Days Like This (8 page)

Casey reached out and took the
woman’s hand in hers.  “I want you to know that my husband is one of the good
guys.  I’ve known him since he was twenty, and I’d trust him with my life.  We’re
not living any kind of wild rock-and-roll lifestyle.  He hasn’t even been out
on tour in more than a year.  We live a quiet, normal life in the little rural
town where I grew up, in an old house just down the road from my dad’s dairy
farm.  She’ll have aunts and uncles and cousins nearby, and her grandparents
are right here in South Boston, so she’ll get the chance to see you when we visit
them.  And we have so much love to give her!  We have a strong marriage, but so
far, it’s been just the two of us.  Paige will make us a family.  I won’t lie
and say this hasn’t been a shock, because it has.  But we’re both thrilled
about Paige.  We’ll do right by her, I promise you.”

Rob and his daughter returned
from the kitchen, both of them silent, but some of the tension seemed to have
dissipated.  The little dog ran to Paige and danced in circles around her feet,
and she crouched down to rub its ears.  Atkinson glanced at his watch and said,
“If I can have just a few minutes of your time, Mr. MacKenzie, we have some
business to go over.”

Rob disappeared back into the
kitchen with the lawyer.  “Are those your things on the porch?” Casey asked the
girl.  Still playing with the dog, Paige nodded.  “Okay, then,” she said
briskly.  “We might as well start loading the car while your father’s tied up
with Mr. Atkinson.”

She stuck her head into the
kitchen, where her husband and the attorney were sitting at the table with a
thick manila envelope between them.  “Sorry to interrupt,” she said.  “Car
keys?”  Rob pulled them from his pocket and tossed them to her, and she blew
him a kiss.

Outside, on the porch, she eyed
the stack of boxes and said, “Is this everything?”

Paige nodded.  “Everything
else—all my mom’s stuff—went into storage.”

“Okay, then.  Grab a box, and let’s
get started.”

Together, they carried boxes,
suitcases, guitar, and bicycle down the long flight of stairs and up the hill
to where Rob had parked the Explorer.  Casey opened the tailgate and began
packing the rear cargo area tightly with boxes, while Paige squeezed the
suitcases and the guitar into the back seat.  They debated how to fit in the
bicycle, finally managed, after a couple of failed attempts, to maneuver it in
and close the tailgate. 

Brushing grit from the bicycle
tires off her hands, Casey said, “There. We did it!”

Paige shrugged, and for the first
time, Casey saw a bit of Sandy in the girl.  “You remind me a little of your
mother,” she said as they began walking back toward the house.  “I knew her,
years ago.  I liked her.”

“You knew my mom?”

“I did.  She and Rob dated, off
and on, for quite a while.”

After a moment of deliberation, Paige
blurted, “Were you the reason they broke up?”

The stricken look on the girl’s
face almost broke her heart.  “Oh, no, honey.  Rob and I have only been
together for a short time.  I was married to Danny Fiore for thirteen years.  I
knew your mom because we were all friends back then.  I don’t know why they
broke up.  If you want to know, you’ll have to ask your father.” 

They reached the house, began
climbing the stairs.  “I’m so sorry about your mother,” she said.  “I can
empathize with what you’re going through.  I lost my mom when I was fifteen,
and it was a terrible thing to live through.  I know this is scary for you,
because we’re strangers.  You don’t know us, and we don’t know you, and this is
a whole new world for all of us.  But we’re so glad to make you part of our
family.  We look at you as a gift, one that just dropped into our laps from out
of nowhere.  And those are the best kind of gifts.  The unexpected ones.”

In a flat tone, Paige said, “That’s
pretty much what he said to me.  My father.  In the kitchen.”

“I’m not surprised.  We’re
generally on the same wavelength.  Your dad’s a really good guy, Paige.  But he’s
scared to death right now, because he doesn’t have a clue how to be a father,
and he doesn’t want to screw it up and disappoint you.  Or himself.  Try to
give him a chance, and don’t expect him to always get it right.  Just remember
how hard he’s trying.”

Inside, Rob waited with the
lawyer and Lorraine Harriman, the manila envelope tucked into the crook of his
elbow.  Atkinson shook hands all around, wished them luck, and saw himself
out.  “You didn’t have to load it all without me,” Rob said when the attorney
was gone. 

“We are two strong, independent
women.  Fully capable of doing it for ourselves.  Right, Paige?”

Paige just made a soft snorting noise.

 “Well, then,” Rob said.  “I
guess we’re ready to roll.”

Paige said goodbye to Lorraine
and the boy, then picked up her purse and a bright pink leash from the couch.  “Come
on, Leroy,” she said.  The dog ran to her, and she snapped the leash onto his harness. 

Casey and Rob exchanged startled
glances. 

“The dog’s yours?” he said.

“You didn’t know?”  Terror, mixed
with defiance, filled her eyes.  Frantically, she said, “You won’t make me get
rid of him?  I’ve had him since he was a puppy, and he sleeps with me every
night.  He’s my best friend.  My only friend.”

Casey and Rob exchanged glances again
and held a silent conversation.  This would not go over well with Igor, Rob’s
cantankerous Siamese cat, who was cranky under the best of circumstances, and
who still, after all this time, hadn’t accepted Casey as part of his family. 

Without speaking a word, they
reached consensus. 
Oy
, she thought. 
This should be interesting.

“Of course we won’t,” Rob said. 
He crouched down to the dog’s level and held out a hand.  Leroy daintily lifted
a paw, and Rob shot Casey a quick grin.  “Hey, Leroy,” he said, taking the paw
and shaking it.  “Welcome to the family.”

They stopped at a McDonald’s
somewhere in the urban sprawl on Route 1 north of Boston for lunch, a bathroom
break, and a dish of water for Leroy.  Paige had very little to say, and once
they were back on the road, Casey attempted to draw the girl out.  “So you play
guitar?” she asked, turning in her seat to see the girl’s face.

Paige shrugged.  “Some.”

“Maybe you and your dad can play
together.  He’s an amazing guitarist.”

“I’ve heard him play.”

“Really?  Where?”

“MTV.  And Mom had record
albums.  I don’t live under a rock.”

Casey looked to Rob for help, but
he glanced at her and shrugged, his shoulders clearly conveying his message: 
Don’t
look at me.  I don’t know thing one about teenagers.

When she checked the back seat
again, Paige had put on her headphones.  With Leroy curled up beside her, his
head on her lap, she was pointedly ignoring them.  Casey looked at Rob.  He
glanced in the rearview mirror, picked up the manila envelope he’d tucked
beside his seat, and handed it to her.

The envelope contained a
notarized copy of Sandy’s will and other legal paperwork detailing custody
arrangements.  It also held an official copy of Paige’s birth certificate, her
school records, her medical records, her baptismal certificate.  Casey skimmed
them.  All the girl’s immunizations were up to date.  She’d had chicken pox at
age four, and impetigo at age seven.  Her tonsils had been removed when she was
nine.  She was a solid B student, had been a member of the school chorus in
middle school, and would be entering tenth grade when classes resumed in September. 
“Wow,” Casey said quietly.  “Atkinson was thorough.”

“If you dig deep enough,” he
said, “you’ll even find Sandy’s family medical history.”

“I’m impressed.”

“We’ll sit down and go over it
together when we have time.  It doesn’t have to be today.  I just wanted you to
get a quick look at it.”

“We really did this, didn’t we,
Flash?”

“We really did it, babydoll.”

She stuffed everything back into
the envelope and closed it.  After a few minutes of silence, he took one eye
off the road, shuffled through the cassettes in the center console, chose the
one he wanted, and handed it to her.  She opened the case and popped the tape
into the stereo, and Gene Pitney began singing in his unique, pained vibrato
about a town without pity.  She hid a smile, secretly tickled by the fact that
her diehard rocker husband was a closet Gene Pitney aficionado. 

Or maybe not so closeted,
considering that lately, he’d been bringing Gene to the regular weekend
get-togethers at her brother Bill’s house.  Most of the adults there, who were
all old enough to remember Pitney’s angst-y ballads from the dusty reaches of
childhood, found his choice of music perfectly acceptable.  Most of the kids,
on the other hand, were reduced to eye rolling and occasional emergency trips
to town so they could wash away the taste of Pitney with some speaker-blowing
Guns n’ Roses.

From the back seat, there was
absolute silence.  Casey glanced over at her husband, and he shot her a wink. 
She smiled, leaned back into soft leather upholstery, and they listened to oldies
the rest of the way home.

Sunlight spilled through the
gauzy curtain fluttering in the breeze from the open window.  At first, she
didn’t know where she was.  Confused, she blinked at the brightness, looked
around the room, saw the boxes piled in the corner.  And remembered.  The pain
hit her hard, low in the stomach.  Her mom was gone, life as she’d known it was
over, and she’d been shipped off to live with strangers in this old house at
the end of the earth.

She reached out for Leroy.  When
she didn’t find him, she rolled onto one hip and looked down the length of the
bed.  She was alone.  Panic clutched her insides.  Paige rolled out of bed and
walked to the window.  Outside, on the back lawn, her father’s wife was on her
knees, weeding the garden.  Leroy lay nearby, basking in the sunshine, his
leash hitched to a wooden stake that had been driven into the ground.

The panic receded, but her
stomach still hurt.  She threw on jeans and a tee shirt and padded barefoot to
the kitchen.  The refrigerator didn’t offer anything exotic or exciting.  She settled
for a bowl of Cheerios, rinsed the bowl and spoon when she was done and left
them in the sink.  Somebody in this house, probably Casey, was a serious neat
freak.  Wasn’t it usually the woman who kept the house in order?  Not that she
actually knew.  The closest she’d ever come to a normal household, with a
mother and a father, was all those TV sitcoms she’d grown up watching.

Paige glanced around the
kitchen.  Her Walkman had died yesterday.  Somewhere in this house, there had
to be a package of batteries.  They’d most likely be found in the junk drawer,
and even rich people had junk drawers.  Although this didn’t look like a rich
person’s house, she knew he—her father—was worth
beaucoup
bucks.  His
wife was probably even richer; Danny Fiore had been a huge star, and when he
died, all that money must have gone to his widow.  Why had they buried
themselves in this half-assed town, when they could have lived in Paris or London
or frigging Hollywood?  There were cows—
cows, for Chrissake!
—just up the
road.  The road itself wasn’t even paved.  Who in their right mind would choose
to live in a place like this?

She began opening drawers in
search of the holy grail.  After several false starts, she found what she was
looking for.  The drawer held an assortment of mismatched screwdrivers, a
pencil with a broken lead, a random selection of screws and nails and cup hooks,
a piece of sandpaper, slightly used, and beneath that,
voilà!
  An
unopened 4-pack of AA batteries.  She popped it open, dropped a couple into her
palm, and returned the pack to the drawer.

With her Walkman revived, Paige took
a long, hot shower, dressed in cut-off jeans and a Metallica tee shirt, and stepped
outside to see just what she’d gotten herself into.  She was immediately struck
by the quiet; it was a little creepy, the complete absence of car horns or sirens. 
Instead, there was the buzzing of insects and the annoying chirping of birds.

The grass was soft and springy
against the soles of her feet.  She circled the house, moving toward the only
other human who seemed to exist in this rural hell.  Casey was on her knees in
the garden, methodically murdering weeds and tossing them aside. The resulting
pile of dead soldiers reminded Paige of a photo her eighth-grade history
teacher had shown the class of one of the death chambers at Auschwitz, limp bodies
stacked like firewood.  Her father’s wife was wearing some kind of lame-ass
wide-brimmed straw hat.  Its pink cotton print straps, designed to tie under
the chin, instead fluttered loose around her face.

The two of them—her father and
his wife—had hovered over her last night like a pair of fussy old hens, pouring
on the niceness and the bogus concern until Paige was ready to scream.  Did
they really think they were going to win her over with pizza and fake smiles?  He
had made a huge deal out of helping her set up her stereo (as if she didn’t
know how to do it herself!), even going so far as to unearth a dusty set of
speakers that were twice the size of hers and could really bark.

She’d offered him a stilted
thank-you.  She didn’t even know what to call him. 
Dad?
  Not in this
lifetime. 
Father?
  Too snobby-rich-socialite. 
Rob?
  That seemed
far too friendly. 
Mr. MacKenzie?
  Utterly preposterous.  She’d finally
settled on the generic pronoun: 
Him.  He.  You.
  It seemed the most
appropriate choice.  Just because they shared DNA and a last name didn’t mean
he could waltz into her life and take it over, as if the first fifteen years
hadn’t meant a thing.  He was not her dad, and would never be; she’d gotten
along quite nicely for fifteen years without a father.  Rob MacKenzie was
nothing more than some random stranger who had once known her mother, and who
looked a little—okay, if she wanted to be honest, a lot—like Paige herself.  A
sperm donor.  They did not have any kind of father/daughter relationship, and
she intended to keep it that way.