I looked sideways at the compliment. “It did my heart good to play.” I shouldered my case. “Are you all done for the day?”
“I’d like to make one more visit. If you don’t mind.”
“I can wait.”
“Actually, I was hoping you’d come with me.”
“Me?”
“There’s a young man here, a veteran. Apparently, he and his wife are fans of yours. They danced to your song at their wedding—the one you sang for Jo and Eric.”
“Miss You More.” The one I’d written for Mom and Dad. The one they had danced to.
“I mentioned you were here,” my father said. “They’d like it very much—I’d like it very much—if you would sing it for them.”
“I don’t think I can.”
He looked at the guitar case. Raised his eyebrows slightly.
I flushed. I’d played for Mr. Laurence. “Not for strangers.”Not my songs.
“It’s always been easier for me.” My father smiled ruefully. “Helping strangers.”
“I’m not like you, Dad.”
“I think you are. More than you know. You’ve always put yourself in the service of others. That’s your strength.”
Tears welled in my eyes.
He cleared his throat. “I have found... Sometimes helping others can help you, too.”
All my life I’d hoped for my father’s attention. His approval. But if I did this, it couldn’t be for him.
“Play or don’t play. It’s your music.”
I asked anyway. “You’ll be there?”
“Every step of the way,” my father said.
CHAPTER 17
Amy
Alone at last,” I joked.
Trey and I were walking through the rehab center parking lot. Not the most romantic setting. That was okay. We weren’t about romance. We were about comfort and caring. Support. Sex.
Not that we’d actually had sex again. Not yet.
He slanted a look down at me, a smile in his soulful dark eyes. God, those eyes. “Sorry about that.”
“No ‘sorry.’ Nothing to be sorry about. You’re dealing with a lot right now.”
“You, too.”
Since that night in his grandfather’s hospital room, our relationship—if you could call it that—had been put on hold. Because whatever Trey’s eventual “plan” was, his focus was on his grandfather. And mine had to be on Baggage. Sometimes I thought Aunt Phee was softening her insistence that I move my business to Bunyan. But so far she’d evaded all my attempts to get her to invest. To commit.
Kind of like Trey.
