Bridge To Happiness (40 page)

“Yes, I’ve been struggling this past year. Yes, I’ve felt alone. Yes, I’ve made mistakes. But this is not a mistake. And even if it is, it’s my mistake to make. Not yours.”

“But Rio Paxton, Mother?” Molly clearly wanted a fight.

“It’s perfectly understandable that you kids would have trouble with anyone I dated.”

“That’s not true,” Scott said too reasonably, which told me it was true.

“Well, whether it is or not doesn’t matter. I guess we’ll never know now, will we? Because I’m seeing Rio,” I said firmly.

“See?” Molly said to her brothers. “I told you I couldn’t do this alone. She’s so stubborn.”

“Molly.
She
is right here. Don’t talk about me as if I’m not.”

“Okay, then, Mother. What do you have to say? There’s a huge age difference between you.”

“Aren’t you the black pot talking to the kettle? Spider is twenty five years older than you are.”

“And you’re old enough to be that cowboy’s mother.”

“Not quite,” I said through gritted teeth.

“What could you possibly have in common?” she asked me.

“What could you possibly have in common with Spider?”

“Sex, Mother,” she said to shock me. “Spider is great in bed.”

“So is Rio,” I shot back.

“Oh, God . . . ” She made a face and held up her hands.

Scott groaned and Phil said, “Too much information, Ma.”

“Well, where the hell did you think I was for the last two days? Holding hands with him? Your generation did not invent sex.”

“But you hardly know him, and you slept with him?” Molly looked appalled.

“I slept with your father the first night I met him.”

They all looked at me stunned, part horror in my daughter’s case, and shock or awe or a mix of the two, I wasn’t sure which, with the boys.

“That was back in the Sixties,” I said, slightly embarrassed because I didn’t exactly mean to admit that to them. “You had to have been there. And frankly, who I sleep with really isn’t your concern, especially now that you’re adults. I would consider it Mickey’s concern since he still lives at home, but it’s too early in my opinion for us to all play meet the family.”

“Who you date is our concern, Mom,” Scott said. “You’re a wealthy woman.”

“Who can make decisions for herself,” I said.

“Like getting drunk and cracking her head open or getting herself thrown in jail,” Molly muttered.

I turned to her. “Or dating the wrong man.”

“Exactly,” she said.

“I meant you.”

“If the shoe fits,” was her response. “And Spider and I are not dating.”

“He broke up with you?” I glanced from her to her brothers.

“We’re engaged.” Molly held out her hand and twisted a band ring around. A large oversized pink diamond surrounded in more stones sparkled from her ring finger.

I wanted to throw up. “But he’s already been married three times.” I looked to her brothers with the hope they would at least acknowledge some risk in this. They weren’t listening to anything I said about her, just like before. “What is wrong with you two?” I was getting so angry with them. “Can’t you see the problem in this?”

“Right now we’re only worried about you,” Scott said.

“Look Ma, we know who Spider is.” Phil’s voice was calm. “But we don’t know much about this . . . Rio guy.”

“Well, you don’t need to. Back off of me and try to talk some sense into your sister. This is her whole life. It’s a huge decision. I’m dating Rio, not marrying him.”

The longer I looked at them, the more I could tell nothing I had said eased their already-made-up-minds.

“I looked him up on the internet,” Scott admitted.

“You Googled Rio?”

“Yes,” all three of my kids said at once.

I stepped back, a little surprised.

“He’s had a pretty wild life, Ma.” Phil gave me a concerned look and Scott nodded. That might have been the first thing the two of them agreed on since Mike died, I thought miserably.

“And a bad marriage,” Molly added.

“One failed marriage, not three,” I said, and she at least had the good sense to look down.

“There’s a huge gap in his history,” Phillip said.

“Yeah,” Scott agreed. “There’s been nothing about him for years.”

“Perhaps because of the life he lives now. Did that cross your mind? Rio was young when he became famous way too fast. He let the limelight go to his head. My God, he was just a kid when he hit it big. Think about Mickey. Think about yourselves at that age. It didn’t take that long for his life to fall completely apart, and he’s worked hard to turn everything around. If there’s one thing I certain of, he’s a good man.”

I hated being forced to defend Rio, who didn’t need defending, and if he did, he could do so himself. He never verbally apologized for the mistakes he had made, although he had come close the afternoon at the ski lodge. But his jokes about them always carried edges of regret.

His humility was real and not just something coy bred from the polite South; it came from having been in the lowest places, and from understanding how easily you could make the wrong choice and ruin a life. I believed he carried with him self-condemnation and dark memories in a place deep in his heart. I also believed his occasional go-to-hell-look was instinctive; a defense against a past he regretted so greatly, but knew he could never change.

“At least Rio has a learning curve,” I said. “I don’t see that Spider Olsen has changed, or even tried to.” I faced my sons. “And neither of you had any trouble at all with Spider and Molly, but you question me
about Rio? I didn’t raise you to practice that kind of a double standard.”

“You’re our mother,” Scott said.

“She’s your sister,” I shot back.

The doorbell rang before any of us could say another word, and I looked up startled. Though I hadn’t expected him, I knew who was standing on the other side of the door. “I’ll get it.” I walked over and let Rio inside.

He leaned into me and took my hand. “You’re not going to face them alone,
darlin
’.”

“This isn’t going to be fun or easy,” I said quietly.

“I didn’t expect it would be,” he said and gave my hand a squeeze.

We walked into the great room together. “Scott, Phil, Molly, this is Rio.”

Rio moved toward my sons, who stood and shook his hand, and I saw that he kept eye contact with each of them, said their name with a nod of acknowledgment, before he turned to my daughter, who hadn’t budged from the sofa. “Molly,” he said kindly, and she was stubbornly silent.

With Molly, this wasn’t about him, not really. This was about her father, and about me, and my choices which she worked very hard at not agreeing with. She, of my children in that room, I realized all too late, honestly felt betrayed by me, and I was sorry I snapped at her.

“Careful,” I said to cut the tension. “She’s already called me a cougar.”

“You?” Rio burst out laughing, then looked at me, slid his arm around my waist and his face turned serious as he looked at my children. “The truth is she met me at the back door of the stage with her panties in her hand.”

For just an instant, the look on my kids’ faces was priceless. “He’s kidding,” I said. “I told him what you boys said New Year’s Eve.”

“Sorry,” Rio said, not looking the least bit apologetic. “Too good a moment to pass up. The truth is that I chased after your mother. It wasn’t the other way around.”

“That’s exactly why we’re here,” Scott said, giving Rio a direct look that reminded me so much of his dad. “For our mother.” Scott had just drawn a line in the sand, a deep line.

“Okay,” Rio said easily, sitting down next to me on the sofa. “Fire away. Ask me whatever you want, whatever you need to know about me. I’ll tell you the truth.” He leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees.

I sipped wine as my children grilled him on every subject, questions I hadn’t asked and answers I hadn’t known. They wanted to know his roots and background, about those days as a country star; questions about everything from cocaine to his net worth, a figure which made Molly gasp, Phil choke on his beer, and Scott ask even more pointed questions, like why the hell he sang in a casino lounge.

If there was a sure thing to bet on in this world, it was that Rio loved to sing, and he said as much. Performing wasn’t about show business and limelight. “Music needs to be heard, and the stories the songs tell should be shared with as many people who want to hear them,” he told my son. “I have something to say in my songs.”

Every time someone played a recording of one of Rio Paxton’s long list of songs on the radio, every time someone sang his lyrics on TV, Rio was paid. He had been active behind the scenes in recent years, recording and producing some of the biggest groups to come into Country Music and some top albums, for which he was paid a whole hell of a lot of money. But his work was important to him, not as a claim to fame, but simply how he felt about the music.

It was late when my kids were done with him, and we left them sitting uncomfortably quiet and pensive and perhaps a little more accepting. I wasn’t really sure.

Outside, I walked with him over to the driver’s side of his truck. He leaned against it and pulled me into his arms, then wrapped me inside his heavy fleece coat and slid his hands into the back pockets of my jeans.

I felt his lips on my forehead and we stood like that for an immeasurable amount of time, hearts beating against each other, and I felt so incredibly good. It was probably twenty degrees out and the moon was big and white and almost full; it was hazy around the edges, as if it were rimmed in dry ice, as if it would burn you if you touched it.

I took a deep breath of frozen air and watched the frost cloud float upward when I exhaled. “I wonder if you have any idea how much I adore you for what you just went through for me.”

“I’m a selfish bastard,
darlin
’. I want you, so I did it for me.”

“Yeah . . . yeah . . . yeah . . . ,” I said and he tilted my chin up with his knuckle and kissed me so tenderly I almost wanted to cry. I couldn’t stop the way my body fit against his or the passion that flared so hot and fast between us, passion and something more than that, something I just felt, and still had trouble accepting and being comfortable with. This was all so unexpected and new and fresh and wonderful. And I was scared.

He pulled back after a minute and ran his thumb back and forth across my lip. “I’ll miss you tonight.”

“I know. Me, too.”

Once inside, he rolled down the window and started the truck.

“Call me when you get home. I want to know you’re okay.” The words came without thought, and at that moment I understood exactly where my heart was. I was afraid I would lose another man I loved.

I walked back
toward the house and I could hear my sons’ raised voices inside. When I opened the door, the two of them were like bulldogs facing off nose to nose. They both had the same expressions. Molly wasn’t in the room.

“You’ve lost the company more money this year with your chicken shit choices than I ever did with SKISTAR,” Phillip shouted.

“Well, it’s damned easy for you to stand here and criticize me, Phil. You didn’t have the make those decisions. Do you know what Dad would have done? Is it all just so easy for you?”