Recently I rewatched 219. After Rayna wondered, to Tandy, about whether she should have just told Deacon the truth about Maddie, back when she found out she was pregnant, I thought about all the times she might have wished she had told him the truth. Concealing something like that for thirteen years had to have been incredibly stressful, although she seemed, on the surface, to have figured out how to deal with it. So this is about all the times she might have wanted to tell Deacon the truth.
Prologue
As she eased onto the highway from the entrance ramp, she still felt drained. She had a lump in her throat and she kept feeling like she wanted to cry. It had certainly been a stressful day. Sitting in front of that camera, with Teddy on one side and Deacon on the other, and talking about her personal life, that was stressful. It was the thing she never liked to do. She prided herself on keeping her private life private, and that had felt like such a violation, having to talk about Maddie that way. She had been grateful Deacon showed up. And that he didn't make a scene. He'd kept his feelings about Teddy to himself – and she knew how hard that must have been – and stepped up for Maddie. But he'd run out before she'd had a chance to talk to him. To thank him. And so she'd made the drive to the cabin, the second time in just a couple days. After all the years she'd stayed away, it had, once again, been the epicenter of their pain.
So why didn't you tell me when she was like three, you know, or five, or ten, or… why didn't you just give me a little more time to be her daddy?
She had thought it was enough to have him in Maddie's life, but as soon as the words were out of her mouth, she realized how awful it sounded. To him, of course, but to her as well. What had she been thinking? How could she possibly have believed it was okay to let him know his daughter without ever knowing she was his? She'd done it with the best of intentions, against Teddy's wishes, because it made her feel like she hadn't done this horrible thing. But she'd never really considered what might happen if the truth ever came out. Because she had always intended to protect both of them from that.
The hard part is that right now I still wouldn't know. If she hadn't found out, Rayna, I still wouldn't know. You'd be sitting in that chair, lying to my face right now and every other day for the rest of my life.
You don't know that….
She choked on a sob. She hadn't really had an answer to that. Because, of course, he was right. The reality was that she probably wouldn't have ever told him, on her own. The truth was that, once she'd made the decision to not tell him, there was never a time that made sense. Every time she ever even considered it, she worried that he would prove her right, that he couldn't handle it, that he would do exactly the thing he'd done when he did find out. Get drunk.
I lied to you, I did, and now I bet you resent the hell out of me for that, but I guarantee you I resent you even more for putting us in this position in the first place. She'd said it. She'd wanted to say it all along and she'd finally had her chance, when he poked at the scab of her cover-up all those years. She lashed out, knew she was doing it, felt good in that moment to finally say what had been there all that time. At least until she looked at his face and saw the pain and the hurt and the self-blame. Deacon always took everything on himself, always had, probably always would, whether it was his to shoulder or not. It hadn't always changed anything. In fact, very often it had not. But while his demons had certainly been the start of this twisted, awful plan to conceal, it truly wasn't all on him. Not the way she'd tried to make it seem.
He had turned away from her, finally, tears rimming his eyes, and she had heard herself breathing, in ugly, gasping sounds. She wanted to tell him she hadn't meant it the way it had sounded, that she was sorry she had hurt him, but she couldn't make the words come out. How do I ever apologize for that? How do I ever say I'm sorry for lying to him all these years? Is there any way I can make him understand just how devastated I was back then? How impossible everything seemed? How much I didn't want this?
She had turned and practically run down the porch and out to her car. She had pulled open the door and thrown herself into the driver's seat, clutching the steering wheel and trying to breathe. She had dropped the keys on the floorboard as she tried to shove them into the ignition, her hands shaking badly. When she finally got the car started, she had sped back down the dirt and gravel drive to the main road.
She hated that it had happened the way it had. It had been all the painful, horrible outcomes she could have ever imagined. She acknowledged to herself that the accident was probably the catalyst to him getting back on track. Maybe if that hadn't happened, he'd have fallen back into the cycle, for good probably, and it would have just confirmed for her that she'd made the right choice all those years ago. It was what had always held her back, every single time she'd ever even considered telling him the truth.
She thought he was more hurt now than angry, although there was still some anger there, she could tell. She hadn't really allowed herself to think about how he felt. She'd been so wrapped up in her own anger and her own pain. And in the aftermath of the car accident, she hadn't been sure she could ever even be around him again. It had helped that Maddie had been so ambivalent about all of it then. It had kept her from having to face what had happened and having to deal with it. But when Maddie finally decided she did want a relationship with him, she had had to let him back in, and now she knew she needed to think about what all this had done to him.
By the time she walked into the house, she was exhausted. The girls were with Teddy and she had told Luke she had a headache and just wanted to sleep it off, so the house was empty when she walked in. She dropped her purse on the counter, along with her keys, and shrugged out of her jacket and scarf, laying them across a chair. She walked up the stairs to her bedroom and straight back to the closet. She dragged the stepladder over and then opened the top cabinet. She hesitated for just a moment, then reached in and pulled out a small suitcase.
She stood, just holding it, for a moment, then got off the stepladder and slid down onto the floor, laying the suitcase beside her. She crossed her legs, one over the other, and laid her hand on the top of the suitcase. She looked down at it. It was a plain, tan suitcase. She'd had it since she was a little girl and it was one of the suitcases that had been sitting in the foyer at her father's house the night he'd kicked her out. She ran her hand over it and closed her eyes. This was where she'd kept all her most personal memories, since she'd first started out all those years ago.
It held all her memories. All those significant events, from the time she'd been running around town playing every open mic she could, to when she finally was headlining arenas. To her knowledge, Teddy never knew it was even there, because certainly he would have mentioned finding those journals, with all her most personal thoughts. The pictures. The videos. The memorabilia. And every ounce of pain she'd ever felt, written down in journals.
She opened her eyes, took a deep breath, and opened it. There was the picture of her and Deacon, sitting on stools at the Bluebird. She reached out and rubbed the edge with her thumb and forefinger. She smiled softly. They had been so young then. So filled with hope and dreams. It was before things had started to get so bad with him, back before her whole life seemed to be filled with worry and dread, heartache and pain. There were badges and articles, travel documents and notes. She laid her hand on top of one of her old lyrics notebooks. It was an old spiral bound notebook. These days she had leather bound notebooks, but this was from the early days, when she and Deacon hardly had two nickels to rub together.
She knew what she was looking for and she set aside the lyrics notebook and several videos. Bucky had gotten all the old ones moved to DVD's so she could still watch them if she wanted. She didn't though. Not the old ones anyway. Too much pain. Too much heartache. She finally found what she was looking for, a notebook stuffed with loose paper, where she'd written down notes about things that were happening, feelings she had, stuff she needed to write out. It was held closed by a couple of large rubber bands. She sat back, holding the notebook in her lap, closing her eyes. All her most private thoughts were here.
The pain had been visceral, especially in the beginning. Over time, it had lessened. The panic that always seemed to be right in her throat those first few years had nearly choked her. Even that too eased off as time went on. But there were always those times when the heartache rose up, special days, significant events, milestones. Those were the times she'd write in this notebook. Those were the times when she would give in to the loss of all she had dreamed of.
He really hadn't pushed back on her before, made her feel as bad as he could have, about what she'd taken away from him. He'd lost all those years as Maddie's father and yet he'd shouldered the blame and let her take the lead. She could see so clearly that he and Maddie wanted to develop that relationship and it caused her heart to ache when she really thought about how she'd kept them from doing that all these years. She really felt like she needed to go back and think about what he'd lost. What Maddie had lost. What they'd all lost together.
She opened her eyes and took a deep breath. Then she took the rubber bands off the notebook and opened it, preparing herself for the rush of emotions that would surely follow.