Page 181 of Reverse

Just past the front door, I follow Dad through the living room and down the hall toward the master bedroom. Dad walks in first and motions for me to follow, opening the door. I trail him inside the large room as he pads over to the oversized chair tucked next to a bay window. Mom lays on her side, her head resting against the edge as she blinks vacantly into a view of the thick trees edging our backyard.

Dad kneels in front of her, brushing his lips on the top of her head. “Hey, baby,” he murmurs, pulling back. She continues to look through him in the absence of a reply. “He’s home,” Dad says, my mother’s cloudy eyes finally floating in my direction. Dad sighs and stands, walking over to Mom’s vanity and pulling a pill bottle from it. He taps one into his hand, but she shakes her head in refusal. “Baby, please. For me,” he implores. My gut churns, and his anger toward me becomes incredibly justified—it’s like a punch in the gut.

“I don’t need it,” she says, lifting to sit. “I’m okay.”

Dad sighs again, looking down at her helplessly, overflowing me with guilt. He stalks over to me, where I’m standing next to the chair, stopping when we’re shoulder to shoulder.

“You come fucking get me as soon as you’re done talking. You hear me, son?”

“Dad—”

He jerks his chin. “Do you fucking hear me?”

I nod, feeling every ounce of his resentment. The hurt turned to anger before the wheels touched down in Seattle. The worst part? He was done arguing with me at the hotel. No matter how hard I tried to engage him, he successfully ignored me. For the first time in my life, my father doesn’t have my back. I feel that implication everywhere.

Dad pulls the door closed as I look over to my mother, whose eyes are scanning me from head to foot as if I’m not the son she raised, but some mystery to her.

“Mom,” I greet softly, walking over and mimicking Dad, kneeling at her chair. “How are you feeling?”

She stares at me, probing. “You really married her?” She asks, barely above a whisper. “You marriedNate’s daughter?”

I nod.

“Easton,” she croaks. “Youmarriedher.”

“I love her.”

“Why? Why did you marry her?”

“It’s the way it happened and has nothing to do with you, Nate, or anyone else.”

She moves to stand, a completely different woman than the one I saw mere weeks ago on tour, and begins to pace.

“Please don’t get worked up, Mom. Do you need anything?”

“Do Ineed anything?” She parrots incredulously, a little life coming back into her eyes as a storm begins to brew inside them. “I need to wake up from this fucking nightmare.” The look in her eyes cuts me to the bone. “How?”

“I don’t want to upset you anymore. It’s dangerous. Can we table this until you’re okay?”

“Absolutely fucking not,” she delivers with a targeted bite before reclaiming her seat in the chair. “Start from the beginning.”

Three hours later, exhausted and distraught, I walk out of the bedroom in search of my dad. I find him in his studio watching a tape from one of his early concerts. The second I step in, he stands and brushes past me.

“Dad—”

“No.”

“She’s okay, she’s not happy, but she’s talking.”

He stops a few feet from the door and launches a livid expression at me.

“I practically begged you to come clean with me when I knew you were lying. You could have handled this situation a dozen different ways—better ways—but you didn’t fucking respect me, your mother, or our marriage enough to take any one of them, if only to keep her fuckingsafe.Itrustedyou to help me with that.”

“Dad, I’m sorry—”

His reply is the slam of his door at his back, which says it all.

FIFTY-FOUR

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