— FRANKIE —
19. I MISS MY MUSIC
“Our daughter?” Austin asked, going rigid and staring at Moxie with new eyes. “My daughter? This is what you’ve been keeping from me?”
I had imagined telling Austin this secret a million times, and I had never come up with the right way to confess, but this was not the way I had hoped it would go. Not by accident. Not with an audience. And definitely not in front of Moxie. “Yes,” I finally said.
A humorless laugh left him. “I’m not sure what’s worse, thinking you started a family with someone else or finding out we had a family and I never knew about it.”
My stomach plummeted like I’d jumped off a cliff headfirst. “Austin.” I reached for him, but he deftly stepped out of my reach.
He looked from me to Moxie, shaking his head. The expression on his face was a mixture of disbelief and betrayal. I’d never felt so dirty in my entire life. Not even when I cashed Chantel Stone’s check. That had felt like I’d whored myself out. But this? I felt as if I had torn open Austin’s chest and was watching him writhe in agony as his insides spilled all over the floor. I would rather do almost anything than have to see the hurt look on his face.
“Why?” He backed away, shaking his head at all of us, repulsed. I could only imagine how this revelation was rocking his world, at how I would feel if he’d done the same thing to me. He rounded on me, furious. “How could you keep this from me?” he asked, fists clenching at his sides, voice broken.
Everyone was staring at us like we were a massive car accident and they weren’t sure who to try to help.
Austin paced back and forth, and I didn’t say anything as his gaze ricocheted from Moxie to me and back again, his mind working out all the details I still hadn’t revealed to him. He was putting it all together. He must have figured out that Moxie was the reason I left Vegas, he just didn’t know why. And how could I tell him? That his mother had paid me. That I’d thought I was doing the right thing for him and his future.
In the end, I’d not only kept his daughter from him, but I’d done wrong by Moxie too. I knew that now. I’d never given Austin the opportunity to be a part of Moxie’s life, and I regretted that. Deep down I knew there was no way I could ever make that right for either of them.
“Austin…I’m sorry.” I tried again to put my hand on his arm, to take some of his pain, but he twisted out of my reach. “I was trying to do the right thing. I…”
“Right thing?” His head snapped up, and he met my eyes. “Right thing?” he repeated bitterly. “Do you have any idea what you’ve taken from me?” His gaze dropped to Moxie, and his teeth dug into his bottom lip. “What you’ve taken from her?” When he looked back up to me, his eyes were hard. “Four years. You stole four years from me, Frankie. And it was bad enough that you took four years of your love away, but that was at least something I could deal with. We could make up for lost time. We could have—”
He took a deep breath, looked at Moxie again, and then glanced away, blinking away tears like just the idea of looking at her was too much to handle. His voice was brittle and cold when he spoke again.
“You stole away four years with my child, and I won’t ever get that back. How can you ever justify that? How could you be so…” He twisted his lips tight, looking for the right word. “Cruel?”
Sobs poured out of me, bubbling out of my chest like a water pot boiling over. I could barely breathe as tears blurred my vision. “I’m sorry. I never meant to hurt you,” I swore. “Please.”
I reached for him again, and he shrugged me off.
“Mama? Why is Daddy so mad?”
At the sound of the word “Daddy," I saw the last of Austin’s composure crumble as he looked at our daughter and realized she knew.
She had always known she had a daddy and who he was. I never kept that from her. I showed her pictures and talked about him and told her that he was in Vegas working. She had heard stories about him and his brother, and how wonderfully he played music. She’d listened to his CD’s, and I had promised that she would meet him one day.
Only I thought I’d have the courage to talk to him in person first and explain everything.
“I told her about you,” I admitted in a whisper.
That seemed to be a dagger to Austin’s heart, realizing that even though she had never met him, at least Moxie had four years of knowing who her dad was.
His fingers clutched tightly around the neck of the wine bottle he held, and for a moment, I thought he might smash it against something in anger. Instead, he walked over to the fireplace and set it on the mantle since there was no furniture in the room where he could place it. Then, without another word, he walked out the front door. It slammed behind him, and the sound echoed through the house.
I collapsed to my knees and pulled Moxie to me, telling her over and over again how sorry I was.
“What did I do wrong?” she asked as she started to cry. “Why is he mad?”
How could I have ruined this so completely? It wasn’t enough to break my heart or Austin’s…I broke my daughter’s too.
“He’s not mad at you, baby,” I told her, choking back my tears and stroking her hair to comfort her. “He’s mad at me. I’ll make it right. I promise. He’s going to love you.”
“I want him to love you, too,” she said sweetly, sniffling as she hugged me back.
“I know. Me too, baby. Me too.”
Even if I’d ruined things between Austin and me beyond repair, I would sacrifice everything I had to make it right between Moxie and her daddy.
***
Austin didn’t answer his phone. He also didn’t come home that night. I didn’t see him the next morning either. My brothers had returned home, glad to hear that we wouldn’t have to sell the house, but obviously worried about me. Now that the repairs were finished, I was supposed to return to Texas. I still had a position at the Woodsbrook Gap Motocross Park in Wortham, but returning there had been my plan when I thought that the house would be sold. Now that I could keep it, now that Austin was no longer doing his show in Vegas, I didn’t want that life in Texas anymore.
I wanted Moxie to have a chance to spend time with Austin. And I had a feeling that’s what he would want too once he was able to make peace with what I’d done. I knew I had no right to want Austin in my life, but I clung to that hope as well. If I went back to Texas, that hope would be forever dashed to pieces.
Beth and I had helped each other out with child care over the last four years, and it was nice to know that when Moxie wasn’t with me, she was with family. Little JD was like a brother to her. But despite my brother’s worries and protest, when he went back to Texas, Moxie stayed with me at Nana’s house, sharing the bed that I’d slept in for my entire childhood.
After Austin left, I did my best to pull myself together. For Moxie.
I showed her around the house and asked her if she thought it might be a place she would want to live. She said she would and loved the old attic that had been converted into a living space. I felt a sense of rightness, imagining her playing up there, in the same place that Austin and I had shared so many afternoons together.
We spent a lot of time in the yard. I’d gone into town and gotten Moxie a bike to ride. She always loved riding in the yard with JD back in Texas, and they’d both ditched the training wheels months ago. All of my old ramps were long gone, and the old dirt hills I practiced on had been leveled out years ago, but I remembered where every one of them had been. I kept one eye on Moxie and the other on the house next door. Waiting for my chance to try to make things right.
I knew that if I was faced with the same decision now, I would’ve chosen differently. I’d only been eighteen and lots of teenagers made stupid decisions. Mine had just been the most epically stupid decision possible. Looking back, I realized the only thing I did correctly when it came to Austin and me was deciding to keep Moxie. Everything else was just one wrong decision after another. In trying to support Austin’s dreams, I’d stolen from him instead.
Even if he ever found it in his heart to forgive me, I wasn’t sure I’d ever be able to forgive myself.
“Mama,” Moxie said, her sweet southern accent making my heart melt like it always did. “Are we waiting for Daddy to come home?”
I reached down to touch her head and had to grin at the adorable face hidden behind lopsided ponytails. My brothers used to tease me that I needed to get a helmet with holes for my ponytails because after riding, my hair had always been a ratty mess. Moxie might have gotten Austin’s beautiful eyes and talent for music, but she’d gotten my unruly hair.
“Yes. We’re waiting.”
She scrunched up her nose and then wiped it with the back of her grubby hand leaving a trail of dirt on her upper lip. She was totally like her mama in many ways. “Why don’t we just go look for him? Maybe he’s waiting for us to find him,” she said. “Maybe he likes hide and seek just like me!” she said hopefully.
I sighed and pulled her close to hug her. “If he doesn’t come back by tomorrow, we’ll go look for him,” I promised.
“Good. I miss my music,” she said, referring to the CD of his show I’d ordered for her online that she had left in Texas. “I want him to play the cello for me to help me sleep.”
I ruffled her hair and looked across the yard at the window. “Me too.”