“Yeah,” she whispers so low I can barely hear her.
What is it about hearing a name that can provoke such a strong emotional reaction? I hear the name Adam and I want to pummel something. Claire hears the name Abigail and she immediately shuts down. Maybe I shouldn’t talk to her about this stuff. She needs a clear head to do well in her classes.
“Are you sure you’re okay talking about this?” I ask.
“Yes. I’m fine. I need to talk about it, too.”
I take the stairs down to the first floor and head for the kitchen. I have an apartment in L.A. that’s been empty for months while I’ve been on tour. This Home Sweet Home tour is the last leg for this year. It’s over in the end of September. I’m headed back to L.A. in October to record for a few weeks then I’ll be back before Christmas.
“I need to get you up to speed on the details of the agreement and I need to give you my schedule for the next few months so you can try to handle some of this stuff alone while I’m gone, if necessary.”
“I can’t do this alone.”
I open the refrigerator and grab a bottle of water. When I close the refrigerator door, I notice a new picture my mom must have dug up and stuck on the fridge before she left for work this morning. It’s a picture of me playing at one of my first paid gigs when I was sixteen. A small piece of the back of Claire’s head is visible in the bottom-left corner of the photo. This picture was taken just a few months after I met Claire, when we were still “just friends.” So much has changed. Claire and I will never be “just friends” again.
“You won’t be alone. You’ll be working with Tasha. I’ll be gone for less than four weeks and I’ll be just a phone call away.”
“Don’t you think that’s going to look bad? Leaving to L.A. when we’re so close to coming to an agreement with her parents? They’re already nervous about your… lifestyle.”
I laugh as I take a seat on a barstool. “My lifestyle? What the fuck does that mean?”
“I don’t know,” she replies, probably afraid she’ll offend me if she elaborates.
“Come on, Claire, you can be honest with me. What the fuck do you think I do when I’m not sitting in my mom’s kitchen talking to you?”
“It doesn’t matter what I think. It matters what Abigail’s parents think.”
“It matters to me what you think.”
There’s a long pause followed by a sigh. “I have to study. Feel free to give Tasha my phone number so she can fill me in on the details. Bye, Chris.”
She hangs up before I can get in another word. When I pull the phone away from my ear I see two text message notifications. The first message is from Amira, a girl I made the mistake of giving my phone number to when we fucked two months ago after a show in Houston. She texts me every now and then to tell me about shows she went to in Houston, like I give a fuck. I think she’s waiting for me to tell her the next time I’ll be there for a show.
I delete her text then open the next.
Tasha: Got a cryptic message from adoptive mother. She wants to meet me alone tomorrow without her husband. Will keep you posted.
My stomach twists inside me as I imagine what this could mean. Does she want to call the whole thing off or is she going to allow us to visit Abigail without her husband knowing? Maybe she just needs someone to talk to. I hate the idea that this whole agreement might be causing turmoil in their marriage, but I want to see my daughter. Abigail and Claire are the missing pieces of my heart. Even if I only get to hold Abigail once, I think I can live with that.
I slide off the barstool and make my way into the living room where I grab my acoustic guitar, Betty, off the ottoman then sit down on the hardwood floor. Betty was a gift from Claire for my eighteenth birthday. I have at least six better sounding acoustic guitars, but this vintage guitar with the initials she carved into the wood is still my favorite.
I trace my finger over the “CC” carved into the curve of the body then tune her up. Tristan and Jake aren’t coming over to practice for another hour so I have some time to work on a song I began writing in my head while lying in bed last night. I play the opening exactly as I heard it in my head last night, but the transition to the melody of the first verse is all wrong. I start from the beginning again a few more times before I finally get it right and the first verse comes to me.
“This ain’t our last goodbye. It’s our last hello. I can feel it in my shattered heart; all through my weary bones. You’re the missing piece, the final scrap. Someday we’ll fit together; someday I’ll bring you back.” I type the lyrics into the notes app on my phone before I continue working on the chorus. “These pieces of you are promises, whispering endless possibilities. My pieces of you are haunted, just echoes of shattered memories.”