Chapter Six
A Life That's Good
"Hey, darlin'!"
Rayna was sitting on top of their picnic table soaking up the sun, her bare feet – toenails painted red – resting on the bench. Her smile when she heard his greeting and looked up at him, one hand shading her eyes, took his breath away. Deacon shoved his keys in his pocket, picked up the flowers he'd brought for her and slammed the door of his truck.
He hurried across the road and jumped down onto the grass, his eyes never leaving her. Even from this distance, he thought he noticed something different about her, but he couldn't quite figure out what it was. Her hair? That was usually what she changed. It was parted on the side and pulled away from her face in the front, cascading in waves over her shoulders; pretty much the way she'd been wearing it lately. She didn't have much makeup on, but that wasn't unusual for a summer afternoon. The sleeveless blue sundress she wore was long, tucked over her knees, and maybe looser than usual. But that didn't seem so terribly different, either.
"Hey," she said, climbing off the table as he walked to her. She held her arms out and he kissed her on the cheek, embracing her briefly.
"You look so pretty, darlin'. You're a sight for sore eyes. Here, I got you these." He handed her the flowers, a bright mixture of yellow and white daisies and light blue irises.
"Thank you," she murmured, admiring the flowers and then laying them down on the far edge of the table, next to her bejeweled sandals and purse. She turned and kissed him on the cheek, resting her face against his for a moment before pulling back and looking up at him.
"What?"
"This. It's new," she said, running her fingers through his beard.
"Yeah," he said, smiling. "I kinda got outta the habit of shavin' everyday up at Riverside. Then when I got back to town I figured I might keep it a while. You like it?"
"It looks good on you," she said, still stroking his cheek. "It's softer than I thought."
He grinned again and brought his right hand up to his chin, rubbing it. "Yeah? I was thinkin' maybe it looked like I was sleepin' on a bus bench or somethin'. But if you like it, I guess it's okay."
"I like it. You look great."
He took his familiar place on the table, leaning his elbows on his knees and looking out over the water. She sat next to him.
"How're you feeling, Deacon?"
"Good. Real good. They got a terrific program up there at Riverside. Best I ever been through. And I'm makin' some changes, doin' some things different this time. It's all gonna turn around for me, Ray."
She nodded, but looked skeptical. He wasn't surprised. He was nearly always optimistic when he first completed a program. She knew, as well as he did, that it was only later when things tended to go downhill for him.
"I was kind of surprised I didn't hear from you when you got back," she said.
Deacon couldn't shake the feeling that something was different about her, but he couldn't put his finger on it. "Well, I been wantin' to see you darlin'. But I wasn't sure where things stood after you came up to visit. And I wasn't real sure you'd want to see me, anyway."
"Why'd you think that?"
"Well," he said, glancing over at her, "I hear Coleman told you to steer clear of me. That right?"
"Yeah. He did."
"Guess you been hearin' that from a lot of folks, huh?"
"That's nothing new, babe."
He shifted uneasily. "Well, I hope you're not listenin' to 'em Ray, 'cause things are gonna change. I promise you. I turned over a new leaf up at that clinic. I was thinkin' the other day the two of us oughta take some time off. Get away for a while, y'know? Maybe buy ourselves a little cabin up in the mountains, someplace we can be alone. Get reacquainted." He slipped his right arm around her and reached up to rub her neck. "Whattaya think?"
Rayna stiffened and turned to look at him. "I thought you weren't supposed to make big decisions right away. Isn't that what they always tell you?"
"Yeah, that's what they say. But damn it, you deserve somethin' special, darlin'. Waitin' for me all this time."
He spoke the last sentence with a sense of certainty that he wasn't really feeling. Had she been waiting for him? She didn't seem like herself today. Maybe his instincts had been right after all, when she'd come to see him up at Riverside. He had spent the past three weeks talking himself out of it, but maybe she was getting serious with Teddy Conrad and wanted to tell him so. Wanted to tell him - what? That the two of them were getting married? God, no. The thought made him sick to his stomach.
"You have been waitin' for me, haven't you Ray? Or are you still seein' Teddy Conrad?"
"This is not about Teddy, Deacon. I asked you to meet me here so we could talk about us."
Here it was. He sighed and rubbed a hand over his face. "Baby, you want to break up with me, just do it. You don't have to worry about sparin' my feelin's."
"Deacon-"
"Look, I may not be a genius, Ray, but I'm not stupid either. You tried to tell me about you an' Teddy when you came up to visit me, and I blew it. I'm a damn drunk. I'm not surprised you're done with me."
Rayna heaved a sigh and let her head fall forward into her hands. "God Deacon, you always have to be such a martyr. Will you just listen to me for a minute?"
He climbed off the table and stood facing her. "Rayna, I'm listenin'! Just come on out and say it – you don't have to pretty it up. Just get it over with!"
"Okay." She didn't raise her voice but he could tell she was getting angry. "You want to hear it? You want to know why I called you this morning!?"
"Yeah! I do."
She took a deep breath but her voice dropped to a shaky whisper before the words came out. "I'm pregnant."
Two small words, but they could have been uttered in another language, they were so incomprehensible to Deacon. He stared at her. Surely he had heard wrong. "What?"
She looked at him, steely-eyed. "You heard me, Deacon."
The wind went out of him, all at once. He felt like he'd been sucker-punched in a bar fight. He sank back down onto the bench, his knees weak. He looked up at her. He'd always feared he might lose her for good someday but he had never dreamed it would be like this.
"You – you and Teddy. You're ... havin' a baby?" The words tasted bitter in his mouth; he could barely get them out.
But she was shaking her head. "No. It's your baby, Deacon."
Now he was sure he had heard wrong. He just stared at her.
"We did a paternity test. It's not Teddy's. It's yours."
The look on her face was apprehensive, suddenly. It was clear she was on tenterhooks awaiting his response. But Deacon felt like he was incapable of speaking. Finally, he sputtered out the question that loomed large in his mind: "How? How is that even possible, Ray? It can't be."
Tears sprang to her eyes and she looked away. He felt acutely guilty, though he didn't know why. He climbed back up on the table to sit next to her as she shook her head and wiped her eyes. She looked back at him, the devastation plain on her face.
"You really don't remember, do you?"
Oh god. Just this morning, after a meeting, he had told Gus that he'd forgotten more than he'd remembered over the past two years. But forgetting about being with Rayna? That couldn't be. Could it? A sense of dread formed in the pit of his stomach just thinking about it.
She turned away from him, digging through her purse for a minute before lifting out a small, red-velvet bag shut with a gold-tasseled drawstring. She opened it and pulled out a ring, handing it to him.
"Does that look familiar?"
Deacon examined it. It was an old-fashioned silver ring with a circle of small diamonds around it. An eternity band. That's what the jewelry store salesman had called it. He remembered how much he'd liked that phrase. He'd tucked it into the back of his mind, thinking he might use it in a song lyric someday.
He looked up at Rayna, who was staring at him curiously. "I bought this for you," he said slowly, his eyes shifting across the water. "It reminded me of the one my Grandma Dillon wore. She was married to my grandpa almost 60 years. My mama buried her with the ring still on her finger. Said she couldn't bear to take it off her, even after she was dead. That's how much grandma loved that man."
Her voice brought him back to the present. "You gave it to me, Deacon. Back in April, after you got home from that rehab center in Colorado. I hadn't seen you for months. But you called me, said you knew I was dating Teddy, and you wanted to talk to me. So I met you out at the house and we had dinner."
He raised his eyebrows. All this was news to him.
"You gave me that ring. And we ... I stayed the night out there with you. And in the morning, you weren't in bed when I woke up. I went to the family room and found you passed out on the couch, dead drunk."
Suddenly, snatches of that morning came back to him. Bits and pieces, like the gossamer threads of a dream that evaporates as soon as you open your eyes. She had been angry. She'd taken the ring off her finger and thrown it on the floor. He'd scrambled to pick it up. Pleaded with her to forgive him. Vivid in his mind was the fear that he'd finally screwed things up with her for good.
There was something else. Something important that he didn't remember. He had to ask. "You said yes? You said you'd marry me, Ray?"
"Yeah, I did," she whispered. "That night … that must have been when it happened." She looked up at him, her eyes enormous and uncertain.
He realized he'd been holding his breath. They were talking around something huge, something he couldn't begin to fully fathom. He thought back again and something else occurred to him. "At Riverside. That day you came up to visit. You were sick. I thought you were gonna lose your lunch, just lookin' at all that food. You said somethin' didn't sit right, but that wasn't it, was it? You knew, even back then."
"That's right. I forgot all about that." She was still staring at him, looking like someone standing at the edge of a cliff, wondering if he was going to take her hand and jump with her or make her go over alone. "I wanted to tell you that day, but I couldn't. I wasn't sure what I was going to do. I wasn't sure of anything. And then you got mad at me." She looked down at her hands, clasped in her lap, and brought them to her mouth, trying to stifle a sob.
He still wasn't sure exactly what all this meant. But he could never stand to see her cry. Compassion flooded through him, overwhelming his confusion. He pocketed the ring quickly and scooted closer to her, drawing her into his arms. "Oh, darlin'. Please don't cry. Please, Ray."
His entreaty was lost in the flood of tears that seemed to be unleashed by his physical presence. She put her arms around his waist and strained to hold him as close as she could, sobbing into his shoulder. It was as if - finally - she could let go of all the stress and uncertainty of the past six weeks, now that she was safe in his arms. He held her tightly against him, one hand stroking her hair, making soothing noises deep in his throat.
"Shhh … it's okay now. It's okay, darlin'. I'm here now." He rocked her gently, feeling tears spring to his own eyes and a lump form in his throat. Then he felt her hands, yanking insistently on the back of his shirt, pulling it up so that she could slide her bare arms underneath it, making contact with his skin. Deacon felt his heartbeat quicken as every fiber in his being responded to her touch. He had missed her so much. Since he'd been home he had thought about her again and again, replaying what it felt like when she was moving under him, looking up at him, her face transformed by ecstasy.
She continued stroking his back as he started kissing her - her hair, her ear, her neck. Did she want sex? His mind went immediately to a particular clearing a couple minutes' walk into the nearby woods. They had made good use of that spot, grateful for the thick tree cover, more than once. He could take her hand and lead her there blindfolded, if he had to. That was how indelibly the experiences had seared themselves into his mind. Why did he always remember the wrong things?
But then she took a deep, shuddering breath and exhaled another noisy sob. He could feel his shirt collar getting soaked with the onslaught of her tears. Putting her hands on him wasn't about sex, he realized, it was about her needing to be close to him. Get a fucking grip, Claybourne. This was the kind of thinking that had gotten them into this situation in the first place, after all.
Eventually she began to calm down, her breathing becoming more regular, and he loosened his arms around her, trying to sort out the details in his head.
"Rayna, are you tellin' me that we - you and me - we're gonna have a kid?"
She sniffled and nodded, her head still on his shoulder. "Yeah. I should have told you before, babe. I knew it was yours, deep down. But I had to get the paternity test first." She pulled back and looked him, strands of damp hair sticking to her tear-stained face. "Teddy wanted me to marry him, and Tandy kept telling me that I should just marry Teddy and do the paternity test later, and Coleman said I should cut you loose or you'd never get better. I just - I didn't know what to do. And then I wasn't even sure I was going to go through with it."
Deacon looked at her, astonished all over again. "You weren't gonna go through with it?"
"Well, I thought about that. About not having it. But I just couldn't do it."
"Darlin', I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry I wasn't here with you. You shouldn't have had to decide all this by yourself."
His arms were still loosely clasped around her waist, their faces close together. "You know what?" she said. "It wasn't all bad, thinking things through for myself for a change. And Dave helped. And my doctor. She's been wonderful. I just saw her for my three-month checkup yesterday."
Deacon let go of her and pulled a handkerchief out of his back pocket, handing it to her. She wiped her face with it and drew her fingers through her hair. Meanwhile, he mentally ran through the names of their band members, their musician friends and Rayna's circle of cousins, even getting to distant relatives. He still couldn't place the name. "Dave? Who's that?
"Oh, he's my new neighbor. He's a great guy; a doctor." She handed back the handkerchief and sat down on the table again, considerably calmer now. "That's right, you haven't seen my new apartment. I had to move. Mr. Lewis wanted me out of the old place. Said the neighbors complained about me."
Deacon winced. So much had happened in her life that he'd missed. He hated himself all over again for not being there. "Complained about you? More like complained about me, probably."
She made a wry face, but didn't look at him.
"Rayna, tell me everything that's been goin' on. Please."
She nodded at him and the words came out of her mouth in a rush. "Well, I'm due in February. A week before your birthday, actually. I haven't told anybody yet. I mean, Teddy and Tandy know, and I'm sure Tandy's told Daddy by now. But I haven't said anything to Bucky or anyone at Edgehill. They're probably wondering what's wrong with me, I've been so tired lately. I was feeling sick for a while, so I haven't gained any weight. But Dr. Madsen says everything's fine, everything with the baby is right on track. She said I'm going to start putting on the pounds pretty soon. I've been eating like a horse for the last week, that's for sure," she smiled weakly at this and looked up at him, her eyes shining with hope.
He looked down at her stomach and she followed his gaze. "It's not – I'm not showing yet. I think I'll have to get some new clothes pretty soon, though. My jeans were tight when I went to put them on this morning."
Deacon felt his heart beating fast as the reality started to sink in. Doctors. A baby. February. It was all so concrete, all of a sudden, out of nowhere. To say he hadn't been expecting this when she'd called him that morning was the understatement of the year. He took a deep breath, feeling like he was going to jump out of his skin. He stood up; he couldn't possibly sit still another minute. Then he started walking back and forth in front of the picnic table, running his hands through his hair.
A baby. Rayna's baby. His baby. Was it possible? It was not only possible, it was really happening. February. But that was so soon. It would be here before they knew it. What would he do? He couldn't be a father; didn't know the first thing about it. And what would happen if-? He let out a groan.
Rayna watched him, a baffled expression on her face. "Babe, what are you doing?"
He stopped walking and looked over at her. "Whattaya mean?"
"You. You're - I don't know. You're ... pacing or something."
He looked distracted for a moment, then put his head down and went back to walking. She smiled. "Deacon, calm down. It's not like I'm in labor."
"Labor!?" He stopped walking and stared at her.
She laughed this time. "Babe, seriously, everything's going to be okay."
"Yeah, well, that's easy for you to say. You've had all kinds of time to figure this out. I'm just tryin' to understand it, you know?" He looked away for a moment, not sure he should tell her what he was feeling. Then he looked back at her. "Rayna, I don't know if I can be a daddy. I mean, I know I don't have a choice in that matter. I get that this is my responsibility. But I don't really think I'm father material, you know? I'm scared that I might …" his voice trailed off and he looked away again.
Rayna seemed to steel herself, sitting up and squaring her shoulders. "Deacon, I want you to know something right now. I will not ever put a defenseless child through what I've gone through with you these past few years. I want you to be part of our lives; I want that so much. But you've got to want it, too. You've got to figure out a way to do it right this time."
He turned to stare at her, a haunted look in his eyes.
"If you're sober, and you can stay that way, you will be the best daddy in the world. I know that in my heart; I haven't got any doubt about it. But if you can't stay sober, then I will do everything in my power to keep you away from this baby. To keep you from hurting it. Everything."
His eyes narrowed. "What're you sayin', Rayna? Are you threatenin' to sic Lamar on me?"
"I will do whatever it takes to protect this child, Deacon. I can promise you that." There was a fierce light in her eyes. Deacon had seen it only once before. They'd been in a negotiation with a record executive who was trying to get her to sign a terrible contract, one that would have swindled both of them. She had looked at that man with this same ferocious stare. And he had backed down.
Deacon's shoulders slumped and he looked down. "Good for you, Rayna. You do whatever it takes to keep me away. That's what I want, too."
"Deacon," she said softly, getting up and walking to him. She put her hands on his face and looked into his eyes. "I know what you want. You want this. You want a family – you always have." His eyes swam with tears as she started humming, then sang quietly, "Two arms around me, heaven to ground me, and family that always draws me home. Four wheels to get there, enough love to share, and a sweet, sweet, sweet song."
By the time she finished the phrase, his tears were falling freely. She wiped his cheeks with her thumbs. "Didn't you write that about a half hour after you met me?"
He smiled a little. "I wrote that about five minutes after I first laid eyes on you, Ray. I hadn't even met you yet. I took one look at you, singin' up there on stage at the Bluebird, and I knew you were what I wanted."
"You did. And you still want that, Deacon, I know you do."
"That's just a song, Rayna. Just a dream. It's not real."
"It is real, Deacon," she said. "It's standing right here in front of you. I'm right here." She took his hand and placed it on her lower belly, holding it in place. "We're right here, rooting for you. Now all you've got to do is come home to us."
He took a deep breath and wiped the back of his hand across his face. "I don't know, Ray. I don't know if I can. I've been tryin', all this time. I've been tryin' to do it for you, and I just can't seem to make it stick."
"Maybe that's the problem. You're doing it for the wrong reason, Deacon. You've got to do this for yourself. Because you deserve it. You deserve happiness." He shook his head at that, starting to protest, but she insisted. "Yes, you do! I know you better than anyone and I know it's true, Deacon Claybourne. Have you ever heard what Einstein said about insanity?"
He laughed, shaking his head and looking up at the sky. "Oh god, not you too, Ray. You gonna start quotin' Einstein at me now, like everybody up at Riverside?"
"Jesus, Deacon! Maybe they're right. You ever thought of that? We can't go back to where we were. Not now."
They stood looking at each other for a long time. "Ray," he said at last. "I want you to move back up to the house. You should take the place. I've got so much space, I don't need it. I ... I can sleep upstairs. Or I'll move out if you want. You should be there. You and," he looked back at her stomach again. "You and the kid."
"No," she said, shaking her head and stepping over to the table to pick up her sandals. She slipped them on her feet. "I'm fine where I'm at; it's a real nice place. Tandy picked it out, if that tells you anything. I've got a spare room where I've got my computer set up. I can put a crib in there when I need it."
"What about Teddy? You said he wants you to marry him."
She sighed. "Yeah. Teddy's not very happy with me. I turned down his proposal, more than once. He thinks I'm making a big mistake. They all do. But you know what? They can think what they want."
"What about you and me, Ray?"
She hesitated. "We don't have to decide anything right now. We've got six months. Let's just see how things go."
Deacon grimaced, not wanting her to walk away like this. "Darlin', I wanna get you something. Help you out. What do you need?"
She smiled and picked up the flowers. "These are all I need from you right now. These and your promise that you're going to work hard at getting better. Okay?" She leaned in to kiss him on the cheek, caressing his cheek again briefly. Then she turned to pick up her purse. "I've got to go to rehearsal, and then I've got to go home and take my nap. I've got a gig tonight. That's what I do now: I take naps. Can you believe it?"
He smiled, watching her slip the purse over her shoulder and head for her car.
"Rayna." He stopped her, putting one hand on her arm. She turned back to look at him. "I love you, darlin'."
She smiled, sadly he thought. "Take care, Deacon," she said. "I'll talk to you soon."
She walked up the stairs to the road, got into her car and drove off. Deacon sat down on the picnic table again. He stayed there a long time, looking out over the water. Finally, he shoved his hands into his pockets and his fingers closed around his keys. Then he felt something else. He pulled out the silver ring and looked at it.
I wanna get better, darlin', I want that so much. I just wish I knew if it was even possible.