizes it’s all in his head.
I step around the stump in front of him and tangle my fingers in his long, damp hair tilting his face up to mine. “You’re a good man. No matter what you did in the past, you have become a wonderful man and an amazing father. Constance would be proud of you, and from the sound of it, she would have forgiven you for anything you did or almost did when she was alive.”