Sweet Girl (Love Is..., Part 2)

You Never Knew It

Brentwood, California
Friday, March 2, 2018
(5:00 pm)
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"You're out of your fucking mind. Has anyone ever told you that, I mean really sat you down and told you that?"

Lindsey was standing in the foyer of what used to be his house, but had never once been his home. Kristen stood before him, holding a glass of wine, slippers on with her velour track suit, hair up in a messy bun, a scowl on her face. He stood there as they squared off and tried to remember a sweet, confident young photographer named Kristen Messner, twenty-seven years old and hanging on his every word but with plenty to say herself. He wondered where she'd gone, and why he'd let her take him away from the love of his life just as they'd found their way back to each other, older and wiser. He wondered how much he'd had to do with the disappearance of that girl. It couldn't have been easy, he thought, to have spent twenty years knowing she was his default.

"They only crazy thing I see going on here is the that you're taking our daughter to a house with that woman."

"Kristen, 'that woman' has loved Stella like her own kid since the day she was born! And, I might add, she had every reason in the world not to!"

"What the hell does that mean?"

"You know good and goddamn well what that means! Look, I love our kids, okay, but it was a pretty rotten trick you pulled that got them here!"

Kristen rolled her eyes over her wine glass, then took a generous sip. "Oh my God...Lindsey...not that bullshit again. You know, you lie around up there in Santa Monica with that old bitch who can't accept the reality that you chose me and the kids over chasing after her city by city to accompany her whiny songs on the guitar, and she puts that idea in your head."

"For your information, that 'old bitch', as you say, was the one who practically threw me out the door so I would choose you and the kids, and she's also the one who held down three jobs while we were sitting there writing the songs!"

"I'm supposed to be impressed because she scrubbed toilets and served cocktails before she turned into a spoiled-rotten home wrecker?"

"More like thank her for being the bigger person and telling me not to give up an opportunity...which I now say...and listen to me really clearly here...is over. I'm out. And I'm taking Stella with me overnight, as we agreed." He called up the stairs to his daughter. "Stella! You all packed up yet?"

Stella appeared on the staircase with a backpack strapped to herself and her phone in her hand. "Ready," she said, ignoring the same fight she'd been hearing since birth whenever Aunt Stevie's name came up.

"Stella, you call me if anything goes wrong out there, okay?" Kristen demanded, watching her daughter descend the stairs.

"I'm sure Aunt Stevie is saving the Ouija board and the coke for after I'm in bed," Stella said sarcastically, rolling her eyes at her mother. "Too late on the tambourine, Mom...she already taught me how to play it."

Lindsey had to stifle a laugh as he watched his daughter go through the open front door and out to his Mercedes in the driveway.

The first thing Stella did once they drove off was to change the radio station. She found Harry Styles' "Sign Of The Times" and kept it on, and for a moment, it was the only voice in the car.

"We never learn; we've been here before...Why are we always stuck and running from the bullets...the bullets..."

"So how was school this week?" Lindsey asked as he turned onto the main road out of Brentwood. "Anything cool going on?"

"Nope." Stella shrugged. "Dad? When you marry Aunt Stevie, should I just call her Stevie?"

"Call her whatever makes you feel comfortable, Stella," he said. "I know this is weird. You've known her as Aunt Stevie since you were born. Your brother and sister too."

"LeeLee thinks Aunt Stevie is going to ask us to be bridesmaids," she said. "That would be cool. I've never been in a wedding party before. My friend Taylor's older brother got married and she was a bridesmaid. My friend Kylie too."

"Well, maybe this is your chance, kid." He winked at her before returning his eyes to the road.

Lindsey already knew the secret. Stevie had told him that she was going to take LeeLee and Stella to lunch tomorrow before Stella went home and give them each a gift bag including a swatch of fabric for their dress option, a little box of Godiva chocolates and a white gold moon necklace, and a little card inside each bag would read, Please be my bridesmaid at the wedding, and my Sister Of The Moon forever. Love, Aunt Stevie.

Lindsey knew his kids had not come away unscathed. The fighting in his marriage that had begun when Will and LeeLee were small had escalated, and by the time Stella was in school, it was such an epic battle between them each night that he'd actually thought they were safer when he was on tour so they wouldn't have to hear the yelling. He used to think Will had gotten the worst of it, the first one old enough to understand everything, but he was beginning to think it was Stella, born too late, who's born the brunt of an unhappy marriage between a desperate woman and a man whose heart had always been elsewhere, with a little blonde woman with a tambourine out on the road who instantly made his heart skip a beat just by entering a room.

He thought about Kristen's demands in the meeting the other day. She wanted the house, which he had no problem with, but she wanted his custody of Stella to not include overnight visits, which he knew was a dig at Stevie. If he didn't comply, she said, she would go after his Fleetwood Mac royalties - not for the money, but because it would delay the divorce another year while he "came to his senses and left the old witch behind."

Stevie was all smiles when they arrived at the apartment. She hugged Stella so tight her backpack came loose.

"Stella Bella!" Stevie shouted out, her squeaky voice coming out. "I saved us the last two episodes of This Is Us on the DVR so your dad can laugh at us crying like a couple of girls. Want some cranberry lemonade? I just brought it out."

Lindsey watched half of the four most important people in his life disappear into the kitchen, trying to figure out a way to get Kristen to see what she was doing was wrong...and thinking that if this continued, no matter what he did, one of the two rapidly-chatting female voices in the kitchen were going to get hurt.

Not for the first time, Lindsey cursed his younger self for letting pride and jealousy inform his decisions. If he'd been more willing to accept Stevie for all that she was years ago, he wouldn't be torn in two right now.

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