Page 25 of Sweet Music
Cash blinked at him, stunned that his father could be so observant. Or maybe he had just been a lot more obvious than he’d thought at the time.
“It wasn’t really a breakup,” Cash said. “Not exactly. But I guess it was something like that. Anyway, in those early days I did a few things I’m not proud of. And it’s time for me to make one of them right.”
“What do you mean?” Mom asked.
Cash slid his phone out of his pocket, figuring the boy could do a better job of explaining than he could.
“Look at this,” he said, navigating to the video, and then letting it play.
“That’s Bella Wood’s boy,” Mom said. “I don’t see what… oh…”
They all listened to the rest of the song in silence, and when it looped back to the beginning, they watched it again.
“Oh, Cash,” Mom said, pulling him close after their second watch. “This is incredible. And can you believe that he’s right here in town?”
Dad stayed silent.
“I promise you that I didn’t know,” Cash said, pulling back to look his father in the eye. “If I had, I would have been there for him and his mother from the very beginning. You can look at the timestamp on that video if youwant to see how fast I hightailed it out here as soon as I saw this.”
Dad nodded, his eyes meeting Cash’s again, understanding on his face.
Relief flooded through him. A lot of people were going to think he’d abandoned a mother and child, but if his parents believed him and Tripp did too, then he knew he would find a way to get through this personally, whether his public image survived or not.
If only Bella believed me…
That would be nice, but the only person whose feelings really mattered was Cody Wood.
“Bella is going to talk to him after school,” Cash said. “And if he agrees to it, then I’ll get to see him tonight.”
“Of course he’ll want to see you,” Mom said. “He plays so beautifully. He’s obviously been hoping to grow up just like you.”
Her words hit him hard, and he felt his eyes prickling.
“Now, let’s figure out what you should bring with you,” she said, letting go of him to pace the kitchen.
“Well, the important thing is going to be support,” Cash said. “I can basically hand Bella a blank check for anything he needs.”
“Charles Cash Lawrence,” Mom said sternly. “That’snotwhat I meant. Of course you’ll provide for the boy, that part goes without saying. But you need to bring him somethingpersonal.Something that shows him you want to know him and you want him to know you—something that makes him understand that he’s part of this family.”
“Oh,” Cash said, overwhelmed at how obviously right she was. “Right. Thank Godfor you, Mom.”
“I’m just going to whip up a batch of lemon squares,” she told him. “They were your favorite when you were a teen, so he should have some right away.”
“Great,” Cash said. “Did you, uh, happen to keep any of my old stuff?”
He felt a guilty pang that he hadn’t even bothered to come home and help out when Mom and Dad moved from the big green Victorian over here to the house that used to belong to his grandparents.
“Of course,” Mom said right away. “We put it over at your place. It’s waiting right there for you, for whenever you decided to come home. I went over there while you were out this morning and aired everything out and made up the bed for you.”
“My place?” he echoed.
“You always liked the purple house,” Dad chuckled. “Reminded you of that guitarist you loved.”
“Prince,” Cash breathed. “But wait, the house is really mine?”
“We don’t have renters here,” Mom said firmly. “This is family land.”
“Amazing,” Cash said.
