Silver Springs: A Holiday Love Story

Your Only Dream

Santa Monica, California
Friday, December 23, 2022
(11:30 pm)
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"Oh, nice! Hey Stevie, it's the one where the aliens come down to Maple Street to stop the power and everybody turns on each other!"

Lindsey returning to his job as nightly announcer of which episode of The Twilight Zone was on as he waited for Stevie to join him in bed made Stevie pause for a moment at the bathroom mirror, setting the hairbrush down and stopping for a breath, and a quick prayer to Robin - her best friend Robin - in heaven.

Merry Christmas Eve Eve, Robin...remember that one? We exchanged gifts the day before Christmas Eve because we couldn't take the wait...I miss that. I miss you. Thank you for sending my Silver Springs back to me, Robin. I love you.

"Did you take all of your meds, sweetheart?" Stevie asked, turning out the bathroom light and walking over to the bed. "I'm not picking, I swear...but I don't want us to fall asleep watching The Twilight Zone and then you miss a dose of something important."

"Took it all," Lindsey said. "I was a good boy...maybe Santa will treat me well tomorrow."

"Mmm...why wait for Santa?" Stevie crept onto the bed and leaned over to kiss him. Two weeks after surgery, Lindsey was up and walking around but slowly, and his incision was still bandaged but getting better every day. Christmas Eve tomorrow would be spent at home with the kids and the dogs, It's A Wonderful Life on TV and cookies being eaten...and the surprise Lindsey had planned for Stevie before his surgery.

They settled in to watch The Twilight Zone. Lindsey reclining against the pillows and Stevie lying with her head in his lap, his fingers dancing through her hair. They watched as neighbors in a calm community were driven to mass hysteria and violence over a power outage supposedly caused by aliens posing as members of the community, Stevie's fingers lightly stroking his knee and thigh, Lindsey thanking God for another peaceful night on earth like this, watching the dogs get cozy near Stevie and running his fingers through her hair and listening to her breathing.

"Hey Stevie?" It had almost become a joke to them by now when he asked for her attention that way, especially in the first few days in the hospital, when he was on a morphine drip and high as a kite. Her lack of response, he knew, meant she was falling asleep. He scratched delicately into her hair at the crown. "My beautiful Stephanie...are you asleep already?"

"Mmmm..." was her reply, with a nuzzle against his thigh.

"I just wanted to tell you I love you before we fall asleep...like my meds, you know... I wouldn't want to miss a dose of something important." He smiled down at her, his hand cupping her head more as he stroked her hair.

Lindsey had been home for a little over a week, and he had been improving the whole time. While he knew there was no cure for heart failure, the valve replacement would slow the process and restore a lot of his energy. He was going to need it in a few months, when his Christmas surprise for Stevie came true.

Robin had been over every day since he'd gotten home, proudly announcing on her third visit that she was no longer seeing her toxic boyfriend Joe.

"I deserve what you guys have," she'd told her father out on the terrace that evening as they shared a joint, which made Robin rethink her jealousy of Will's impersonal, stuffy household growing up. "You and Mom. It's like Hollywood-in-the-nineteen-FORTIES love between you two! Will and I get grossed out." She giggled on the last line.

Lindsey sighed. "You know, you have your mother's giggle," he said. "But I tell you, kid, it was not an easy road. Your mother and I were like 1970s Romeo and Juliet in the beginning...then it was twenty years of screaming and avoiding and blaming and acting like toddlers before we came to our senses."

"I have the internet, Daddy...I know." Robin giggled again. She passed the joint to her father and said, "I'm out, Lindsey Buckingham...you are the champion weed smoker around here."

It was Lindsey's turn to laugh. "Clearly you never knew Stevie Nicks in 1975," he said. "Listen up, kid...I am very proud of you, you know. Not just for standing up for what you deserve, giving that idiot with the gages in his ears his walking papers...but for everything. Your music, your vibe, your whole way of going about it like your mother did...and look where SHE wound up!"

"I love you, Daddy." Robin smiled at him. "Just...please don't say 'vibe' anymore, okay? You're seventy-three."

They were both laughing now. "Hey...I may be seventy-three but I am a guitarist in a rock band...don't I get cool points for that?"

Robin stood up on her way into the house from the terrace. She stopped to touch his shoulder and said, "You always have, Daddy."

Lindsey had that conversation with his daughter on his mind as he fell asleep that night against the pillows with Stevie's head in his lap.

He could hardly see their faces when he told them what he had planned.

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