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Chapter One


Kevin - 1991


It was cold for mid-August in Kentucky. I was sitting in the old chapel on the edge of the property of my father’s camp, staring up at the silhouette of the cross that hung high in the cathedral-style window, back-lit by a starry night sky. I leaned against the pew back and stared up at the stars. I ran my hand over the cordless phone, which was only just barely in range of the base in the kitchen, and I waited for it to ring.

Behind me, the chapel doors creaked open, and I turned around.

Caroline Watson stood in the doorway, her thick, curly blonde hair pale in the moonlight that came through the window. She hugged the door, her cheek pressed against it. “Your mom said you were out here,” she said. “I just stopped by to see how you were doing. I heard about your Dad. How is he?”

“He’s…” I paused. I didn’t know what to say about my Dad. What do you say when someone you love has cancer, and they’re dying, and they didn’t tell you until the last minute and all you can do is show up in the final days to say goodbye? I felt like he’d stolen time from me. I knew he’d done it to protect me, but at the same time… I felt sort of ripped off.

Caroline walked across the chapel, her sneakers squeaked a little on the stone floor, and she set herself on the pew beside me, sitting on her hands daintily. “When did you get back in town?” she asked.

“Yesterday,” I said. I could barely believe it’d only been twenty-four hours that I’d spent back in Irvine. Somehow, hospital visits made time drag by so much slower until twenty-four hours seemed like hundreds of hours. I’d only just got home the day before, but I already felt like I’d never left.

She leaned back so her hips were just on the edge of the pew seat, her neck supported by the back of the pew, staring up at the stars, too. “You look good,” she commented. “Tan. How’s Florida?”

The life I’d started to build in Orlando was seeming more and more distant by the hour.

“Good,” I answered.

“I heard you’re working for Disney?”

I nodded, “Playing characters in the themepark. It pays pretty well.” My fingers tapped against the plastic shell of the phone. “Pays the rent while I go out on auditions, at least,” I added.

“Anything promising?” Caroline asked, glancing over.

I shrugged, “I had a couple callbacks lined up this weekend, but --” I let the sentence drop. Obviously those were going no where. I wasn’t even in Florida to go to the callbacks, much less land the spots.

“Any women?”

I actually had been seeing a girl, the girl whose call I was waiting on. I tightened my grip on the phone instinctively. Kristin Willits was a co-worker at Disney, and she’d helped me prepare for several of the auditions I’d done in the last few months. She was a great girl, funny, really pretty, and she believed in me and encouraged me in my dreams. But I felt funny telling Caroline about her. Mostly because Caroline was the girl that Kristin was replacing.

I shrugged.

“It’s okay, Kevin,” Caroline said, turning her eyes back to the stars, “I understand. You moved away and on. I didn’t expect you to hold a candle for me forever.”

But I knew somewhere, deep down, that she had - just like every other person in the town had. We’d been the “it couple” of Irvine for five years, everyone had just expected us to end up together. They’d already envisioned our future for us, and it was good. It was nice. It was predictable and comfortable and all the things that a good country boy and a good country girl should expect from a marriage. It was everything that both of us should have wanted, everything that Caroline did want.

I was the problem. I was the rebellious force that just couldn’t be happy to follow in my family’s footsteps, settled and comfortable in Irvine, Kentucky. I’d been raised a dreamer, fascinated by stories of faraway lands and foreign customs and the glamour of rock and roll. I wanted more than Irvine could give me, more than just a house and a couple kids in the yard. More than just Caroline.

But then again, it didn’t seem much like it was gonna matter in the end what I wanted out of life. Every hour, my future seemed like it became deeper engraved in stone as my father’s condition worsened.

I glanced over at Caroline and realized that I’d been sitting in silence with her for almost five minutes. She was still staring up at the stars through the window, just listening to the silence. The sound of our breathing echoed through the chapel. It was comforting. Her presence in general was comforting. Caroline had always had this sort of mystic air about her that made me feel at ease, like she just radiated hope. I missed that feeling, I realized.

Kristin actually reminded me a little bit of Caroline in a lot of ways. They both had thick, curly blonde hair and bright eyes and wide smiles. They both had contagious personalities. They both believed in me and built me up emotionally. In fact, when I’d first started seeing her, I’d thought of Kristin as “Florida-Caroline”, the replacement to something I had at home that I knew would never bridge the gap.

I took a deep breath, “You’d like Florida,” I told her.

Caroline shook her head, “It’s too humid,” she answered. “Remember when we went there in eighth grade, on that summer trip to Disney?” she shook her head again. “My hair looked like a French poodle.” She held her arms out to indicate how wide her hair had gotten. I laughed because I remembered the trip well. It was only a slight exaggeration to the truth: her hair had been a mess, but I’d thought it was beautiful.

I’d had my first kiss on that trip, in the vending machine room of the hotel. Caroline had gotten up for a midnight snack and I’d been getting ice in a bucket for a prank we were about to pull on one of the other boys in my room and we’d run into each other. Caroline had been wearing a pair of pajamas with tiny hearts on them and I’d been in sweats and an old Wildcats tee and we’d stood there, the bucket filling with ice cubes and the vending machine groaning as it produced a bag of pretzels. I was on the JV football team that year and Caroline was a cheerleader and we’d talked a couple times maybe before, but that night she was electric and there was something about those purple and pink pajamas and the smell of her Love’s Baby Soft body spray that made me want her bad and we’d made out until ice cubes ran over the edge of the bucket and clattered to the floor.

Basically, we’d been a couple ever since.

The irony of the fact that even my Kentucky dreams had been born in Florida was not lost on me. I’d long thought of Florida as the place where Dreams Came True, which was why I’d gone there instead of Nashville or New York or Los Angeles to find the roots of my career. There was just something about Florida, some feeling that permeated my soul whenever I went there. Like my Destiny there and I could feel it.

“I probably won’t be going back,” I said in a resigned tone.

Caroline looked over at me. “Why not?” she asked.

“Well, just, you know. If -- when -- my dad dies, my mother can’t run this place herself,” I said, “And it means too much to him to just let this place go.” I sighed. I looked around at the rafters, the vaulted ceiling stretching away into the dark. “This place is home.”

We sat in silence for a few minutes, neither speaking a word. I thought about the camp and the horses and the people who visited each summer, the people who rented out cabins and hiked through the trails that wound through the woods around the property, and went fishing in the river. I thought about the responsibility that I had as a son to my father to protect the home he’d built for us over the years and the ramifications of fully taking on my father’s legacy. Maybe I would end up being everything that everyone expected of me after all, I thought.

My heart felt heavy. I leaned forward, running my hands over my forehead and into my hair. “I just wish things were different,” I said thickly, and emotion built up in me faster than I expected it to. Suddenly, I was struggling to hold back tears. “I just wanted -- I wanted a chance --” I shook my head, “It’s not fair,” I said childishly, “He’s just forcing this responsibility on me. I’m still just a kid, you know? I’m still just a kid and he’s going to die. I’m not supposed to go through this yet. He’s supposed to live longer. It’s not fair.”

Caroline moved to my side, kneeling on the pew beside me. She ran her hand down my back. “I know, I’m sorry, Kevin,” she whispered. “I wish I could fix it.” Caroline’s fingers massaged my spine gently, and I leaned into her, letting my cheek press to her chest as she kissed my hair and held me close. “I’m here, Baby-K,” she said, employing the nickname she’d given me during our years of courtship. “I’m right here.”

I was overwhelmed by adoration for her, for her understanding and her gentle touch and soothing tone of voice, and I looked up and our mouths met and I wrapped my arms around her and somewhere among the tears and the stars and the rafters of the chapel, we ended up tangled on the floor in a mess of limbs and sex, the rough carpet beneath the pew leaving marks on my knees and her back. Afterwards, we lay there in a pool of moonlight and sweat, breathing heavily and holding onto one another.

I closed my eyes, trying to wrap my mind around what we’d done and what it meant.

The phone rang.

I sat up, and Caroline did, too, hugging her knees and watching as I picked up the receiver from the pew. I’d half expected it to be Kristin finally calling like we’d planned, but it was the hospital in Louisville, where my Dad was. Before I’d even pressed the button to answer the call, there was already a heavy sense of dread and loss clouding into my heart, and I answered the phone, already knowing what was coming.




At the funeral, my brothers and I each took a turn speaking. Even though I’d written the words myself and practiced them a dozen times for Caroline in the cab of my father’s pick-up truck, I still could only just barely get them out. My throat felt closed off. And when I stepped away from the podium, I felt like I hadn’t said enough about how much I appreciated my father and I thought maybe nobody understood how much it hurt me for him to be gone. The hole in my heart was the widest chasm I’d ever stared into, and I felt like at the bottom was a blackhole, sucking everything into its vortex.

Caroline took my hand and wove her fingers through mine the second I returned to her side. Her fingers squeezed my hand and she rested her cheek against my arm. I closed my eyes and just felt the weight of her against me.

After the ceremony was over, we walked through the grass, past the smattering of graves that filled the little cemetery, and we climbed into the red pick-up. I watched my brothers guide my mother into the little town car that would drive her home, my hands loose on the steering wheel. I looked down at the Chevy logo on the wheel and closed my eyes and in my memory I could see my father’s thick, calloused hands, and the hair that crept from his arm onto the backs of his hands. I could see that old watch of his, heavy on his wrist, as he drove, lazy-armed, one hand out the window, feeling the air. I could see the smile on his face, relaxed and happy, as he talked about sports on the way to the grocery store. Some of my best memories were built out of simple times like that, I realized. I opened my eyes.

“I wanna go for a drive,” I said. “Do you want me to drop you off first?”

Caroline shook her head.

I drove 52 all the way out to the 65 and went south. I didn’t know where I was going but the miles I put between myself and the camp and the grave felt good, and I wondered if there were enough miles on the earth to go to erase the hurt I was feeling. After all, there’s only so far away you can go before you start coming back.

I didn’t know where we were going until we reached Nashville. Caroline had turned on the old radio and the stations had crackled in and out of range all the way, alternating between Garth Brooks and Trisha Yearwood and Willie Nelson. The neon lights of Broadway stretched before us and we parked the pick-up and got out and walked, Caroline skipping along beside me. I didn’t know what I was searching for besides a peace of mind, and she didn’t seem concerned by the lack of direction. I just knew I needed something, something to get the pain out.

We ducked into a karaoke bar, and Caroline got us a seat at a table in the front, in a corner, and I ordered us a couple sodas. But once at the counter, I realized that the soda just wasn’t strong enough and I wondered if I could get away with ordering a beer. I was only nineteen, about to be twenty in just two-months, but I had a smattering of facial hair that gave me an older appearance. So I gave it a try and to my surprise, the bartender didn’t hesitate, he just popped the caps off two Buds and slid them across the counter, too busy taking requests for harder drinks to even notice me at all. I returned to the table with my contraband and Caroline’s eyebrows raised. She smirked and I handed her one of the two cold bottles. She held it daintily. Neither of us had drank before, neither of us knew what to expect, but I’d heard beer had a way of taking the edge off life, and that was what I needed, so I took a long sip.

It tasted like balls.

“Oh man,” Caroline muttered, putting her bottle down on the counter, “That’s awful, ain’t it?”

I nodded. But I could already feel the tingling of the alcohol ebbing away at the throbbing emotions that were filling me up, and I took another sip.

“I don’t know how you can drink it,” Caroline said.

I wasn’t sure myself. But I suppose I drank it the same way you drink medicine when you’re a kid, because of the promise that, once it’s in you, you’ll start to feel better.

The music blared and a parade of horrible voices blurred together as I kept on drinking that Bud. “You suck!” someone would shout from the back of the bar and everyone would boo their agreement, except Caroline, who clapped enthusiastically for every single person that went up on the stage. “They were brave for getting up there at all,” she explained once when she caught my eye.

When the mic made it’s way to our table, Caroline waved it off, but I took it and climbed onto the stage and looked down at the list of songs, and I selected one quickly, told the band behind me, and grabbed the mic, cupping my hand around it. I lowered my voice and started singing The Ring of Fire.

”Love is a burning thing
“And it makes a fiery ring
“Bound by wild desire
“I fell into a ring of fire

“I fell into a burning ring of fire
“I went down, down, down as the flames went higher
“And it burns, burns, burns,
“The ring of fire
“Oh the ring of fire…”


Caroline looked on, proud and happy, clapping her hands to the beat of the song, and I closed my eyes and let the words pour out of me, the beer in my veins letting the pain fade, and for the first time since my father had told me he was sick I felt free again. This was what music could do, I realized, it could help make the bad things okay again. Music was a greater drug than any substance - well, besides maybe beer because I’d grown an affinity to the beer by this time.

“I fell into a burning ring of fire,
“I went down, down, down as the flames went higher
“And it burns, burns, burns,
“The ring of fire, the ring of fire... “And it burns, burns, burns,
“The ring of fire, the ring of fire,
“The ring of fire, the ring of fire…”


I must’ve done okay because Caroline wasn’t the only one who clapped, nobody shouted for me to get off the stage. I was met by only cheers, and I waved the way that I did as Aladdin to the kids at Disney, and I jumped off the stage, only tripping slightly, and landed myself back in my chair beside Caroline at our table. She was still clapping, a grin on her face. I took the last swig from my bottle of Bud as the applause died down.

“That was stellar, Baby-K,” she said, leaning over to kiss my cheek.




We drove back to Irvine, but we didn’t go straight home, even though we both knew our parents were probably wondering where we were. We parked the pick-up on a deserted road on an overlook. Below, the minimal lights of downtown Irvine glowed faintly, lights from homes dotting the forest trees. Overhead, the stars were brilliant, the moon bright as day. We pulled some blankets out of the back of the cab and threw them down in the truck bed and laid there, staring up at the sky, pointing out constellations we recognized, and making some up that didn’t even exist, telling stories of Greek gods that were never told by Bullfinch. Our fingers were woven together, our legs tangled up, bodies pressing close enough to feel the heat of each other, and I could breathe her scent, all powdery soft.

In a world without my father, without my dreams, only Caroline made sense.

She ran her fingers through my hair, staring into my eyes.

“Marry me,” I whispered.

Caroline smiled, “Of course,” she whispered back.




It was September when I went back to Orlando to get my things to move them home to the camp. Caroline was preparing for the wedding, something small enough that we could have it put together in just a week’s time. There wasn’t a point in waiting, I’d reasoned, because I’d always known if I’d stayed in Irvine it would be Caroline and I together, wading through life hand in hand. And I was staying in Irvine.

Kristin wasn’t at home when I got to the apartment we shared. She was probably at work at Disney, and I was glad for it because I couldn’t imagine explaining everything that had changed in the month I’d been gone. I collected my things into boxes and piled them into the pick-up bed, strapped my mattress on top with a string of bungee cords and lengths of rope, and I’d gone back inside to leave a note and a couple months of rent money, since I knew Kris couldn’t afford the apartment on her own and I was abandoning her without warning. I scrawled an apology, a John Dear letter of sorts, and left it in an envelope on the kitchen table under the salt shaker so the air from the open window wouldn’t knock it to the floor. And then I got back in my truck and I drove away.

I drove past the signs directing tourists to the Magic Kingdom and I bade it farewell. I’d called in my resignation while I was packing, and my heart felt heavy as I turned onto the freeway that would bring me north through Georgia and Tennessee, back to Irvine, back to the life I’d tried to escape by coming to Florida in the first place. I tried not to cry, tried to focus on all the good things. I had a woman that I was in love with, who loved me and took care of me and understood me in the worst times. I had a stable home, and a built in job, where I was the boss, where I could spend long days in the outdoors, taking care of the property that my father had so deeply and passionately taken care of for all his life. I had everything that we call the American Dream.

And I was going to be happy, damn it, if it was the last thing I did.




The day of the wedding came. We were holding it in the chapel on the camp’s property, and I was in a small office room off the main hall. My brothers had been in and out of the room, carrying bottles of beer and words of encouragement, dressed to the nines in their best suits, the same as they’d worn to our father’s funeral the month before. They’d gone to get another round of beers, and I was standing, staring into a mirror that my momma had leaned against the wall for the occasion.

I tugged on the corners of the bow tie at my neck and angled my chin, trying to remember how my father had taught me to tie these things. “This is a skill every man should know,” he’d told me, “Good business happens in a good bow tie.” And I remembered thinking that his hands were more graceful than mine, that he’d had years of practice and I’d only had the night of my senior prom to practice. He should’ve been there, in the room with me on my wedding day, there to help me again, to reassure me that it wasn’t the end of the world if I couldn’t remember how to loop the ends to make the tie. It was okay because he was there to teach me how again any time I needed to.

It didn’t mean I wasn’t a man, it just meant I still needed my father.

The door creaked open and I glanced over to see my mother in the doorway, smiling. “You look so handsome,” she commented, and she closed the door behind her as she crossed the room to join my side at the mirror. “Let me,” she said, seeing my struggle with the tie. I lifted my chin and crouched ever so slightly so she could reach. She swept through the motions, experienced from years of helping my father with his ties, and soon she was done and I adjusted the tie against my neck, looking in the mirror to see it was perfect. “Your father would be so proud if he could see you right now,” she said thickly.

I wondered if he would be as proud if he knew what I was thinking, if he knew about the panic that was building in my chest and stomach, the feeling of finality. It was like willingly walking into a prison and tossing the key out of the window, I thought. There was no hope for pardon, I was the one sentencing myself. Life in Irvine.

“You’ll make a good husband,” my mother said. “Caroline is lucky.”

“I’m lucky she’ll take me,” I answered. Which was truly how I felt. I wasn’t much of anything, I was a shadow, and I was lucky that any woman could love someone like me, a spineless shell of a man whose dreams were too far to reach for. Integrity, my mind told me, What you’re doing shows integrity. Putting family first, putting legacies first. I thought of Jimmy Stewart in It’s a Wonderful Life, giving up his dreams of travel to take over the family business. He’d made the right choice, staying at home with the girl, having the kids and the house and the American Dream. It was a classic for a reason, I told myself.

“I’ll see you out there, sweetie,” my mother said, patting my chest with her palm gently, a smile on her face. She slipped back out the door.

I stared into my own eyes in the mirror and steeled myself. The man staring back at me was an entirely different one than I’d ever believed I’d become.

There was a knock at the door. “Yeah, c’mon in,” I called.

“Hey.”

When I turned around, I thought it was Caroline for just a moment before my brain caught up to the sensory overload. It wasn’t Caroline. It was Florida-Caroline. Kristin. Kristin Willits standing here in the grooms’ room in the chapel on my father’s camp property. I stared at her in disbelief. She pushed the door shut and leaned against it. She stared at me, her palms splayed on the wood behind her.

“Kris,” I said, “What’re you doing here?”

She reached into the pocket of the red jacket she wore and pulled out what I recognized as my John-Dear letter. She held it up. “I tried calling, but you’re impossible to get in touch with,” she said. I’d avoided all calls with Florida area codes, it was true. I adverted my eyes. “I needed to know if you were okay.” She laughed, but not in humor. “I didn’t mean to walk in on a wedding. You didn’t mention it in your letter.” She tossed the note onto the desk as she came further into the room. “I was afraid for you. Running away isn’t like you.”

“I’m doing the opposite of running away,” I said sternly.

Kristin stared up at me, her eyes wide and searching. “You’re moving back here? You’re getting married? Kevin, maybe you aren’t running away, but you’re definitely running. A hundred miles an hour. In the wrong direction,” she added. She shook her head, “This isn’t what you want. I know you better than this.”

“I don’t have a choice, Kris, this is… my destiny.” I waved my arms at the walls of the chapel, indicating the whole camp, the town.

“No,” she said sharply, “It’s not. This is you being scared of the possibility of something more.”

“What am I supposed to do, Kris?” I asked, “Abandon my family and let my home fall apart? My father didn’t want that. He worked too damn hard to let that happen. I have to carry the torch. I have to take care of my momma.”

“You have two brothers, Kevin, you have a huge extended family, let someone else carry the torch.”

“It’s not that easy,” I answered. “I have other obligations.”

“What other obligations?” Kristin demanded.

“Well you are crashing my wedding,” I said.

Kristin took a deep breath, “Well she should know that Irvine isn’t the place for you, just the way I do. If she really loves you, she wouldn’t want to limit you to this town. She’d know you belong somewhere that you can be discovered, where you can make your dreams come true. If she knows you and loves you at all, she’d know that’s never going to happen in Irvine.”

I licked my lips.

“Kevin, you told me a hundred times that your father told you to get out of Irvine and find your future. He didn’t tell you that just to reel you back in here when he died. He didn’t tell you he was sick until the end because he didn’t want you coming back here.” Kristin’s eyes were pleading. “You don’t have to come back to me in Orlando, Kevin, but you do have to come back, because that’s where your father really wanted you to be.”

My throat burned. She was right, and I knew it, and suddenly the tie around my neck felt like a noose and I grappled at it, desperate to pull it off. I tugged and it fell away and my hands shook as I let it fall to the ground at my feet. I could hear the people outside in the chapel talking, laughter that I could recognize from years of spending my time around the same townspeople. Predictable. Prison. I hadn’t thrown the key just yet, and I needed to get out before it was too late.

So I wrote a second John Dear letter, and I used a roll of scotch tape from the desk drawer to attach it to the mirror, and I pushed the window open and climbed out, pulling Kristin along with me. We ran. We ran away from the chapel like two escapees, to the red pick-up truck, and I drove down the freeway, faster than sin, through Tennessee and Georgia to Florida, leaving behind the responsibility, leaving behind the prison I’d almost locked myself in, leaving behind Caroline and everything that might’ve been.

And a year later, I became a Backstreet Boy.

I didn’t see or hear from Caroline again.