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It’s how I feel nothing as I drive away.
***
“He’s good,” I hear myself say, lost in my thoughts. “Jamie’s always good.”
There must be something in my voice, because we’re both quiet for a bit.
“I got those guitars in the storage,” says Bill finally.
I clear my throat, unsure how to approach this. “You talk to Jamie at all before I got here?”
He shrugs, swinging his gaze around on me. “Not too much. He said you were feeling pretty burned out and needed a place to land for the summer.”
I nod.
“I kinda thought you might have other issues,” he says.
“What other issues?” I come to a stop at a crossroad, checking the map on the dashboard.
“I don’t get around online the way my daughters do, but I know taking a break means rehab.”
I laugh, not offended. Most certainly, the minute it gets out that I’m taking a break, rumors to that effect will start swirling. I’m sure one of the gossip rags will dig up a photo of me snapped in a vulnerable moment while I was on my way to get coffee and pretend it’s me having a meltdown in the street instead of just being un-showered and caffeine deprived.
“Nah, don’t do drugs,” I say. “Not my thing. Gets in the way of work, and I got too many contracts to mess around.”
He clears his throat, tapping his foot. “Good. Keep it on the straight and narrow.”
There’s something in his voice that makes me pause before I answer. I glance sideways, and he’s back to gazing out the window. Was that a hint of sadness? I wait, wondering if he’ll elaborate. He stays quiet the rest of the way to the storage unit. When we park, he’s out of the car and reaching for the cane he brought with him. I take my time, following him between the metal buildings.
“This one,” he says, pointing at a rolling door labeled thirty-eight. “Code is four, twenty-eight, four.”
Crouching, I tap the code in and roll the door up to reveal a little unit packed almost to the ceiling with paths carved in it. All along the back wall sits at least a half dozen guitar cases.
“Wow,” I say before I can bite it back.
Bill laughs, stepping inside and hitting the light switch. “Yeah, I might have a little problem with throwing shit out. I just didn’t want to let go of any of the girls’ things as they got older.”
“You kept everything?”
He leans on his cane, eyes narrowed. “Yeah, every Barbie, every plastic horse.”
I scan the cardboard boxes stacked along the wall. Everything is labeled, black Sharpie scrawled across the side. The closest box says: Sabrina, fourth grade, coats. I shift it to the side, revealing another. Serena, tea sets, second grade. My stomach lurches. Bill really loves his kids, and it’s making me miss my mom. That wound will always hurt, even after a decade and a half. I’m just…stuck, forever living in a post-Mom world, where things like tea sets in boxes hurt a little bit.
“Here it is.”
I turn to find Bill shoving a few boxes aside and pulling one labeled Scott Iron—that’s Jamie’s dad—out. Stepping through the piles, I help him set it on a folding table. He leans on his cane with one elbow and opens the box with the other hand. Inside is a pile of photographs, a baseball glove, a stack of records, and a baseball with a signature scrawled across it.
“Scott didn’t keep much,” he rumbles, taking out a collector’s card.
He holds it out. I take it, turning it over. It’s a Babe Ruth reproduction.
“It’s nice,” I say. “How’d you end up with Scott’s things?”
“He came over to the house a lot when the girls were real little. Left stuff over here and there. When he and his wife split up, I think he was real lonely. Maybe we were both lonely.”
I haven’t been divorced myself, but I wrote a divorce album for an unnamed star whose philandering husband stepped out on her. It was about anger and revenge, about doing better now that he’s gone, but these bits and pieces aren’t like that. They’re leftovers from something happy, resigned more than anything else. Shreds of the family Jamie had, the one he rarely talks about. He’s always putting on a brave face. Maybe that’s why I want to work so hard.
We both have struggles, me and Jamie, deep down. A bit of darkness handed to us by others, brought along in our suitcases when we came to Nashville seventeen years ago.
