Madison's Quest

Her throat and chest tightening just a little bit, Madison
parked in front of the pale yellow Cape Cod that’d been her childhood home,
that was once again her home.

Eventually the fear would go away. It had to. But today—

Seeing her mother’s car missing created the urge to make a
mad dash across lush green lawn, to leap up five white steps and wrench open
the glassed screen door, then slam open the wooden one behind it.

Total overreaction
. But her hands tightened on
Myrtle’s steering wheel.

Nothing’s wrong.
And yet she still had to stifle the
impulse to rush to the house.
Mom’s probably just running an errand. Or
maybe
Dad had a doctor’s appointment.

That lie clogged her throat. She’d checked the calendar on
the side of the refrigerator before she left for work, just as she checked it
every time she went into the kitchen. Just as she checked the one in their
office whenever she had an excuse to be in that room.

She took a deep breath and calmly exited the VW Kombi.
Everything was okay. She needed to chill. Her mother’s life didn’t entail
reporting every movement to her daughter.

To prove to herself there was nothing to worry about, Madison
detoured to a mail box decorated by a flowery cover that matched the flag to
the right of the front door. She opened the box, grabbed the mail, shuffled
through the stack as she walked up the drive.

Bills. Bills. Bills.

Hospital. Doctors. Credit cards—more of those than her
parents ever had when she was growing up.

The tightness returned to her chest.

She flipped to a final piece of mail, this one addressed to
her and sent by a Richmond lawyer.

She opened the envelope and unfolded the letter. It read:
Please
contact me on a matter of great urgency.

Junk mail? Some kind of scam?

Or something to do with her parents?

She shoved the letter into a back pocket. She couldn’t deal
with it now.

She gave in to the urge she’d denied herself at seeing her
mother’s car gone. She sprinted to the front door, entered the house, the smell
of lemon Pledge and floor wax greeting her along with silence and the sense of emptiness.

“Dad, you home?”

She couldn’t stop herself from yelling it again, even
louder. “Dad, you home?”

Nothing.

She ran to the office and checked the calendar.

Nothing scheduled for today.

She dropped the stack of bills onto the desk, her stomach
cramping at seeing how many of them there were, more than ever before, more
than she would have imagined existing. Enough of them that the fear grew
stronger, arriving with the thought that all these bills had only been left out
in the open because her parents had left in a hurry.

A letter from the bank grabbed her attention. Dizziness
swept through her at seeing the threat of foreclosure.

She gripped the back of the chair.

They couldn’t lose the house.

They loved this place.

Her phone rang and she pulled it from her pocket with a hand
that shook. Her heart tripled its beat at seeing Sabrina’s name.

She answered by asking, “They’re at the hospital?”

“Yeah, but I don’t have any deets. Just saw them from the
back. Figured it was better if they didn’t see me ‘cause I didn’t want to deal
with the whole
don’t tell Madison we’re here—why didn’t you tell me they
were at the hospital
thing.”

“You did good,” Madison said, grateful. Sabrina knew her
parents hadn’t called her home when the lung cancer was first detected because
they hadn’t wanted her to worry—and still didn’t want her to worry.

“Where were they heading?”

“Don’t freak, Mad. Best guess, radiology. It doesn’t
necessarily mean something terrible is going on. Now I gotta run.”

Me too
, Madison thought.

She was barely aware of the drive to the hospital, barely
noticed where she parked the combination camper and van, before sprinting to
the entrance.

Let it turn out to be nothing. Let Dad be okay.

Each word was a hard beat matched to the staccato pounding
in her chest and the slap of tennis shoes on asphalt and concrete.

Let him be okay.

Ache spread through her chest, up her throat and into her
jaw. Old, familiar pain, at being excluded.

Her parents wanted to shield her, but when it came to the
big things, it left her feeling like she was on the outside looking in. They
loved her, but it’d always seemed as though they didn’t
need
anyone else
in their lives but each other.

The automatic doors slid open with a soft swoosh. The
distinctive hospital smell poured out in an assault.

She rushed past the gift shop on the left. A suited man was
at the counter with an open wallet.

She hurried by the information desk. Sixty-three-year-old
Gertrude was manning it, tapping a blue ink pen against her lips and working a
crossword puzzle.

She hustled into the section housing a bank of elevators.
One of them opened and the smell of cafeteria food escaped along with a
gray-faced woman and a pair of nurses wearing super-hero themed tops and light
blue pants.

Madison stepped into the elevator, holding her breath
against the cafeteria scent. She stabbed the button for the radiology floor.

Heart fluttering, she whispered, “Let him be okay. Please
let him be okay.”

Her parents and her music were the most important things in
her life. These days the
only
things in her life.

An eternity later, the elevator doors opened and she surged
forward, moving swiftly down the hallway, each step announced by the squeak of
tennis shoes on shiny tan linoleum.

Turning the corner she saw her parents coming toward her and
experienced the same bruising jab to the heart she always did at seeing how
much older they appeared. Even since this morning, the lines in their faces
seemed to have deepened.

Her mother smiled, though it didn’t eradicate the strain in
her eyes.

Madison’s heart banged even harder.

“Let me guess,” her mother said. “Sabrina called you.”

Madison reached them, hugging her mother and inhaling the
flowery smell of Wind Song dusting powder. Then her father, relief gaining a firmer
grip at his not wearing a hospital gown or a patient ID bracelet.

“One of
you
should have called me.”

Her mother took Madison’s hand, squeezing it. “And have you
worry for nothing? You were out late playing music with your friends and up
early to get to work. Your dad has a bit of a respiratory infection, that’s all,
Madison. Dr. Lassen wanted to check a couple of things to be on the safe side.”

Madison wanted to believe it. Wanted this to just be a
precaution.

She couldn’t lose him. More, her mother couldn’t lose him.
She wasn’t absolutely positive her parents could survive without one other.

They’d been high-school sweethearts. They’d gotten married
days after graduating from college. They’d lived the happy-ever-after of a
romance story for the most part, until now. And except for not being able to
have children of their own, not that she wasn’t theirs.

No doubt there. No worry that they didn’t love her every bit
as much as they would have loved a biological daughter.

They were her parents, the only parents who mattered, the
only parents she remembered, though she’d been two when they adopted her.

“I can handle a little worry.” Hell, she could handle a lot
of it. She wanted to give back, desperately. She wanted to repay them for the
hell she’d put them through during her teen years. She wanted them to see her
as successful, capable, someone who’d always be there for them
when they
needed her.

“I’m fine,” her dad said, his voice gruff. “Your mother and
I are going to swing by the hospital pharmacy to pick up a prescription, then
we’ll be home. There’s a ball game on in a couple of hours. How about the three
of us watching the Braves? I’ll grill some hamburgers and your mother can make
some of her famous potato salad. What do you say, Maddie?”

Love swelled, clogging Madison’s throat so it took a minute
before she could answer. “Sounds like a plan.”

Her mother’s grip loosened, fingertips brushing the calluses
on Madison’s. “Your dad and I’ll see you at home.”

“Okay.”

But separating was still hard. It should be getting easier
but it wasn’t. There was always the fear that the doctors had missed something,
that the cancer was back, or lurking elsewhere, undiscovered. And now, adding
to the fear, the possibility her dad was being sent home to keep from incurring
more medical bills, and not because he didn’t need to stay.

Her stomach went tight again. Her chest constricted.

They couldn’t lose the house. The stress of that, and all
the other debt, would be as deadly as the cancer.

I’ve got to find a way to help.

I’ve got to find a way to earn quick cash.

She passed the man who’d been in the gift shop. He was
carrying a small, plush panda.

She passed Gertrude, muttering over the crossword puzzle.

Outside the air was humid and heavy, adding thickness and
weight to thoughts of her parents’ staggering debt and the potential loss of
the house.

Madison climbed into the Kombi. She gripped Myrtle’s
steering wheel rather than reach for the ignition. Her eyes stung as she heard echoes
of her father’s laughter ring from the past, from the day he’d nicknamed the camper
van after a beach in South Carolina because the rusted hull needed so much
sanding.

She felt a swell of helplessness and an oppressive sense of
failure. When she’d left home at eighteen with dreams of making it as a songwriter
and musician, she’d been so full of confidence. It was just a matter of finding
the right band, the right sound, the right song—one of hers.

In Miami, after years of struggle, she’d nailed the first
two. She and the guys had started making a name for themselves with live
performances, playing covers as well as original material.

A little bit of luck, that’s all they’d needed, to be in the
right place at the right time and be seen by the right person, or go viral on
YouTube. They were good, really really good.

But she couldn’t be in two places at once.

The guys knew it.

She knew it.

She’d come home. And they’d moved on, replacing her with
another guitarist.

That hadn’t hurt nearly as much as not having feedback on
new songs, not being part of something, of losing the synergy that’d fed into
her creativity.

I’ll get there again.
She had to believe that. And
despite her parents telling her there was nothing to worry about, that she
should go back to Miami, home with them was where she needed to be.

She just needed to find a way to help, to figure out a way
to bring in some quick cash and as much of it as possible.

She rubbed her palms against Myrtle’s steering wheel. Her
throat clogged. The bus might bring in twenty or thirty thousand, but the
thought of parting with Myrtle made her ache.

Restoring Myrtle had taken most of her junior and senior years
in high school. Piece by piece, her heart and soul had been healed and their
family life stitched back together.

She and Dad had spent hours in the garage, doing all the
labor themselves. Her mother had often joined them, bringing sun tea or soda,
taking a seat and watching, or there reading, so they were all in the same
place.

Aside from those memories, the Kombi represented her father’s
vote of confidence. “A musician needs a touring bus,” he’d said, always going
on to paint word pictures of the venues she’d play, even when the VW was little
more than a shell and a collection of scavenged parts.

He’d dreamed big dreams for her when life seemed more
nightmare.

Madison’s hands gripped the steering wheel tightly enough to
whiten.
I’ll sell her
.

It wouldn’t make a dent in the medical bills, but it might
buy time on the house.

Then what?

Strip? Work for an escort service?

The first would come easier than the second. But doing
either would hurt her parents.

They’d rather lose the house.

Remembering the letter from the lawyer, she tugged it from
her pocket and scanned the message from Gary Johansen.

It hadn’t changed.
Please contact me on a matter of great
urgency.

She pulled out her cell, called the lawyer and was put right
through.

He said, “I’m contacting you on behalf of your biological
father.”

Her head jerked back. She looked at the cell screen, shook
the fuzz from her mind and said, “Not interested.”

“He wants you to get to know him.”

“Still not interested.”

Her thumb slid along the phone’s surface on its way to
ending the call.