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“And you were the star player with the letterman jacket all the girls wanted to wear, right?”
“Until I got kicked off the team.”
“You gotkicked offthe team?”
“Uh-huh.”
“I can’t picture that.”
“Found out I was going to be a big brother. I didn’t handle it well.”
“Oh.”
He glances over, one corner of his mouth curling upward. “You can ask.”
“We don’t have to talk about it. It’s none of my business.”
Kyle exhales. “My mom was…complicated. I never knew my dad, and I don’t think she had a clue who he was either. She settled down with Carter Spencer when I was three. He legally adopted me and got sick about a year later. Was gone in a few months, and he left us the ranch. Fast-forward to high school. She shacked up with one of my teachers. Got pregnant and relapsed into drinking as soon as the baby was born. The father got full custody and moved to Tennessee.”
I manage to get out, “I’m so sorry, Kyle,” through the lump in my throat.
“Pretty sure you had nothing to do with it,” he says, attempting to lighten the heavy mood.
“Still, sorry you had to live it.”
“Yeah. Thanks.”
“What…what about your mom?”
He said shewascomplicated.
Does that mean she’s no longer complicated or no longer…
“She got drunk and wrapped her car around a telephone pole six months ago. Died instantly.”
I pull in a surprised breath, even having some sense of where this story was going. You don’t deliver a happy ending wearing the pained expression Kyle is.
Sorrydoesn’t seem like enough, but it’s what I offer him again.
“I paid for her rehab. Paid for her car. Paid for people to run the farm. For years, I just threw money at the problem.”
“People have to want the help, Kyle. You did everything you could.”
“No.” He shakes his head. “I could have done more, and I chose not to.”
“It was her job to take care of you, not the other way around.”
Kyle is silent, but I hear the disagreement in it.
“My mom isn’t why I’m leaving music,” he finally says. “It’s a fucking miracle the press didn’t dig up the story—and probably only because we had different last names. But I feel like I lost sight of…everything, you know? Got so caught up in accomplishing something, and it ended up feeling like it was a whole lot of nothing. It was a wake-up call, I guess. A refocusing.”
“That makes sense,” is my unoriginal response.
“You’re not going to tell me I’m making a mistake and my mom would want me to keep performing?”
“Would your mom want you to keep performing?”
Kyle sighs. “I have no fucking clue. She never saw me play anywhere, except the fair, even when I sent tickets.”
