Sidewalk Flower (34 page)

She sat back and let her phone fall into
the pocket of her blue dress.
 
Normally
she would use a longer flight like this to jump ahead in her work load.
 
She had a list of three more priority items
that needed taking care of before they could go live tonight.
 
But it was the warmth radiating from the
plane’s window that drew her in.
 
She
moved to the next seat over and pulled up on the hard plastic shade.
 

A collective baritone groan rumbled its
way down the aisle at the sun’s rays.
 
She ignored them, again.
 
Nothing
looked familiar below, no landmarks she recognized.
 
Her favorite part of the flight had already
passed.
 
The way they flew as if to head
out across the Pacific, only to curl it back around before heading east.
 
She wondered when they’d be flying over
Nashville and then figured it wasn’t the way the crow flew.
 
She wouldn’t be anywhere near the state of
Tennessee on this plane ride.
 
Nowhere near Lucky.
 
Besides, if he wouldn’t even talk to her, there really was no point of
her carrying on with these useless thoughts.
 

Sadness filled the seat beside her and
she instantly fell out of sync with the sun.
 
She tugged the shade back down and turned her back to it.
 
Someone muttered a thank you, probably
Stefan.
 
After getting up to use the
restroom and receiving a pat on the shoulder from Vance as she passed by, she
took her seat again and decided to get some work done.
 

The details for tonight’s venue looked in
order.
 
As long as Lonerby showed up on
time, everything should work out, as it most always did, sometimes miraculously
and by the skin of her teeth.
 
She went
over the itinerary for the next show, two nights away in Philly.
 
Everything was already set there, too.
 
Okay, four nights away, Baltimore.
 
Taken care of.
 
Six nights?
 
D.C.
 
Done.
 
The pitfalls of
being a workaholic, when the time came that she needed something to do—it had
already been done.
 
The only productive
thing left for her to do was sleep.
 
She
closed her eyes and curled up into a ball, as best she could.
 
It was going to be a long six days, let alone
six months.

* * * *

Lucky sat at his work bench, carefully
eyeing the detailed pattern he was etching out.
 
Saw dust had drifted into his eyes.
 
His father gave him the stink eye when he passed by to go rinse it in
the shop bathroom.
 

“Where’re your goggles, Lucky?”

“At my station, Dad.”

His father ignored him, having made
enough of a point.
 
When he came back, he
put the goggles on.
 
It wasn’t worth
being stubborn.
 
That last chip that had
flown at him had hurt.
 
And there was the
other matter; he was an adult and needed to act like one.

“When’s that due to the customer?”
 
His father pointed a finger at the coat rack
he was working on.
 
It was in the shape
of an old gnarled
tree,
at the very base of the trunk
was the chiseled face of a bear cub.
 
The
branches up top were to be the racks.
 
And those resembled the fine veneered antlers of a male deer.
 
The customer had sent in a drawing of what
she wanted for her husband, not sure if the Masons would be able to produce
such a project.
 
Of course that’s what
they had Lucky for.
 
He was the artist of
the group, the one with the unique vision and the knack for these more peculiar
requests.
Peculiar to his dad and uncle.
 
He was almost finished with the cub’s
face.
 
Then it would be complete.

“Tomorrow mornin’.”

“Well, get it done and then I want to
speak with you.”

Luke Mason never requested to speak with
anybody. If he had something to say, he just said it.
  

His father eyed him until he nodded and
added the polite, “Yes, sir.” He’d planned on going straight home to check the
website again.
 
Forget it,
he thought, as he worked a tiny whisker in beneath the
cub’s chin.
 
That plane has already flown.
 
Get over it.

The rack was finished just before suppertime.
 
Unfortunately, he hadn’t made it to his truck
quickly enough to avoid the talk with his father.

“Son, you haven’t said much since you got
back from California.”
 
Luke stood tall
but bent at one hip.
 
One arthritic
finger curled around the worn strap of his denim overalls.

“Well, you haven’t asked about
much.”
 
Lucky regretted the buff retort
to a man he respected more than most.

“Your uncle wanted to know about
Jaxon.
 
How’s he doin’?”
 
Of course his father would do Uncle Bear’s
bidding.
 
Pride ran strong in the Mason
bloodline.
 

He hesitated.
 
Uncle Bear didn’t deserve to be burdened with
his issues against Jaxon.
 
“He’s
okay.
 
Busy with his band’s tour.”
 
And then he realized something that hadn’t
occurred to him before.
 
Uncle Bear might
not have any idea he was a grandfather.
 
“You know, he’s got a beautiful little girl, she just turned five and
her name is Maryella.”

“No kiddin’?
 
Well, if he does know, he hadn’t said
anything ‘bout it to me.
 
You know,
Lucky, you might speak with your uncle about that.
 
I’m sure he’d like to hear about the girl.”

“Yeah, I’ll make sure and do that, Dad.”

“Happen to have any pictures?”

“Uh, yeah, actually I do have a
couple.”
 
He’d avoided sharing them
because doing so would mean seeing Trista.
 
But, this was family and who was he to keep that for himself?
 
Maryella was his father’s kin too, his great
niece.
 
“They’re on my phone.
 
I’ll go get it.”

“Your phone?”
 
His dad crowed in disbelief as he went out to
his truck to retrieve the digital memories.

When he got there, he found that he had a
missed call and a voicemail from Trista’s number.
 
He dismissed the prompt, saving it for later,
when he would be alone.
 
When there
wouldn’t be anyone around to hear him cussing, crying or sitting in deafening
silence, heartbroken.

He loped back over to where his father
had just locked up the shop doors and crouched in closely so he’d have a good
view.
 
The screen was only a couple
inches in size and his father’s life-sized hands looked haggard holding up the
small device.
 

“Well, I’ll be damned.
 
Look at that.
 
She’s got your uncle’s smile.
 
Hadn’t she?
 
And Jaxon hadn’t changed
that much.
 
Geez, that boy is cocked
diesel, just like Bear.
 
Is that their
house?”

“Yeah, that was taken at Jaxon’s
home.”
 
He erased the image coming to
mind before finishing. “That’s his daughter’s room.
 
They were playing with her stuffed animals.”

His father admired the small snapshot for
a while then Lucky figured he’d need to bring the next one up for him.
 
He handed his father back the phone, and
tried to act unaffected.

“Ah, what a darlin’.
 
Looks like a party.”

“Yeah, that was the next day.
 
She turned five.”

“And is that the girl’s mother?
 
She’s a pretty one.
 
Humph.”
 
His father referred to the golden-haired woman with the passionate blue
eyes.
 
The joyous
smile.
 
Too bad she’d been taken,
long before he’d come along.

“No, that’s…Trista…Hart.
 
She works for Jaxon and the band.
 
She’s very close to Maryella.”

“Huh, well is that it?
 
You got anymore?”

“No, that’s it.”
 
He took back his phone and gave Trista’s face
a look of regret, then closed the image folder.

“What’s that all about, son?”

“What about what?”

“The girl, in the photo.
 
You and her friends?”

“Not exactly.
 
I really don’t want to talk about that, Dad.”

“All right, well I still think you ought
to share those with your uncle.
 
You comin’
to supper?”

“Not tonight.
 
I’m tired.
 
I’m gonna go back to my place.
 
Get some rest.”

He hadn’t missed more than a handful of
Mason-men suppers.
 
The bulk of those
times having just come from his recent trip out west.
 
Tonight would have been a good opportunity to
show his uncle the photos.
 
But the
thought of telling him for the first time that he was a grandpa was not
something he felt up to right now.
 

“Maybe breakfast in the mornin’ then?”

“Yes sir, that sounds better.”

“Hey, son, I don’t think I have to tell
you this, but there’s more to life than livin’ out here, and this shop.”

“Yes sir, I know that.”

“Well, if that girl in the picture is
part of somethin’ outside all this…”

He wiped at his nose as if he’d just
taken a snort of sawdust.
 
“She’s
not.
 
You’ve got it wrong, okay?”

“Don’t interrupt your father, son.”

“Yes, sir.”

“I don’t believe I am wrong.
 
Your face is sayin’ otherwise.
 
If she’s someone to you, don’t feel like
you’re obligated to us.
 
You hear me?”

“Yes, sir.”
 

He took off for home after that.
 
He had a message to hear.

Chapter
Twenty-Three

New York.
 
It had been appropriately hectic and exuberantly successful.

But, when it was all done and quiet and
they’d all returned back to their hotel rooms for the night, Trista thought
less about the excitement of the next gig and more about the emptiness of
everything else in her life.
 
That was
rare and different for her.
 
She’d always
loved the live shows.
 
The
music.
 
The band.
 
Her family.
 
Being on the road.
 

It was a turning point.
 
She could feel it.
 
The hold was losing its stick.
 
The thought scared her.
 
Where would she go from here?
 
What did a person do once they’d experienced
this high?
 
She feared the only other half
of that duo—the low.
 
Lucky.
 
She stopped herself cold at that thought.

It was a few minutes past midnight.
 
She was restless.
 
The hotel gym was her best idea.
 
She’d run herself to sleep if she had to.

* * * *

Lucky took out a cold bottle of Bud Light
from his refrigerator and a plate of leftover roast beef from the night
before.
 
Maybe it had been from a couple
nights ago.
 
He sniffed at it to make
sure it was still edible.
 
It smelled
okay.
 
He was too tired to fix anything
fresh and he still didn’t feel like eating with his father and uncle.
 

He plopped down on his couch and took a
bite of the meat.
 
It was fine.
 
He ate some more and just to be safe, washed
it down with a few large swigs of his beer.