Page 64 of Reverb

“It’s just so I can refer back to our conversation,” I told her. “So I can get your words exactly right.”

“Sure.” She watched my phone warily for a moment, then pulled her gaze away. “I don’t know where to start. Ask a question, honey.”

“Why does Stone have a different last name than you?” I asked.

She brightened, because she knew the answer to this question. “Oh. Harvey was my second husband’s last name. I changed it when we married. Never bothered changing it again, because I learned that lesson. Stoney had his father’s last name when he was born, but we had it legally changed when he was thirteen. It was his idea. We changed it to my mother’s maiden name, because he said he didn’t really have a father. He knew his mind even then. We fought about it of course, but he got his way.” She smiled.

I blinked. It was the first question, and I’d already learned something Stone had never told me. “Zeeland wasn’t his birth name?”

“No. But Michael Roark was a no-good sonofabitch who took off after Stoney was born. I figured out later that I wasn’t the only woman he had in his black book the whole time. I just managed to snag a wedding and a baby out of him before he moved on to the next one. He never cared one bit about his son, not now and not then.” She pointed to my phone. “You can write that in the article. That’s facts.”

“Where is Stone’s father now?” I asked.

“Who knows? We didn’t bother chasing him down.” Diana’s gaze darted away, and I had the feeling she might have kept tabs on her ex for longer than she admitted to her son. “He probably had other kids he left behind. If he did, I feel sorry for them. I got this house out of him and I got my son, which is why I can’t say I wish I never met him. But otherwise, he can go to hell.”

Something turned over in the back of my mind, a thought I couldn’t quite place. I left it and moved to my next question. “What was Stone like as a little boy?”

That got her talking. If you want to get any mother onto her favorite topic, ask her about when her kids were little and she’ll talk all day.

Diana’s portrait of Stone was a pile of contradictions. He was a good boy, but he was also a troublemaker. He was smart, but his marks were terrible and his grammar was “hopeless.” He liked to get his own way, but he also did chores around the house and got his first job at thirteen for cash under the table. He would practice guitar for hours at a time, but he was also lazy. He had attitude, but when he got his first check from a Road Kings tour as they were first starting out, he sent his mother two hundred dollars.

I listened, my thoughts spinning as I tried to reconcile all of this with the man I knew. Lazy? A troublemaker? Those didn’t compute. Diana’s version of Stone’s year in L.A. was that he left home “because he was in a mood,” not because his home life was a disaster.

And she made no mention of the fact that at least one of her husbands had hit her son.

I didn’t call her on it. Stone had talked to me about it honestly when I interviewed him, and there was no point in bringing it up now, except to make Diana angry, guilty, and defensive. She’d end the interview, and I didn’t want that yet. I still had questions to ask.

I wondered what she’d think if she knew I’d been dating her son for months now. That he’d spent the night at my place just two nights ago, and I’d slept curled up against his big, warm body.

We moved on to the topic of present-day Stone. Diana’s opinion of her son as a fully grown rock star was much the same as when he was a child. She was proud of him, but she also said he “liked to make her life difficult.” When I asked for an example, she just rolled her eyes and said, “You have no idea what he puts me through!”

It wasn’t an answer. Diana seemed to find comfort in seeing her son as a lifelong problem. Even her compliments were laced with insults—he was smart but he was stupid, he was successful but he was lazy. It made me angry. Now I knew why Stone had a low opinion of himself. I knew why he’d warned me not to judge her, why he’d told me that Diana had had a hard childhood of her own. It excused her a somewhat, but not all the way. To me, she still had a lot to answer for.

And I didn’t know how much of this to put into my article. Which was why I’d already rewritten it twice and I hadn’t turned it in.

Then, as we were wrapping up, she made things even worse.

“Make sure to write that I want grandkids,” she joked as I turned off my recording app. “He can start with that gorgeous agent he’s dating.”

I paused and stared at her. “What?”

“You didn’t know?” Diana relished this. “The blond model.” She waggled her eyebrows. “Stoney’s dating her. She’s forty I think, but if they get started soon it could still happen. They could fertilize her eggs or something. Hollywood actresses do it all the time.”

I put my phone in my bag with numb fingers as my thoughts spun. “Um, I don’t think—”

“She was in Sports Illustrated,” Diana continued. “I know Stoney doesn’t date much. He likes to play the field, like his father. But that one? He should lock her down. I’ve told him that. But what do I know? I’m just his mother.”

TWENTY-FIVE

Stone

Diana was going to ruin it. I could sense it, like the smell of smoke in the wind. She was going to say something during this interview, do something—I had no idea what—and Sienna wouldn’t want me anymore. It wasn’t a possibility, it was a fucking certainty. I knew my mother that well.

I waited as long as I could while I knew Sienna was at my mother’s house, and then I bailed on rehearsal and drove to Sienna’s apartment building. For once, I didn’t bother calling or texting our usual back-and-forth. This was too important.

Sienna’s car wasn’t at her building, which meant she could be anywhere. I tried to think of where she’d go while trying not to panic. Then I remembered.

Peter and Maggie were away for the weekend at a teachers’ conference, so their house was empty. If Sienna wanted a peaceful place to work, she’d go to her attic.

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