He lifted his palm in the air. “Night.”
“Good night.” My eyes tracked him until he was out the door.
I turned back toward the bar and muttered into my drink, “Good advice, Dad.”
* * *
I got home long after the sun had set, and Mason was nowhere to be found inside the house. Maybe he was still out back?
When I opened the door to the back patio, my jaw dropped. “Holy shit.”
My bandmate was covered in dirt and sweat, but the backyard looked better than I’d ever seen it. The fallen twigs and branches were gone, the grass had been cut, and he was tearing out the weeds in the far corner.
I jumped off the deck and walked over to him. “So this is what it takes for you to get inspired to do some spring cleaning?”
He leveled me with a no-bullshit look and gestured at a spare pair of gloves on the ground beside him. “You going to help me or what?”
The air was buzzing with crickets and mosquitoes, and the few lights we had out here were barely sufficient to light up the space, but I took my shirt off anyway and knelt down beside him. I wanted to tell him about my chance encounter with my dad, but I didn’t want to interrupt whatever he was doing here. Maybe this was his way of coming to terms with what lay ahead of us.
We worked outside for a few hours until the bugs became too much. “I’m going inside,” I declared, peeling off the gloves. “Come on. Let’s shower and have a beer.”
Mason nodded wordlessly and followed behind me. I cleaned up, grabbed two beers out of the fridge, and made my way down to the basement. A few minutes later, Mason came down as well.
“You won’t believe what happened to me,” I said, pressing my back against the chair.
He had his elbows on his knees, the bottle loose in his hand, but at hearing my words, his pensive expression turned curious. “Oh, yeah?”
“I met my dad tonight.”
I told Mase how I walked into a grimy little watering hole and found my father sitting at the bar. He hung on to every word, his eyes wide in shock. When I finished my story, he began to laugh in disbelief.
“That’s the most insane thing I’ve ever heard,” he said, shaking his head. “Small world. Goddamn. For once, I think you made the right move not telling him who you are. He’d probably have a heart attack.”
“I didn’t want to take his choice away from him,” I said, tipping my head back to stare at the soundproof ceiling. “But I hope he contacts me. And I feel lighter now. All this time, I was afraid he wouldn’t want to know me, but now I know that’s not the case.”
Mase ran his fingers through his hair. “So you’re going to wait for him to make a move?”
“Yeah. We’ve got something else we need to focus on first.”
“Molly.”
“My dad gave me some timely advice.” I repeated the advice to Mase.
He placed his beer on the ground and stretched his feet out in front of him “I was angry and disappointed when she first left, but then I took it out on our backyard. I think I understand why she did what she did. It’s actually pretty simple. She thinks she’ll hold us back, and if we disagree, we need to prove her wrong.
“There’s only one way to do it.”
“Yeah. With our actions, not our words.”
I grinned at him as hope and certainty filled my chest. “Then that’s exactly what we’ll do.”
28
MOLLY
On Saturday morning,I said goodbye to Piper and drove over to my sister’s home.
The house she and her partners owned was wedged between a Tudor-like mansion on the left and a Spanish-style hacienda on the right. In comparison, their modern two-story mansion lacked a certain flair, but I knew that was intentional. They may live in one of the nicest neighborhoods in LA, but it wasn’t in their natures to be showy or extravagant. With the exception of Abel on occasion.
