Not gonna lie, It was hard to write this. I know we'll be seeing a lot of "alternate endings" here, and this isn't exactly that. It's just my version of how I'd like to see some of the next few episodes played out. We can't bring Rayna back, but we can definitely pay tribute to all she was, and all that #Deyna was.
Deacon
He can't sleep.
It's been a long time since he had insomnia problems. At one point in his life, he went years without ever sleeping more than 2 hours at a time. He is a person who is restless by nature. Laying in bed every night overthinking everything. Always some half-finished song in his head. Always something to worry about. When he was drinking, it was the booze that kept him from sleeping. He couldn't close his eyes without the release from reality that it brought. When he finally got sober, it took him years to learn to sleep without it.
It was different, though, after him and Rayna had gotten back together. As long as she was next to him, her leg thrown over his or her hand on his back, his mind was at ease and he was at peace. He didn't need anything to sleep except her.
Let it go, babe, she'd mumble half-awake with her head on his chest when he brought up his concerns about Maddie's new boyfriend, about that album they had to finish, about that creepy Gene guy following them around with cameras. "We'll worry about it in the morning."
Ray….
Deacon, she sighed and burrowed in closer to him. Let it go. There's always tomorrow.
But now there isn't.
He looks over at her empty side of the bed now, and the ache in his chest is so tight, he has to force himself to keep breathing. Outside, a spring thunderstorm is raging, lightning cracking across the sky and rain pounding on the windows. It seems almost appropriate that it has done nothing but rain off and on for several weeks.
It's been three weeks since their world shattered. Three weeks, 2 days, and 12 hours. He knows he because he counts the time in his mind when he can't sleep; how many days since he kissed her goodbye and watched her slip away without being able to do a damn thing to stop it. How many hours that the girls have lived without their mother. How long it will be spending the rest of his life without her.
He tries to tell himself that maybe it's just the opposite. He's actually fallen asleep and it's some kind of dream that he just hasn't woken up from yet. A nightmare. But he keeps pinching himself to test that theory, to try to escape it, and he never wakes up.
Drawing in a shaky breath, Deacon rises from the bed, grabs a blanket, and heads for the music room downstairs to sleep on the couch there. At the last second, he takes the pillow too, the one that smells like her coconut shampoo, and that jasmine perfume he gave her for her last birthday.
When the thunder outside finally fades away, and the day is rising new outside, and he can hear the girls moving around in the kitchen, he still hasn't closed his eyes.
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Maddie
Maddie watches from the doorway of the guest bedroom while her Aunt Tandy carefully arranges things in the suitcase on the bed. Tandy is going back to California today.
She is wary. She loves Aunt Tandy. But with her mom gone now…everything is different. She's not dumb. Tandy has never thought much of her dad, and even now the tension between the two of them is obvious.
"I really think you girls should come back to California with me," Tandy says carefully as she closes and zips the suitcase. "it's not too late to change your mind. It'll be a good change for you."
"Thanks but we're doing fine." Maddie quickly changes the subject. "So when you find that necklace you mentioned will you send it to me? You know the one of grandma's you said you have? I'd really like to have it."
"I'll do that." Tandy sits down on the edge of the bed and pats the spot next to her.
But Maddie, stationary, leaning in the doorway, doesn't move. "I know exactly what you're thinking."
Tandy sighs heavily. "Maddie. Your dad is going through a lot right now. He's not stable. And you are not fine. Any of you."
Her mom is still everywhere in this house. Rayna's makeup is in the bathroom drawers. Her favorite boots, still in a corner of the music room where she'd kicked them off after a late night songwriting session . A leftover box from her favorite Chinese restaurant in the fridge, that nobody can seem to throw out even though it's been there for weeks. Lyrics to songs she didn't finish, scribbled on yellow notepads, left on the coffee table in the music room.
She knows Tandy is right. They're not living. They're just existing. Breathing but numb. Trying not to feel. Trying to be strong for Daphne. Trying to keep it altogether. Hanging on by a thread.
"I just worry…." Tandy's voice trails off.
"What?" Maddie says angrily. "That he's going to turn back into a raging alcoholic?"
The look on Tandy's face says that's exactly what she's worried about.
"Unbelievable," Maddie shakes her head, furious. "Where have YOU been the last year? You haven't even been here, and Teddy's in jail. Dad was the one who got us through all that, not you. I'm not going anywhere. And neither is Daphne. We needed him then and now he needs us."
Tandy doesn't look convinced, but she lets the subject drop and reluctantly rises to continue packing her bags.
A little while later, they are biding her goodbye with hugs at the front door while a car waits to take her to the airport for her early morning flight.
"Call me if you need anything," Tandy says repeatedly as she ruffles Daphne's hair. It is not overlooked by Deacon that she directs the comment towards Daphne. Yes, he's grateful for Tandy's help with the girls the last few weeks, but he's not exactly sad to see her go either.
Deacon turns away and heads for the kitchen, and Tandy shoots Maddie a raised look with her eyebrows as if to say I told you so.
"We won't," Maddie says firmly. "We'll be fine."
Somehow they have to find a way to get back to the land of the living on their own.
####################################################
Daphne
Deacon's getting out stuff to make pancakes, because they always have pancakes on Saturday mornings and today is no different. They've been eating chocolate chip pancakes on Saturday mornings for as long as she can remember. They're her mom's favorite.
She swears Deacon looks more tired every day than the day before.
I'm worried about Dad, she's heard Maddie tell Scarlett more than once. I don't think he ever sleeps at all. Daphne goes to school and he just sits in the music room staring at all Mom's records on the walls.
Maddie doesn't tell her that stuff. She still thinks she's a little kid and needs to be taken care of like a baby, but she's 13. She can handle stuff too.
"Can we have something else?" She says abruptly. "I don't want pancakes today."
Deacon looks up from pulling out the griddle out of the closet, surprised. "Uh…yeah I guess. How about eggs and bacon? That okay?"
"I guess." She doesn't care what they have for breakfast. She's not really hungry anyway.
She just wants the awful feeling in her stomach to go away.
Maybe I should have went to California with Aunt Tandy, Daphne thinks. At least they could stop acting like everything is okay.
#########################################
Deacon
He pretends like it's just another Saturday morning as he makes them breakfast and they sit across the counter from him.
He's trying to keep the girls in a normal routine because it seems like the right thing to do. Especially Daphne. She's been fighting him about going back to school. I'm tired of everyone looking at me like they feel sorry for me, she says.
He sure as hell knows that feeling all too well.
He makes her go to school anyway. The one thing she will not do is sing. "I'm done with choir", she said with such vehemence in her voice a few nights ago. "And you can't make me go."
He doesn't argue with her on that one. Nobody in this house has anything to sing about right now.
"So what's your plans for the day?" he asks Maddie. "Seeing Clay later?"
He watches as she pushes her food around on her plate, not really eating. Her face has gotten thinner, and he realizes he hasn't seen her eat much in days.
"He's not really….around anymore." Maddie mumbles.
A month ago he probably would have been relieved to hear that. But now…
This is what they do now, him and Maddie. Make small talk. Act like everything's okay for Daphne's sake.
"Maybe you could take Daph to the mall or something?"
"Sure," Maddie barely looks up from her plate. She's eaten exactly three bites. "Whatever."
Daphne tries to hide the hurt on her face at the indifference in Maddie's voice, but it is obvious.
"You don't have to if you don't want to," she says in a hollow voice.
"No, it's fine, Maddie's sad attempt at a smile is clearly forced. "We'll go to the mall, okay? Get some ice cream or something. Try on clothes."
Because what you really want to do when your mother is dead is go to the mall and try on clothes.
It sounds more absurd when Deacon thinks it to himself in his own head. He's failing at this. He promised Rayna he'd do right by their girls, and he's failing.
"I'm sorry," he says, laying a hand on Daphne's shoulder. "I just thought maybe it would be good for you girls to get out for a little while."
"I know," Daphne said, her bottom lip wavering. "I know you're trying to make everything fine, Dad. It's just…"
Its just that they aren't fine. None of them are ever going to be fine again. Not until the day Rayna walks through that door and dropped her phone and keys on the counter, kissed their cheeks and says "hey my beautiful family, how was your day?"
And that is never going to happen. She'll never watch her children walk across the stage at their college graduations. She won't watch them walk down the aisle at their weddings, or hold their first babies. She won't be in the audience when they win their first CMA awards.
He doesn't know if he can be enough to make up for that.
For the first time, he wonders if Tandy was right. Maybe they would have been better off with her. She'd been through this with Ray when their lost their mom. She knows what to say at least.
Maddie's phone buzzes and she glances at it. "It's Scarlett." She murmurs. "She wants to know if we want to come for dinner later."
Scarlett has been a lifesaver through all this. She's seen him at his lowest points before. She knows how he gets.
"Deacon, you gotta talk about it. You can't keep bottling it up. I know you. I know how you keep things inside. Talk to me, talk to a counselor. Someone."
"What do you want me to say? My wife is dead. My kids are miserable. I can't change it. I can't fix it for them, Scar. I can't bring her back."
"You're right. But you need to cry, scream, or something. Because you acting like you're fine, the girls think they need to be that way too. And that's not good for them either."
He knows Scarlett is right but that doesn't make it any easier to do it.
Rayna is gone. And she's not coming back. Ever.
"Come on," he says abruptly, taking the plates away from them and setting them in the sink. "We're getting out of here."
Maddie looks up bleakly as if she hadn't really heard him. "What?"
Daphne looks doubtful. "Dad, no offense, but that mall thing…."
"We're not going to the mall, forget that," he gently herds them towards the door.
"It's raining, you know," Daphne informs.
As he pulls open the door, he realizes she's right. The day is overcast and its pouring.
It seems appropriate somehow that they haven't seen the sun for days.
They dodge through the raindrops to his truck and climb inside. The girls are running together, holding hands, laughing, and for a second it lightens his heart to hear them laugh even just a little.
He drives, formulating the idea in his head.
Maddie leans her head against the side window. Daphne is quiet in the backseat.
"Want to turn the radio on?" He asks Maddie.
Maddie shakes her head.
So they drive in silence, just the sound of the wipers on the windshield, until he pulls up in front of a ramshackle two story apartment building south of town.
"What's this?" Daphne asks, leaning over the front seat. "What are we doing here?"
Even Maddie's interest has piqued.
"Well," Deacon says, trying to figure out where to start. "I thought maybe you girls would like to see some of the places that were real special to your mom and me. And this is one of them."
Staring at that rundown apartment building, the memories come back as hard and fast as the rain outside.
"Well, this is…interesting," 18 year old Rayna walking through the door in her white boots and designer jeans. The whole apartment was one room, and it was small to begin with. Crammed with all Deacon's guitars and equipment, you could barely walk to the bathroom.
He was still trying to absorb all that had happened tonight.
Lamar had finally done it. Thrown her out for good.
"Sorry," he said, ashamed. "It's all I can afford right now." She'd grown up in a mansion in Belle Meade. Compared to that, this was…well, it wasn't nearly as pretty, that's for damn sure.
She saw the look on his face. "Deacon," she said, reaching for his hand. "I don't care where you live. I just want to make music with you, and we can do that anywhere."
God, he could see her there now, in that tiny apartment like it was yesterday. She'd made it a home for them, never once complained about lugging guitar cases up and down the steps with no elevator. Never once complained when they woke up freezing in the middle of the night because the furnace was out again. Sure, they'd only stayed there two years, but she'd made it feel like home.
"See when I first met your mom, you know, your grandpa Lamar didn't like me much, and he didn't want her to be a singer," Deacon started.
Maddie nodded. "And he kicked her out."
"Right. And she lived here with me. Well when first started out, you know, we didn't have much and this was all we could afford. So we lived here the first couple years. That apartment was so small you could sit on the edge of the bed and put your feet on the couch at the same time."
"Dad, really," Maddie rolls her eyes, but she almost smiles.
"Really. I swear."
Daphne looks intrigued. "It was nicer on the inside than the outside, I hope," she says wryly.
"I don't think that's the point," Maddie pokes her sister affectionately.
"It's not," Deacon agrees. "The point is…," he says, squinting through the windshield. "that I learned a lot about myself living here with your mom. We both did. We could make music anywhere as long as we were together. Yeah, this was a crappy apartment, but she fixed it up real nice. We wrote some of our first number ones here. We realized that if we stuck together, we could make it work no matter where we lived."
Maddie nods. "Like us, right? We need to stick together."
"Right," he says quietly.
"I like hearing about you and Mom," Daphne says softly from the backseat. "I like….talking about her. I miss talking about her."
He turns to look at her over his shoulder. "You do?"
"Me too." Maddie says, chewing her bottle lip. "We just…well, we've been trying not to because we thought it hurt you."
Deacon's breathe slides out in a ragged sigh. "I thought it would hurt you to hear about her," he admits. "Guess we have some things to work on, huh? I don't want you ever, ever be afraid to talk about her. Memories are a good thing."
Daphne scrambles quickly over the front seat between them before she can change her mind and parks herself between him and Maddie. "Can you show us some other places?" she asks tentatively. "That are about you and Mom?"
"That," he says, reaching over to tug a lock of her hair. "I can definitely do. We have all afternoon. Unless you'd rather go to the mall."
On the other side of her sister, Maddie can't hold back a laugh. "No!"
"Dad," she says. "Some day we are going to spend an afternoon at the mall, and you're going to wish you never brought it up."
He would spent a hundred afternoons at the damn mall if it meant keeping those smiles on their faces.
"Alright," he says, starting up the truck again. "The tour continues."…..
Thanks for reading! To be continued soon.