Fix It Up - Mary Calmes Page 0,117
sure that you’ve done all you came to do.”
“Meaning closure.”
“Meaning whatever you think you need,” I clarified. “I don’t want you to feel like you’ve short-changed yourself in any way.”
“Like by confronting my father.”
“Do you feel like you need to do that?”
He let out a deep breath. “He never reached out to me, and just today he plotted, from inside a jail cell, to have you kidnapped and ransomed. So no, Loc, I don’t ever need to see him again.”
There was never going to be a happy resolution for him and his family; that ship had sailed years ago. All he had now was whatever memories were left.
“Tomorrow morning I’m going to visit my mother’s grave and say goodbye. From here on out, I’m going to make sure it’s covered in flowers, and whatever else is going to happen to my father and my sisters, that is for them to deal with, live with, and be at peace with. I am going to go home with you, wait for my ring to be delivered, and then we will head back to your mother’s house and get married. That’s where my head is; that’s my North Star, as it were.”
“Okay,” I whispered, reaching behind me to take hold of his hip. “I can’t wait to be married too.”
“Really?”
“Yes, really,” I snapped at him.
His husky laughter made me smile, even though I didn’t let him see. “God, I love you.”
“Yeah, well, I love you back.”
His sigh was long.
“You can hold me a little tighter; I’m not gonna break,” I murmured.
And he did.
Eighteen
I had everyone from Torus fly out to Sedona for the wedding, and as I suspected, my mother and Jared hit it off right away. What was really surprising, though, was that people stayed after Nick and I left. Ella needed to sit in the sun with my mother; Owen was compelled to put in just a simple video security system; Shaw and Nash constructed an herb garden of river rock and put in some more fruit trees. I never questioned the need that others had to be near Sherri Barnes. She was coming to stay with Nick and me over the holidays, with all the dogs, and I was looking forward to that. She had been worried that she was going to interfere with my studies, but my classes to begin my master’s degree in social work didn’t start until the spring. Not that I would have been bothered anyway, she was a soothing blanket of calm for me. Always.
The Reckoning was finished a month later, in November, much to the joy of the record executives. It was quickly hailed, on the strength of the two songs that debuted ahead of the album that was scheduled for a January release, as Nick’s best album to date, full of campfire serenades as well as bluesy hard-rocking ballads. Critics who were given early access called the album a labor of love; the tracks were a combination of country-influenced seventies throwbacks, full of lyrical and melodic harmonized hooks as well as heart-pounding beats of rage that would make your neighbors bang on your walls to turn it down. Everyone in Nick’s camp was ecstatic, his fanbase was in a frenzy, and the predictions for sales were astronomical.
Nick was pleased, but what was most important to him was how I could never—not once—not get misty eyed when my song, his song that he’d written for me, “Lock and Heart,” came on the radio. It was there, in every aching note he sang, his raw, almost savage, clearly wholehearted love for me. The first time he sang it, at our wedding, I had to take a small walk to the edge of the water to not break down in front of everyone. It took him coming after me, holding me tight, to get myself together.
“Tell me again, Loc,” he pressed me, whispering in my ear.
“I love you; and that’s a promise forever.”
The words were important to him. They allowed him to be able to leave me and go out, with his band, on a theater tour with Stig Malloy in mid-November ahead of the release of the Netflix documentary, Redemption Road, in December and the album in January. The sets were all acoustic based, the music lower dynamic, and everyone lost their minds.
Nick’s father had agreed to a plea deal and would spend no more than twenty years in prison, and no less than twelve. Alan took a plea as well, which, ironically, got him