Say You Will Part 1: Destiny Rules

Epilogue: You Become Someone Else In An Instant (Part 1 Finale)

L.A.X. Airport,
Los Angeles, California
Sunday, May 4, 2003
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"You look great, Molly! For goodness sake, you're taller than me already!"

"Almost everybody is taller than you, Aunt Stevie," Molly teased, and they both laughed.

Stevie gave Molly McVie a hug as soon as she arrived with her parents in the lounge where everyone on the Say You Will tour was congregating to wait for the private plane that was taking them to Columbus, Ohio, their first stop on the tour. Molly McVie was twelve years old and looked a lot like her father had in his youth, and she was dressed simply in a hoodie and sneakers, her dark hair back in a ponytail, but to Stevie, who had watched Amy and Lucy Fleetwood grow up and wondered how time was passing so quickly, she noted that Molly looked very mature. Molly asked about Jessi, saying she hadn't seen her in awhile, and Stevie promised her they'd go round up Jessi for a day out when Fleetwood Mac came to Phoenix, saying, "Tell your dad he has to let you skip school for that one!"

Lindsey was ducking in a corner of the lounge, talking on his cell phone. He wore a leather jacket that Stevie thought was entirely inappropriate for the weather...not that she was an accurate judge of temperature these days with her back-to-back hot flashes. Stevie had been watching him out of the corner of her eye for awhile now, and he was growing more and more agitated as he spoke, pacing in tiny circles as his phone call carried on. She approached him slowly, and as soon as she got close enough, she wished she had waited a minute more. She didn't need to hear the end of his conversation with his wife.

"I know, but Jesus, you act like I'm telling you I'm going on a tour of whorehouses! It's business! Are you really trying to insinuate that I'm doing anything wrong here? Do you think it's 1977?" There was a pause while the other person spoke, and Lindsey's sentence told her that person was Kristen. "I'll call you when I land, and I'll call tonight before the kids go to bed, but I am not having this fight with you anymore! Whatever. Bye." And he folded his phone closed. It took him a moment to realize that Stevie was standing in front of him. When he did, he instantly looked stricken, caught.

"Lindsey, she's your wife. You're about to go on tour. You can talk to her." She smiled. "Don't look so guilty!" I'm not even going to begin to address the comment about 1977 that was obviously about me.

"That's about all I'm being made to feel these days about leaving," he said, shoving his phone into his jacket pocket. "Does she not realize that I don't get money for being a musician, I have to go play music? I don't just wander into the fucking bank and go, 'Hi, I'm Lindsey Buckingham o Fleetwood Mac. Give me a million dollars, please.'"

"I'm not trash-talking your wife with you, Lindsey. I've told you that." Stevie had made that rule in 1998, when she realized she'd have to see them together at the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame induction. Kristen had been pregnant with Will then, they were not married yet, and she had shaken hands with a blonde woman of twenty-eight who was polite and looked kind of nauseous - morning sickness all day, she'd explained. Stevie had let it slip as a reflex, "I know how that is," but caught herself and did not elaborate, and she had not been able to look at Lindsey's face at all after that comment. This was the woman she had sent Lindsey off to have a family with, and no matter what happened, she was not going to let herself sound bitter. Stevie had been involved with married men before, but this was different. This was Lindsey.

"Suit yourself," he said. He took a step back and looked her up and down. "You look delicious today, sweet girl! How come you look so good just to fly to Ohio?"

"I could lie and say it's for the film crew..." She smiled slyly. "Maybe it's because I'm in love with a man who tells me I'm beautiful every day and I hate to disappoint."