Jon Bon Jovi had given up everything for a chance to see stardom, including his highschool sweetheart Amelia Sambora.
Now as Jon approaches the most important and most dangerous moments in his professional life, Amelia has a way of making it back in...
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May 6th, 1987 / Rumson New Jersey
Amelia hurried out to her father’s brand-new Mercedes. She couldn’t deny that she was on the brink of nervous breakdown. What exactly could have caused Jon to go home without giving her a call? He would never have left Richie alone and drunk like that with no cause.
“Are you alright?” her father asked as he started driving. “You seem vacant.”
She tapped her finger on the metal door handle. “Yes. Worried is all.”
“What has you worrying?”
“Just everything,” she groaned, rubbing her face, “I just want everybody to get along, all this discordance is tearing me apart. I want Richie to see how much I love Jon, it’s all my fault that they’re feuding.”
“No, sweetheart,” Adam sighed, “It’s my fault.”
Amelia turned her head. Her father’s face was shrouded in darkness, she could barely make out the small quiver of his lip.
“I should have put a stop to all of this long ago. I should have listened to you, you’re infinitely more logical than I am, I should have known that you’d never be with a man you knew was no good for you. Perhaps deep down I did know, and I just wasn’t ready to let you go.”
Amelia’s heart brimmed with sweet sorrow. Why was it always that the most catastrophic mistakes were made with the loveliest intentions.
“You know,” he continued, “Your mother was the belle of the ball in our day, it was impossible not to fall in love with her. I don’t know what she saw in me but it must have been something worthwhile. You know that your grandfather was a farmer, I had nothing to offer her financially, the rest of her suitors came from old southern money, vastly wealthy, but for some reason she chose me. I can’t for the life of me understand why, I often wonder if she regrets her decision. I was young and foolish once just like your brother, I ran away with your mother on numerous occasions; her father was furious, threatened to have me locked up. I’m sure you’ve wonder sometimes why you never see your grandparents.”
Amelia couldn’t believe her ears.
“I remember one night, a terrible night, that your grandfather tossed your mother out into the rain. He gave her an unthinkable ultimatum; to marry a man called Francis Robinson, a suitable uptown lawyer that’d been pestering for her hand, or never step foot in their house again.”
“And she chose you,” Amelia whispered.
She’d never known her parents to be romantics. To know that they’d had their own Shakespearian tale of woe, that’d they were as crazy about each other as any young couple; the knowledge had thrown Amelia for a loop. She saw her father in a light never before seen.
“Your poor mother was just seventeen. She walked some ten miles out to my father’s farm in just her sandals and her dress. She caught a terrible influenza from the walk in the rain, I didn’t even have enough money to see a doctor. She recovered, of course, though it took a month of bed rest. After that I decided that I needed to get my act together. I got an education, served in the armed forces. That changed me, I think. When I came back I was hardened, not at all the jovial young man I’d once been. Your mother noticed the difference, I knew. I wasn’t the man that she’d fallen in love with. She didn’t have the heart to leave me after everything I’d been through knowing it was all for her. I got myself a good job, married her, provided for her, and yet I’m sure she often wonders what it’d be like if I’d stayed a farmer. Maybe even Francis Robinson would’ve been a better husband.”
