Days Like This (33 page)

“This is not a cheap guitar,” she
said.

“No, it’s not.  It’s also not
brand-new, but whoever owned it took damn good care of it.  I’m trusting that
you’ll do the same.  Because even though it’s not new and I didn’t pay full
price, I still dropped a pretty penny on it.”

“I don’t know what to say.”

“Thank you will be sufficient.”

“Thank you.”  Her eyes met
Casey’s, and a silent message he couldn’t decipher passed between them.  “Did
you—” 

“I swear I did not,” his wife
said.  “I’m as surprised as you are.”

Biting her lower lip, Paige bent
her head over the guitar, ran her fingers up and down the fretboard, played a few
notes.  “What?” he said.

“Later,” Casey said, and over
Paige’s head, gave him a look that said
Please don’t argue
.

He shot her a wink, said to the
kid, “Thanks for the breakfast, kiddo.  I’m off to take a shower.” 

And he left the two of them to whatever
they were secretly plotting.

They’d been practicing for a
week, she and Luke, but still she was nervous.  It wasn’t the profusion of
relatives that bothered her, all those aunts and uncles and cousins squeezed
into her father’s house.  She’d sung in front of people before.  Hell, she’d
sung solos with the school chorus before five hundred people, and been unfazed
by it. Luke had a decent voice, and they sounded good together.  There was
nothing to be nervous about.  But tonight her nerves were on edge.  Because
tonight, for the first time, her father would hear her sing.

Casey had written the song for
her, and it wasn’t some wussy, saccharine, fifteen-year-old-kid song, it was a
real piece of music, complex enough to do her voice justice, simple enough to
appeal to a wide audience.  Her stepmother knew what she was doing when it came
to writing music, and she knew how that piece of music needed to be performed. 
Tonight, there was no backup band, no amplification, no rocking out.  Just the
two of them, playing their acoustic guitars and singing. 

“You ready?” Luke said.

“As ready I’ll ever be.”  She
glanced around the room, at the assembled Saturday-night regulars.  Bill, with
coffee mug in hand, leaning against the fireplace.  Trish and Rose, side by
side on the couch.  Paula and Chuck Fournier, sitting in matching armchairs. 
Billy and Alison with their new baby, looking tired but happy.  Jesse, standing
in the doorway to the front hall, leaning against the door frame.  And her
father in the Boston rocker, long legs stretched out, ankles crossed, waiting. 
Casey stood behind him, her hands resting on his shoulders.  Paige met her
stepmother’s eyes, and Casey nodded.

She beat out a soft 1-2-3-4
rhythm on the body of her guitar, the one her father had given her.  And she
and Luke began to play.

There were more than a dozen
people in the room, but as her voice gained momentum and she lost herself in
the song, only one of those people counted.  Only one of those people existed. 
Her father sat watching, listening, with a flat expression she couldn’t
decipher.  With Luke singing harmony, she wound her voice around the notes,
wrapped herself around the lyrics.  It was a song about a woman who’d given her
all to a relationship and lost everything.  She’d given up on love and life
until this special guy came along and made her believe again.  The song was raw
and touching and uplifting, a perfect vehicle for her voice.  Her audience
seemed entranced, and she saw at least one mouth hanging open. 

But still her father sat there,
deadpan, sending her stomach plummeting.  Was he disappointed?  Did he hate the
song, her singing?  Had he expected something she couldn’t deliver?  As far as
she knew, Casey had said nothing to him beyond, “Paige is going to sing for us
tonight.”  So she had no idea what his expectations had been.  Or if he’d even
had expectations.

Maybe it was her own expectations
that had exceeded the realm of possibility.

The song ended, and she barely
heard the applause, because her father still had no reaction.  While Luke, ever
the ham, took bow after bow for his part in the performance, Paige set down her
guitar and fled.  In the kitchen, she brushed wordlessly past Mikey, who was just
arriving, pulled her jacket from the coat tree in the shed, and let herself out
into the crisp autumn evening.

She stood on the steps and
breathed in the night air as she shoved her arms into her jacket and zipped
it.  Then she made her way around the house, up the seldom-used front steps,
and across the porch to the swing.

Hands tucked into her pockets for
warmth, she huddled in one corner of the swing, her feet curled up on the
wooden slats beneath her, a confused mix of emotions tumbling around inside
her.  How could he have just sat there, unmoved, unspeaking?  And what possible
difference could it make if he did?  She hated her father.  Didn’t she? 
Nothing he did or said could possibly matter.  The fact that he’d wooed her
with postcards and a new guitar didn’t mean a damn thing.  Just because he was
a professional musician, the one person who should have understood, didn’t mean
zip.  She was her own person.  She didn’t need him, didn’t expect anything from
him.  She’d done this on her own for fifteen years.  She sure as hell didn’t
need his approval to keep on doing it.

Then she saw him, a shadowy
figure in the darkness, tall and lanky, coming around the corner of the house,
moving unerringly toward the swing.  Of course he knew exactly where she’d
gone.  It was the same place he always went when his own wounds needed
licking.  Was it too farfetched that they would have chosen the same place to
do their serious thinking?  After all, they shared DNA.  And as much as she
hated to admit it, from the prickly outer shell right through to the marshmallow
center, they were so clearly father and daughter that there was no escaping the
truth.

He sat down beside her, propped
his ankles on the porch railing, and set the swing in motion.  Paige folded her
arms around her stomach and waited.  After a long silence, he said, “And I
thought you only liked rap.”

In spite of her desire to
maintain her distance, she let out a soft snort of laughter.

“So,” he said amiably, “were you
planning to keep this from me forever?”

“It’s my thing,” she said.  “I’m
under no obligation to share it with you.”

“Don’t bullshit me.  You have a
gift, Paige.  A real gift.  Don’t you think you have an obligation to share
that gift with the world?”

“I’ve never thought about it that
way.”

“Think about it.”

“What if I said I don’t want to? 
Share it with the world?”

He turned his head, studied her
in the faint lamplight that fell through the bay window.  “Then I’d say I don’t
believe you.  I don’t believe anybody can sing the way you do without wanting
to share it.  Without wanting to drown in the music, lose yourself in it, let
it swallow you up and hold you there forever.”

How was it he could see inside
her soul and read what was written there?  Was it because he was a musician? 
Or was it just another symptom of that shared DNA?

“I was blown away by what I heard
tonight,” he said.  “Completely and utterly blown away.  Do you understand
that?  You have the most amazing voice I’ve heard since Danny Fiore.  I don’t
toss around compliments lightly.  I don’t bullshit.  You have a talent that
rendered me speechless.  Have you ever seen me speechless?”

“Um…no?”

“Exactly.  Casey says I came out
of the womb already talking.  Tonight, I couldn’t believe that voice was coming
from my kid.”

“Mom always said I got my musical
talent from you.”

“Well, wherever it came from,
kid, you impressed the hell out of me.  I don’t think I’ve ever been so proud.”

 Why did it feel like this,
hearing him say those words?  She hated him.  Had hated him since birth.  Paige
searched inside herself in an attempt to resuscitate that sleeping hatred, and
realized that at some point, when she wasn’t paying attention, it had fled. 
What it had left behind in its place was a lump of raw clay, one she could mold
into any shape she wanted.  But the molding was up to her.  She was the one who
had to decide what kind of relationship she wanted with her father.  Or whether
she wanted one at all.

They sat for a while longer in a
companionable silence.  “Why don’t we go back inside?” he finally said.  “Your
legion of fans awaits.  You were the belle of the ball tonight.”

She held back a smile.  “I
think,” she said, “I’ll just stay out here for a while.  I have some thinking
to do.”

He swung his feet down off the
railing and stood up.  “Just don’t stay out here too long,” he said.  “You’ll
turn into a Popsicle.”

And he lumbered down the steps
and across the lawn, disappearing into the shadows.

***

She’d been sitting for a while,
arms wrapped around her folded knees, studying the night sky, when Mikey walked
up the porch steps and sat down beside her.  “You dad said you were out here.”

“Don’t be so shy.  Feel free to
sit down and join me.”

The corner of his mouth
twitched.  “I hear you were quite a hit tonight,” he said.  “I’m sorry I missed
it.”

She shrugged.  “It wasn’t that
big a deal.  And it wasn’t just me. Luke was there, too.”

“According to Luke, he was just
window dressing.”

“He would say that.”

“One of these days, I’ll have to hear
you sing.”

“Band rehearsal three times a
week.  You’re invited.  Any time you want.”

“Let’s go for a walk.”

“A walk?” she said.  “Where would
we walk around here?”

“Just up the road a bit.  Get
away from this crazy crowd.  The moon’s full, the stars are out.  It’s a great
night for walking.”

“It’s freezing cold, Mikey
Lindstrom!  And you’re nuts.”  But she slid off the swing and went with him
anyway.  Hands tucked in pockets, they walked, elbow to elbow, down the driveway
to Meadowbrook Road.  “Which way?” she said.

He looked left, then right. 
“North,” he said.

They crossed the road and began ambling
along the shoulder, facing traffic.  “So,” he said, “how’s algebra going?”

“Better.  Mrs. Silverburg’s been
really good.  I never could get the hang of it before, but with her teaching,
it suddenly makes sense.”

“That’s good.  Do you know, my
dad had her for a teacher back when he was in school?  As far as he’s
concerned, she’s a cross between Mother Teresa and Margaret Thatcher.”

“Your dad’s a cool guy.”

“He’s all right.  I think he’s
happy with your Aunt Rose.  He was alone for a lot of years after my mom left. 
I’m glad he found someone.”  He looked up at the night sky.  “Life is funny
sometimes.  If he’d married Aunt Casey like he was supposed to, I wouldn’t be
here today.  Or if I was, I’d be somebody different.”

“What do you mean, like he was
supposed to?”

“I thought you knew.  It’s the
stuff of family legend.  They were childhood sweethearts who got engaged in
high school.  Four weeks before the wedding, she met Danny, and married him
instead.”

“Wait. 
Your father
is the
guy she left at the altar?”

“Not quite at the altar.  But,
yeah.  Can you imagine if they’d gotten married?”

She couldn’t.  Even she could see
there was no spark between them.  They were friends.  Good friends.  But
boyfriend and girlfriend?  She couldn’t fathom such a thing. 

“Wow,” she said.  “I had no
idea.  She told me she was engaged when she met Danny, but she never told me
who the guy was.”

“They grew up together.  After
she left, Dad ended up marrying her sister instead.  My mom.  I don’t think it
was a love match.  She was never happy.  I can remember, even as a small kid,
sometimes she’d just sit and cry.  Then one day, she up and left.  I see her a
few times a year.  She hasn’t neglected me.  I think she’s still trying to find
herself.”

“Getting kind of old for that,
isn’t she?”

He let out a soft snort that
might have been laughter, but she couldn’t be sure.  “Look up there,” he said,
pointing.  “See that grouping of stars?  Ursa Major.  And just below it, you
have Ursa Minor.”

“It’s amazing.  All I could see
in Boston was electric lights.”

“And over here—“”  He caught her
elbow and turned her.  “That’s Cassiopeia.”

She tried to follow, but it was
all too confusing.  To her, all those stars looked alike.  She turned to tell
him so, and suddenly they were face to face, standing on the side of the road,
cloaked in velvety darkness, and she couldn’t breathe.

She shivered.  “You’re cold,” he
said.

“I told you it was freezing out
here, but did you listen to me?”

“Here.  Put your hands inside my
jacket.”

She hesitated, then slipped them,
clasped into tight little fists, inside the unzipped football jacket.  His body
heat enveloped her, warmed and loosened those fists.  She looked up into his
face, that gorgeous face, and all the moisture left her mouth.  His dark eyes,
ravenous, examined her.  His hair, in the moonlight, looked almost white, and
she had an overwhelming urge to reach up and touch it.  But her hands were
trapped inside his jacket, pinned there by his arms, which had somehow managed
to find their way around her.  When had that happened, and how could she
possibly have missed it?  “I think,” she said, “that this is a bad idea.”

“It’s a really, really bad idea.”

“So…?”

“So…”  He dipped his head down
and kissed her.

It wasn’t her first time.  She’d
been kissed before.  Stewie Katz had kissed her after the eighth-grade
graduation dance, and Sonny Malone had edged her into a dark corner at a party
last summer and laid a good one on her.  But those kisses had been nothing like
this.  They’d been child’s play.  This was different.  This was the real thing. 
Her first real kiss.  His mouth was soft and warm and seductive, and the kiss
went on and on, until she thought she might faint right here in his arms.