His to Own: 50 Loving States, Arkansas Read online

  No, I guess I didn’t. I think about ignoring the order. I could always say later that I didn’t notice the sentence in her case letter, blame the night nurse who hadn’t stuck around to train me. I am my mama’s daughter after all, and I know how to lie.

  But then I look down at Rose. She’s still shaking her head, her lips kissed into a silent “Noooo!” She doesn’t want this. This life in this big fancy house of hers. It’s not enough. Not enough to make her want to stay here in her broken body…

  “Hello? Are you still there?” the operator asks on the other side of my phone.

  I sit back on my knees and release the breath I’d been holding.

  “Yeah, I’m still here,” I answer. “I can’t begin life saving procedures. She has a DNR on file.”

  “Oh,” the operator says.

  We share a tiny moment of quiet over that piece of information, then she goes right back into efficiency mode. Telling me to stay with Rose, and try to make her comfortable. An ambulance is still on the way.

  “Okay,” I say to the operator, but I’m looking at Rose. I’m holding her limp hand, the one that doesn’t work anymore because of the strokes.

  “I’m here with you,” I tell her. “You’re not alone. I’m here with you until the end.”

  It’s stupid, because I’m not her family. I’m not even anybody she’s ever met before. In fact, from what I recall of her paperwork, we only have one thing in common, her and me. We’re both from Alabama, and somehow we both ended up in Tennessee.

  But that’s all. She’s white. I’m black. A few minutes ago, I was feeling like my life was finally getting started. But hers… it’s coming to an end.

  I hold her hand anyway. I hold her hand and watch the last light of life leave her eyes as the ambulance sirens sound in the distance. Eventually, her right hand unclenches and I see I was right. It was an old, silver cross necklace she’d been clinging to, until the very end.

  SO… NO, NOT THE BEST FIRST DAY I’ve ever had on a job. But better than some last days, I suppose, as I sit on the sweeping staircase, strumming my guitar.

  At least it hadn’t involved a client with dementia, accusing me of stealing the jewelry that had obviously been taken by her junkie son. There was no asshole male family member who’d come to visit his ailing mother, or aunt, or grandmother, but somehow decided it’d be a great idea to corner her home aide with a pick up line like, “Hey redbone, you wanna come out with me or what?”—then have the nerve to get upset and convince his relative to fire you when you say no.

  No, not as bad as being accused of stealing or getting sexually harassed while you’ve got a bedpan in your hands. But way up there on that list, for sure.

  It took a while to get everything sorted out. The paramedics called in more people, including a medical examiner to make pronouncements and fill out paperwork. More calls had been made, and I’d been told to stay with the body until the funeral home arrived, which they did. In record time, I thought.

  My only experience with an in-home death happened a long time ago. My grandfather died in his sleep while I was still in my training program to become a home aide. All I really remember about that sad morning was sitting with my grandmother, waiting for the church’s funeral home to come get him. It felt like it took them forever.

  But I guess I’ve been lucky up until now. None of my other clients ever died while I was on the job. But Rose had died, had silently commanded me to let her go on. And now I was stuck here in the place where she’d done it, waiting here for her son who’d been out of town, but is flying back from wherever. I’m supposed to give him the agency’s condolences, and the keys, and some paperwork, but you know, don’t talk to him too much about what happened.

  “If he asks you about it, have him call me directly,” the director at the agency told me. “I’ve been on the phone with his assistant all morning, but this is a VIP client, so I want him sent straight to the top if he has any questions.”

  The top being the director, who hadn’t even been there. I had a feeling if the agency’s headquarters weren’t all the way over in Memphis, she would have come out here to handle things herself.

  Actually it’s more like a wish than a feeling, because talking to your dead client’s only son is not exactly a job I would have necessarily signed up for. But it is what it is, I guess. So I sit on the staircase with my guitar and wait.

  Then wait some more.

  The sun sets and eventually the lights click off as the house grows cold—it’s probably on one of those timers, designed to turn off all the lights and stop cranking the heat so hard when everybody is under the covers. Real good for the environment, but my old peacoat isn’t doing much to keep me warm.

  I’m grateful to have my guitar. The nice thing about music is if you’re playing it right, it can distract you from a lot of life’s problems. Like cold houses. And promising jobs that end the morning they start. And the memory of life’s light fading from milky blue eyes.

  Thinking about Rose, I start playing a song that’s been bugging me off and on for the last few months. A hook and some chords, always slipping away when I tried to chase down the full song. But this time when I start playing it, the song doesn’t turn tail and run. Instead it unfurls, slow and sad, until I get to the last verse, when I know it’s okay. It’s not happy, but it’s okay. Because she’s finally at peace. She’s okay to leave and… become my country song.

  I stop when I finish. Barely able to believe what just happened. A song. A full song unfolded in its entirety in less than five minutes. I fumble for the journal I keep inside my guitar case with a pen tucked inside, and I write it down. Every single word. I write it down, even though it’s not the kind of song a soul would or could ever forget.

  Then just in case I misunderstood what just happened, I play it again in its entirety. This time with a little more passion, taking what I’ve inherited, the drama from my mama and the grit from my grandma, and pouring all of it into my performance in the empty room, until I find myself once again arriving at the last three words, “…my country song.”

  “That your song?” a voice asks after the last guitar note fades.

  I nearly drop my guitar out of my lap. A man is standing in the foyer. I hadn’t heard him come in, but obviously he must have arrived sometime while I was singing, because the front door is still open, the streetlight casting him in shadows.

  I squint, trying to get a better read on him. Sensing who he is, even though I can’t quite see his face.

  He’s tall, and covered from head to toe in casual clothes, so perfectly suited to him that I’m sure someone spent a grip of his money picking them out. A white Stetson sits on top his head, like a crown.

  He doesn’t look the same. He doesn’t even sound the same. But I recognize him immediately, even before he steps into the light and reveals his crystal blue gaze.

  It’s Colin. Colin Fairgood.

  And now I’m the housekeeper’s kid, sitting on the stairs, my mind locked in the past. My body once again tingling with the memory of his kiss, as if it had just happened moments, not years ago.

  “That your song?” he asks me again.

  Chapter 2

  “You don’t have the same name as your mama.”

  The words sound dumb, even to my own ears. Slow and awkward, with a side of “duh” thrown in.

  “No, I don’t,” Colin answers. He tilts his head and regards me. But this time his assessing blue gaze makes me feel like I’m taking steps backwards in his estimation. Like a complicated math problem that might be way more simple than he originally thought.

  “What’s your name?” he asks me.

  I blink, a little surprised that he doesn’t remember me.

  But it has been a long time. A really long time. And though that kiss permanently seared itself across my memory, there’s a good chance Colin forgot all about it. He probably has women throwing themselves at him on the daily now. There’s no reason he’d remember me after all
of this time.

  Also, he wasn’t the only one who’d gone through some changes since that night.

  He no longer looked like a skinny stork, and I no longer looked like a hot-to-trot teenager. I imagine what I must look like to him now: a home health aide with brassy, obviously dyed, blond hair, pulled back into a ponytail. The make up I put on this morning before leaving West Tennessee is a distance memory, and I can feel my scar pulsing hot and obvious on my face.

  “What’s your name?” he asks me again. Probably wondering now what kind of incompetent the agency sent to see to his mother.

  “Kyra,” I answer. “Kyra Goode. I was the one who found your—”

  “I know who you are,” he says.

  I freeze inside my body, wondering if that means…

  “Ginny, my assistant, told me somebody would be here to meet me. She didn’t tell me you’d be singing about it, though.”

  Nothing. His “I know who you are” meant absolutely nothing. Except that his mother had just died and he’d found me strumming on my guitar, like all I cared about was using her memory to write my next song.

  I don’t ever play in front of people. Ever. Not even my grandma. If I gotta play at home, I go down to our little creek, deep in the woods, where nobody but the rabbits and birds can hear me. To not only be caught playing by Colin Fairgood, of all people, but to also have it be a song about his mother’s recent death—my whole body goes hot with embarrassment.

  “I’m so sorry,” I say. “Sorry for your loss. Sorry for… everything.”

  I drop the guitar into its case and pick up the white envelope I put together for him earlier.

  “I got all the house keys right here, and the agency’s business card. I wrote the director’s number there on the back for you, just in case you have any questions. You can call her direct.”

  He barely glances at the envelope and doesn’t make any kind of move to take it out of my hand.

  “How about if I have questions I want to ask you?” he says.

  “My number’s all over your paperwork,” I tell him. “If you’ve got questions, you can call me, too, but my boss wants you to talk to her. I mean—she’d be a better person for explaining what happened with your mama.”

  “So I’m assuming that was your song and you don’t want to talk about it with me,” he says.

  My scar is straight up throbbing now. Like it’s the only thing happening on my entire face. And another new song called, “Inquisition” starts forming in my head.

  “You really should take this,” I say, thrusting the envelope at him. “I’ve still got to drive back to West Tennessee tonight, so I should be probably be getting on the road.”

  The thought of the long drive in front of me fills me with sadness and regret. Back to my grandmother’s house, back to square one. The thought is so depressing, the arm I’m holding the envelope out with sags a little.

  But at least he finally comes forward. The muscles in his arms move like ropes underneath his skin as he takes the envelope from me.

  “You’re from Alabama, ain’t you?” he asks me quietly.

  I nod, feeling caught for sure, but I tell him the truth. At least a piece of it. “I left when I was fifteen.”

  “I can tell. You talk like my friend, Jo-Jo. She left the state for a while, too, but she never could lose that accent.”

  “I guess it’s a hard accent to lose.” My voice sounds all sorts of weak, like the most awkward soul making the most awkward small talk.

  And he’s staring at me hard now, like he’s seeing me in a new light.

  I put all my energy into not actually visibly squirming under his blue stare. And into wishing I was wearing regular clothes. When you’re fixing to get recognized by someone who got real mad at you a long time ago because you were secretly dating his mother’s employer’s asshole son and then had the nerve to stop that asshole from beating him up, believe me, you do not want to be wearing scrubs.

  I think about those stories you occasionally see in celebrity magazines about stars running into people who’d done them dirty somehow. These “done a future star dirty” folks never seem to be happy and well adjusted for some reason. They’re always at least fifty pounds heavier, working some crummy paying job, and so downtrodden, the star barely recognizes them… until he does.

  I don’t want to be one of those recognized people. But here I am, standing in front of Colin Fairgood in wrinkled scrubs. And I haven’t exactly gained fifty pounds since high school, but the thirty I’ve put on since then are feeling a whole lot heavier than they did just a few minutes ago. Before I knew I was sitting on Rose Gaither’s fancy steps, waiting for her super star son, Colin Fairgood, to walk back into my life.

  I wait, still as can be, to become that story Colin Fairgood tells some magazine.

  But then Colin says, “Tell me about that song you were playing. What are you planning on doing with it?”

  I blink. For some reason these questions make me want to hide my face—even more than the scar sometimes does.

  “It’s a song I’ve been working on for a while, but it just came together tonight. I’m trying… trying to be a country music songwriter, I guess. That’s why I moved to Nashville.”

  He inclines his head. “Seriously? You want to sing country music?”

  “No, not sing it,” I tell him quickly. I have to physically repress a shudder at the thought of getting up on a stage and singing in front of people. “I just want to write it. Like write songs for other folks to sing and maybe sell one or two.”

  Colin’s brows knit. “You got a demo?”

  “No,” I answer. “I’ve still got to save up for one, but believe me, I’m not country simple. I do know I can’t just walk in to some label and tell them I’ve got a few songs I want to play for them.”

  “No, you can’t,” Colin says, shooting me a thoughtful look. “It’s either a demo or scoring the right gigs so the right people can see you.”

  I think about all the stuff my mama went through in order to get the “right” gigs. Full on prostituting herself a few times, just for the chance to sing on the right stage in front of the right music scouts, and this time I really do shudder.

  “No, it’d have to be a demo,” I answer. “I’m not getting up on anybody’s stage.” Not ever again.

  “But demos cost money,” Colin says, like I needed a rich country singer to tell me that. Another thoughtful look, then he says, “You don’t have much training do you?”

  I shake my head. “No, I don’t have any,” I admit. “My mom was a singer, and I taught myself how to play the guitar.” I don’t add that it was the only thing to do backstage when I was little and waiting for my mama to finish up with her singing gigs.

  Colin nods again, as if I’ve confirmed something bad about myself, but then he says. “Luckily you don’t need it.”

  Now it’s my turn to tilt my head. “Excuse me?”

  He gives me an up and down look that feels familiar somehow, even though I haven’t seen it for a whole lot of years.

  “I’m just saying, you’ve got talent for sure, but no connections, I’m guessing. Not even a music program to vouch for you.”

  “No, I don’t have any connections,” I agree, remembering belatedly something I’d read about him being in a music program at some fancy East Coast university when he’d gotten his first label deal.

  Why is he pointing all of this out? I ask myself. And again I have to wonder if he really doesn’t recognize me.

  He gives me a frank look.

  “Listen, Blondie, I’m just going to go’on ahead and lay this out for you straight. If you try to do this by yourself with no stage performances, you’re looking at three, maybe five good years until you’re able to get a meeting with somebody important enough to give you the kind of publishing deal you’re looking for. But if I work with you… help you polish up that song, get you the studio time you need with the right session musicians and the right producer—that right p
roducer being me—if that happens, then you could have everything you want in three to five months. We’re talking you making at least six figures by this time next year after we add up the fees and royalties.”

  My eyes just about saucer. I barely cleared twenty thousand last year. That kind of money would change my life. It would be enough to set my grandma up for life, maybe even in a new house. Enough for me to quit my job. Enough to take away the worry of providing for my grandma, now that my grandfather is dead—

  However, thinking about Paw Paw pops my dream bubble.

  “And you’d do this for me because…?” I ask Colin, my face setting.

  “Because it’s a good song,” he answers, flashing me the same charming smile he once dazzled me with back in Alabama.

  “Thanks,” I say, my voice flat as soda left out in the sun. “But my Paw Paw always told me if a man comes around offering a deal too good to be true, then I’d better check under his hat for the horns on his head. Make sure they ain’t too big for me to get my hands around before I agree to anything.”

  Colin’s answer to that is to take off his white Stetson, revealing his full head of sun-colored locks. “Your Paw Paw was a very wise man.”

  “Yes, he was, so I’m going to need the full story on why you’re so hot to help me out with my career.”

  To Colin’s credit, he doesn’t keep trying to bullshit me.

  “You’re right. I’m willing to do a lot for you, but in exchange I’m going to need you to do a little something for me.”

  I hold my breath and wait for him to drop the other shoe.

  Then Colin says, “There’s this girl I want to marry. Her name’s Josie, but I call her Jo-Jo. We’ve been best friends since we were twelve…”

  Chapter 3

  So, as it turns out, Colin’s got it real bad for this black girl he grew up with in Forest Brook.

  According to Colin, who’s sitting beside me on the marble staircase now, he and this Jo-Jo girl have always been a case of two meant-to-be-together ships passing in the night. First because they were living in Forest Brook, a town that wouldn’t have been very tolerant of a teenage interracial relationship back then—probably still only barely tolerated it now. Then they were separated by distance, when he went to college at Carnegie Mellon in Pittsburgh, and she stayed behind to attend state college in Alabama. They fell out of touch, but according to Colin, he never stopped thinking about her. Unfortunately, she dropped out of college, went through an abusive marriage, and then got into another bad relationship with some football player they’d both gone to school with—one who’d sucker punched Colin the last time he’d been in Alabama.