Page 6 of Heartstring

“I know. Well, if you’re set on it, you can tell Daisy you’re not interested in recording. You’ve made her a very wealthy agent by writing for other people. Why change now, right?”

I sit back on the couch. The truth is I could talk to Daisy. She won’t question my decision, whichever way I go. But the other thing I’ll never admit to anyone is that now, without Porter in my life, the thought of saying I don’t want to perform my own songs scares me as much as the thought of saying yes.

Performing is what I’ve always wanted to do until I was forced to replace it with new dreams. Such as making the most of the short time I had with my dad.

“Anyway. Why the suitcase?” I ask.

“Because when Daisy told me you weren’t taking her calls, I decided the one thing you need in your life to get you out of your funky funk wasn’t with you.”

“What’s that?”

“Me!”

“Oh great. And for how long will I have to endure your charming personality?”

“Only until you get your head out of your ass so that when I look into your eyes, I see my best friend again.”

My throat tightens.

All the turns my life has taken, all the pain and loss. Seymour has been there for most of it. He was the hard, heavy rock that grounded me when his brother died, even as he was hurting for his own loss.

Maybe sharing my space with someone else again, even if for a short time, won’t be so bad.

3

MIK

NOW

I stareat the thermostat on the wall and wonder again if there’s some life class I missed growing up. It shouldn’t be so hard to make this house warm. It’s not even a big house.

Okay, so for most people, the six-bedroom house with a basement recording studio and indoor pool is a big house, but I’ve been to some of my friends’ places. They’d laugh at what I now call home. Which is beside the point.

I should light the fire in the living room, but that would also require knowledge beyond my current skills.

“See? I told you we shouldn’t have moved to Small Town, Middle of Nowhere, Lost State,” Kay says.

My daughter is nothing if not dramatic, courtesy of growing up as a little princess with rock stars for uncles. The worst kind of influence.

“It’s called Stillwater, and it’s not the middle of nowhere. The coast is literally an hour away.”

She stares at me in that new way she’s learned since turning fourteen. Clearly, one of us isn’t missing key life stages. Moody teenager: check.

“Anyway, you loved it here when we played in the summer festival,” I say.

“I love it everywhere you play, Thor, because I love traveling. It doesn’t mean I want to move to all the places we’ve been. Besides, it was summer, not the arctic winter.”

I cringe at the nickname Kay adopted for me with the band’s influence. Okay, so with the Scandinavian heritage that gave me the blond hair, blue eyes, and tall, muscly frame, I could pass for a Norse god. But really? Couldn’t they be more creative? I don’t even have a hammer.

“First of all, my name is Dad. Second, we’ve never moved anywhere. And third, you’re used to cold weather. You love it in Vermont when we stay with Bastian.”

“Precisely…Dad. We don’t need to change what’s not broken.” She turns and leaves the room. A moment later, I hear her bedroom door slam, followed by the latest album by Rock Plasticity, playing at max volume.

God, I really hate that album, and Kay knows it. Just as she knows to decrease the sound on the one decent song the album has for maximum annoyance effect.

I turn back to the task at hand and grab the instructions the previous owners left for us. Was the guy a doctor or something? I can barely make out what he wrote. Don’t most people have computers and printers?

Kay isn’t totally wrong. We’ve been very happy on the road, and when we’re not touring, she loves when we stay with my mom in California or at my bandmate’s farm in Vermont.