Maeve hurried on, “I had found this babysitter who would take care of Zoey in the afternoons. She seemed great, Zoey loved her, but then things started going wrong in her life and I didn’t realize quick enough. Your mom came round one day and found her passed out drunk in the hallway.” Maeve shuddered at the memory of it. “It was really bad. I shouldn’t have let it happen. Martha rang me at college, all calm while I was panicking, and made me tell her where the spare key was and that she would take Zoey home and not to worry.” Maeve sighed as she looked up at Brodie. “Of course, I left straight away to come and get her and there she was, fast asleep in a little crib—that was probably your crib once!—at Silver Sky. I could hardly breathe. Zoey was your mom’s granddaughter and she had no idea. It was awful.” She covered her cheeks with her hands. “I couldn’t say anything.”
Brodie sat forward, brow furrowed, hands clasped in front of him. “Didn’t you think that we could have helped? Given you money? Made life easier?”
“Of course I did.” She looked across at him over the fire, his wide, clear eyes reminding her so much of Zoey’s. She stared, almost beseeching, as she said, “Think back, you were so famous, Brodie, you could have anything you wanted. And I’d already kept the truth from you. I didn’t know how you’d react.” It was a risk, her honesty, laying out her vulnerability for him, but it felt like the only way. “You were a gazillionaire and I’m in my grandma’s house with a drunk babysitter barely able to scrape together the money to eat and work and put gas in the car while studying full-time. I was not in a secure place. And maybe you wouldn’t have tried to take Zoey away—” the fear of him swooping in and gathering Zoey up had forever kept Maeve awake at night “—but I couldn’t take that risk. I was scared, I was young, I had no one.” Stupidly, she felt her eyes well up, and she was not a crier! “I know it sounds like an excuse, Brodie, but I just didn’t want to lose my daughter.”
ChapterSeventeen
Brodie wanted to stop her, to tell her that she didn’t need to say all these things. Even though he wanted to hear them. He felt like a fraud expecting this justification because he knew, with certainty, that if she had told him at the time, bar throwing obscene amounts of money at the problem, the situation would likely have been the same—his mom would have stepped in to help.
He sat back in his chair and sighed as he looked across at Maeve, sitting with her damp hair in tendrils in her baggy sweater and towel, a haunted look of fear on her pale face, eyes glittering maybe with hidden tears, and said, “I’d like to think that I wouldn’t have tried to take her away.”
While he wanted to stick with that train of thought—felt a moral right to make Maeve regret her past choices—as he said it, he had a flash memory of his and his ex-wife, Celeste’s demand for unicorns at their wedding. It pained him to think too much about his own ego. The addictive amusement of demanding the impossible when money was no object. The certainty that life revolved without doubt around him. He could imagine being on tour saying, “I want to see my daughter now.” He thought of Celeste, cuddling her little dogs, saying, “Brodie let’s have a baby. The dogs wouldloveit!” And him balking. He could have shipped in Zoey for them to play with. He cringed at what he knew of his past self. It was all about the fun. Everything in his life at that time had been done for him. Even when he and Celeste realized they couldn’t stand each other, they’d simply handed the reins over to lawyers to deal with it. He couldn’t have looked after a child. He didn’t even know how to pay his own bills when his music career ended.
“All I wanted,” Maeve said, “was security—safety—and I could do that, just about, alone. I couldn’t trust what might happen if I told you. I didn’t know you.”
Brodie looked down at his hands for a moment, then he looked up, met her gaze and nodded slowly. He watched her shoulders drop a fraction. “But like you said before, you still don’t know me.”
“No—” her eyes were more steely now “—but I know myself better. What I’m capable of.”
Brodie thought about that for a moment. The only sound was the river rippling over the rocks. The last of the blood-red sunset giving the air an ethereal glow. He wondered if he could say the same about himself. Recalling that time of his life with Celeste was enough to make him curl in on himself, like he’d taken a hit on the football field.
Did he know himself? What he was capable of? He thought of his dad:One day, Brodie, you’ll grow up and see that life’s not just fun and games.
Maeve sat back in her chair, pulled her knees up, her bare feet flat on the edge of the seat. “I’m not looking forward to Martha’s reaction when she finds out. She’s been so good to me and I’ve, well, you know…”
Brodie ran his hand through his hair, wondering what his mom would say. He tried to imagine her getting annoyed, but all he could see was her face softening at the idea that she had a bona fide grandchild, and that it was Brodie of all people who had made it happen. “I think she’ll be pretty thrilled when she finds out.”
“I think she might be mad.”
He shook his head. “No, she’s not like that.” He thought of the times his mom would come and sit on his bed and say things like, “I know it’s tough, Brodie, but just because you don’t see eye to eye, it doesn’t mean you’re not special to your dad.” Brodie would know it was a lie but it made him feel better all the same. “And you’re more special than anything to me, all of you are.”
When his mom had gotten sick and they’d auditioned for the band, he wrote songs like there was no tomorrow. His pen couldn’t move quick enough on the paper. They poured out of him like therapy. Every fear and blank, cold terror for the future came out in those lyrics. Some people said it was the songs that won them the audition. They’d certainly made Brodie and Ethan millions. They were the soundtrack still to people’s weddings and funerals. An alchemy that he’d all but forgotten about.
“Iamsorry, Brodie, that I didn’t tell you,” Maeve said.
Brodie could barely meet the earnestness in her eyes. Her story was like listening to something very far away, a turning off the path of his life that, even if there had been a signpost, he would have shot past at full speed. He hated to admit it, but the more he thought about it, the more he was glad, in fact, that there was no signpost. But he couldn’t bring himself to say that out loud. Such a confession would undercut everything she had been through, all her fear and anxiety. And yet he felt like a fraud nodding in acceptance at what had seemed like a justification, and now her apology.
Really, all he could think was, given who he was eight years ago—he still cringed at his wedding pictures inPeoplemagazine with the carpet of scattered rose petals and the golden horse/unicorn-drawn carriage—he could not be certain that his daughter would be the inquisitive, strong, vivacious kid he had spent the day with.
His daughter.
He reached for a gulp of champagne. Then dangling the flute between his fingers, he said, “I’m sorry I didn’t return your calls.”
Maeve blinked as if taken by surprise then laughed. “I did get sent a copy of the album and a signed photo.”
He winced at the idea of it, pressing his thumb and forefinger to his forehead thinking of how often he’d just turned any and all admin over to his management. “I hope you ripped it up.”
“I saved it for Zoey.”
He nodded, embarrassed, pleased, confused. Then he sat forward in his chair and after a moment’s silence said, “You’ve done a really good job with her, much better than I could ever have done.”
And again, clearly caught by surprise, she said, “Thanks, Brodie. I really appreciate that.”
Their eyes met for a moment, hers holding a grateful smile, soft with unchecked vulnerability.
Brodie had enough experience to know he wasn’t imagining the tiny crackle that sparked between them like an ember falling from the fire, a sizzling awareness that shivered through him, but the moment he felt it, the moment he saw her feel it, Maeve turned sharply away, like she’d promised herself never to go there.
ChapterEighteen
