Jamie scanned the waterline. He looked back at her and nodded, as if giving her permission to meet him at his most vulnerable.
“I love talking about real life. The good, the bad—everything in between. I think that’s why people fall in love with country music. Why I fell in love with it, anyway. My father is one of the great country songwriters of our time. A lot of his early hits were about his relationship with my mom. They got together when he first got signed.”
“She was fresh out of high school and waiting tables at a diner in town,” Jamie continued. “My dad wrote a lot about how lonely it was on the road and how he feared she would eventually leave him for somebody more…available. He feared I would forget him because he was gone so much. But that’s the real shit, you know? What keeps me going is that, one day, I’ll share something that helps someone else too. Even if it’s the worst thing I’ve ever experienced.”
“Like what?”
He looked down at the boat’s sandy deck. “Like when my mom died.”
Brinton held the space for him as he exhaled softly. “No one talks about this, but I wanna tell you because I trust you’ll know how to use it. To get my story out there in a way that’s authentic. Tell the truth.”
His eyes drifted to hers. “Everyone thinks my mom died in an accident, that she’d fallen asleep in the tub. My mom had troubles, and with my father gone so often, life got dark for her. She tried to hide it, but I think she felt like she’d paused her whole life for him. One day, when I was thirteen, I came home late after football practice. But there was an ambulance outside. The police wouldn’t let me see her, no matter how hard I screamed and fought. Tex just held me back.”
“My father wasn’t even supposed to be there, but he had come home early from the city to beat a storm that was rolling in. He was the one who found her. I overheard him tell Tex that paramedics saw her sleeping pills by the tub. Even then, as a kid, I didn’t think it was an accident. Who takes sleeping pills in the middle of the day? But she was in a lot of pain. That night, I was too.”
“Jamie,” Brinton breathed, shaking her head. “If this is too hard?—”
He shook his head. “I wanna tell you. I need to,” Jamie added, roughly rubbing his fist against his lips, as if summoning the willpower to continue.
“Later that night, I stole my dad’s truck keys. Had no idea where I was going. I just couldn’t bethere. It was so fucking reckless of me, but I didn’t know what else to do. It’d started to rain hard, and I couldn’t drive for shit, and it was so dark out. I slammed into a tree. Gave myself a nice little concussion. Thankfully, my dad found me, took me to the hospital.But I saw something change in him. He’d lost all trust in me, I think. Couldn’t blame him. I’d put him through hell, on the worst night of his life. We never recovered from that. A part of us died that night too.”
“But everything happens for a reason, right?” he asked. Jamie’s voice sounded hoarse, like a bitter pill had become lodged in his throat.
“I miss my mom every damn day, but I rest easier knowing she’s not hurting anymore. And I thank God for my mamaw, who helped me process it all. That, and therapy.”
“You go to therapy?”
“Briefly, after my mom died. Mamaw is big into looking after yourself and wanted to make sure I was coping. I probably should’ve kept up with it, but my dad…He thought telling strangers your problems was”—Jamie used air quotes—“self-indulgent. So, I found other ways to deal.”
“What did you do?”
“Mostly whiskey and women.” Jamie scoffed. “Clearly, I got more healing to do, because talking about her is agonizing. Sometimes, I feel guilty, like if I could have done more to protect my mom, she’d still be here. But I learned in therapy that guilt is a natural part of the healing process.”
He smiled at her. It was pained, but she recognized that feeling.
“Do you think talking to your dad now might help?” Brinton asked.
Jamie tutted. “That would take a miracle. Or, another tragedy. But a few nights ago, I wrote a song about my mom for the first time. Kind of like this letter asking her all the questions I never could. If she were here, I’d want to learn everything she could teach me about being a better man.”
“Oh, Jamie…” Brinton whispered, the sting of fresh tears swelling behind her eyes. He moved to sit next to her and squeezed her knee.
“Hey, it’s okay—I’m okay. People in town pity me because I didn’t have any siblings, and my father never remarried. It’s probably why everyone around me felt like they needed to micromanage every detail of my life. But I think it would have been worse if my dad had moved on. It would have been this constant point of conversation with each new person who came into our lives.”
He clicked his tongue, his gaze miles away. “Instead, we buried it. And I turned out fine, right?”
“I-I’m so deeply sorry,” Brinton stuttered.
His gaze found hers again. “Please, don’t feel sorry for me. That’s not why I told you. I told you so you’d know why I do what I do.”
In that moment, she understood what made Jamie tick, what he needed most but couldn’t get from his father or his team. He needed someone to listen to him. Brinton’s own mother always said that her empathy was her greatest strength. Brinton liked to think it also made her good at her job.
She was grateful for the opportunity to hear him now.
“Are you going to record the song about your mom?”
Jamie sighed and dragged a hand over his jaw. “I don’t know if it will see the light of day. It doesn’t fit the…” He looked again to the water, as if on an expedition for the right words. “It doesn’t quite feel or sound like what most people expect from me. I’ll need time to make something I know will land.”
“Isn’t that the point of starting over? Subverting those expectations? You could release the song as a demo, test the waters? A twelve-year-old Soundcloud rapper can do it. Why can’t you?”
