From Scratch (23 page)

I look at the stage as the opening chords of “A Tragic Trajectory”—the final track off
Resolution
—surround me. The sea of people have parted a bit so I can see the top of Nick’s head, bent down, as I suspected. It hits me that while I may not know everything about him anymore, I still know him. He’s lived inside me since our world was one block wide and I thought clouds were meringue cookies floating in the sky. Our roots are so entwined they can’t be separated.

“Eventually Nick did let go and move on. With
me,
” Margaret says, recapturing my attention. Her eyes are alight with anger and hurt and sadness, emotions I recognize all too well—I’ve seen them in my own eyes enough times. “You just couldn’t stand to see that happen, could you? You had to sweep back in here and destroy everything I’ve rightfully earned.”

The bitterness in her voice settles like a brick in my stomach as I recall Nick confessing that he shouldn’t have entered a relationship with Margaret out of a sense of loyalty. I can’t blame her for her anger, and while not intentional, maybe I am a reason for her pain. I feel as if I owe Margaret an apology, but more than that, my gratitude. For her honesty, for being Nick’s anchor when I wasn’t strong enough, for helping him get here, to this point.

“I’m sorry,” I say, hoping she senses that it comes from a sincere, real place.

She shakes her head, as though rejecting it, and says, “You’ll run away again—it’s all you’re capable of. Except this time I won’t be there to pick up the pieces.” Shouldering past me, Margaret storms away.

Her words are aimed to strike at my heart, her fury about the situation acting as fuel, but I refuse to grant them that kind of power because she’s wrong. I’m not running anymore.

The music fades out, and Jason speaks into the microphone. “We’re going to play one more song in this acoustic set, then get back to what y’all came here for.” He taps a short beat on the bongos.

“You won’t find this track on
Resolution
because it’s not our story,” Tim adds, his fingers poised over the frets of the bass guitar. “That doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be told. So we’re going to hand this one off to our boy Nick to lead.”

Nick glances at Tim, an unspoken conversation passing between them, then rakes a hand through his hair and exhales a deep breath. “This song is called ‘Ripped Stitches.’ It was written during a particularly dark period in my life . . .” Nick clears his throat, his gaze scanning the audience. My skin prickles, and I swear he’s searching for me. “It’s about leaving people behind who don’t want to be left . . .”

Closing his eyes, Nick counts down from three and begins to play. The band joins in. A slow, somber melody reverberates around the House of Blues. Nick sings with such rawness and intensity I feel his voice running through every inch of my body.

I can’t do anything but stand there, listening as the lyrics, so full of sadness and betrayal, chain me to their honesty. The way they talk about abandoning the people we love the most. How every choice has a cost, and no matter how high the stakes, the consequences are great just the same.

A fist squeezes my chest as I remember clutching a suitcase and whispering good-bye to Nick while he slept, the moment before our paths moved in opposite directions.

The moment before I left him behind.

I fold the memory inside of me, tuck it away. Maybe someday it won’t hurt so much to remember. Maybe someday time won’t carry so much weight.

I understand finally what Margaret meant when she talked about competing with ghosts. Just as Nick’s ghost has haunted me these past five years, perhaps mine has lingered with him as well. Perhaps that’s the true motivation behind why Nick ended things with Margaret—we’re both still clinging to each other. At least I want that to be the case. I know now that running isn’t the same as moving on or letting go, and I have to believe that Nick hasn’t done the same either. Otherwise, where does that leave me?

I move back toward the stage and work my way to the front as the song ends. The crowd roars with cheers and applause. Nick gives a slight bow, then lifts the strap over his head and rests my father’s old guitar in the stand beside his stool. He exits off the stage, and I intercept him when he steps into the crowd. His face is composed, unreadable as a label-less can.

“Why didn’t you tell me you gave it all up?” I ask. “Why the half-truths?”

Nick remains silent, his deep blue eyes studying mine, his mouth a thin line. “Would it have mattered?”

I consider his question. It occurs to me that until recently I wasn’t in a place to hear him, even if he had told me. “No, and it still doesn’t because that’s not what this is about.”

A muscle twitches in his jaw. “Oh? What
is
it about, Lillie? I don’t even think you know.”

My throat constricts, but I press on. “It’s about how it always comes back to you and me . . . how we never really left each other behind.”

Shaking his head, Nick turns and walks to a pair of double doors at the side of the stage.

The hope starts to drain out of me.

Hope is dangerous that way. Once it sparks, it grabs hold and devours everything it touches until it’s the only thing keeping you breathing. To put it out would mean death, swift and absolute, but without it what’s the point of living at all?

I cling to the small sliver of hope still flickering within me and follow Nick into a corridor lined with framed concert posters. “Now who’s running away?”

Nick stops in front of the bathrooms and faces me. “What do you want, Lillie?”

“Why didn’t you find me?”

“What?”

“In Chicago,” I say.

“Because I went there expecting the girl I remembered. Who I discovered was someone else.” He glances at my bare left ring finger. “It’s been so easy for you—new job, new
life
.” His voice is controlled, but I hear traces of anger simmering underneath.

“You think it was easy? It took everything I had to piece myself back together. There was no one there to catch me if I fell. I was alone, left to figure out how to navigate a whole new world of firsts on my own,” I say, remembering when I moved into my tiny apartment with only my name on the contract, scoured job sites for positions I was in no way qualified for, ventured out into a city that was now my home but in no way felt like it.

He stares at me, his gaze impenetrable. “Yet you were able to move on so quickly.”

I shake my head. “Drew and I . . . We’re no longer engaged . . . because the thing is . . .” I take a deep breath. The truth is messy and scary and sometimes it hurts, but I must tell it, trust that the risk is worth it. “I love you, Nick.”

There it is: the bravest thing I’ve ever said.

His eyes, his expression, it all hardens. “You don’t even know who you are. How could you know what you feel?”

“You’re wrong. I may still be figuring myself out, but not this,” I say. “Loving you is the biggest, most honest thing I know. It’s consumed my whole life.”

Nick’s quiet a moment. When he finally speaks, his voice is a cold nothingness. “Listen, Lillie, if I’ve learned anything in the last five years it’s that I have to be in charge of my own happiness. I have to make choices that are good for me. I know exactly who I am now, unlike you, and I won’t fall back into old habits. I won’t repeat my same mistakes.”

At his words, my stomach drops, but then I realize it’s actually my heart, which is so much heavier and more fragile. I watch as it shatters at my feet, strewn across the floor. Everything inside me is anguish.

Nick turns and stalks back down the hallway toward the main room, without hesitating, without glancing over his shoulder.

As if I mean nothing to him—as if I’ve
never
meant anything to him.

TWENTY-FIVE

THERE’S A SPOT
in my father’s backyard near the fence line, where if I lie on my back, feet facing the house, it’s as though the trees touch the sky. They stretch and stretch and stretch like taffy until it’s impossible to decipher where the branches end and the clouds begin. There, I can knock on the floor of heaven. There, time stands still.

Sometimes, back in Chicago, when it was late at night and I couldn’t sleep, I would squeeze my eyes shut and imagine I was in that spot again, floating toward the sky, the leaves haloed in light. Curling my fingers into the sheets, I’d pretend the soft cotton was damp grass and the noisy traffic passing on the street outside our apartment was the next-door neighbor boy with the blue eyes and crooked grin strumming a Taylor acoustic guitar in his own backyard. I’d breathe in deep and convince my senses that the lingering greasy odor of Thai delivery was the scent of my father’s famous chicken and dumplings drifting out the kitchen window.

Because if I returned to that place in my head, then nothing had changed.

I visit that spot now, minutes after driving my father home from the hospital. Kicking off my ballet flats, I lie down, wiggling my toes in the sun-bleached grass, and stare up at the sky, waiting for that floating feeling to overtake me, for time to pause. My body feels heavy, my limbs filled with crushing disappointment. Everything is different, lost. The trees have been trimmed, no longer climbing high, some of the branches stripped bare and reduced to stubs. I can see the side of Nick’s old house through the gaps in the leaves and hear the impostors that are the Rosenbloom family discussing their choices for the upcoming Oscar nominations on the covered veranda.

That’s the bitter thing about loss; there’s no going back to what once was, and nothing stays the same after.

All I can do is move forward, but how am I supposed to do that when everything inside me wishes it could rewind, erase my mistakes, forge a new path where I never left and my father is healthy and Nick is still mine?

I close my eyes. The events of last night dance across my eyelids in a constant loop.
I won’t repeat my same mistakes.
Nick may have forgiven me, but he won’t forget. Only now do I fully comprehend the meaning behind the lyrics of “Ripped Stitches,” when he sang about choices and consequences. Me leaving, our history, all the pain, it will forever stand between us. How could I have been so foolish to assume otherwise?

I wonder how many songs Nick has written with the blood of our failure; if the process has healed him. I wonder if channeling all his hurt and anger and betrayal into every verse and bridge and chorus, purging our history, allowed him to let go of us as thoroughly as he did. If only I could do the same.

If only I wanted to.

LATER IN THE
day, I rummage under the bed for my old memento box, dust motes flying in the air. I can’t seem to find it anywhere. Did my father toss it into the garbage? Panic wells inside me, but then I spot it shoved in a corner by the headboard, the word “Life” written in cursive on the side. Grabbing the scissors off the desk, I slice through the duct tape, fold back the flaps, and turn the box over, scattering the contents across the floor.

It’s funny, most people would consider this stuff sentimental junk, but these items were my most prized possessions, and in a way, they still are. Each one carries a mark—the splotches on a stack of photographs from being displayed directly in the sun’s path; the frayed edges of my newspaper columns because I was too lazy to cut them out properly; the chips in the guitar picks from an overzealous musician; the curled corners and creases in the cover of a small spiral notebook from years of shoving it into apron pockets, the pages filled with recipes, some unfinished.

With my back resting against the foot of the bed, I sift through it all, remembering. At some point, I hear the floorboards creak. My father stands in the doorway, his salt-and-pepper hair sticking up in weird directions. He’s wearing his usual uniform. The sleeves are rolled up on his ratty plaid shirt. His skin still has a sallow quality but the dark bruises have yellowed a bit.

“Dad, you should be in bed sleeping. Dr. Preston’s orders.”

“Nonsense. Doc ain’t nothing but a dream crusher,” he says, stepping into the room. “I’m healthier than asparagus. Besides, it’s my ticker that’s messed up, not my legs.”

I sigh. My father’s been home from the hospital less than four hours and already he’s up to his old tricks. I even caught him sneaking a bowl of peanut brittle ice cream for lunch, claiming it was included in the list of soft foods he’s approved to eat. At least he tried to appear sheepish while I searched the house, ridding it of all junk food and hidden stashes.
Perhaps some things do stay the same,
I think as my father settles beside me on the floor.

“That’s an oldie,” he says, tapping the photograph in my hand.

I nod, smiling at the skinny, knobby-kneed versions of Nick and myself sitting on a mound of haystacks, my lips pressed against his cheek. A sign reading
14TH ANNUAL OAK HILL CORN MAZE
hung from a gnarly tree in the background. Even with the hollowed-out pumpkin perched upon his head, Nick’s hair ran wild beneath the makeshift hat. Our shoulders glowed golden in the afternoon sun.

“You were so in love with that boy, even back then.”

I swipe my thumb across Nick’s grinning face. “Yeah, I was.” I am. I think we both know I never stopped. Even when I tried to push those feelings away, they always came back, more consuming than before. I hoped Nick hadn’t stopped loving me either, that he could see past the worst parts of me, but just as I was wrong about so many other things, I was wrong about that, too. Now I have no choice but to accept it as punishment for my actions, for running away.

“I’m glad you stayed close with him,” I say, but more than that I’m glad Nick was there for my father when I wasn’t.

“It wasn’t always like that. For a long time after you left, the boy wouldn’t show his face anywhere, but then he did some growing on his own. Now I can’t seem to get rid of him.”

His words make my heart feel as though it’s been ripped open. While I was out there trying to discover the real me, Nick was actually doing it. Now it’s too late for us. As much as I want Nick to belong to me, people aren’t items on a grocery shelf—they can’t be owned.

My father must be able to tell I don’t know how to respond because he says, “If my brain’s working right, I think you threw a terror of a tantrum after I snapped this picture.”

“That’s because you wouldn’t let me do the barrel ride when you gave Nick and Wes permission.”

“Baby girl, all the barrels were occupied at the time. I told you to wait in line for the next available one, but you weren’t hearing any of it.”

“I was seven. What did you expect?”

My father laughs, his eyes crinkling in the corners. “You’ve always been too stubborn for your own good.”

I nudge his side. “Who do you think I inherited that trait from?”

“Don’t be pointing fingers at me. I’m the very definition of open-minded.”

“Whatever you say, Dad.” I rest my head against his shoulder.

My father picks up the spiral notebook and flips through it, his fingers dancing over the pages. “I remember this. You carried it around everywhere, always scribbling little notes or some such in it. Do you ever plan on finishing some of these?” He’s paused on a French onion soup recipe that’s only half complete. I got frustrated figuring out the correct sherry-to-cognac ratio to balance out the broth and gave up on it.

“I don’t know. Maybe.”

He smiles, wistful but also sad. “You’re so much like her—your mother. When inspiration struck, there was no standing in her way. She’d jot down recipes on napkins, cracker boxes, old egg cartons, anything she could get her hands on.”

I tense. “Dad, I don’t want to talk about her.”

“Even when you run your mouth off. She used to do that when she got flustered or annoyed at something. And the way you blush when you’re embarrassed . . .”

My stomach twists. “I think we should get you back in bed.” Straightening up, I reach for his arm, but he waves me off.

“Now, listen close, baby girl. You listening?” My father brushes the hair off my forehead. “You’ve got the best parts of your mother inside you, but you’ve also got some of me in there, too. It’s what separates you from her. Don’t ever forget that. Promise me you won’t forget.”

“I promise,” I say, automatic, as I’m reminded of the day I discovered my mother’s peach cobbler recipe, when I vowed something similar.

A vow I broke.

I wonder if I’ll break this one, too.

For several moments, we’re silent, lost in thought. I hear the rooster clock crowing downstairs, familiar, comforting. Until now I never realized how much I missed that annoying sound.

“I’m sorry I abandoned you,” I say after a while, my eyes welling with tears.

“Don’t go apologizing for that. You needed to get out there, do some searching on your own for a bit,” my father says, setting the notebook aside. “Besides, you dropped a trail of crumbs when you left. I always knew you’d follow them home someday, even if it did take a little prodding from me to get you moving.”

“I didn’t. Still, I wish you would’ve told me the truth when you suffered the first episode. You shouldn’t have kept something like that from me.”

“I thought I could handle it on my own, and I didn’t want to worry you.”

I shake my head. “And your scheduled bypass operation and cough? Why were you so evasive about all that?”

My father sighs and says, “Parents make mistakes, baby girl. I’ve been thinking about what you said the other morning in the hospital, and I promise I’m going to try harder, do better. That situation with the ice cream was a minor slipup.”

“Sure it was,” I say, concealing the break in my voice with an attempt at a laugh.

“Hey, now.” He cups my face, wiping away the wetness with his thumb. “Someone’s got to keep you on your toes. Otherwise, you’ll get rusty as an old tuna fish can.”

This time I do laugh, and it fills me with a weightless sensation.

My father chuckles softly to himself like he does when he’s musing. “It seems like yesterday you were no taller than the counter. I remember how you used to dress up as the Chef Boyardee man, but my old white coat was too big on you and the chef’s hat didn’t fit your head, so it was always dropping into your eyes.”

I smile, remembering how I would stand on a step stool gesturing with a wooden spoon as though I was the conductor of our kitchen, bossing my father around and dictating recipe instructions to him.

“Now look at you,” he says. “All grown up with a master’s degree and a career of your own. You’re strong and beautiful and independent. You don’t need me protecting you anymore, but sometimes it’s easy for me to forget that. You’ll have to forgive your old man for his stupidity.”

“I’ll always need you, Dad,” I say, squeezing his knee. “Always.”

He covers my hand. The calluses on his palm scratch against my knuckles. “I know that, but I also know you’ve got a life to return to. It was unfair of me to pull the rug out from under you like that. If Chicago is where you want to be, then I’ll get Ernie to run things until I arrange for something more permanent. Just promise to visit every now and again. But don’t even think about bailing on the Upper Crust. Sullivan Grace will have my hide if you do.”

“I’m not going anywhere, and I’m not bailing. The only place I want to be is right here with you.”
Which is where I should have been all along.

My father frowns, the lines around his mouth and eyes deepening. “What about that boyfriend of yours and the big promotion?”

I bite my lip. “I sort of quit my job and broke up with Drew . . .” Now I don’t know what I’m going to do. All I know is the life I had planned in Chicago isn’t what I want.

My father is quiet a second. Then pats my leg and says, “You know sometimes you have to lose who you are before you can find who you are. Even if that means starting from scratch, making a whole new life for yourself here in Dallas—with or without the diner—I know you’ll figure out how to get yourself found again.”

I gulp in some air, fighting back a sob. Somehow my father always knows the exact words I need to hear. I don’t know what my future looks like, but that’s okay.
I’m
okay. “I love you, Dad. So much.”

“Love you, too, baby girl.” My father wraps an arm around me and kisses the top of my head. I hug him as if I’m five again, so tight he may burst. The soft fabric of his shirt smells like hash browns, even though it’s been washed since he wore it last.

“Easy there,” he says, loosening my hold. “I ain’t no Tonka truck anymore. Now get going. You need to practice for the Upper Crust. Second place isn’t in this family’s vocabulary.”

I smile as a tear slips down my cheek. Right then, I’ve never been more thankful for my father’s antics and stubborn ways, for bringing me back here. Despite how jumbled everything is in my mind, I’m also overcome with certainty that I’m finally on the right path.