CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
I have no idea what time it is when I wake up again. My cell phone is dead. The light outside my window is dim, suggesting it’s either early in the morning or nighttime. I haven’t heard our rooster crowing, so I’m betting it’s the latter.
I wander into the bathroom to pee and take a moment to brush my teeth. My hair looks like crap, but nobody in this house is going to care. As I reach the top of the staircase, I hear voices down on the main floor—deep voices. I slowly go down the steps, holding on to the railing. The lower I get, the more familiar those voices become.
When I reach the bottom I stop and my jaw falls open. My living room is full of people, and they’re all looking at me.
“Amber.” Mister Bigger-Than-Life himself, Red Wylde, is standing in the middle of our living room. My mothers are beaming, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen them look so happy. Cash is sitting in the recliner with a beer resting on his belly. Mooch is on the floor, feeding a puppy with a bottle. Paul is on the couch between Rose and Em. And Ty is standing off to the side, isolated from the rest, but now the center of my attention.
“What are you doing here?” I ask him.
He shrugs. “We took the jet.”
Red takes two steps toward me. “Amber, we need you to come back.”
I hang on to the railing with two hands, shaking my head. “You don’t need me.”
Red goes to take another step, but Ty stops him, holding up a hand. When I’m ready to race up the stairs, overwhelmed by the idea that all these people flew to Maine to talk to me, I stop for the man before me; Ty reaches the bottom stair and takes my hand.
“I know you’re exhausted, and this is probably the last thing you want to see right now, but we felt really bad about what happened to you and wanted to apologize.”
“In person,” Mooch says loudly. The puppy he’s supposed to be feeding starts squealing. “Sorry, sorry, little guy. Geez, you’re hungry.”
I try to smile at Mooch’s silliness, but my cheeks tremble with the effort. I bite my lip to keep from crying.
“We really do want you to come back. You were in the middle of doing great things for us, and it’s already making a difference. Look.” Ty unlocks his phone and presses a few buttons, holding it up for me. The big headline is impossible to miss. Red Hot is back and hotter than ever. It’s a perfect photograph of the band as they’re standing outside the hair salon. They do look great, I have to admit. I take his phone so I can get a closer look. I can’t help but smile. I’m proud of myself. I did good.
“You did that,” Red says. “And we know you have other plans for us. Come back and make them happen.”
I give Ty his phone. “This is all very flattering, but I have things I need to do here.” My heart is hammering in my chest. I want to hope so badly, but my brain won’t let me. My brain is rational, realistic. It’s telling me this is too big a risk to take.
“We can cover for you,” Carol says loudly.
“Not that we don’t love you to pieces,” Sally says, “but your presence here is not needed. Not for the farm to function, I mean.” She reaches up to tug her braid. “I mean, don’t stay here just for us.” She looks at Barbara. “Help . . . I’m screwing this up.”
My mom walks over and stands next to Ty. “Baby, you need to be happy. You’re not happy here on the farm. You know it and we know it. Go be who you are in the city.”
“But . . . what about the farm?” I ask. “My bees?”
“Smitty can take care of the bees,” she says, stroking my hand. “He knows this farm like the back of his hand, and he’s already asked if we need help.”
Good old Smitty . . . the boy next door who we’ve known since early childhood. It’s kind of crazy that I never thought about him taking over for me. Of course he’s perfectly capable, there’s no question about that.
“Come back,” Ty says. “You can stay at my place. It’s a lot more private than that hotel. Nobody will be able to bother you there.”
Hope keeps beating away at me, demanding to be let into my heart. “They’ll just be waiting for me outside the studio, or the hair salon, or wherever else I go.”
“You get better at avoiding them with more practice. And we’ll work with specialists who can help you come up with ways to deal with them, answers to give them that will satisfy them so they won’t harass you.”
“People like that exist?”
“You bet,” says Paul. “I had to have several sessions with them.”
“We all did,” Cash says.
“Even me,” Ty says. “It’s not easy, but you can find ways to make it bearable. The rewards are so great. I know you were enjoying your time in the city. Let me show it to you. Let me show you the fun parts of living in New York.” He pulls me down to the ground floor and hugs me, whispering in my ear. “Just give us a real chance. That’s all I ask.”
Barbara puts her hand on Ty’s shoulder and looks up at him, silently asking him for a moment. He nods and steps aside.
My mother stands before me, placing her hands on my cheeks. She kisses me on the forehead. “Baby girl, it’s time for you to leave the nest. We love having you here, and you are an amazingly fun, lovely, intelligent person we love to be with. But the farm is not the place for you right now. You can come back whenever you want, but you need to spread your wings and fly a little bit.”
I start to cry. “What if I don’t want to?”
She nods in understanding. “You want to. You just need to be honest with yourself. We’ve seen it for a long time, but we also knew you weren’t quite ready to go. You’re ready now. We release you from any obligations you feel you have toward the farm or your family. Go with our blessings.”
I take a deep, shuddering breath. “There’s a lot of really rude people in that city.”
“Yes, there are. But there’re also a lot of really great people there who care about you very much.” She looks briefly over her shoulder before coming back to me. Her voice drops to a whisper. “Don’t make the same mistake that I made, okay? Take a chance on life. Don’t let those mean people scare you away from your future.”
I think about it for a while, and then I nod. She’s right. I know she is. Hope explodes in my chest, now joined by the rational part of my brain. This makes sense. I might be out here, living in the sticks, wearing cotton and hemp, but that doesn’t mean I need to be intimidated by people who live in the city, wear three-inch heels, carry microphones around, and make up lies. I’m not going to let these people scare me. I need to learn to follow my own advice. And if my moms say I’m not needed for the functioning of this farm, then I’m not going to argue with them.
“I think I can handle it for two weeks.”
Red comes over and stops just next to my mother. “We were kind of hoping we could convince you to stay for longer than two weeks.”
Now I’m scared all over again. “What exactly are you saying?”
“Can we call that two weeks a trial period? And if you’re still happy at the end of it, maybe you could consider staying for longer?”
“Like a permanent job?”
He nods. “We can get you an apartment, a driver—anything you need.”
I frown at him. “I’m still not taking that money.” I haven’t quite worked out in my mind yet what ten million dollars is supposed to represent, so I can’t consider taking it. Not yet, anyway. Most important, I don’t want it to come between me and the men standing in this room. Those potential relationships are worth a lot more to me than that.
He grins. “We’ll talk about that later. What do you say about the job?”
I look over at the group of people standing in my living room . . . my moms, my sisters, this guy I’m falling in love with, my father, whoever he is . . . They’re all here for me. It’s pretty damn overwhelming, to be honest. I’ve never felt more loved in my entire life. I don’t want to let any of these people down, and I don’t want to let myself down either.
My mom is right. My future isn’t out here in the middle of a hippie commune in Maine. It’s in New York City.
So what am I waiting for?