Somebody Stand By Me

Nothing Is What It Seems

*2003*

Being the son of the Queen of Rock and Roll has its pros and cons. Yes, Stevie Nicks is my mother and I love her dearly. She is the best mother in the world and I feel so blessed to have her in my life.

I love traveling the world with her and Fleetwood Mac when they go on tour. My sister and I have grown up on the road; we are homeschooled and we love it! My mom has protected us from the dark side of touring but now that we are older, we know what had gone on back then when we were younger. Now, everyone is much more mature and they have left the drugs and bad habits behind.

Traveling is one of the pros of being the son of Stevie Nicks; I love seeing the world and all that it has to offer.

Now the downside is, the paparazzi. We can hardly go anywhere with my mom without having a camera shoved in our face and then there are the crazy rumors that are printed all over the tabloids and internet. They are such vultures and I hate it.

Oh! I'm sorry. I forgot to introduce myself. My name is Ethan Nicks Buckingham. My sister's name is Sara Nicks Buckingham. Yep, we're Buckinghams and we are twins. We are now 16 years old. We grew up so close and we had even made up our own language whenever we wanted to keep things from our parents to which my mom hated. My dad found it funny.

Sara is the outgoing twin; she's just like mom and loves to be the center of attention and is quite the chatterbox. I'm the twin that likes to stay in the background. I feel so uncomfortable being in the spotlight which again makes me detest the paparazzi. I rather be in the shadows minding my own business and doing my own thing.

As much as my mother and father loved each other, they couldn't get their...life together and when we were eleven, that was when our family life crumbled. Well...I guess that's what I thought but now that I think about it, our family life was far from a happy one.

My parents were married soon after my sister and I were born. There were many happy memories we had made together but, they are masked by the bad ones.

I remember mom and dad fought constantly. I even remember when I was six years old that I saw my dad raise his hand to my mother. I remember hearing the loud smack as his hand met my mother's cheek. I jumped when I heard it, it was so loud. Then I remember that my mom would stick up for herself and fight back.

Now that I'm older, I now know why my mother lost our baby brother; the stress that my father caused for her made her go into premature labor and my baby brother was born way too soon.

But still my mother stayed with him. She would say she still loved him and after losing my brother, dad had actually became loving and caring towards mom. Things had looked so much more positive and things at home had calmed down immensely. It was nice to have some peace for a while.

Now I have come to when we were eleven. That was 1998 and the Dance had been taped then soon after the tour was underway.

That year, dad had been going out every night after the shows with the crew and with Uncle Mick and uncle John for drinks and to just relax. Mom would stay behind with us and with aunt Christine. But as the tour was coming to an end, mom found out that dad had lied to her all that time and he wasn't even going out with uncle Mick and uncle John.

Mom confronted him and that's when I remember the screaming coming from their room. I was glad that most of the Fleetwood Mac crew members were on the same floor as us. Sara and I stayed sitting on the floor by our door and we had our ears pressed close to it so we could hear better.

More screaming occurred and what we found out broke our hearts for our mom. It turned out that dad had been cheating on mom for the past two years with a woman named Kristen and she was six months pregnant.

We heard more screaming then scuffling; we knew mom and dad were physically fighting. Sara and I cried as we hugged each other still on the floor.

There was a knock and Sara quickly opened the door. It was aunt Christine and she immediately got us away from the door and she laid down with us on our bed. She held us close and sang to us to try to muffle the fight that was still going on across our hotel room. Aunt Christine would have gone across to our parents room to probably help mom beat up my dad. She was so protective of our mom but in that moment, she knew she needed to be with us. She assured us that uncle Mick and uncle John were taking care of it.

A moment later, mom walked into our room.
She quickly closed the door then saw that we were still up. She gasped then she slid to floor and sobbed into her hands. She knew that we had heard everything.

"I'm so sorry! I'm sorry!" She kept repeating.

We then got off the bed and rushed to her side. We hugged her and cried with her; we ignored her cut lip and just held her close to us.

After that, once the tour finished, mom filed for divorce and dad moved out of our house.

That was five years ago, and life has been calm and much more relaxed. There is no more screaming and no more fighting.

Once the divorce was final, dad's son William was born then soon after, he married Kristen. Now they have another child together, Leelee. We hardly see dad and we don't even know our half siblings. It makes me so sad that our parents love wasn't enough to keep them together. Or maybe I'm just kidding myself and they really didn't love each other at all. Maybe it was just my dad that didn't love my mom. Who knows! I gave up trying to make sense of what went wrong with my parents marriage.

Anyway, uncle Mick called mom a few months ago and he brought up the idea of Fleetwood Mac going back into the studio to record a new album. It took some convincing but, mom finally said yes. Uncle Mick promised mom that he had talked to dad and said that dad promised to be on his best behavior.

I'm not too sure about dad promising that. From past experience, I don't trust my dad at all but I hope for mom's sake that dad will follow through with this promise.

So, this idea for this story has been floating around in my head for a while now but I wasn't sure about writing it.

I don't want to give too much away so I hope you all liked this first chapter and will stick with the story and continue to read it.

Please let me know your thoughts on this chapter.