“Or not having to hear that incessant drone of the engine?—”
“I loved the sound of the engine,” Wade says. “It was calming.”
Winona chuckles, a wry, yet wistful look on her face. “Yeah, it did have a way of lulling me to sleep after a long show.”
“Not that you needed it,” Nora says. “You always slept like the dead the second you got onto the bus. I don’t remember a lot of those tours, but I remember you crashing hard after every show.”
I spot the way Wade’s eyes turn to his wife, but for her part, Winona doesn’t do more than shrug. “Performing can take a lot out of a person.”
“Or it can recharge them,” Lou says, a hint of that spark I know so well flashing across her face.
“That, too,” her mom says with a smile. “Your battery looks full, Lou Lou. Now, why don’t we have breakfast, and you can tell us all about it?”
An hour later, Winona is giving us all a tour of the house and the yard, and introduces us to the goats, chickens, and horses in the barn.
She shows us a second barn right off a grove of orange trees—except it isn’t a barn at all, but rather a high-tech recording studio with huge skylights and a gorgeous Bechstein A192 grand piano that makes me ball my hands into fists to keep from lunging at it.
Winona’s eyes drop down to my hands, and she gives me a knowing smile, but she doesn’t acknowledge it, for which I’m thankful.
During the tour, she peppers Lou, Alicia, and me with questions (Jimmy goes back to the bus to call his wife). She’s so happy for her daughter’s happiness, it causes a pang in me. Have I ever been that happy for someone else? Sean? My dad?
Although, it’s not like they’ve had the kind of luck someone celebrates …
But if they did—if Sean got drafted into the NHL—it’d be the happiest moment of my life. I’m not so far gone as to pretend otherwise.
I shake my head, pushing the thought aside. Hope is for fools. Hope makes you think you can fix what’s already broken.
Man, I need an outlet. That piano is calling my name.
Eventually, Wade and his son-in-law take the kids out to ride horses, and Lou and Alicia join the Williams women on the porch, leaving me with a desire to check in on my own family.
A stab of guilt almost stops me—I’ve left them once again to hold down the fort while I’m out chasing my dreams—but there’s something about seeing Lou laughing with her family, seeing the love and support so clear on all their faces.
The guilt shifts, turning into something else—something I can’t name.
So I dial the bar.
“Donegal’s Bar,” Dad’s familiar voice says. He was raised in the South by fully Irish parents, so he has a hint of a lilt that makes that unnamed pang intensify.
“Hey, Dad, it’s me.”
“Patrick!” he says in a cheerful voice. In the background are the clinks of glass, the hum of voices, and the scrape of stools and chairs on the wood floor—the soundtrack of my life for years now. And hearing it from afar, I find I like that soundtrack more than I thought.
“I’ve missed you, my boy.”
There it is.
The feeling.
It’s not only homesickness, but that feeling of missing pieces. Dad, Sean, probably Rusty too, if I think about it. I don’t let many people in, but those three? I’d trust them with my life. And Ash, by extension.
“You too, Dad,” I tell him.
“How are you?”
“You know me,” I say, hoping my voice sounds its usual gruff self and not choked up. It’s been a couple of weeks. What’s to get choked up about?
“I do,” Dad says. “How’s the tour? How’s Lucy?”
