"Alright," Lucy said finally one Wednesday morning as they sat on the patio sipping their coffee. It was a beautiful warm fall day, not many of those left til winter hit. She'd been working on this book project with Rayna for about two months now, and it was more enlightening than she had ever imagined. She hadn't told them, but it was the last book she planned on writing. Had to make it a good one. "Should we bring up the elephant in the room? Deacon's alcoholism is one of the things we haven't talked about. How it affected you."
Rayna frowned. "It's in the past and I want it to stay there. Can we just….say that he went to rehab and leave it at that? I don't want any of the details of it in the book. We're happy now. Getting married next month, figuring out how to be a family. He's come a long way, and we are all very proud of him. I just…don't know if I want to dredge all that up."
"It's your story, honey," she said kindly, patting Rayna's arm. "I'm just writing it. So whatever you want on the pages is up to you."
Rayna sighed. "You know, I never have really talked about any of this with anyone."
"Understandable. You're a very private person."
" I felt…pretty alone at that time. Tandy didn't understand why I stuck by him. My mother was gone, my father was busy making shady business deals….."
Lucy took the notebook in her hand and closed it. Then she stuck it back in her purse.
"What are you doing?" Rayna said. "Are we done for today?"
"No siree." Lucy said. "But right now I'm not being a writer, I'm just being a friend. Sometimes you just need someone to listen."
Rayna stared out the window for a long time. "It's hard to think about," she said softly. "Or talk about. That was a very painful time in both of our lives. It didn't start out that way. I mean we had four years that were just…unbelievable. Amazing. I don't even know how to find the right words."
"Yes I remember. I saw some of your early shows," Lucy said with a chuckle. "You couldn't have denied you were in love if you tried."
"On stage we were so in sync, so…well, we would just go onstage and pour our hearts out to each other," Rayna said with a small smile. "Gosh, when I look back now… Maybe it was too good, or something. Maybe I was too lucky. I went from opening act to headlining tour, to number ones and CMAs in four years. It was all so fast."
"Oh honey, now luck has nothing to do with it. You were always meant to be on that stage, you know that. You've had talent since the day you were born. You had to work just as hard as anyone else in this business to get where you are."
"Well thank you," she patted Lucy's hand. "I know you have worked with the best and that means a lot to hear you say that."
"When did things start going wrong?"
"After Vince," Rayna said without hesitation.
"After?"
"After he died." She said. "You know, I'm sorry he died. He was a good friend to both of us for a long time, before he started dragging Deacon downhill with him. But a lot of the alcohol and drug abuse, I blame on him. He didn't cause it, but he sure as hell aggravated it….."
#####################################
That night was ingrained in her mind forever. Vince coming to the house wanting to drag Deacon off to some party with him in Baker Hills. He was already half-lit up and had a beer in his hand as he stood there on the front porch.
Rayna answered the door.
She was tired. They'd just come off of a 6 month tour. She just wanted to be at home with Deacon, in their house that had waited for them patiently all these months, not on a bus. With just him. Fall asleep and wake up in their bed in his arms. They had only a month off before going back out again.
And she was mad. "What the hell are you doing here?" She demanded. "Coming here drunk and trying to convince him to go out and do something stupid? You want to tank your life Vince, go do it, but don't keep dragging him down with you. You coulda been a lot more, you know." He'd been her drummer for the first couple years, but finally she'd let him go when getting wasted and high became more important than showing up for gigs.
"You know what I know," Vince said, taking a swig of his beer. "You used to be fun, Rayna. Goddamn, you're just like Carmen. No fun at all."
Deacon came out on the porch behind her. "What're you doing here?" He asked, noticing the bottle in Vince's hand. He had cut down a lot on the partying in the last year, especially with Vince. Partly because of Rayna. Mostly because his own habits had started to scare him a little. A bender with Vince sometimes lasted 3 days. Sometimes you ended up in another state. Or jail.
Rayna looked like she was ready to start throwing punches.
"I got this." he gently pushed her back into the house and went out on the front porch to talk to Vince and closed the door behind him.
Rayna didn't know what exactly got said or when the fists started flying but she knew Deacon came back in the house with a busted lip and a black eye. She never saw Vince alive again.
Cops were banging on their front door the next morning. Vince had wrapped his car around a tree. He was gone. And Deacon had to be the one to go down there and identify him. They found an empty Jose Cuervo bottle in the remains of his front seat.
It only took a week before Deacon fell into a harder state than Rayna had ever seen him.
She came home from a label party one night he hadn't wanted to go to, and found him laid out in a lawn chair in the backyard. A bottle of Jack Daniels dangled from one hand, and a cigarette smoldered in the other.
She hated when he smoked, and he knew it. Said it was just another thing he couldn't quit. He wouldn't let her touch the things. She needed to protect her voice, he said.
His face, his eyes had such pain that she hurt just looking at him. She wished there was some way to take it away.
"I shoulda stopped him," he mumbled.
"It's not your fault, babe," she said softly.
"I'm no good for you, Ray. No good for anyone. I'm just like him."
She started to wonder which him he meant, Vince or his father. He'd mentioned his father in bitter passing words a few times lately, and she knew it was on his mind.
"Don't talk like that, I love you. Come on in the house, okay?"
He leaned on her as she walked him inside and to the leather couch and then he passed out cold.
She sat by him on the floor and held his motionless hand and cried. It wouldn't be the last time she sat next to him and watched him sleep off a drunken bender. She'd sit by his side in hospital rooms while they pumped the booze and pills out of his stomach. She'd sit outside courthouses and jails, and drag him out of hotel rooms, and have moments where she sat next to him screaming in his face, slapping him, scared that he was really dead this time until he'd finally blink his eyes and mumble in confusion because he really didn't know where he was or how he'd gotten there. It wasn't the last time she'd sit next to him and cry.
But it was the one she would remember the most, because it was the first time.
###########################
The first time Deacon went to rehab, he went willingly. He was willing to try, he said. For Rayna. He knew his drinking had gone to a scary level of out of control when he found out Rayna was employing a backup guitarist to hang around every show "just in case" he didn't show up. He didn't want to be that guy. He didn't want to turn into Vince, or his father, and he knew he was dangerously close to that ledge. Rayna walked him in. And promised she'd been waiting when he came back out.
They only kept him in there for 7 days. Even now looking back on it, Rayna thought that was ridiculous. All it did was give him a 7 day long headache and make him ornery and tired from 7 days of withdrawal symptoms when he came out.
She drove him home and he didn't speak.
So many things she wanted to ask him, but truthfully she was scared. Because she knew in her heart this hadn't worked. And wondered how long it would be before it started again.
It only took two days before a night happened when he didn't come home. She tried to tell herself that he was probably out just wandering around walking it off trying to spare her, but the next morning when she was driving to Soundcheck, she found his truck parked in the park n ride lot she passed every day.
Oh, he was having no problem getting some sleep now. He was passed out on the seat of the truck with an empty bottle of Scotch on the seat next to him. Sleeping like a rock.
She left him there, troubled. Not even angry at him, just sad. He probably wouldn't want her to know, she thought, that he had failed. He'd wake up sober, come home, and pretend like it didn't happen. And so would she.
She wondered what was going to become of him if he couldn't even make it two days.
#############################
The Second time he went to rehab, it was for 60 days. And court appointed after a DUI.
He went out on a bender with band mates one night and rolled his truck off of a curve north of the city limits, and woke up in jail. Didn't even remember walking away from it without a scratch. Rayna was playing in Austin. Since he hadn't shown up when they were getting ready to leave, she sighed and told the bus driver to take off without him. Later, when she got his drunken message after the show, she called Tandy to bail him out of jail.
Rayna's sister had told him exactly what she thought in one sentence when she dumped him in his driveway. "Get your shit together, Deacon. Or let her go."
That sentence stayed with him for a long time.
He tried real hard, tried to be the sober and dependable guy she'd fallen in love with. They had to take a red-eye flight home from Portland to be there in time for his court hearing a month later, and go in the courthouse through a back door so the press wouldn't get wind of her being there. She held his hand. She listened to the judge tell him to get his shit together, just like Tandy had.
And then she took him back to rehab, because it was part of his court sentence. A different, more expensive, more exclusive one this time. One she paid for.
Once again she walked him in there.
His eyes, when he turned to walk in, they just broke her. Pleading. Please be here.
"I can't make any promises, Deacon," she said quietly as they stood outside the clinic. "Can you?" She knew Deacon's childhood had been much worse than hers, and now with Vince's death on top of it, it was slowly killing him. He didn't like to talk about any of it much, if ever. She tried to understand the pain that he was trying to drink away, she tried to be there for him. But it was never enough. He had demons following him around she couldn't even begin to understand.
"Do what you need to do. For you." He kissed her forehead. "I love you, Ray. See you in two months."
He had to get it right this time. For Rayna.
She forced herself to walk away without crying.
Then she went out on tour. With a new guitar player she pretended to like, and her heart left at home in Nashville.
############################################
Rayna's voice caught as she told Lucy parts of the story she'd never told anyone. How terrifying it had been to watch him self-destruct. How she'd watched him try so hard and fail so many times. How she'd loved him anyway, despite of it all. She wanted those dreams they'd made together.
But he blamed himself for so many things, and those demons ate him alive from the inside out. He spent more time passed out in hotel rooms and drunk in the back of the bus than actually playing on stage with her. They stopped writing. They stopped sleeping together. He was just existing, and she was trying to make a career. Their roads had never been farther apart.
So each time she found another place for him, one with a better program, one that costed more of her hard-earned money. One that swore it was different than other places. She missed the Deacon she had fallen in love with, and she knew this was the end of them unless it worked.
So off he went to rehab again. For the third time, then fourth time in three years. They were done, she told him as she walked him in to #4. But she would always love him and she wanted him to get better. And she still wanted them to be friends.
That was the worst joke he'd ever heard.
But once again he kissed her forehead, and wiped away the tears in her eyes she was trying like hell to hold back, and turned around and walked in.
He was always afraid when he walked back out she wouldn't be there. And she always was. But the fourth time was different.
Because when he came out, she was dating Teddy Conrad.
########################
Rayna was there when he came out, and he coulda swore he let out out a sigh of relief he'd been holding in for two months.
But it was different now. She hugged him, and something was….different.
"You uh….staying at the house?" He asked tentatively.
She shook her head slowly. "I've been staying with Tandy. Don't worry I got everything…you know…taken care of. Payments. Utilities. Your one plant," she gave him a half smile.
He looked confused.
Rayna sighed. "We have to talk, okay?"
She drove them to a spot near the river, a beautiful spot with weeping willow trees and an old stone bridge across the water. They sat on the picnic table, knee to knee.
"I like to come here sometimes," she said softly. "To think. Away from the city and everyone watching."
"It's nice. Peaceful." They'd talked about getting a place on a lake someday. Just somewhere to get away from it all. He wondered if that would ever happen now.
Somehow he knew what she was afraid to say.
"I've been….seeing someone else." She said.
His jaw moved up and down real slow. "Okay."
She started to cry. "I love you, you know that. But I can't keep doing this. It's too hard to watch you try to kill yourself over and over again."
"Okay," he said again. "Can you please take me home."
He got up and walked back to her car.
The ride back to the house in East Nashville, neither one of them said a word.
He just got out of her truck and walked up to the house, shoulders hunched, hands in his pockets.
He looked so broken, that she wondered if it was the right thing to do. God, what if it set him off all over again?
###################################
It had been Tandy's idea to set her up on the date with Teddy. Rayna hated the idea. She hated blind dates. She was too busy worrying about her headlining tour, the debut of her album that had just come out, and Deacon. Worrying about him every day and if it was really going to work this time.
Finally, Rayna agreed reluctantly to go. And fell into a few dates with Teddy, then a slow relationship. He was nice, treated her real good. He was the kind of guy who pulled out your chair for you, and held the door, and brought you flowers every time. She didn't need those things, but it was nice to have them.
She just wished she could feel even a fraction of something besides like and admiration. Teddy was stable, smart, he was on his way to being a successful Nashville businessman. He'd be a great success one day. He was husband material, Tandy said. He'd been a good husband and a good father.
But she didn't love him, she argued.
Tandy didn't see how that even mattered. She thought the word "love" was a complete joke. People didn't married because they were in love. They got married because they needed a partner in life.
Rayna thought maybe she and Tandy were both a hell of a lot more damaged by Lamar and Virginia than she thought if her sister had that opinion.
She didn't see Deacon again for months. Not that she didn't think about him. She missed him so bad she cried herself to sleep every night.
#############################################
"Tell me about Maddie," Lucy said, pouring more coffee from her thermos. "That sweet girl of yours. How she came to be. We'll get to Daphne too, but Maddie first."
"Well," Rayna said slowly. "Deacon and I got back together….briefly…after his 4th stint in rehab…. Very briefly. He was doing real good, you know, but something…always set him off. Like when Vince died. That was just…awful. He's never stopped blaming himself for that."
"What was it that time?"
She sighed. "I didn't know at the time, but it was his father. He got notice that his father died in prison."
"That's a terrible tragedy for him to have to live with," Lucy said, shaking her head. "Just terrible. No wonder that poor man turned to drowning in a bottle."
"It was," Rayna said quietly. "And I know how that feels. To live with it. I never made peace with my father before he died. And he never made peace with his either. I don't know that either of our fathers deserved it."
"But you don't make peace to die," she said. "you do it to live with yourself."
"Maybe," Rayna looked unconvinced. "Anyway, Deacon had been sober for a long time then, almost a year. And then with all that with his father, it started all over again. I found out I was pregnant, and I knew this time I needed to let him go. It wasn't just about me anymore. I had to protect our child. So I did. I let him go. He went to rehab for the fifth time, and by the time he got out, Teddy and I were married and the whole world was so happy because we were having a baby."…
##################################
Rayna found out she was was pregnant in a gas station.
"Ugh," she grumbled. "Bucky, can you have them stop at the next BP? I just feel awful. I need some ginger ale or something and all we got in here is beer and water. This is what I get for having so many guys in my band."
"Sure," Bucky looked at her worriedly. "You okay?"
"I'm sure I'm fine," she waved him away. "Just probably got a bug or something. All these people breathing germs on me all the time, I'm surprised I'm not dead yet."
The bus stopped and she was the only one that got off. She paid for her ginger ale, and feeling even worse, headed for the bathroom in the back of the store. If she was gonna lose her breakfast, she didn't need 12 guys and her manager hear her do it in a 3x3 plastic room on a bus.
She didn't want to admit that she'd been feeling awful for a few weeks now, trying to attribute it to the stress, the traveling, not enough sleep etc. But this was getting worse, not better. She was opening for sold out shows the next three nights. She couldn't afford not to be at her best.
She ended up throwing up in the bathroom for a half hour, while an entire tour bus full of band members waited outside in the parking lot to get the show back on the road.
God, she felt awful.
Rayna gingerly washed her face in the dirty bathroom sink, and reached for the paper towels.
She noticed a row of metal machines on the wall, selling condoms, tampons, and pregnancy tests. A padlock on the side kept thieves from running off with its contents.
Lovely, she thought. Only in California.
But the reality suddenly slammed into her.
"Like hell I am," she said aloud to no one but herself. Her voice echoed off the tile walls.
Against her better judgement, she put 2 dollars in the last slot.
3 minutes later she was looking at a plus sign on a cheap gas station pregnancy test. It could have been wrong. But she knew it wasn't. She also knew there was no possible way this was Teddy Conrad's baby. Memories floated through her mind of that night a few months ago when Deacon had brought her to the lakehouse he'd just bought. It was like a dream, what they'd always wanted. Maybe they hadn't been too careful that night. At the time, she hadn't really cared. It had worked this time, she thought, his fifth time in rehab. Things were going to be different. He'd asked her to marry him, and like a fool, she'd believed they were behind the worst and happily ever after wasn't too far off.
The next morning, he hadn't remembered anything. Not the love-making, or the ring on her finger, or the empty promises. All taken away by the empty bottle of Jack lying on the living room floor.
She left. She called Coleman, and the next day he was back in rehab. Cole had practically dragged him in there by his hair this time, Deacon kicking and hollering all the way.
Tears rolled down her face, and angrily she swiped them away.
She had never felt so alone. Sitting there in a damn dirty gas station bathroom, contemplating how she was a) going to tell her drunk ex-boyfriend he was about to be a father b) going to tell her current boyfriend that her drunk ex boyfriend was about to be a father and c) go onstage in front of 50,000 people in 10 hours and not puke her guts out. D) oh by the way, apparently her newfound country music career on the rise was going to include raising a child.
When she was done feeling alone, she just got mad.
She was mad at Deacon for not being there with her and not being able to stay sober to save his own life. Literally.
She was mad at Tandy for trying to force her to date Teddy.
And she was mad at herself for being mad about all of the above.
Sometimes being a strong independent woman was sure as hell overrated.
10 minutes later she had dried her tears, washed her face, and walked out to the bus, convincing herself that it wouldn't be so bad. She was 27 years old. Well old enough to be able to take care of a baby. The tabloids were going to have a heyday with it, but screw them. People had babies all the time and the world didn't end. It was nobody's damn business anyway.
No more tears, she told herself.
She was Lamar Wyatt's daughter, goddammit. You didn't cry. In front of anyone.
"You okay?" Bucky asked her when she prepared to climb back on the bus armed with three bottles of ginger ale and a box of saltine crackers shoved in her purse. "You look kind of pale."
"I'm fine," she said determinedly. She looked around. They were literally in the middle of nowhere. She could see nothing for miles except this gas station and 3 houses. "Where the hell are we anyway?"
"Madeline, California." Bucky said with a shrug. "I guess it's some kind of ghost town, used to be a railroad depot. Gas station owner said about a hundred miles to Sacramento."
She gave the little town one last look as she climbed back on the bus feeling like a different person than the one who had gotten off it a little while earlier, her life irrevocably changed now.
"Madeline, huh?" she asked softly.
Sounded like a nice name for a little girl.