Page 42 of Whirlwind

“Shut up.” He chuckled. “We’d work on new songs together in her room until all hours. Well, they were her songs. I’d help her out on my guitar. It was totally innocent. I wouldn’t have made a move anyhow, her boyfriend would’ve killed me. No joke.”

My head fell back and I laughed.

“He was this huge guy, a Vietnam vet. A grimace with a snarl was his relaxed look. I still remember how jumpy he made me. They were really in love. A big love. If they were within ten yards of each other, you could feel it. There was no screwing with that. We all respected it.”

That sounded like the way I thought of Mom and Finger.

“For me, at eighteen, on my own for the first time,” Dad continued, “it was a thrill just to be in the same room with her working out chords and lyrics, helping her find what she was after. And singing with her onstage was…fire. Her voice was truly extraordinary—aggressive, emotional, powerful, and it could also be real vulnerable.” He swallowed hard. “Her stage presence…performers like her don’t come along very often.” His eyes narrowed, his gaze focused in the distance to long ago. A muscle along his jaw flexed. “She was fire.”

I’d never heard him describe any performer like that. I didn’t say anything. What the hell do you say to that kind of memory that was so vivid, that still hurt?

His back straightened, and he let out a soft laugh. “I was like a puppy dog around her.”

“You had it bad.”

“I did. Got a lot of shit for it too from the guys. Assholes loved teasing me.”

“You’re a romantic at heart, Dad.”

“I am. Something your mother is not, by the way.”

“You’re wrong—you haven’t seen her with her new husband, the tough as nails outlaw biker.”

He let out a chuckle, his feet paddling in the water. “Isi was a sweetheart, a good person. Bold, brazen even. Someone you could really talk to about anything.” He crossed his arms around himself like he was holding his insides in. “It was the first time I was actually friends with a woman. We could talk about anything, laughed a lot.”

Sounded like my girl from Meager.

He let out a heavy breath. “Those were heady days. We had nothing but our dreams keeping us together. Grateful for every chance flung our way. Not much money if any, just our will to succeed, ourneedto succeed, our hopes for making the next gig our best ever, and at the end of every day, we had each other. That’s what got us through all the mud and junk food—sometimes no food—and lots of sleepless nights.

“And through all the crazy she was bright, funny, and so generous as an artist, as a human being. Taught me a lot, which helped shape me. I learned to listen.” He rubbed the back of his neck, his Adam’s apple bobbing. He was emotional. “Jesus, I haven’t thought about all that in a long, long time.” He leaned over and grabbed his pack of cigs from the table nearby and lit a cigarette, his face drawn. “Then Isi goes and gets herself killed for no goddamn reason.”

“Isi?”

“That was her name.” He exhaled a stream of smoke. “That last year, we were officially Isi and the Silver Tongues.”

I’d known the basics of this story but not these details. Dad playing roadie for his cousin Jay’s band. Going on tour with them for months and months, doing a little bit of everything. Then there’d been a death and the band had broken up for a while. Then Dad got them to regroup with him as the front man—lead singer, lead guitar.

He let out another, longer plume of smoke, his gaze clouded, far away. “Isidora Dillon, my girl from Meager.”

I stilled. Violet’s photograph. Violet’s second cousin, the rock singer. Isi. My blood backed up in my veins, rushed in reverse.

“After that fucking horror we were all just numb,” Dad murmured. “Destroyed. But I knew we couldn’t just give up, walk away, she wouldn’t have wanted that for us. Deep down nobody wanted that either. We’d worked so hard, we’d gotten pretty far. I was everybody’s damn therapist, their cheerleader. I formally joined the band, and we renamed ourselves and kept going.”

“Cruel Fate.” Pins needled over the back of my neck as the name of Dad’s band left my lips.

“Oh, and how cruel she is.” He sucked on his cigarette.

“Dad, I think my girl from Meager—Violet—is related to yours. Isi was her grandmother’s cousin.”

“What?”

“In Meager, Violet showed me a picture of her second cousin. Said she’d been a rock singer and that she’d gotten killed in a convenience store with her brother. She said her name was Isidora.”

His lips parted, jaw hardened. “You serious?”

“Totally. Her family owned a store in Meager.”

“Yeah, that’s her. I’ve got the chills right now, and I’m not shitting you.”

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