Buckingham Nicks A/U Series Part 3: Storms

Though The Love Has Always Been

Venice Beach, California
Memorial Day
Monday, May 28, 1979
(11:45 pm)
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"Two sleeping babies."

Stevie barely looked up from her book when Lindsey entered the bedroom with his announcement and began walking over to the bed to join her. She was reading Forever Amber, an enormous novel by Kathleen Windsor, a book she had begun reading almost a year before when her "morning sickness" that hit the hardest at night during her pregnancy with Aaron had finally gone away and frequent dashes to the bathroom wouldn't interrupt her reading at night, and she'd quickly discovered two things - she'd be naming the baby Amber after the heroine if it was a girl, and she had to put the book down in favor of a smaller one because it was over a thousand pages and literally could not be balanced to read in any position with her growing belly.

She'd picked it up again two nights ago and was thoroughly engrossed.

"Aaron fussed a bit, but Julia..." Lindsey continued as he climbed into bed beside his wife, a far-off tone in his voice as he mentioned their almost-fourteen-month-old daughter. "I tell you, Stevie, that girl...never a problem, always a big smile, one read-through of Goodnight, Moon and she's out like I hit her with a tranquilizer dart!" He chuckled at his own joke and then turned to Stevie, who had not spoken or even really shifted her eyes from the page. "Stevie?" He leaned in closer to her. "Are you getting any of this?"

Stevie was frozen in place. She knew what she was doing was wrong, standoffish, but she was afraid that if she looked at her husband she'd start to cry, and they were due at a photography studio tomorrow morning for a shoot for the promotion of Tusk, the double album that was the big sequel to Rumors the world was waiting for but was anything but that. She knew her eyes would be puffy in the photos because once she began crying, she feared she'd never stop.

She thought of Christine's words earlier that evening as she'd gone upstairs to collect Jodie from the nursery where he'd been sitting happily on the floor with Julia, surrounded by little wooden horses and big foam balls, the two babies giggling together and rolling over on the big shag rug, two peas in a pod.

"I thought about it and thought about it till I was thinking in circles," Christine said, watching their children play together. Julia had said her first word a few months earlier and could now say a few more, and Jodie, who was six months older, was able to say two words together.

They heard Jodie say, "No, Juju, that one!" He was lying on his side, pointing at a blue ball, and as soon as he did, Julia crawled away from a red ball she'd been reaching for a took up the one Jodie had suggested.

"Dis?" Julia sat up triumphantly with the red ball in her hands, and began pushing it towards Jodie while crawling to him, even though she'd begun to walk just before her birthday. She was hitting every milestone ahead of schedule, including talking.

It had surprised no one on Valentine's Day when she'd pointed at a little boy in a red t-shirt at The Village Recorders and said her first word...

Jodie.

"You're going to have it, aren't you?" Stevie asked Christine, referring to the baby whose existence she'd learned of a few hours before.

"I wasn't going to," Christine explained. "I wasn't sure I wanted to bring another innocent person into this mess. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized it's not this baby's fault we're going through this. Maybe it'll wake him up, you know...make him realize this is serious and he can't just disappear on his boat for two days in Catalina and crawl into a whiskey bottle whenever life gives him lemons...you know?"