Bitter Farewell (20 page)

“Whoa, Liv, what the...”

“You shouldn’t be here,” Liv said. “I thought you were at the house.”

“Lorraine came,” Danny said. “I wanted to check on you. I asked someone and they said you went to get food.”

“Danny...”

“What happened? Did someone do this? Or was it an accident?”

“Sort of both,” Liv said. “Let’s get out of here to talk.”

“No. If I can help... can I go get more food? Is everyone okay? I... Liv... I know I haven’t been here in years but that doesn’t mean...”

“Christ, Danny!” Liv yelled. “Chasing Cross burned it down!”

Liv gasped and tried to hold onto Danny. He wiggled free and backed up a few steps.

“What did you say?” he asked.

“I’m sorry, that came out wrong.”

“Came out wrong? So what did you want to say?”

The pain in her heart and stomach matched.

“The videos,” she said. “The videos.”

“What videos?”

“Of you guys playing here. A huge crowd showed up, thinking you were all in town still. Because of your father’s passing. They flooded the bar and the parking lot. They waited, thinking Chasing Cross would play another surprise show. You guys weren’t here last night...”

“No,” Danny whispered. “No...”

“It wasn’t on purpose,” Liv said. “Or they don’t think so. It was just so many people at once. Something happened. When they tried to close the bar, everyone got wild.”

“Because we weren’t here?”

Liv nodded. “They think that it started at the back where the trees were. Gas from a car. A cigarette. I don’t know. But there were so many people here... it was just too much...”

“And it caught on fire,” Danny said.

Liv saw the way Danny looked at the rubble of the building. The guilt on his face already present.

“I’m so sorry,” Danny said. “We never...”

“Danny, don’t,” Liv said. She reached for Danny, but he backed up.

“I came to town to fix some things and look what happens,” Danny said.

“That’s right,” a voice yelled. “That’s right.”

Liv saw Mitch walking towards Danny. There was a cut on his lip and his eye looked a little swollen.

“Mitch. No.”

“No,” Mitch said. “This is it for me. I knew you and your buddies were trouble. Always trouble. Bringing a riot to town.”

“We didn’t,” Danny said.

Mitch moved fast and when he stormed by Liv, she feared the worst. Mitch pushed Danny, sending him back but Danny didn’t retaliate. He just stared at what used to be Crabley’s. Even when Mitch grabbed Danny’s shirt and shook him.

“How long are you staying?” Mitch asked. “Until the fucking town is ruined? You know, when your father kicked, we thought the last of your kind was finally out of town. Bad news drunks.”

“Mitch!” Liv cried out.

Mitch made a fist and put it to Danny’s chin. Danny looked at Mitch. He blinked and he nodded.

“You got it,” Danny said. “You got it.”

He backed up and looked at Liv.

“Danny...”

“It’s okay,” Danny said. “I’m so sorry. I’ll pay to have it built again...”

Danny turned and walked to his car. Liv found herself in a paralyzed state. She couldn’t do it. Not right then. She couldn’t chase Danny down.

There was already so much to deal with.

Including the fact that her father’s doctor had called and wanted to up his medication because everything was starting to progress more.

It made Liv think about what Danny had said to her.

Who is Dave?

Liv knew who Dave was... Dave was the uncle she never met. Dave was her father’s older brother who died when he was twelve in a car accident.

Her father lost his brother.

And now Liv felt like she lost her father... and as the small cloud of dirt started to fade, she felt (again) like she lost Danny...

(15)

“Chasing Cross burned it down!”

Danny couldn’t stop replaying the way Liv’s voice sounded. How mad she was. How honest she finally was. And most of all... how much she really believed it. To Danny it was almost the epitome of fame. To have fans so passionate was one thing, but to have fans show up in a random bar in a random town with the hopes of seeing a show was something else. More so, so many showing up and getting rowdy for no reason. If Chasing Cross had said something about a show that was one thing.

Halfway back to his father’s house, Danny blamed the band. They were the ones that wanted to go to Crabley’s and do that. They were the ones that gave Danny the flyer, talked about his guitar, and guilted him into doing it.

That was it.

It was their fault.

They should have been the ones staring at the burned down bar. They should have been the ones to look into a hundred heartbroken eyes. They should have been the ones to feel Liv’s pain and face that asshole, Mitch, again.

Danny sped and when he saw the driveway to the house, he took the turn as hard and as fast as he could. The backend of the car kicked out and Danny turned the wheel, saving himself from hitting a tree. He sped down the driveway feeling the dirt and rocks kicking up behind him. When he saw the right side of the house, the space between the house and the yard, he smiled. He thought about the sight of lawnmower in the yard. The spot where his father had a heart attack and died. He thought about how meticulous his father was about the yard. About having a clean house. About having food. Things like that... they mattered... but not his family. Not his wife. Not his two sons.

Danny hit the gas pedal and went from the driveway to the grass. He turned the wheel again as hard as he could, cutting along the grass. He could feel the tires digging, ruining the perfect lawn that
Big John
needed to have. Danny remembered times when his mother would put the laundry on the line to dry and his father would purposely go out with the lawnmower and cut the grass, spraying the wet clothes with shards of grass. Just to be an ass.

When Danny finally came from the yard, he parked the car, got out, slammed the door, and kicked the door. He left his smeared shoe print on the door and didn’t care. He kicked open the front door and stood there, years of pain and hate boiling over.

“Anybody home?” Danny called out.

Nobody was home.

Chasing Cross had left hours ago. They were probably getting close to landing in Los Angeles. To be whisked away by a limo to Peter’s management office. Everything would be taken care of, handed to the band. Good food. Good drinks. They’d be talking about music. Living the life still.

And Danny stood in the house of hell, completely alone. He knew with one phone call he could have a private jet on its way to come get him. He could join the band just a few hours behind.

But Danny came back and stayed for a reason.

He needed to make peace with everything.

Maybe fixing things was the wrong way to approach it. He couldn’t fix the clock, right? He could turn the hands on the clock above the mantle, but time would not actually reverse. What was done was done. What was said was said. He couldn’t go back and not leave Liv. He couldn’t go back and do something to make Liv’s father healthy again. And he couldn’t go back and prevent the fire at Crabley’s.

Danny walked to the living room corner and kicked the wooden cabinet in the corner. A black lock shook, rattling at him, teasing him. Danny kicked it again, harder. It felt good. Really good. He kicked it a third and fourth time until the door started to crack. The lock didn’t open but Danny found a way into his father’s liquor cabinet. He took a handful of the bottles and walked them into the kitchen. Drinking the bottles would just be stepping into the path already created for him. He couldn’t bear the idea of being in the house, drunk and alone. He would then be his father. With the rest of the world turning, he’d be there. Trapped in the house. Trapped in Bakersville.

After pouring five bottles down the drain and leaving the empty bottles in the sink, Danny set his sights back to the living room. He looked at the pictures on the walls. Nothing was changed. It was like his father had one decent memory of the family and kept it that way. To convince himself nothing wrong ever happened.

Danny took a picture from a table next to the couch. It was he and Johnnie as kids, wearing cut off, homemade jean shorts. They were skinny and shirtless, both smiling, Danny missing his two front teeth. Their hair was moppy and because of their smiles, Danny knew their mother must have taken the picture. Danny’s fingers felt the back of the frame, felt it moving. He turned it around and opened the clasps. Sometimes his mother used to hide pictures behind pictures. He tore the back off and took out a picture. He flipped it around and let out a cry.

It was a picture of he and Johnnie, with guitars.

They stood shoulder to shoulder, trying to look tough. They held guitars, old guitars, that sounded like hell and couldn’t really be played.

Danny studied the picture. It was all he wanted to find. To have some kind of proof that his father cared about him. Something that showed he followed Chasing Cross, even for a second.

Maybe this was it.

Danny turned the picture around again and saw writing in the bottom corner.

Johnnie and Danny, my rockstars.

In his mother’s handwriting.

It wasn’t written as
our rockstars
but as
my rockstars
. Because their father wanted nothing to do with music... ever...

“
Dad, Johnnie and I wrote a song.”

His father pulled at the string on the mower. The motor wouldn’t start.

“Damn!” his father yelled.

“Want to hear the song?” Danny asked. “I’ll go get Johnnie...”

Danny looked up and saw Johnnie on his bike, pedaling down the driveway. Danny ran from the garage and called for his big brother.

“Where are you going?”

“Out for a bit,” Johnnie said.

“But our song!”

“It’s good, little brother.”

“I want to play it for Dad,” Danny said.

Johnnie’s face looked sad. He always looked sad when Danny mentioned their father. He didn’t understand why.

Johnnie shook his head. “Not today.”

“But he’s right here... he wants...”

The lawnmower started with a thunderous growl and came to life.

Danny turned and saw Dad smiling, looking happy. When he looked back for Johnnie, Johnnie was gone. He turned again and started to say, “Dad... can I play...”

But he was gone too.

Going to work on the yard.

So Danny stood, holding his guitar.

He felt like he wanted to cry but he wasn’t exactly sure why...

Danny threw the frame across the room. It smacked against the stone fireplace and smashed to pieces. He threw the picture of he and Johnnie with their guitars next. It fluttered in the air and came to a quiet landing on the floor.

There had to be something in the house.

Danny didn’t want to believe that his father could have been... that distant.

Danny lifted the couch and found nothing but dirt and dust. He went back to the cabinet in the corner and opened the doors and drawers and dug through all of them. He found paid bills, bills to be paid, and an organized mess of the last month of his father’s life. The top door of the cabinet had a collection of newspapers. Danny felt a small glimmer of hope as he took the stack down. The paper felt brittle and had a yellowish tint to it.

They were old.

Danny dropped the papers to the table and started to go through them. Looking for anything about the band. Anything about Johnnie. Anything about himself.

There wasn’t a thing about Chasing Cross. Or Johnnie. Or Danny. It was simply old papers. Nothing stuck out at Danny, so the reason why his father kept those papers he would never know. They were all local papers, some dating back seven years. Two were as recent as a month ago.

After looking at the last paper on the pile, Danny cleared the table with one hand and stood up. He then reached down and flipped the coffee table. It didn’t help with the feelings surging through his body at all.