Say You Will Part 1: Destiny Rules

Prologue: Like A Barricade

Tuesday, September 11, 2001
Brentwood, California
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The phone lines had been busy or interrupted for hours now, since it first happened.

Lindsey Buckingham sat alone in the studio in his home in Brentwood, his biggest problem when he woke up this morning being the contractor on his home remodeling job giving him shit last night on the phone about some of the costs of the expansion, the newer and larger studio adjacent to the main house that they were building. Lindsey had told him he'd call him back tomorrow morning at nine, after he dropped his son off at pre-K with his wife, talk over the figures some more with a level lead and not with half a case of Corona in his system. Brian had laughed and said, "Talk to your in the a.m., man." Lindsey had hung up and rejoined Kristen on the couch to continue watching Who Wants To Be A Millionaire. They went to bed at eleven, rolling over away from each other immediately, silently agreeing sex was not an option tonight...too tiring a day, too much to do tomorrow.

Then the two planes had come crashing through New York City one after the other, and by ten-thirty the largest structures in the Northeast had come crumbling down over the city and life as they knew it stopped.

Lindsey had watched in horror on the little TV in the kitchen for about ten minutes on the morning of September 11, 2001 before he'd gotten a phone call from Christine McVie in England, checking up on him because she'd seen the international news. It was Christine who'd delivered the news that changed everything, however, information he didn't know because it was not his life anymore...

Stevie was in New York City today on her Enchanted tour. Lindsey's heart would not beat again until he heard her voice.

Now it was after midnight and he was really starting to panic. Kristen had gone upstairs to bed an hour ago, telling him she'd seen enough carnage on TV for one day and it wasn't going to get any better if she kept staring at the TV screen playing the same terrible footage all night long. Lindsey had been able to properly mask his terror all day, pass it off as a general sense of grief over a national tragedy, an act of war, but by the time George W. Bush had addressed the nation Lindsey had been trying to blink back tears that were meant for only one U.S. citizen in particular - one with long, silky blonde hair that he used to get to run through his fingers, one with big, dancing brown eyes that reminded him of the Van Morrison song he used to twirl her around to when they were young and in love and carefree, one who never ceased to amaze him every time he saw her that such a tiny little girl could fill a room the way she did with her voice and her smile...the smile he'd taken from her one night in New York City, ironically enough, when his life had been decided over one colossal mistake and she'd disappeared from his arms for five years now...even if she still took up every inch of his heart.

His cell phone was ringing. He had been slowly working his way through a bottle of Jack Daniels all night, ignoring Kristen's icy glare over that, and he wondered if he'd sound as drunk as he was when he finally got to talk to her. He answered the phone quickly; the last thing he needed was the little ringtone waking one of the kids and hearing Kristen get on him about it. "Hello?"

"Lindsey..." Stevie sobbing his name was the first thing he heard and he realized she was openly crying. He wondered if anyone had ever actually died of needing to hold someone so much.

"Oh God, angel..." She'd told him he wasn't allowed to call her that anymore but he didn't care. "Are you okay? Was it near you? Are you in any danger?" I love you and I will fly out there right now to pull you out of there if you're in any danger and I don't care who knows it. "Baby, you're scaring me." She was just...sobbing. "Talk to me, Stephanie."

"It's just so horrible...I'm okay...but Jesus Christ, Lindsey, it's just...my God..."

She continued her storm of tears and sobbing into the phone, and Lindsey wanted to shoot through the phone wires that connected their call and pull her into his arms and kiss away every tear and never let her go again, no matter what they had decided in a hotel room in New York five years ago, the last time he'd heard her cry like this. He bit back a sob of his own, tears stinging his eyes. He swallowed hard and said, "Are you alone, angel? Is anyone there with you?"

"The whole team's here..." Stevie tried to get a hold of herself. "I'm alone in my room but I have Lori and Sharon and Waddy around."

"Okay, that's good." He imagined her going to sleep alone in her gigantic hotel bed, so small, pulling the covers up tight and wishing it was his arms around her...they way she'd confessed to sleeping on tour a few years ago during a tearful, drunken phone call he'd made to her from the men's room at his wedding reception.

"I don't want to go back in there," Lindsey said into the pay phone, drunkenly crying to her. "I don't want to go upstairs with her tonight and lie that it's her face I see when I'm looking down while...oh God, baby, don't make me go back in there..."

"Lindsey! You cannot do this to me!" Stevie was in tears too, in a hotel room in Boston looking out at the blizzard that had been occurring ever since the concert ended, wishing they could do what they always did on a snowy night on tour and build a blanket fort on the floor, drink hot cocoa with marshmallows and cuddle up against the cold. "I am about to get into my bed alone in the fucking snow and pull the covers over me tight enough to pretend you're holding me...so you get back there and do as the old song says and love the one you're with!"

She'd never shared with him the secret trick she used when she was lonely and she just take it anymore - building a Lindsey out of pillows and blankets so she could get to sleep with minimal crying. She wished she hadn't shared it now.

Stevie was still crying, but softer now, and she said, "We perform in Atlantic City in a few days...no one said anything about canceling yet...but I'm paralyzed, Linds...I'm afraid to move..."

"It just happened, baby. Give yourself some time," Lindsey said. "Do you think you can get to sleep tonight?" It was 12:25 according to the time on the mixing board, which meant it was 3:25 in New York. The Nightbird, he thought with a smile.

"I tried a little." He heard her sniffling. "I got into bed and I hugged Sulamith up close to me, but..." A fresh set of sobs tore from her, right from her soul, but they were quieter, little hiccups really, and Lindsey suppressed the urge to hang up and call Bob at ExecuJet and see about a late-night flight to New York. Of course, he knew air travel around the Trade Center was at a full stop...but he could dream, couldn't he?

"I want you to get into bed, Stephanie, and keep the phone with you and listen to me, okay?"

"Okay." Her voice shook just enough to make his heart feel like it would crack open any minute.

"Are you in? Got the dog with you?" he asked after a minute.

"Yeah." Stevie was in her bed, Sulamith scratching at the covers to find her spot.

"Okay. I want you to get comfortable, pull the covers up tight, arrange it all so it's like there's a person in there with you." He dared not say "me." He could hear rustling on the other end of the call, and when it was done he asked, "Are you set up? Feels like a person kind of?"

"Mmm-hmm." Stevie was on her side, blankets up all the way, head on one pillow and another pillow behind her, tucked in.

"Good. Now I don't care how silly this sounds, angel but...stroke your hair. Just the way you liked it when I..." He couldn't complete the sentence or he would start crying. Instead, he said, "Run your fingers through it, angel, twirl it around, scratch at the crown...you know." She did. Too well. He heard nothing for a moment and he said, "Are you stroking your hair?"

"Mmm-hmm." The last response was a little more tearful, and he swallowed a lump in his throat.

"Okay now I want you to just lie there and breathe in and out, baby, and listen to my voice." He cleared his throat and began to sing softly...

"Do you always trust your first initial feeling...special knowledge holds trust your first initial feeling...special knowledge holds truth, bears believing..."

He could hear her breathing steadily into the phone and he continued, "I turned around and the water was closing all around...like a glove, like the love that had finally, finally found me...and I knew, in the crystalline knowledge of you..."

He stayed on and sang until he heard her breathing deepen, knowing she had fallen asleep. He hung up the phone and sat there for a moment before going upstairs to bed. He undressed quietly in the bathroom, and when he got to the bedroom he found Kristen asleep on her side next to LeeLee in bed. He crawled in beside his wife and daughter and turned over towards the edge of the bed, and only then did he allow his tears to fall.

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