She turned to me, an incredulous look on her face. “Baby, you did. You had this amazing faith back then. You wrote this song.”
The memory thundered back at me. I stared at the paper, realizing that this was the handwriting of my youth. I’d written this after my father left, not long after. It was the last of its kind, as I moved into other kinds of music after, blues and classic rock.
“You remember it now?” she asked gently.
I nodded.
She reached out for me again, restoring the bridge between me and Hannah. “Hannah loved that song. When you turned away from the church, we would pray you would come back, that you would find your faith again.”
I held the paper in my hands. I could remember those days. We had a little band at the church, and that was where I first got interested in guitar. The first song I ever plucked out was “This Little Light of Mine.”
What a long hard fall it had been.
Chapter 51: Jenny
I thought about the funeral as I sat on the plane, looking out the window. The church ladies, Chance’s song, and the way so many people came to pay tribute to the sweet, silly girl I would only know from pictures and cell phone videos.
Chance ducked beneath the overhead bins. He’d sold his truck after all and boxed up his essentials. He said he was ready to try out California. He’d promised his mother to come back in a month to see her and sort Hannah’s belongings and decide what to keep and what to donate.
She also gave him a box of Grateful Dead posters and the things she’d taken from his room.
Chance was still angry at his father for not showing up, not responding to anything anyone sent him about Hannah. I could tell he wasn’t going to let it go, and somewhere down the line, we’d be dealing with this man who’d failed his family.
But we were heading home. Chance was going to live with Jazz, the drummer for the Sonic Kings, at first. We were going to try dating like normal people, despite the grain of sand that was hanging around from our beach encounter. Get to know each other before making any big decisions about weddings or permanent locations.
My phone buzzed. I glanced at the flight attendants to see if I still had time to look at it before they asked us to power everything down. They wandered along the aisle, checking overhead bins.
I pulled up the message. It was just a notification from the pregnancy site I’d joined. Attached was a picture of a strange sea creature with a long tail. The text read “Congratulations! You are five weeks pregnant. Your baby has reached the embryo stage and now resembles a tadpole.”
I looked at the picture again. Gross.
“What’s that?” Chance asked, dropping into the seat next to me. “It looks like an alien.”
“It’s your kid,” I said, bumping my shoulder against his. “It’s supposed to be a tadpole.”
“We’re having a frog?”
I thumped him again. “It’s got your good looks, then.”
He laughed. “I can see how this relationship is going to go.”
He bent down and nudged his nose into my jaw. “So when are we going to see the doctor to get the green light again?”
We hadn’t been having sex since I was worried after the time I bled.
“Tuesday,” I said.
“I can’t wait for Tuesday,” he said.
“You know what I can’t wait for?” I asked him.
“What?” He pressed his lips against the hair over my ear.
“All the Tuesdays. This one and the next and the next, forever.”
His arm came around me. “Let’s take them one at a time.”
Epilogue
The wedding was undoubtedly the smash hit of the season.
The Sonic Kings blared from the canopied stage where the ceremony had taken place. With Chance’s help, they were sounding better and their set list had a lot more punch.
Waiters carrying trays of champagne moved through the guests, nothing outlandish, maybe one hundred or so. There were a few hunky actors in the crowd, and certainly some bombshell-beautiful actresses. A few necessary industry types. But mostly, they were family and friends, ready for the big toast.
I felt bulky with my six-month belly preceding me as I moved between tables. Chance took my hand and waved away the waiters who approached. He still wasn’t interested in drinking, not even for show.
I was definitely nervous. After going to work for Tellmund, I’d been managing two of his most problematic A-list actors’ Twitter and Facebook accounts. Because I was back to going to premieres, often at movies way bigger than Frankie’s were, the press had taken notice when my “bump” appeared.
Another set of stories erupted and I was the subject of the hashtag #guessthebabydaddy until finally Chance asked Dylan Wolf to congratulate us on his Twitter account, which went viral. And it all settled down.
Chance glanced back at me. “You ready for this?”
I nodded.