I was planning to take a break from posting anything new while I work on some other things and concentrate on a very busy time at work. But this germ of an idea went through my head as I drove to The Bluebird Café last night and by the time I got there I had worked out the whole story in my head. I thought I'd put it out there before the show comes back next week.
Maddie Conrad went to sit at a table that faced out through the large floor-to-ceiling windows onto the parking lot, to wait for her ride. She had stayed after school to spend some time in the library working on a paper and now she was waiting. She would be glad when she was old enough to drive and, hopefully, have her own car. She had dropped hints to her parents, but her mom was predictably non-committal and her dad would just say "we'll see." She sighed. Of course, there was another parent in the mix these days. Deacon. Her "biological father", as her dad always referred to him. She guessed she understood that. He and Deacon had never gotten along, as far back as she could remember, although she'd never really understood why until now. And even that was complicated. Teddy Conrad hated Deacon Claybourne because he was her father. And Deacon hated Teddy because he was in love with her mother, Rayna Jaymes, who had been married to Teddy since before she had been born.
Maddie felt all the conflicting emotions she always did when she thought about the three of them. Her mom was the one constant. The great Rayna Jaymes, the Queen of Country Music. That always seemed weird to her because in her eyes Rayna was just "Mom." Sure, she was strict about things like school and homework and curfews and stuff, but she was also silly and fun-loving. And because she was a country music star, she would take her and her sister Daphne on the road sometimes, which was always fun. She loved watching her mom on stage in her sparkly, sexy clothes and high heels. She sure didn't look like a mom when she was out on stage. But she was also very old-fashioned about some things, which annoyed Maddie. Like not wanting her to sing professionally. Wasn't it in her blood? Why couldn't her mom see that and support her? Maddie sighed and rolled her eyes.
Then there was Teddy, the man who raised her, the man who was "Dad." She had always thought she was like him. That she looked like him, was smart like him, was a daddy's girl. When she had found out that he was not really her father after all, she had been thrown into turmoil. Everything she had believed had been turned upside down and she had no idea who she really was anymore. He kept insisting that he was her dad, that Deacon was nothing more than her "biological father", as though that were something bad. He had told her more than once that he was the one who was there for all the important moments of her life. But that wasn't a hundred percent true, because Deacon had been a part of the fabric of her life for as long as she could remember, and he'd been there for a lot of that too.
Deacon Claybourne. Her real father. He was who she looked like, who she got so much of who she was from. She could see that so clearly now. She had always believed she'd gotten her talent from her mom, but now she realized that it really came from Deacon. As she had spent more time with Deacon, getting to know him as her father, she felt so much more connected to him than she had ever felt to Teddy, which had surprised her. She still loved Teddy – her dad. He was the only father she had known for most of her life and she believed he did truly love her as though she were his own. But she had so often during her life felt a little like an outsider in her own family. And now she knew why. Because she was Deacon's daughter. As they had worked on her music together and done some writing together, she saw that she looked at life in the same way that Deacon did. They both felt things passionately, neither of them were silly or goofy the way her mom and Daphne were. They were serious people.
She had always loved Deacon, at least until the accident. Then she had hated him. For almost killing her mom. For being a drunk. For ruining their lives. But when it was all over and her mom came out of the coma, she had learned that it wasn't all Deacon's fault. And that's when things got so complicated. She couldn't relate to her mom at all and she couldn't get past the lies she had told, to both her and to Deacon. She loved her dad but she hated him too, because she realized that he had lied to her too. She was unsure of how she felt about Deacon then. But she had been drawn to know more about him and her mom had shut that down. So she spent hours on the Internet, looking for anything she could find. She found a CD of his only album, cut years ago when he and her mom were still together and still so young. She listened to his songs over and over. She had wanted to reach out to him, but she didn't really know how. And he had not tried to reach her, so she thought he didn't want to be her father.
She refocused her eyes on the parking lot. It would be a little longer before her ride got there. The upper grade Ensworth School was way out on Highway 100 in Bellevue, not really close to anyone. Daphne was still at the lower school over near Belle Meade, so it made regular rides more complicated. Today was different, though, since she had stayed late.
While she waited, she pulled out her iPad and turned it on. When it fully loaded, she did what she'd been doing so often these days. She went to Safari and typed in "Deacon Claybourne Rayna Jaymes" and looked for pictures of the two of them from back in the early days. She knew that they had kept their private life as private as they could, but there were still pictures of the two of them that captured the feelings they'd had for each other. Maddie felt funny sometimes, looking at them, because, after all, they were her parents. She had never liked to think about her mom and dad that way either, like they were in love or something. But it was different with her mom and Deacon. She'd never seen them as a couple, never been a part of a family life with them like she had with her mom and dad.
Her mom looked so young, so happy, in these pictures. She almost looked dreamy, the way she looked at Deacon. With that small smile and her shiny eyes. The way her body was turned towards him. Deacon looked different – not so closed up. She was like him in that way, she knew, keeping her feelings close, being wary and careful. In these pictures he always looked like he was ready to grab her mom and kiss her, the way the romantic leads did in movies. She felt it again, that hint of weirdness over thinking about her parents as romantic people.
Her mom had been dating Luke Wheeler. Maddie made a face as she thought of him. She wasn't sure she liked him. He seemed like he was trying too hard. Daphne loved him. Of course. Daphne was easy. But she just wasn't sure about him. When she looked at her mother around Luke, she seemed like she was having fun, but Maddie saw something in her eyes, when no one was looking, that made her think her mom wasn't having as much fun as she tried to make people think she was.
Her dad had married Peggy. At first, Maddie hadn't liked her. She was the reason her parents split up, she thought, although later she realized there was more to it than that. When her dad and Peggy decided to get married, she tried harder to get to know her. Peggy really seemed to want to connect to Maddie and Daphne and it turned out she wasn't as bad as they'd thought she was. But then she'd been killed and now everything was weird with her dad.
Everything had been so complicated when her parents had split up. Her dad was seeing Peggy. Then she had overheard her mom telling Deacon she loved him. That was when she'd made the decision to snoop. She wasn't really sure what she thought she would find, but it was definitely not the paternity test results that had turned her world upside down.
Maddie felt sad about that again. Only because of the accident. Even though Juliette had assured her it wasn't her fault, she still felt a little guilty. But it was a good thing that the truth was out. Even though it had been horrible for a while, it had all turned out for the best.
Her mom had initially not talked to her much about Deacon. To be fair, she hadn't asked that many questions, but when she had, her mom had not wanted to tell her much. Which just led to frustration. It made her angry and she didn't know how to deal with it. She couldn't talk to her dad about the situation at all. He didn't want to hear Deacon's name. But finally her mom started to open up a little. The night she took her to The Bluebird to hear Deacon play had changed everything. It changed her relationship with her mom and it definitely changed things with Deacon.
And that was the problem. She was really enjoying finding out more about the man who really was her father. She found herself pulling away from the man who had raised her, not meaning to necessarily, but it was hard to balance the two, especially when they hated each other so much.
She looked back at the pictures on her iPad and she started to wonder what it would have been like if her mom and Deacon had gotten married or at least had stayed together. If the three of them had been a family instead of the family she had. It was a weird thing to think about, because it meant there would have been no Daphne and that made her sad. She loved her little sister, even when she was annoying, and that would have been hard. But she felt a little like she had been cheated out of a real family, growing up with the two people that loved her most. The two people who made her.
A lot of her friends had parents who were divorced and they had stepparents. She wasn't sure any of her friends still had the parents they'd been born to. So she was really no different from them, except that she had thought Teddy was her actual dad, not a stepdad, and Deacon had not known about her at all.
Maddie gazed back out the window. She knew Deacon still loved her mom. She could tell. She knew he was seeing that woman named Megan. She hadn't met her yet. She hadn't asked to and Deacon had kept them separate, she guessed so that she and Deacon could bond with each other first. She appreciated that about him, that he was thoughtful where she was concerned. But she could tell from things he said and the way he looked at her mom when she came to pick her up at Deacon's that he still loved her. What she couldn't say for sure was how her mom felt about Deacon. She was a performer, after all, and she was good at putting on a happy face and acting like everything was perfect. And then, of course, she had pretended for thirteen years that Maddie's father was Teddy, not Deacon. You had to be good at keeping your real feelings inside to be able to do that. But she didn't think her mom loved Luke Wheeler.
She wondered if there was anything she could do. Probably not, but Maddie knew life could throw you curve balls and maybe the time would come when her real parents would get that same curve ball. She smiled a little, thinking about that. And then she saw her ride pull into the parking lot. She couldn't help it; a big smile crossed her face. She threw her iPad in her book bag and gathered up her things. She ran out of the building and skipped down the library steps. She ran around to the passenger side and opened the door, jumping in and closing the door. This was her chance to start the conversation.
She smiled broadly. "Hey…Dad," she said, trying it out.
Deacon took a breath and she could see a slight glisten in his eyes. Then he smiled, that head-over-heels happy smile that he gave her every time he saw her now. "Hey, Maddie," he said. "How was your day?"