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Chapter Seventeen


Kevin

I tucked in my shirt. Then I untucked it. Retucked it. Untucked. Sighed and retucked it again as I trotted down the stairs to my momma’s kitchen. I could smell breakfast sausage and pancakes and my stomach growled.

The moment I sat down, she put a plate in front of me and poured maple syrup on there generously ‘til I said stop. Momma joined me after a couple moments of fixin’ her own plate at the counter. I ate hungrily. There ain’t nothin’ like my momma’s home cookin’ in the morning.

We made small talk mostly while we ate. I wanted the keys to the camp again, but for some reason I felt weird asking for them, like I needed a reason or an excuse or something. I didn’t know why I felt like that. After all, going to visit a friend to apologize for not saying good bye last time you were there, that wasn’t all that strange, right? Yet…

“Momma,” I said as we were washing the dishes after, side by side at the sink, her hands buried in the hot soapy water while I dried with an old blue dish cloth. “Last week when Nick and I were here, Nick left some clothes up at the camp and I was going to go up and get them for him. Do you think I could have the keys?”

Momma stared into the soap bubbles for a moment. “Of course,” she replied.

“Thanks, Nick’ll appreciate it.”

She rinsed the soap off her hands and wiped them on her apron when we were done. I dried the last of the dishes while she went to get the keys, and when she came back she handed them to me. “The caretaker will be on the property, too, just so you know in case y’all run into each other,” she said.

I nodded.




There was butterflies in my stomach as I drove up the mountain, past the sign, and up to the house. The sun was out, the sky blue, beautiful day, and I drove up, parking in the driveway. I pushed the car door open and shielded my eyes, looking out toward the horses, but I didn’t see her out there anywhere.

Well, if I was gonna make an excuse, the least I could do was follow through with that part before I went off searching everywhere for Caroline. So I went up and unlocked the front door, headed for the laundry room. The machine was running, but Nick’s “shittified” jeans and t-shirt were still folded on top of the dryer. I picked them up and carried them back out to the car, noticing there were some dishes in the sink and mail on the counter. Uncharacteristic from what I’d seen of Caroline’s cleaning habits. I felt bad, maybe she’d been so lonely since we’d left that she hadn’t bothered cleaning.

I tossed Nick’s clothes into the car and headed for the barn.

“Caroline?” I called as I pulled the door open. Inside, there were the horses in their stalls. I walked over and ran my hand along the side of the horses’ faces. “Hey girls,” I said, wondering where Caroline was at, if she wasn’t out with the horses.

“Excuse me. This is private property. What you’re doin’ is called trespassin’ and --” I turned at the sound of the voice. Michael Spornacki was standing in the doorway of the barn, looking surprised. “Well I guess it ain’t trespassing for you,” he said as he lumbered to a stop. “This time,” he added.

“Sorry ya can’t arrest me for it today,” I replied.

Michael walked into the barn. “She didn’t mention you’d be coming by.”

“Well she didn’t know I was,” I answered.

“Well you had to have got the key from her,” he said.

I paused. “I got the key from my momma,” I answered, confused.

“Who’d you think I was talkin’ about?” Michael asked.

“Caroline?” I asked.

He snorted, “You think she willingly hired me to watch over the horses while she’s gone, please man. Your momma done that.”

I blinked back confusion, “I’m sorry. What?”

“Your momma, she hired me to take care of the camp up here while Caroline’s away this weekend,” he said. “But if you’re going to be up here I don’t much understand why. Or else has Callie-fornie-a made it so you don’t remember how to tend a horse?”

“Where’s Caroline?” I asked, deciding to ignore the jab. I realized that her car hadn’t been in the driveway, and felt kind of like a dumbass. It was hard to miss a bright orange Kia Soul, I should’ve known she wasn’t here. This shouldn’t have come as a surprise.

“Up in the city, getting her certificate,” he said. “She only had a couple tests she had to take on site left to do. Should be back Monday afternoon.”

“She got the certificate?” I asked, a feeling of pride swelling up in me.

“She done had it a long time ago, technically. She finished the course back almost two years now,” Michael replied, “Just was puttin’ off them tests is all. She finally went for’em.”

I wondered why she’d put off taking the tests so long. Wondered what made her go now for them. Why she hadn’t told me she’d completed the course she’d talked so animatedly about when we were talking that night.

“So how long you stayin’ for?” Michael asked.

I shook my head, “I was just leaving,” I answered, and I headed back to the car. Michael’s cruiser was parked beside me in the spot where Caroline’s Kia had sat nearly the whole time we’d been here before. I felt a new wave of stupid wash over me. Why the hell hadn’t I noticed it missing before?

Once again, my momma had failed to mention a key piece of information about the caretaker, I thought, as I backed out onto the road by the sign.

I drove back down the mountain, thinking about Caroline and her therapist certificate and everything she’d told me about her plans for the camp. Tears came to my eyes as I reached the bottom and came to a stop at the sign. She’d worked hard for years and achieved a dream, right here in lil ol’ Irvine, Kentucky. Despite everything she’d been through, she’d done it. And I couldn’t have been more proud. She deserved it.

“Michael Spornacki, momma?” I said as I tossed the keys onto the table a few minutes later. She was sitting there, reading a Woman’s Day magazine with Dr. Oz on the cover, a glass of sweet tea in a mason jar beside her.

“He’s a strong boy,” she commented, “Figured he could handle them horses okay.” She sipped her sweet tea like she was innocent.

“Couldn’t have mentioned it wasn’t Caroline up there when ya gave me the key?” I asked.

“I thought you was goin’ up there for Nick’s clothes?” she asked. “If I’d have known you was goin’ up there for Caroline then I would’ve mentioned it, of course.”

I put Nick’s folded clothes on the table.

She looked over the top of her magazine at them. “Well, see, then, you got what you went after.” She smiled and turned back to the article.

“She got her certificate?” I asked.

Momma lowered the magazine to the table. “Yes,” she answered, “Isn’t that marvelous?”

I nodded.

“Pity she can’t open the camp, though,” she said, returning to the magazine.

I reached over and lowered it again. Momma was smirking ever so slightly, the corners of her jowls trembling with humor.

“Why can’t she open it?”

“Can’t afford it immediately,” Momma replied, “Applications for 501c.3 costs money, you know, and there’s the matter of all the things she’ll need designed, you know, all them flyers and brochures and things to mail out and, of course, she’ll need a sign for the property.”

I stared at her.

“Of course,” Momma cleared her throat, “It would bring an awful lot of revenue to the camp in general, might be a wise investment for the, ahem, owner.” She looked up at me.

“Momma,” I said, “You love to meddle.”

“I don’t meddle,” she argued, “I ain’t meddled a day in my life. I merely make suggestions.” She shook the magazine out of my hands. “Now give me back my readin’. I need to find out what this month’s superfruit is. That Dr. Oz is a fox.”

I groaned and turned away. I hesitated. “Momma?”

“Hmm?” she asked from behind the magazine.

“I’m gonna hold onto the keys for the camp a couple days,” I said.

“As long as you need them, dear,” she answered.




I was supposed to be working on the song, but I’d have all kinds of time with Andrew in Nashville starting Tuesday to do that. This all had to be done before Monday afternoon if I was going to surprise Caroline right with it. And she deserved the surprise. I’d work on the song Monday night, I told myself, and besides, this would give me some time to think about it, get some words flowing around in my head.

That’s what I told myself as I spent the weekend getting estimates on graphic design work and a print shop, calling the city hall and inquiring about the 501c.3 process, and gettin’ a carpenter to do an express job on a new addition for the sign at the camp.

Monday morning, I drove up and came to a stop beside the sign and got out, toting my father’s old tool box I’d found in Momma’s garage collecting dust. I knelt down under the sign and used his old screw driver to turn two eye hooks into the bottom of the sign and hung up the new addition from three short chain links. I backed up to look at it.

Down Home Equine Therapy Camp.

I nodded and put the tools back in the car, and drove on up the rest of the way to the driveway. This time, the Kia’s absence was quite noticeable.

Seriously, how had I not noticed it missing before? I wondered.

I jogged up the steps and into the house and walked out to the kitchen. Michael had left a pretty good collection of cups in the sink, and Caroline’s mail was in a messy pile on the counter. I neatened it up, and cleaned out the sink, then took out the bottle of champagne I’d bought for her, the blue and white ribbons around the neck of the bottle, and pulled out a couple glasses from the cupboard, which I set next to it, and I leaned the envelope containing the money for her 501c.3 and the graphic design estimates against the bottle.

Congratulations, I’d written on the front of it.




I didn’t wait for her to come home.

I’d planned to originally, but as I sat there, waiting, I’d paced around the house, practically wearing grooves in the wood floor, and one of the times I’d walked out to the kitchen and seen the champagne and the envelope and everything I’d really seen the envelope. And I’d felt dizzy.

I wasn’t in Kentucky to see Caroline and make all her dreams come true, that wasn’t the point. And despite what I’d told myself all weekend, I was losing focus on what I had come for. I’d come to work on a song to get my wife back. And instead I was inching dangerously closer and closer to a precipice that could make me lose her forever.

I passed the Kia on the way down the mountain. But it was dark and the lights kept me from seeing her face. Mercifully, they probably kept her from seeing mine, too, I hoped.

I drove quickly to my momma’s house. “I’m going to Nashville tonight,” I told her as I went by. “Now.” I went up to the spare bedroom and got my duffel bag, which I’d never fully unpacked. I was thankful for it. It let me get out of there fast. And my heart was ready to explode. I couldn’t believe I’d let myself lose sight, for even a second, of the real reason I was down home to begin with.

“What about Caroline?” Momma asked. “All that work, don’t you wanna see Caroline’s reaction?”

I shook my head, “Momma, I done enough for her.”

“It’s late to be drivin’ to Nashville,” she said.

“Momma, I’ve driven to Nashville later than this from here,” I said.

“But Kevin --”

Momma, I’m going to Nashville. I need to get a song written, I told you that’s why I was comin’ down, I have studio time with Andrew Fromm. You know him. He wrote that song that Newsboys guy you listen to sang. Peter Furler. Reach. You know that song, momma. Andrew Fromm wrote that. I gotta go write with him in Nashville. It’s a very important meeting.”

“I do like that song,” she admitted. “He’s a talented writer it sounds.”

“Yeah, that’s why I gotta go to Nashville now so I can meet him early tomorrow.”

“But --”

“Momma, please, relax I’ll be okay. I just have to go tonight,” I said.

I felt like I was hustling her.

I hadn’t told her why I needed to write the song, hadn’t told her what was going on with Kris and I. And I couldn’t tell her, either. I couldn’t tell her that I was losing sight of the mission of winning Kristin back by getting too far into the mission of surprising Caroline. I couldn’t explain why I needed to go before I saw Caroline.

I couldn’t even explain that to myself.

And I knew that once Caroline got home, saw the sign, opened that envelope, she’d be on her way here. Because she’d know then that the car she’d passed had been me and that this was the only logical place I’d go.

I had to leave before she got there.

“I’ll call you when I get to Nashville,” I said, pressing the keys to the camp into my momma’s hands.

She didn’t look pleased, but she leaned up on her tip-toes to give me a kiss on the cheek. “You drive carefully,” she said, “You know how them city folk drive, like they ain’t got enough time on their hands.” She shook her head, suddenly distracted by the thought of all those drivers out there, “Like gettin’ a place ten minutes later’s the equivalent of the apocalypse,” she added.

“I know, momma, they drive like maniacs,” I said and I kissed her forehead. I hurried out to the car after we’d said goodbye and I drove like one of them maniacs until I got out of the Irvine town limits, where I let myself breathe a little bit because here, on the road, I would finally be able to focus on the song I needed to write, the words I needed to say to get back to Caroline’s heart.

Kristin’s heart.

I meant Kristin’s heart.

Shit, I thought. And my hands shook a little.

I reached for the radio knob.

”She was like ‘Oh my God this is my song, I’ve been listenin’ to the radio all night long Sittin’ ‘round waiting for it to come on and here it is’...”

I turned the station.

“...the flames went higher, and it burns, burns, burns…
The ring of fire, oh the ring of fire…
The taste of love is sweet
When hearts like ours meet…”


I turned the radio off.

What the fuck were the odds?

Shit, I thought again.

What was happening?

I drove all the way down 65 South into Nashville, my heart thumpin’ in my chest.

It was because I was scared of how Kristin would react, I told myself. I wasn’t positive how she was gonna take the song once I wrote it and my body was trying to do some sort of defensive thing, trying to make me forget. Trying to make me think I wanted something else more. Surely that was it. I just had to squash the stuff I was feeling and thinking. I just had to stay focused on me and Kristin and the song and making everything I felt for her come out perfect and she’d understand and it’d all go back to the way it used to be before all this crazy shit happened.

I was gripping the wheel so hard my knuckles were white.

It was nearly midnight when I pulled up to Nick’s house in Franklin and cut the engine. The house had automatic lights and they glowed from the windows like there was someone home. I pulled my duffel bag over my shoulders as I walked up to the door, digging out the house key he’d given me.

Inside, the house was nice. I’d only been here once or twice and Lauren had redecorated since the last time. I dropped my bag on the floor by the stairs and wandered around the house ‘til I got the feel of the layout. They had crazy art on the walls and a big weird chandelier hung over the table. Upstairs, theirs was the only bedroom. The other rooms were full of stuff like all Nick’s awards and exercise equipment and a computer set up that Nick had for gaming that looked like something out of Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

I settled myself on the bed, bouncing a little on the mattress gingerly. I tried not to think about all the sex they’d probably had all over this bed. I laid back into the pillows and stared up at the ceiling, my brain spinning and spinning through everything, the tune of Ring of Fire still echoing through my head.

I think I drifted off, or maybe my brain just stayed so busy that I didn’t feel the time slip by, but it was around three in the morning when I had an idea for the first verse of the song. Words just poured into my brain and I knew they were perfect. I mumbled them as I got up and went on the hunt for some paper.

Somewhere in this damn house they had to have some paper.

I was downstairs in the kitchen, pawing through the drawers, muttering the words, trying not to forget them. When I finally found the paper, it was in the form of Ninja Turtle post-its in Nick’s futuristic gaming room. And I sat in the computer chair, scribbling the words onto the face of Michelangelo, Donatello, Leonardo and Raphael.

Only Nick would have fricking Ninja Turtle post-its.

I mean, where the hell do you even get such a thing?

I sat back and leaned the post-its against the computer, staring at the words I’d written so frantically, repeating them under my breath, making sure they’d make a good start. If I was gonna get back into Kristin’s heart then I was gonna have to say it right.

But they weren’t the right words after all that.

I ripped the page off the pad and crumbled it, tossing it to the floor.

By morning, I’d used all Nick’s Ninja Turtle post-its and two other pads of paper I’d found in the depths of the Desk from the Future. Almost all the sheets were in balls around the floor. It looked like it’d snowed in there. I sat there, ready to pull my hair out, frustrated beyond belief, just wanting inspiration to strike in some form - any form - when the doorbell rang.

I probably looked like a mad scientist when I opened the door.

Andrew was standing there, a scarf around his neck that looked suspiciously Wylee in nature, and grinned when he saw me, “Good morning.” He held aloft a tray of styrofoam cups from Dunkin’ Donuts and a box of donut holes. “Songwriting fuel.” He had a guitar strapped to his back. He seemed to notice me only at this point. “Shit, what happened to you?”

“Up all night,” I muttered.

“Good thing I brought the fuel,” he said with a grin, and he stepped into the foyer.

I closed the door behind him.

I realized only now that I’d somehow managed to kick several balls of paper from the computer room, down the hall and they’d followed me down the stairs like tumbleweed. Andrew bent down and picked one up, putting the box of donut holes down on the steps. He unrolled it and stared at my chicken scratch writing. He raised an eyebrow, then looked at me. “This is awful,” he said honestly.

“I know,” I answered.

“You were up all night writing this crap?” he asked. He looked up the stairs, at the other escaped paper balls that had followed me down.

“No I have the masterpiece version upstairs,” I said sarcastically.

Andrew reballed the paper and tossed it onto the floor with the crowd of others and grabbed the coffee and donuts from the steps. “You need me even more than I thought. C’mon, to the music room.” And he led the way out to Nick’s kitchen where a side door led down to the home studio he’d constructed in the basement.

With the flick of a few switches, Andrew lit up the room, whose wood paneling was warm and welcoming. Nick’s guitars were on stands lining one wall, a couch that was older than sin lookin’ lined the other, about a hundred thousand stuffed animals from fans cluttered the back of it. A signed Buccs flag hung on the wall. It was very Nick in there.

Andrew set the coffee and donuts on a foot locker that was being used as a table, and pulled open a drawer under the little soundboard, grabbing two notebooks and a couple pens from a plethora that filled the drawer.

So that’s where they’d been hiding.

“Here,” Andrew said, shoving them at me. “Write down what you want to say.”

“If I could do that, it wouldn’t be snowing paper balls up stairs,” I said.

“It doesn’t have to be pretty. Just get it out. Basically, you’re bloodletting words. Just get that shit out of you.” Andrew turned and opened the box. “And here, have a donut.”

“I’m not hungry.”

“The donuts are non-optional,” he said, shoving it into my hand. “Write.”

And so I started writing.

When I finished, I handed it to Andrew, and reached for a second donut because Andrew was right the donuts were non-optional, they tasted good and I was hungrier than I’d realized. We’d drank two of the four coffees that he’d brought along and he’d gone upstairs to microwave the other two just before I’d finished. I sipped my second one while he read what I’d written down.

“This is good,” he said, “Well, I mean, not good, it’s basically heart breaking. But it’s something to work with… better than your balls that we left upstairs.”

He was lucky I wasn’t Nick because Nick would so have had something dirty to say to that.

“Yeah?” I asked, “You think we can get a song out of that?”

“Oh definitely,” Andrew nodded, “Definitely. A damn good one, too. We just gotta focus.” He sat down and grabbed what had to be his third donut and swiveled himself around in Nick’s desk chair, facing at the soundboard and then back to me, staring down at the words I’d written in the notebook. “Hmm,” he murmured. “Okay. Let’s try this,” he said after some time had passed and grabbed his guitar.

C’mon, I willed the universe, c’mon and give me my abracadabra.