Page 56 of Born To Be My Baby

Sean began playing, then Jami began singing. Axel had the percussion down pat, and the backups added their voices to his words.

There were times he couldn't look at Gloria. He saw the tears in her eyes streaming down. He saw her swiping them away. That's how he felt when he played them. So he closed his eyes, and he dug deep into the song and he played his heart out. When they were all finished, everyone in the band started laughing.

"Oh, my God, that is so good!" Mads said.

"It is." Jami nodded to him. "Good song, Sean. Man. Good song." He punched him on the shoulder a little bit.

Sean stared at Gloria. Finally, she smiled and nodded. And he knew that's all her emotions would let her do. He walked over to Mina, and he knelt down in front of her chair.

"What did you think, girl?"

"Dad, it's beautiful. I can't believe you wrote that song so fast. I'm so proud of you."

He stood and kissed Mina on the forehead. He said, "Honey, I'm proud of you, too."

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Gloria moved through the rest of the day in a haze. She recognized Sean's songwriting abilities. Of course, she always knew he was a fantastic musician. He was a consummate entertainer.

She loved watching him play the guitar and sing. Back in the day, when his band was on stage, he was magnetic. But to listen to songs he wrote about them, their life, her. Oh, that was something. That was really something out of this world.

Her phone buzzed, and she glanced quickly to see an email from her attorney. She eagerly opened it.

His words were, "I think you can go ahead with your video. We don't see any problems."

She replied, "Thank you."

Sean said his goodbyes to his bandmates, and she stood. Her knees were still slightly weak after all the emotion. She'd be popping out gray hair left and right after this week.

She received a hug from everyone and they walked to the car together, both she and Mina holding Sean's hands.

As soon as they were on the road, she said, "Tim emailed and gave us the green light to move forward with the video."

Mina said, "If you'll send it to me, I'll send it on to video editing and ask them to take care of it. I've already heard back from them; they'll work with us privately. The same with the sound crew. And I've gone ahead and had Boon send me the raw recording so the network doesn't have that."

She smiled at her daughter's efficiency. "You're amazing, Mina."

She was already back in work mode and didn't acknowledge her words. But she was used to that.

It wasn't far from the Barn to Sean's house. Once they got inside and got Mina settled in the recliner, she sat on the sofa to her right.

"I like the idea of the podcast, Mina. I think we can make that work."

Mina smiled at her, "I think so too, Mom. I think it's going to be great. And even though I'd not wish this past week on anyone, the timing right now is hot. The network must know that too. But they're looking at it all wrong, or they want to capitalize on it while imposing some stupid moral punishment to you so it doesn't look like they agree with you."

Mina stared at her phone a moment, then kept going. "And if sometimes Dad is traveling and we can't go or he isn't able to help with the podcast, you can do it on your own. You've done your show on your own forever. But I think the two of you together, right now at this time, is too hot to not capitalize on. So let's be strategic about releasing the video. Let's get it done. Get it edited. We'll get you in a studio to narrate it. And then we'll go from there. I'm setting us up on podcast aggregator sites right now, which will push it out to other podcasts. We need a name for it."

Gloria pursed her lips. She leaned back. "We can't use Chart Toppers. The network owns that."

Mina smiled, "Well, the network owns Chart Toppers in Music. They don't necessarily own Chart Toppers with Violet Slyk and Sammy Fender. We can sell that one big time. And I've got our PR people working on some things to get them ready to just have a big push."

Gloria watched her daughter spring to life. "So we're going to need a studio."

Sean entered the room with a beer in his hand. He set a glass of wine in front of her. And he gave Mina a bottle of water. She looked at the bottle of water and pouted.

He chuckled, "Sorry, hon, but you're still on painkillers."

Mina nodded. "Okay, I can live with that."

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