Page 10 of Sounds Like Love

“It’s your dad,” she deadpanned.

I laughed despite myself. “You’re right. It probably went right over his head.”

Gigi dug a hush puppy out of the bag and popped it into her mouth. “Exactly.”

I sank down in the passenger seat. “I just don’t know what I’m walking into, you know?” I felt embarrassed admitting it. “I talk to her every day on the phone, but it’s different living a thousand miles away. She can omit things. She has before,” I added wryly, more to myself than to the conversation.

Gigi glanced over at me with a frown. It was the smallest point of contention from Christmas, and I was still a little bitter about it, though Gigi was the only one who knew.

Last summer, after “If You Stayed” hit it big—bigbig, late-night-show big,BillboardHot 100 big—I was on cloud nine. None of my songs had ever broken out like that before. Wherever I turned, there was the song. It was everywhere,everywhere, the theme song to the soundtrack of the rest of my life.

I loved it so much.

So, when I came home for Christmas, I didn’t see it coming—the news. The night I arrived, Mom and Dad sat me down as Mitch hovered in the doorway to the living room, and they told me about the last few months while I’d been basking in a rose-tinted world. They told me about the few times Mom got lost on the way home, and occasionally forgot words, and forgot moments. Like sand slipping through her fingers, she’d told me. She got angry sometimes, too, inexplicably so. And sad. Her emotions seesawed, and sometimes she couldn’t find the words she needed to express them. Mom and Ihadgotten into a few more fights over the last year on the phone, but I figured it was just stress from the Revelry, and my job, and …

It wasn’t.

I began to look around the living room then, and the little sticky notes everywhere—lists in the kitchen, reminders of appointments by the front door, calendars in every room. Little things.

Little things that became so much bigger.

The neurologist said she had early-onset dementia. The verbal kind—the kind that took away your words, your voice, yourself. They said that Mom should have beenmuchfarther along than she was, surprised at how well she functioned, as if she was an old computer found in a back closet, dusted off and plugged in, and not a person.

I think that was the worst part.

“I’ll move home,” I’d suggested immediately, looking at my parents on the love seat. “I’ll live in the guest room and I’ll help out—”

“No,” Mom replied quickly. “No, I would hate that.”

“But you’ll need help—”

“I would hate that foryou,” she corrected. “You moved out there to chase your dreams, heart.”

I was shaking my head, already planning on how to get my things packed into a U-Haul. “I can write from anywhere—”

“But there aren’t opportunities justanywhere,” Mom said, shaking her head. “Don’t put your life—your dreams—on pause for me. I would hate myself if you looked back in twenty years and regretted it.”

“But …”

Behind me, Mitch shifted in the doorway, and quietly left.

“Your brother’s here, and your dad will take care of me,” she said, and squeezed Dad’s hand tightly. “You’ve worked so hard. Embrace this success.Thriveon it.”

I wanted to tell her that it was silly for her to think I’d regret coming home. I never would. Momwasmy dreams. She was the whole reason I wanted to be a songwriter in the first place, because when I heard she used to sing with the Boulevard back before they were famous,I googled old photos and had found one pixelated image of my mother on stage withtheRoman Fell and it imprinted on my young mind. Mom looked so at home there, I figuredthatwas what happiness looked like.

It didn’t matter that she never talked about her past. That, whenever I asked her about it, she’d give me the same story: that one day she came to the Rev, and she fell in love with Dad, and decided to stay. Music brought her here, led her to her happily ever after. That’s what she always said.

Music would lead me to mine, too. I was sure of it.

She was the reason I did all of this, why Iwantedto. Songwriting was as deep in my blood as it was in hers.

But despite being the prolific songwriter I was, I didn’t know the right words to say to tell her exactly that. Mom looked so determined, her mouth set into a thin line, her eyes bright with unshed tears. She wanted this for me.

She wanted me to succeed so, so badly.

So I gave in.

“Okay. I’ll stay in LA.”

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