Page 1 of Finding Home

Chapter 1

Caleb

About a year and a half ago

Santa Monica, California

Iturn onto my side and exhale in the quiet darkness of my bedroom. When the change of position doesn’t quell my racing thoughts, I turn over and check the time on my nightstand.

4:37.

In less than three hours, my sister will be here, so we can take our mother to her first chemo appointment. It’s going to be a long, sleep-deprived day. A whole lot longer for Mom, though, so I shouldn’t complain. Not even in my own head.

I turn onto my back this time and try to let the distant sounds of the ocean lull me to sleep; but I can’t keep my thoughts from spiraling the same way they did last night. And the night before. Although tonight, I’m back to thinking about my kid—the six-month-old who’s out theresomewhere, probably in Seattle, but maybe not. Is my kid a boy or girl? What’s their name? Do they look like me? I know it’s early days yet, but are they showing signs of musicality?

I roll over onto my side again.

I hate feeling like the second coming of my deadbeat father—someone I swore as a teen twenty years ago I’d never become. Granted, I’ve been sending massive sums of money to my child on a monthly basis, and at a level that’s far more generous than anything my baby momma could have hoped to squeeze out of me, if I’d forced her to take me to court. Which I didn’t. But the fact remains, I’m not in the kid’s life. Never have been. And worst of all, thanks to my own stupid insistence during negotiations, my kid will never know their father is C-Bomb, the drummer from Red Card Riot.

When I insisted on complete anonymity and confidentiality a year ago through my lawyer, I was certain that’s what I wanted: zero obligations to my future child, other than sending money. But once the baby was born, and especially after my good friends, Colin and Amy, had a baby only a week after my kid’s birth, doubt started creeping in. After my mother’s diagnosis, my doubt solidified into regret. And now, after watching a video of Colin and Amy’s six-month-old, Rocco, trying apple sauce for the first time today, my regret morphed, once again. This time, into full-blown guilt and shame.

Didmybaby recently try apple sauce, like Rocco? If so, weremybaby’s facial expressions as funny as Rocco’s? Colin and Amy belly-laughed behind the camera in that video today. If I’d been there to witness my own baby making silly faces in a highchair, would I have belly-laughed like they did? It feels like forever since I’ve done that.Have I ever?

I sit up in bed and rub my face. I never imagined myself having these kinds of thoughts when I signed that agreement with Claudia Beaumont. When I first learned of her pregnancy, I didn’t even remember her—not until my lawyer showed me a photo of the pretty blonde groupie from Seattle to jog my drunken memories. Plus, Claudia said she didn’t want me involved, other than sending child support payments, so whywouldn’tI agree to oblige her?

Claudia only asked for fifteen grand per month, which my lawyer said was fair, since she’d probably get more in court. But I offered Claudia twice that amount—thirty grand—on two conditions:

One, confidentiality.

Claudia couldn’t talk about our agreement or her night with me, and she also had to keep my identity a secret, not only from the kid, but from the world at large. As the “bad boy” drummer for Red Card Riot, I wasn’t afraid of the world’s condemnation. I knew the world would shrug their collective shoulders to find out C-Bomb had accidentally knocked up a groupie during a casual hook-up.

No, when I demanded confidentiality in exchange for more money than Claudia could win in court, I was actually concerned about my mother and sister finding out my dirty little secret. God help me, I knew if those two ever found out I’d not only fathered a kid without telling them—but worse, I’d also decided notto step up, other than financially—they’d never forgive me. Also, they’d want to forge a meaningful relationship with the kid, which would force me to do the same, and I selfishly didn’t want to do that. Or so I thoughtat the time.

My second condition to Claudia Beaumont was one my attorney, Paula, initially balked at: Claudia could never bring the baby to her hometown of Prairie Springs, Montana. At least, not during summers. Once Paula showed me a photo of Claudia, I vaguely remembered smoking a blunt with her, either before or after sex, and figuring out the pretty blonde from our show in Seattle had coincidentally grown up in the same small town as my mother. The same place where my grandfather—my mother’s father, who was still alive at the time—owned a cabin on Lake Lucille.

Back then, I knew my grandfather’s health was failing, and that my mother would soon inherit the lake cabin, at which time she’d probably want to start going back to Prairie Springs during summers again, like we used to do when I was a kid. So, I included my second demand to make sure Mom never ran into Claudia and her kid in Prairie Springs and somehow put two and two together.

In the end, much to my lawyer’s surprise, Claudia wound up quickly accepting both of my demands without the slightest push-back. Regarding the Prairie Springs thing, she said, through her attorney, “Fine with me. I don’t want to go to Prairie Springs, anyway. My monster of a father worked there as a police officer for decades, and he still goes back frequently to visit old friends.”

What did Claudia mean when she called her father a monster? I didn’t ask, since I’ve got a monster of a father, too. I simply thought, “Join the club, Claudia.” And never looked back. For a while, anyway. In fact, the night I signed the agreement, I played my heart out for seventy thousand people and soaked in their applause like I hadn’t just done the shittiest, most despicable thing in my life.

A soft whimper wafts into my dark bedroom and prompts me sit up in bed. Was that Mom crying out in painlike she did the other night? I get up and creep down the hallway, but when I open the door to the guest room, Mom is fast asleep. I stand in the doorway staring at her chest for a long moment, making sure it’s rising and falling. When I’m satisfied she’s fine, I creep back to my bedroom, slide back into bed, and try in vain to fall asleep, once again.

If Mom weren’t here, I’d already have battled my insomnia by taking a handful of gummies and/or smoked a fat blunt or bowl and/or downed a half-bottle of Jack by now. Or maybe I would have gone downstairs to my home studio to bang on my drums. But I can’t do any of that with Mom sleeping down the hallway and her first infusion in mere hours. If Mom wakes up in pain, I need to be alert, not dead to the world in a chemically-induced coma or banging on my drums with earphones on.

I hear another whimper and freeze. That sounded like a baby crying. Am I imagining things, due to my guilt, like the guy in the “Tell-Tale Heart” story—the one where the guy who committed murder hears his victim’s beating heart from underneath a floorboard?

I head to my mother’s room again. Same result.

Fuck.

Fuck it.

I can’t live like this anymore.

With determination flooding my veins, I return to my bedroom, grab my laptop, flop into a chair, and quickly find an old email chain between Claudia’s attorney and mine. As I recall, Claudia was copied on one of the emails somewhere . . .

Here it is.Claudia’s personal email address.Bingo.

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