“Well, hello to you, too, Kaley.” She rolls her eyes and doesn’t return the greeting. “I just got in to LA a few hours ago.”
“Does Mom know you’re here?”
“No. I wanted to surprise her.”
Her eyes flash. “Oh, there is definitely going to be a surprise here today.” Hostile and cryptic this time.
She marches across the room toward the kitchen. What is up with that? Kaley and I have always been tight. She looked at me like she hates me.
I debate whether to follow her. After a few minutes, I go into the kitchen. She’s rummaging through the fridge.
I lean against the counter and wait for her to turn toward me. She opens some sort of ready-made container and starts picking at it with a fork.
Is she ignoring me?
It’s an overplayed joke. I’ll try it anyway. “You used to like me a little, love.”
She doesn’t look up. “Very little.” She said her line. Improvement.
“You look good. How do you like living in Pacific Palisades?”
“I fucking hate it here.”
My eyes widen. Kaley didn’t used to swear. But she’s nearly eighteen.
“How’s your mother been?”
She pins me in a look that is withering.
“I’m out of here.”
In a flash I’m alone. What the fuck just happened?
I rake a hand through my hair and stay against the counter, trying to acclimate to the vibe here.
“Alan.”
I look into the family room. Krystal Harris is racing toward me, an enormous smile on her face. That’s more like it. More the welcome I’m used to here.
She’s changed a lot in a year, too. At nine, with her black hair and blue eyes, the term enchanting pixie always come to mind when I see her. She is confident like Jesse had been. Beautifully fragile like Chrissie. Absolutely lovely like you’d expect a daughter of theirs to be.
I swoop her up into my arms and give her a playfully loud kiss on her cheek. “Hey, sunshine, how are you doing? It looks like you’ve grown a foot since I’ve last seen you!”
She nods. “Three inches. Mommy says I’m going to be tall like Kaley. I’ve missed you. It’s been a year. You’ve never gone a whole year without visiting. Why don’t you come to see us anymore?”
I fight to keep reaction from my face. Krystal has an IQ that exceeds that of an MIT professor. It doesn’t surprise me she dropped in bullet-point style and laser accuracy each thing troubling and different about this past year.
What surprises me is it’s troubling to her.
I set her on her feet. “I’ve been working, love. I’ve been out of the States on tour.”
She frowns. “You were in LA in September. I saw it online. You didn’t visit us. Mommy was upset. She didn’t say it, but she didn’t have to.”
There are any number of ways I can interpret that one; none I want to deal with today.
I touch Krystal’s cheek. “It wouldn’t have done your mother any good for me to visit in September. How has she been doing, kiddo?”
Krystal giggles. “It sounds so funny when you say ‘kiddo.’ It doesn’t sound at all like Daddy with a British accent.”
Oh fuck. What the hell had made me call her kiddo? I never do that. That was Jesse’s pet term for the people he loved. I’m relieved to see that it didn’t upset Krystal. It makes her grin larger.
“Mommy is good.” Her eyes sharpen on me. Her brow crinkles. Worried. “You look terrible.”
“I’m getting old, sunshine. It happens to the best of us.”
Krystal pulls herself up to sit down on the counter close beside me. “I downloaded your new release from a bootleg site. Mommy doesn’t like me to do that since it cuts you from the royalties, but she doesn’t let me listen to your music so I can’t buy it. Too many bad words in some of the tracks. I did a remix. Do you want to hear? I turned it into hip-hop.”
I laugh. I have missed this little girl. I didn’t comprehend how much until now.
“Did you really remix me into hip-hop? Is the hip-hop an improvement? You’ve got your grandfather Jack’s talent and his wicked sense of humor. What did your mother think? Did you show her what you did?”
Krystal shrugs. “No. I’d have gotten into trouble and Mommy doesn’t talk about you anymore.”
She stares at her fingers. That bombshell makes my insides sharply adjust. Chrissie doesn’t talk about me anymore and Krystal is wondering why. Krystal has a dangerous sensitivity for a child. She picks up on things in the adult world that no child should be capable of for its own wellbeing. I can tell by her expression that she knows something is wrong between her mother and me, and she is troubled by it.
“Don’t worry, Krystal. Everything is going to be fine. It’s all different for us and it will take time until everything feels normal again. I loved your dad, too. He was a good man, and a good friend. I miss him every day. Are you all right, love?”
She stares at me perplexed “I will always be all right. Daddy loves me. You don’t lose love just because somebody goes away.”
Poignant words from a nine-year-old. It sounds like something Chrissie would say. I can tell that they are heartfelt and I am appalled with myself for being slightly jealous that it is this easy for her.
“Mommy is going to read for another half hour. Would you like to see the rabbits Uncle Sandy gave me for my birthday?”
Uncle Sandy, Jesse’s brother, a music promoter. “I saw your Uncle Sandy in Tokyo a week ago.”
“I know. I heard him tell Mommy. He was backstage at your concert and you had dinner together after the show. He said that being forced to eat in his socks gave him the flu. That you didn’t talk about anything and that you looked like hell. He thought Mommy should call you. She told him to butt out. She snapped at Uncle Sandy. He was surprised by that. Mommy never snaps.”
She slips down from the counter, grabs my hand and tugs me through the house to the side patio door.
There are two elegant structures on the lawn which one has to assume are Chrissie’s idea of hutches.
“Dang it,” she exclaims in irritation.
“What?”
Krystal drops to the grass before a hutch, opens the cage and lifts out a ball of gray fur.
“This is the male. One of the twins put them together. I promised Mommy I wouldn’t let that happen again. Why are boys such idiots? Why do they miss the obvious? Put them together in the cage and we’ve got more rabbits. We almost couldn’t find homes for them all last time. Mom’s going to be pissed.”
I find myself grinning. “You say the most outrageous things, love.”
She shoves the gray lop-eared creature into the other hutch. “Do you want to know their names?”
“I don’t know if I care to know any rabbits on a first-name basis.” I run a hand through my hair and note the disappointment in her eyes. Fine. I’ll ask. “What are their names, Krystal?”
She points at the one in front of her. “That one I named after Mommy. Her name is Chrissie.”
I make a face, and bite back a laugh. “I bet that went over well with your mum.”
Krystal shakes her head. She points to the gray bunny. “That one I named after you. That one we call Manny.”
Oh fuck.
The blood starts to riot through my ears. I can feel color on my face like a burn. I am being confronted about my past with her mother. Fuck, what the hell does she know?
“Krystal, why would you do that?”
I stare at her.
Her eyes widen. “I always name my pets after the people I love. You look very strange. What’s wrong?”
I find her explanation not cute.
“I don’t care for having a rabbit named after me.”
She stares silent and pouty at the cages. Damn, what is she trying to do here? I am being dragged through a minefield of innuendo by a little girl.
“Are you reading the online tabloids again? Is there anything you’ve read that you’d like to ask me about? It’s mostly garbage, Krystal. I hope you know that.”