Thick Love (Thin Love, #2)(32)

Happy anniversary, Ransom.

“You too, baby.”





7





There was music. Always. Childhood memories, dreams that reoccurred over the years, every happy and miserable moment of our lives in Nashville always included music. Like that time Bobby, my mom’s elderly boss, the closest thing to a grandmother I’d ever had, decided to throw me a tenth birthday party. The kids at my school had been scared of my size and my quick temper, so only a few of the guys from my junior high football team showed up. Mom spent a solid hour apologizing to me, trying to pretend there weren’t tears in her eyes over the apparent slight. Bobby and Mark, my mother’s gay best friend, had to drag her out of the kitchen to tell her to suck it up, that she was far more upset than I was. We spent the rest of the party camped around the piano singing songs about farting and diarrhea and other gross boy shit that Mark remembered from his times at Lacrosse camp. It had been the best birthday I remembered having, ever.

Or, when I went an entire summer in pain every single night because my limbs were growing too quickly, that damn Hale DNA hurrying to make me like my father before I was ready, and Mom lying next to me while Mark or his partner Johnny rubbed peppermint oil on my throbbing legs. She sang to me then, or hummed throaty and low. That was the summer she taught me Ava Maria in Italian. Anytime I can’t sleep, that’s the tune that calms me, makes me remember that I had a mother and two adopted fathers who cared enough about me to lose sleep, who wore themselves out to make sure I was in as little pain as possible .

There was always music. Even in the most desperate, unbearable moments. When I got tossed from my school in eighth grade for losing my temper and sending that bastard Mikee Sibley through the glass window for trying to attack a girl who was barely thirteen, my mom sat me down in front of the piano, telling me that the keys would be my therapy, that the notes would blast away the hopelessness.

Music had worked for that angry, fourteen-year-old I’d been. It had worked for me since then, but I had let the accident, my guilt, distract me from my therapy and had not played for over a year.

I’d tried it, with Mom’s insistence, when I could not silence that voice I thought was Emily, when I sank too heavy in the grief that tightened around my heart every single day since I last saw my girlfriend, Mom forced me in front of the piano, or plunked her vintage Gibson guitar in my arms, begging me to play. It had become common for me to pacify her by just doing what she said, and so I’d tried, pushing a smile onto my face, gripping the neck of that guitar tight and playing every song I knew until my mother’s expression didn’t look so tight. Until I thought her worry had eased.

But it wasn’t real. Music stopped working for me. I missed it almost as much as I missed Em.

It was not a surprise to hear music playing as I approached the lake house that Sunday. But it was not only my mother’s raspy alto singing “I Dreamed a Dream” that I heard as I walked inside. There was another voice, this one higher, wobbling, sounding scared as my mother picked up the bridge. It wasn’t bad, but nothing about those voices sounded in harmony. One was trying too hard, the other was overpowering.

And for some reason, I cared.

They didn’t stop playing when I walked through the door and leaned against the wall to watch Mom and Aly at the piano. Mom’s fingers moved effortlessly over the keys, her gaze directed at Aly’s shy face, how she stood so stiff and straight that I was surprised she didn’t complain about an aching back later.

I’d expected our usual Sunday lunch, after two weeks with Dad and the team on away games out of state. I’d missed the Little Monster and my mom’s comfort food, and I was anxious to find out if Aly had actually shown up for the job. So, seeing Aly there with her back to me, standing next to Mom at that baby grand, and realizing that she had been the one singing, had me stopped cold in my tracks. Just as shockingly, the living room was clutter free and Koa’s large assortment of toys and books that were generally scattered around the floor and stuffed among the leather sofa cushions were neatly organized in small bins against the play room wall. And what was this? The floors had been cleaned—no shoe marks or creative kid hieroglyphics from markers, or stray smears of Play-Doh anywhere to be seen. Best of all, my mother’s skin was no longer pale, and the dark circles under her eyes, while still there, were much fainter.

Amazed, I stepped further in, right as Aly struggled through a high note that was clipped off suddenly when she noticed me standing in the entryway.

“Ransom,” my mother said, pushing back from the piano to meet me in the living room. She’d been clingy lately, behavior I’d chalked up to her pregnancy and hormones working their evil juju on her, but my practice schedule and upcoming mid-term prep had kept me in the city for longer than normal. It hadn’t just been missed Sunday dinners—it had been almost two weeks since I’d seen her at all. Still, my mother acted like she hadn’t seen me in months and I leaned down so she could wrap her arms around my neck and give me a peck on the cheek. Then she took my head between her hands and gave my face the once-over. “You look tired.” I didn’t like her frown or how she kept her open palms on my cheeks like she needed to examine me for any expression that would tell her I wasn’t okay.

“Mom, I’ve been practicing like a demon and studying hard.”

“Please,” she said, finally lowering her arms. “I know what goes on in that team house.” She cocked her eyebrow and frowned. “There was a reason I never stayed the night with your father when he lived there.”