Always a Hero. Justine Davis
would be cool,” he said, then smiled at his own unintentional pun.
“So how’s life today?”
“Sucks,” Jordy said, his smile fading.
“Still not getting along with your dad, huh?”
“He’s an as—” Jordy broke off what had obviously been going to be a crude bodily assessment.
“Good save,” Kai said, acknowledging the effort. “Your mom probably didn’t like you swearing.”
“Only reason I stopped,” Jordy muttered, looking away. Kai guessed he was tearing up and didn’t want her to see.
“If we can’t cry for the ones we’ve loved and lost, then what good are we?” she asked softly.
He looked up at her then, and she indeed saw the gleam of moisture in his eyes. Those green eyes, she thought, were going to knock that girl he’d meet someday right on her backside.
“You understand, because you lost someone, too.”
The boy not only had a good ear, he was perceptive.
“Yes.”
“Kit.”
She didn’t talk about him, ever. But this was a kid in pain, worse today than she’d ever seen it, and she sensed he needed to know he wasn’t alone. And she suspected he already knew how Christopher Hudson had died; the info was out there, on the Net, and easy enough to find.
“Yes. And I loved him very much,” she finally said. “But it wasn’t like your mother, who didn’t want to leave you. He did it to himself.”
Jordy’s eyes widened. “He killed himself?”
No outside source would have said that, she knew. They all said it was accidental. She didn’t look at it that way. But then, she’d been in the middle of it.
“Slowly. Years of drugs.”
“Oh.” Jordy was silent for a moment before he said, in a small voice, “How long ago?”
She hesitated again. Was he wondering how long it took to feel life was worth living again?
“A long time ago.” Six years ago was almost half his lifetime, so she figured that was accurate. “And,” she added quietly, “yesterday.”
She saw his brows furrow, then clear as he nodded slowly in understanding.
“So you haven’t … forgotten?”
Panic edged his voice. Ah, she thought. So that was it. “No. And I never will. And you won’t either, Jordy. I promise you.”
“But … sometimes I can’t remember what she sounded like.”
Interesting, she thought, that it was sound and not image that he was worried about.
“But do you remember how you felt when she talked to you, told you how much she loved you?”
The boy colored slightly, but nodded again.
“Then you remember the important part. And you always will.”
It was a few minutes before the boy got around to asking if he could have the sound room and the slightly battered but well-loved Strat she often let people use. Jordan was just starting out, and it was a bit too much for his hands. She had a small acoustic in back she thought he’d do better with, but he thought acoustics were boring and wasn’t interested. Yet.
Now there was something to add to the door rotation, she thought. Some of her personal favorite acoustic bits, six- and twelve-string, Steve Davison and Jaquie Gipson first on the list, Kaki too, and John Butler and his custom eleven strings. Nobody could listen to them and still think acoustics were boring.
But in the meantime, the boy wanted the solace that laboriously plinking out chords until his fingers were sore brought him.
“No,” she said to his request, startling him; she’d never declined him before. But at her gesture he followed her into the former storage room she’d had converted into a soundproof room with a small recording system set up. Nothing fancy, but enough for accurate and fairly full playback. The conversion had cost her, but it had paid for itself by the third year; not many aspiring players could resist the temptation of purchasing the instrument they liked best once they’d heard the sound played back for them. There was something about the process that was an incredible selling tool.
Jordy followed her into the room, knowing to dodge the corner of the keyboard in the slightly cramped space before she even flipped the lights on. She walked across to the rack where she’d put the Gibson SG when she’d finished last night; the mood had been upon her and she’d indulged in a rare these days midnight jam, playing riff after riff until her own out-of-practice fingers were sore.
She picked up the gleaming blue guitar and held it out to the boy.
“Try this one.”
The boy’s eyes widened and she heard him smother a gulping breath. “BeeGee?”
She grinned at his use of her old nickname for the guitar, B for the color, and G for Gibson. A name she’d come up with before it had been pointed out to her that she’d inadvertently chosen the name of her mother’s favorite group, back in the day. It had taken her a while to get over the humiliation of that, but the name had stuck.
And the gesture had the result she’d wanted; the boy completely forgot the pain he’d been mired in. For the moment, he would be all right.
She closed the door behind her, thinking it might be better if she couldn’t hear what sounds his untrained fingers might coax out of her baby. The neck was small enough, but it tended to be a bit head-heavy and might give him trouble. Maybe it would teach him that form had a big role in function; right now he was too taken with looks and flash to absorb that.
When she got back into the store she found Mrs. Ogilvie waiting, a new book of piano music in her hands. Marilyn was desperate to get her youngest daughter seriously interested, although Kai knew Jessica couldn’t care less. At sixteen, her life was full of other things. But her mother kept trying, and Kai wondered if at some point, despite the steady stream of money, she should try and explain that some people just didn’t have the desire or the talent.
Maybe I should suggest she take lessons herself, Kai thought. Then at least somebody would get some use out of all these books.
“I saw Wyatt’s boy come in,” Marilyn said as she rang up the sale.
“He comes in almost every day,” Kai said. Marilyn glanced around questioningly. “He’s in the sound room,” Kai explained. “Practicing.”
Marilyn sniffed audibly. “At least he will practice. Is he taking lessons?”
“He’d like to, but his father won’t let him. I guess he’s pretty strict.”
“Now that’s hard to believe,” Marilyn said with a laugh.
Marilyn would have likely known Jordy’s dad, Kai realized; she’d lived here for most of her life. She, having only been here four years, knew nothing about him outside of Jordy’s litany of complaints.
All he does is work and hassle me, the boy had told her once.
She remembered smiling at the typical complaint, one she’d made about her own father before she’d grown up enough to appreciate the love behind both actions.
“You remember him?” Kai asked, curious to see if there was another viewpoint on the man, curious enough to endure Marilyn’s rather scattered conversational style. “From before, I mean?”
“Wyatt Blake? Anybody who lived in Deer Creek then remembers Wyatt. Smart, restless, and reckless. When he left town at seventeen, nobody was surprised. We all felt bad for Tim and Claire though. Tim was strict, but Wyatt needed that, reckless as he was.”