Bluebird

38

May 23, 2013

Lindsey was driving, Stevie was in the passenger seat. William, Annabel, and Samantha were in the middle and the rest of the group was in the back. Leelee had sulked briefly about having to sit between Garrett and Blake, but she found out that Garrett made a good pillow so she had fallen asleep. They had stayed the night in San Jose because by the time the concert got over it was late, but now It was going on eight at night and they were about an hour and a half out of Los Angeles. 

Annabel turned her head away from the window and she loomed over the back of her mom's seat and wrapped her arms around her. Stevie startled and then looked back and smiled rubbing her daughter's forearm. 

"What's the matter baby?" She asks.

"Will you come to our house?" Annabel bites her lip.

"Why? I was thinking you guys could come to mine." Stevie states. 

"Because I have some things to show you." She sighs.

"Uh-oh that doesn't seem good." Lindsey tells her.

"It's eye-opening...I was semi-kidnapped."

"You were what?" Stevie whips around in her seat to the best of her ability.

"You'll see why when we get to our house." Annabel nods.

***

"This is nice..." Stevie says when she walks into the Buckingham home. 

"We're only about ten minutes away from you." Lindsey tells her.

"You've been ten minutes down the road for two years." She blanches.

"Year and a half...we lived in a condo for some time." Annabel states. 

"So why were you semi-kidnapped?" Lindsey asks.

"Give me a minute and I'll tell you." She kisses her dad's cheek and then she goes into her bedroom. 

She ditched her traveling clothes and changed into her pajamas. A pair of blue linen shorts with yellow daisy's on them and a matching tank top Then she lugged the giant leather suitcase and the file into the living room. 

"What is that?" Lindsey asks when she drops them on the suitcase on the coffee table.

"We'll look at that in a little bit, Daddy, you need to see this." She hands Lindsey the file. 

He opens it and thumbs through it, his eyes going wide at some points and then he looks at her. "Mike was Cheri's lawyer?" 

"I know I thought it was strange too...But then, I saw this and I about jumped out of my skin...see Mike and Edith left me a storage locker when they died...I could never go in it, because it was too much for me. But after I talked to Cedars....so they told me that they were in the wrong, The pediatrician had taken my blood and the blood of several other babies without parent permission. He was sued in 1990 and subsequently fired...Edith legally took me from the hospital because there wasn't room in the California system. But what she didn't do is legally adopt me..." She stops and opens the leather suitcase.

"Oh my god." Stevie says after she puts her glasses on her face and  starts digging in the suitcase.

"That's kinda creepy." Lindsey admits looking at some of the pictures of Stevie Nicks in that case.

"But mom, here's the freakiest picture." She hands her the cheer picture. 

"Which one is Edith?" Stevie asks shaking her head.

"That one." Annabel points out.

"I wish I could ask her why." Stevie falls back into the couch. 

"Let's do what I did when I didn't know who my parents were." Annabel sighs curling up in between them on the couch. 

"What did you do?" Lindsey asks throwing his arm up on the back of the couch, so it's behind both Stevie and Annabel, but he starts lightly rubbing Stevie's back. 

"I made up little scenarios in my head...As soon as I found out I was adopted and who my birth parents were, I was sixteen, I had just lost Mike and Edith, and I came up with the scenario of you two having a one night stand and neither of you wanting me. Then it was something like you two were too selfish to raise a child and you didn't even want me because I knew about the abortions you had, and that your job was way more important to you than your child...Then It was like something bad maybe had happened. I was right, something bad at happened, but that wasn't the point...Let's make up some scenarios." Annabel explains. 

"I'll go first, she had knew Stevie long before we were famous...even though we may not have remembered her, and she wanted to take care of you for her." Lindsey shrugs.

"Maybe I made fun of her or something and she wanted to get revenge by taking my baby." Stevie huffs. Annabel could tell that Stevie was deeply affected by the loss of her child and half of the time, she didn't know how to approach it. She had her guard up because she didn't know who her mother was or what she was like, and she wanted to be cautious. But at the same time, she was a huge fan of Stevie Nicks so she wanted to jump for joy and freak out about the whole thing. She was conflicted. 

"You are dark and morbid." Annabel quickly recovers from her thoughts and looks at her mother.

"Well, I don't fucking know." She huffs. 

"Alright, so maybe...maybe Edith...I'm assuming she was a freshman or something when you were a senior. So maybe Edith looked up to you and even though you were on the same cheer team, because she was so much lower in grade to you, that she didn't approach you. Then you got famous and Edith was like, "I know who she is." So she'd go to all your concerts and stuff and she could say that she was on the cheer team with you. When she found out that the baby she had to take was yours, maybe she didn't want to. But she had to because it was her job, so she took me and brought me back to Salt Lake City. Maybe she wanted to avoid putting Stevie Nicks' baby in the foster system so she opted to raise me herself." Annabel shrugs. 

"Well, whatever it was...I still lost my baby." Stevie pouts. 

"I mean she has a point, because of Edith we weren't able to reunify." Lindsey nods.

"It makes me upset too, I love you guys and I think I would've had a much better time if you two had gotten me from day one. But we can't change the fact that I still had a decent life. I got to take ballet and I was a Girl Scout, and even though they weren't around a lot, doesn't mean that I didn't have a good childhood. We can't dwell on the past, we have to focus on the future." Annabel shrugs.

Lindsey chuckles and then pulls his daughter into a hug, "You're way smarter than we are."