I flipped on my belly on the sofa, ready to kick my arms and legs like an angry toddler. What the hell had I done?
My face smashed into the cushion. I was stuck. I had no idea where Chance was. Or even who he was. No way to contact him. If the tabloids hadn’t tracked him down, I surely wasn’t going to have any luck.
But had they tried?
I snatched my phone from the coffee table. I typed in “Chance Tennessee musician.”
I found one guy born in 1925. And a whole lot of want ads for musicians to play in gigs, a “chance” to do something or another.
Why did he have to have a name that was a common word?
I dropped the phone to the floor.
If I couldn’t talk to Tina and Corabelle, then who? Frankie? I couldn’t imagine that conversation. Besides, he was outed with the new boy now. The last thing he needed was speculation that my swelling belly was HIS love child.
Tears threatened then. I was so not a crier, but I could feel them coming. Probably the hormones. A whole host of new horrible things were about to happen, if Buzzfeed videos were anything to judge by. Was I really going to get hemorrhoids and leaky boobs?
I had five-inch spike platforms! Designer dresses! Pink godforsaken dreadlocks!
I clutched a handful and resisted the urge to yank. Stupid hair. I couldn’t even afford to keep it up, and now I would have a baby?
I collapsed back on the sofa. I never wanted to leave the house again. But I had to pull myself together. I had a vague notion that I was supposed to eat certain things, but not others. And there was something about diet drinks. And hot tubs.
How did people know all this stuff?
I got up and paced the room, feeling like a lion in a cage. I needed help. Big-time help.
Then I paused by a framed photograph. It was taken when I was nine, before all the bad things happened. When my family was still a family, and not a bunch of cinders scattered everywhere. My mom, my dad, and — My mind froze on his name. Bry Guy. My little brother. He was seven in the picture, a mess as usual, hair everywhere and his collar crooked. He was a tornado, tearing through our lives with laughter and energy.
He’d died when I was ten. Nothing was ever the same after.
I switched my gaze to Dad. He lived in Florida now. I hadn’t gone to see him like he wanted. Probably a good thing, given what had happened.
And Mom. She lived here in San Diego. Despite the way our family blew apart after Bryan died, she was a good, solid person. She didn’t understand me and my crazy ways. But she would listen. She’d try to dress me in normal clothes and would shake her head at my hair.
But she’d be there.
I raced to my bedroom to put on my most normal outfit. I knew what I needed now.
I needed my mama.
Chapter 27: Chance
Now this was better. I could see the song lyrics in my head, how I would write out the scene.
The rolling hills were green and dotted with trees. The battlegrounds rose and fell in gentle slopes. Along a line, blue cannons on big spindle wheels stood sentry, clean and perfect like soldiers on the march.
The whole thing felt too pristine, too tidy for the bloodshed that went on here. A Civil War with spectators, northerners who came to the battlefield to witness the quick defeat of the backwater Confederates. Instead of witnessing a decisive victory, however, these voyeurs ended up running in smoky chaos when the battle raged like war does, with death and gunfire and devastation.
Only a few tourists walked the grounds at this early hour. The morning was cool, a light mist rising from the ground as if the ghosts of the old soldiers were getting up for a day’s work.
An intricate wood fence was pieced together like a puzzle of timbers, angular and neat. I couldn’t get past how idealized the battlegrounds had become. How long did it take before something so horrible became beautiful again? At least one hundred years, judging by this park.
I walked along the slope past the sturdy stone house with its blood orange-red door. My father had visited these places once, I knew. He told me stories about these fields when I was young, when he still lived with us.
I wondered if he had been back here since, if this was still a favorite place for him. After he left my mother, we got only a rare word back from him, although I know he sent her money. I saw the deposit slips once. But he did not try to see me, or Hannah, who was too young when he left to even remember him.
Water sluiced down a path, perhaps from a faulty irrigation line, or maybe just a hose left on. The deep, heavy footprint of a boot broke up the perfection of the path. I imagined it could be a relic from some soldier’s tread, or maybe even the mark of my own father’s passage here. I stared at it until an old man carrying a toolbox stopped to peer at me. His shoe matched the print.