Page 101 of Caught in a Storm

She leans back against an upright bass the size of a small bear. When Burnt Flowers first got signed to Stage Dive, she imagined pristine recording studios, dustless and gleaming. Turned out, from the best to the worst of them, they all have rooms like this.

OK smart ass

Why are you texting me? I prefer your voice.

i’m busy

Busy doing what?

none of your biz!

Margot imagines Poppy on the other side of the continental United States going about her young life.

are you happy mum?

The question snaps Margot out of her breaktime daze. She doesn’t know if she’s happy, but she’s busy, and sometimes that’s just as good. She’s due back in Studio 1 in twenty minutes. She and Anna will work through alt backing tracks for a song called “It’s Time Again.” They’ve got five rough songs laid down. They need five or six more, at least, plus a prerelease song to drop on social. The pace is stressful for everyone. Axl is staying away as ordered, but Rebecca brings messages from him every day. Yesterday, his message was: “Axl’s not sure he’s hearing a single yet.”

your silence is deafening…and telling

I’m working Poppy, she replies. It’s annoying having text conversations with twentysomethings; they type so fast. Happiness isn’t always the point.

u should write motivational posters for sad people to hang in their cubes. Then she texts: im sending you a video. caleb sent it to me.

The upright bass makes a low sound of protest as Margot leans forward. Billy’s Caleb?

Duh

A video arrives with a swooshing sound.

i know he asked you to leave and that mustve hurt. he thought he was doing the right thing. i dont know. guy logic. whatever. but he misses u.

How do you know?

just watch it mum. Pretty good song btw. wonder who wrote it. gtg ttyl

Poppy?

No typing bubbles. Poppy isn’t gone, because people Poppy’s age are never “gone” from their phones. Her daughter is done with this conversation, though, and Margot says, “Shit,” which, due to the acoustics in the little room, sounds crisp and rich.

When she taps the video, it opens on a street corner in Baltimore, one she recognizes. Daquan is sitting at his buckets, LaVar’s son Jackson is cross-legged on the ground with a portable piano in his lap, and Billy is standing between them holding his electric guitar. “Just do whatever you want, guys,” Billy tells Daquan and Jackson. “We’re just kinda jamming here, okay.”

Billy looks tired. He’s a little skinny, too, and his face is drawn. He always looked happy, even that first messed-up day at Charm City Rocks. He doesn’t look happy now, though. He looks like how Margot feels. He looks like he misses her.

“Are you filming this, Cay?” asks Billy.

Off camera, Caleb’s voice says, “Yeah. But what are you doing exactly, Dad?”

“You a lead singer now, too, Piano Man?” says LaVar, also off camera, and Margot thinks about how nice it’d be to be there with them.

Billy counts off and starts playing the same messy chords he played in the apartment over Robyn’s garage just before Lawson showed up. Daquan eases into some steady drumming, and Jackson starts playing. When Billy sings Margot’s lyrics, it’s bad, of course, but it’s good, too. Even though he’s a piano teacher on a street corner with two kids, it works, because it’s rock and roll.

Chapter 56

“You’re in a good mood,” says Billy.

Robyn is smiling. “Who, me?”

They’re out to dinner with Caleb, but it’s just the two of them, because Caleb excused himself to the restroom a few minutes ago. They’re at a table outside of Phillips Seafood in the Inner Harbor, surrounded by tourists. It’s sunny and warm, and in a few minutes their waiter will bring them a bushel of steaming crabs to hammer apart with mallets. It was Caleb’s choice, and Billy and Robyn are doing pretty much whatever their son wants.