I might stay up, drunk on wine, hurtin' like hell
Ugly cryin' black mascara tears

Rayna wondered for a second if she was still asleep because the scene happening in front of her looked a lot like a dream. Deacon was sitting on the couch, strumming his guitar and belting out the lyrics of Love Like Mine to Sue, the family's new puppy.

"Is it... a Juliette Barnes song?"

"I've already played him every other damn song I know."

The dog didn't seem too impressed. He was busy running and sniffing around until he found something of interest to chew on.

"Why did you get up so early?" Rayna asked, suppressing a yawn. She picked Sue up in her arms. "Hey, buddy."

"The real question is, why didn't you? Didn't you hear him moaning and whining all night?"

"Yeah, but I went to check on him in his corral once and he was fine, so I went back to sleep."

"Well, I couldn't sleep. I fed him, he peed all over the damn house, so I know it's not that. I suspect we were given a defective dog," Deacon grumbled.

Rayna chuckled at that. "It was his first night here, he's just a puppy."

"I still can't believe you agreed to keep him."

"What did you want me to do?" Rayna protested. It was Watty and the girls who, without having consulted her and Deacon first, had brought Sue back home the previous day. "I swear, the girls call him 'Grandpa' and he can't refuse them anything anymore."

"We're going to have to teach him to say no to them or, knowing Daphne, we're going to end up with a pony."

She laughed out loud. "You'll have to admit, though, it's hard not to want to keep this little mush face." Rayna had never had a dog before. When she was a kid, Lamar used to believe the expensive interior of the Wyatt mansion wouldn't fare too well with the addition of a four-legged family member. And because of the amount of time they spent away from home, she and Deacon had always resisted getting one, despite Maddie and Daphne's insistence they should. "You know," Rayna went on, "for someome who loves Old Yeller as much as you do, I thought you would be more excited to have a dog," she teased. Deacon got up, without a word, to put his guitar on the stand. "I was kidding, where are you going?"

"I'm going to wake the girls up."

"It's Saturday, babe."

"Well, I'm going to the vet, and it's their dog, so they're coming with me."

—

The door was still locked when the three of them arrived at the vet clinic. They had to wait a few minutes outside until someone showed up to open for them. Maddie had spent the whole drive asking why they had to do this so early, and Daphne was fighting to keep her eyes open. Weirdly enough, Sue was the only one who hadn't complained.

"He's gonna settle in fine," the vet told them after having thoroughly examined him. "He just needs to get used to his surroundings."

"Are you sure?" Deacon asked. "'Cause he was just, like, moaning and whining, just carrying on all night."

"Yeah, it's called a puppy," she teased. She looked at the form the receptionist had asked them to fill in earlier. "It says here his name is Sue. Did you think he was a girl? We can still change his name."

"No, we know it's a boy. Named Sue."

The vet looked at them like she didn't understand.

"You're not from here, are you?" Daphne asked with the kind of sass that would have made her aunt Tandy proud.

"It's a Johnny Cash song," Maddie explained.

"Oh, then Sue it is. I'm sorry, I don't really like country." At that, Daphne stared wide-eyed at Deacon, trying to ask without words if it was really wise to entrust the health of their dog to a women who didn't like country music. "Have you thought about microchipping him?"

"I mean, isn't that what dog tags are for?" Deacon wondered aloud, only half-joking.

"Dad," Maddie huffed, with the same kind of exasperated tone she'd used that one time she'd had to explain to him how to use Twitter. "We should microchip him."

"It's a yes, then," Deacon confirmed. "Do you think he would travel alright, like on the road?"

"Why, are you a truck driver?"

The girls both giggled at that. "No, I'm a musician," Deacon smiled.

"Oh. Yeah. Everyone in this town is. I apologize, I've only been here five weeks."

Once the consultation was over, Maddie and Daphne bickered about who was going to carry Sue back to the car. The pup had acted like an angel for the entire time he was at the vet, but Deacon suspected he was going to turn back into his little troublemaker self the minute he would set paw in the house. On the drive back, they made a stop to pick up waffles, before they all headed home.

"How did it go?" Rayna asked, when she heard them in the hall.

"The vet said everything is fine," Daphne reported, "but she also thought Dad was a truck driver, so we can't be sure of anything."

—

Rayna couldn't believe her girls had done that. She swore, as soon as they would step off stage, they were going to get grounded for life.

Unbeknownst to her and Deacon – and unbeknownst to the two parties involved – her daughters had conspired to invite both Lamar and Watty to their open mic at Two Old Hippies. Rayna and Deacon were now stuck sitting between two men who hadn't exchanged a single word since they'd spotted each other earlier. Awkward didn't even begin to cover it.

When the host called out their names, the girls walked on stage all smiles. Daphne even waved at them, looking rather proud of herself. "The song we're going to perform is about family," Maddie announced with the subtlety of a sledgehammer. "It's called A Life That's Good."

Rayna caught Deacon shaking his head in amusement and smiling, and she couldn't help do the same. There was a little part of her which was still angry, but another big part which was mostly proud.

Once the event was over, and while they all waited for the girls, Watty took upon himself to engage the conversation. The four of them chatted a bit, keeping the topics of discussion neutral enough that, from an outsider's point of view, it could almost haved sounded cordial.

When Rayna spotted her daughters, she and Deacon walked towards them. "You two," she warned, "we'll need to have a little talk."

"It was her idea," Daphne ratted out, quick to throw her sister under the bus.

"It didn't look like you were held up against your will up there," Deacon pointed out.

"Now come say hi to—" Rayna started, but she stopped when she turned around and noticed both Lamar and Watty had disappeared. It didn't augur well. "Can you wait here?" she asked Deacon and the girls. After she'd toured the room without success, she went to check outside and found them on the sidewalk in front of the building, in the middle of a loud argument.

"It wasn't enough you tried to destroy our family while Virginia was alive, you had to steal my daughter now."

"She is my daughter, Lamar, so you are the one who stole my life with her."

Rayna was dismayed. "What are you two doing?" she exclaimed. At that, they stopped and turned towards her. She noticed people on the opposite sidewalk were looking at them because of the yelling.

"I'm sorry, Ray," Watty apologized. "I'm just... I'm going to go."

"Damn right you will," Lamar huffed before he headed back inside.

Watty started walking away, but Rayna ran after him and grabbed his arm. "Wait! Please don't leave."

"Ray, it's better like that."

"No, it's not. I'm really sorry the girls did that, they're..."

"...very much like you, quite creative and resourceful when they set their mind to something," Watty finished, and they both smiled at that. "Listen, Ray, I love the way things have been going lately. I love spending time with you, Deacon and my granddaughters, so let's keep it this way, okay? Lamar and I, we're never going to get over the past, so do not try to make us into one big happy family, it's not going to happen."

"I love the way things have been going lately too," Rayna said.

"Good."

They hugged, and when Watty was about to leave, she asked, "You're still dogsitting Sue next weekend, right?"

—

"I'm sorry, Mom."

Rayna was reading in bed, and she looked at Maddie standing in the bedroom's doorway. "I know, honey. Come here," she waved her in. She threw her magazine on the comforter as her daughter settled besides her.

"I'm not sure what I thought was going to happen," Maddie apologized.

"You meant well, but your grandpas... they're never going to get along."

"Because of Grandma?"

Rayna hesitated. "Uh, well, yeah."

"I'm not a kid anymore, we can talk about it."

Rayna smiled. "Well, you are still a kid, but yeah, we should talk about it."

"Why aren't you mad at them for having lied to you all this time? I know I would be."

"Because it's... complicated. Because I think my mom did what she thought was best for me and Tandy at the time, which was not breaking our family apart."

"Do you wish sometimes you grew up living with Watty?"

"You know, while my mom was still alive, my dad was away working a lot, but when he was around, we were a real family. It was only after your grandma died that he... disappeared, and our relationship degraded."

Maddie looked down, pensive. "I'm happy you and Dad are still together. Brianna's dad got remarried, and he's never around anymore."

Rayna smiled, putting a hand on hers. "Well, that's something you really don't have to worry about."

—

TBC

A/N: It wasn't Christmas or Thanksgiving, but I did try to put Watty and Lamar in a room together. ;) And no matter what Watty said, they will have to interact again. For the reviewer who asked about Rayna and Deacon having a son, I'm not sure how to fit that in this story, but I wanted to recommend a great fic called "Second Shot" by headtrip parade, if you haven't read it yet. :)