Epic (9 page)

I wouldn’t be me if I didn’t do something.

Without reading Griffin’s email, I closed my laptop and headed out to see Catastrophe Rising.

The venue was small, in a seedier part of town. There was no sign to let me know I found the right place. The only indicator I had to go by were all the groupies milling around the front door, smoking their cigarettes, and other things, as they talked about the bands playing that night.

Fortunately the gig was 18+, or else I would have never gotten past the bouncer, a fine gentleman that likely moonlighted as a Hell’s Angel. He stamped my hand to indicate I was underage before grunting that I should move along out of his way.

I was only too happy to do so.

The venue was essentially a dive bar. There was a dinky stage, an even more constricted dance floor and a bar that served the basics. I ordered a soft drink before slinking away to a dark table in the corner.

More patrons entered the bar, and some even sat with me at my table. They didn’t bother introducing themselves, and frankly neither did I. I was invisible in the inky darkness just beyond the stage. I sipped my drink slowly as I waited for Diego’s band to play.

They were second in the lineup, warming the crowd up for the headline act. None of the bands I knew, nor the music, but they were surprising well prepared for a live audience. I was even more impressed with Catastrophe Rising, whose anarchist lyrics and hard, driving guitar licks immediately got the fans on their feet, milling around the stage.

All of the band members looked like Diego. They were heavy metal Goth with a chip on their collective shoulders. It was hard to distinguish one or the other, but quite honestly I didn’t even try. I was too focused on Diego, who
communicated his particular brand of angst through the music, using his guitar to keep anyone who could hurt him safely at arm’s length.

It reminded me of how I felt behind a microphone. There was a fearlessness to him, one of pure self-expression. He didn’t sing much, he didn’t really talk much. Instead, the guitar spoke for him. I watched his fingers move across the fret board in a blur during his solo. The girls all went crazy for him though he barely paid them any attention at all.

He was a good looking kid, but more than that he was the sensitive bad boy hidden inside a hard rocking exterior. How strange it was staring into his face and seeing a popular, more talented, better looking version of myself in a whole other gender. Even stranger, he shared some of my mannerisms. Had I not known who he was, I likely would have been able to figure it out, just by watching him play.

The only time he even realized that there was an audience in front of him was at the end, when they all took their bow. His eyes fell on my face, which caused his jaw to clench.

I knew from the expression on his face that I was unwelcome there. So I slid easily from the bar stool and headed toward the door.

I had taken precisely ten steps from the front door when Diego trotted out to meet me. “What the hell are you doing here?” he demanded as he wrenched me around.

What could I say? “I heard you were in a band. I wanted to see you play.”

“Why? You want to fix that, too?”

Maybe
. “I just wanted to see you play, Diego,” I said with a sigh. “I’m sorry if that upsets you.”

“I’ll tell you what upsets me,
Sis
. That you think you can show up and use my mom to polish your tarnished image for the press.”

My eyes flew wide. “Is that really what you think?”

He shrugged. “Isn’t that what you famous people do? Didn’t that fruit Carnevale do the same damn thing after he nearly killed a hooker? You make all these stupid ass mistakes and expect to make up for it using us little people. Well, I’m not going to let you. If you really wanted to help, you would have found us long before now. But I guess we weren’t ‘TV ready’ enough for you.”

“I didn’t know about you both until now,” I tried to explain.

“Sure you didn’t.”

I didn’t know what to say. He was determined to hate me. “I’m here now,” I told him. “Doesn’t that count for something?”

“Yeah, you’ll do some good deeds. That’s the point. It’s all a little too convenient. But tell me,
Jordana
. What happens when you don’t need us for your press kit anymore? Where does that leave Mama then? I’ll tell you where. Sicker and poorer… and brokenhearted. She can’t survive another disappointment, lady. You were the one thing in her life she could feel good about. What do you think will happen when you take that away?”

I met his anger with some of my own.
“First of all,” I began, “I’m not taking anything away. From Maya, from you, from anyone. Secondly, I’m not the only thing she feels good about. She loves you, Diego. Her face lights up whenever she talks about you.”

He snorted in derision.
“Yeah, right.”

“Maybe if you were around more, you’d see that,” I suggested as gently as possible, but it still rubbed him the wrong way.

“I’ve been here every day for the last sixteen years. Where were you?”

I wanted to defend myself, to tell him that I had my own struggles to get through. But he wasn’t ready to hear that. “I’m here now,” I said instead. “You’re not alone anymore.”

His eyes hardened as he stared down at me. “I’ve always been alone,” he informed me coldly. “It’s better that way,” he added before he spun on his heel and headed back to the bar.

I wanted to chase him down, to plead my case, but I knew it was useless.
We were two different people, and our struggles were not one in the same. I had been wounded and lost. He was wounded and angry.

I would have offered him a ride back to the house, but it was clear he wouldn’t take it. Just as I had my lingering doubt they wanted something out of me, he was convinced that I w
anted something out of them. Time was the only thing that could engender any kind of trust between us now. I turned back toward the parking lot, but before I could get to my car, a middle-aged man with a bald spot and a bad paunch jumped in front of me to snap my photo with his smart phone.

“
Cruising for new blood, Jordi?” he wanted to know. I knew immediately he was with PING. He was rude, ambushed me out of nowhere and delighted in what damage he could do to me. He could belong to no other organization.

I pushed past him and trotted to my car, fully aware he was videotaping me from his phone as I did so. I knew I looked ridiculous without a speck of makeup, my hair still stringy from the dried sweat as I cleaned Maya’s house. But nothing was more ridiculous than a shot of me running from behind. I knew every jiggle in my jeans would be front page news by the morning.

And of course it was.

PLUS SIZE DIVA MOONLIGHTS AS GROUPIE AT VEGAS DIVE!

Apparently Jordi Hemphill got bored with the high life in Hollywood. The scandalous diva was spotted at a run-down club in Las Vegas, scoping out all the new, young talent. Could it be she’s outgrown superstars Jace Riga and Giovanni Carnevale in more ways than one? Hold onto your husbands, ladies! The man-eater is on the prowl!
– Miles O’Rourke

My phone blew up wi
th text alert after text alert. The only call I answered was from Jace.

“What happened?” he wanted to know.

“I went to see Diego’s band perform. It was a crap venue. How was I supposed to know they’d have one of their leeches scoping out the joint?”

“It’s PING,” he replied dryly. “These are bottom feeders on a good day. You know you have to be vigilant. Especially right now. You heard about Shelby, right?”

“Yeah.  I saw Coy’s interview.”

“He’s going to milk this controversy for all it is worth, now that he’s running for office. That means you’re the secular adulteress while she’s the martyred victim. Don’t give them any more ammunition than they already have, Jordi.”

“You’re right,” I conceded. I got careless and I knew it. This was my penance.

His voice softened. “When are you coming home?”

“Hold on,” I told him as I opened my laptop. “Let me see if I’ve heard back from Mr. Vass yet.” I opened my email inbox, only to find Griffin’s unopened email sitting right there at the time. “Nothing yet,” I confirmed.

“You can’t stay there forever,” he advised. “It could take months for Vass to find anything. Like last time.”

“We had no information when he began his investigation,” I reminded. “It shouldn’t be as hard to corroborate her story.”

“And what happens when, and if, he does, babe?”

I rubbed my eyes with one hand. “I don’t know, Jace. You’re asking me questions I can’t possibly answer right now.”

He paused. I knew he was weighing his comment carefully. More than anything, I knew he didn’t want me to be painted into yet another corner like I was with Marianne or Eddie. He had told me as much.
But he also knew more than anyone how lost I had been. Shane had shattered my entire identity by taking away the family I always knew, even when that family had been non-supportive and disconnected at best. It made sense now why I never felt as though I belonged after my father died.

This journey to find Maya wasn’t
only to find my birth mother. It was a journey to find myself. I needed to know where I belonged. I simply couldn’t move forward until I did. He couldn’t possibly understand that given that his family was, aside from his father, intact. He was tethered to another person, not just drifting in the wind.

“You know I support you in whatever you need to do, right?” he asked gently.

“I know.”

“I just don’t want to see you screwed over anymore. You’ve paid your dues, Jordi. You don’t have to punish yourself, no matter how obligated you feel to these new people. I know their situation is dire, and I know – with that great big heart of yours that I love so much – that you want to do whatever you can to help. Just don’t forget to put the oxygen mask on yourself first.”

“Says the guy who lost his leg trying to protect everyone else,” I reminded.

He chuckled. “Touche.” After a pause, he added, “The stakes are higher now. They involve you.”

My heart melted. “I love you, Jace.”

“I love you, too. Come home soon, babe.”

I was still smiling as we ended the call. How did I ever get so lucky to find a man like Jace Riga? He deserved the best of me. I just needed to figure out who that was first.

I also knew I couldn’t just wait for Mr. Vass to investigate the matter any further. I was playing Beat the Clock now that PING knew I was in Las Vegas. Their snoops made Kent Vass look like an amateur. Within the week, I had no doubt they’d know why I was at that club, and link me right back to Diego. I had to get ahead of it before it blew up beyond my control.

I spent the better part of the morning researching the Palermo family tree. Thanks to Internet sources, especially ancestry records, I was able to locate several Palermo families in the New Jersey area. I found nothing on my dad to narrow down the vicinity. I noted several names before heading back over to see Maya. I decided to bring her lunch as well, since I knew that most of her afternoons were spent alone. To brighten her day, I also got her a small blooming plant with bright coral flowers.

She was still in bed by the time I arrived, and looked tired with an ashen complexion. “Are you not feeling well?” I asked, though it was clear she wasn’t.

She waved a hand. “Some nights are better than others,” she dismissed, before she succumbed to another coughing fit. I helped her over to the recliner and retrieved her inhaler. Her hands shook so badly as she took a deep, labored breath that I had to hold it steady for her. I was no doctor, but I was completely positive this woman wasn’t faking her illness.

I sat on the sofa next to her, disheartened to find food containers and beer cans scattered across the
coffee table I had cleaned the day before. Most of it littered the other end of the table, near Sonny’s recliner. Wordlessly I began to gather the trash so that I would have a pretty place to put her flowers.

“You are too good to me, Jordana,” she managed painfully. “Your dad would be so proud of the woman you have become.”

I smiled at her. “Thank you,” I said sincerely.

She picked at her food as I picked up around the house. I knew she didn’t feel like eating, but I insisted.
It didn’t take long before I sent her back to bed entirely. I instead resorted to the photo albums to dig a little deeper around my family tree.

The photos of
my dad brought tears to my eyes as I revisited the pages. He looked so happy, even when they were virtually vagabonds working their way from town to town to make the thousand mile trek from Jersey to Iowa. I peeled away the plastic cover to gently pull the photos from the adhesive pages. On the back, Maya had carefully documented their journey.

“The adventure begins! Jersey, 1987.”

“Joey and I camping in PA, summer 1988.”

“Joey and I, motel livin’. Ohio: 1988.”

“Joey and me, working on a farm in IN, spring 1989.”

“Joey and I make it to Aunt Verna’s farm.
December of 1989.”