Total pages in book: 129
Estimated words: 131459 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 657(@200wpm)___ 526(@250wpm)___ 438(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 131459 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 657(@200wpm)___ 526(@250wpm)___ 438(@300wpm)
“I love Bowie. Sasha loves Bowie. Matt loves Bowie. Hell, you love Bowie,” she continued.
Tom found his voice.
“Your mother loves Bowie more than any of us.”
“And she loved you too.”
He actually winced, that explosion landed so close.
“Honey, this is not a repeat performance,” he informed her. “This is a different situation. One, I’ll point out, neither of us know a thing about. You need to cut her some slack.”
There was a moment of silence before she spoke again.
“You didn’t do right. You didn’t. I don’t have to tell you that because you know it better than I do. But I learned the hard way, through my parents, that there are two sides to every story. You learned your lesson, Dad. Before it’s too late, and she screws something else up that’s beautiful and has a lot of people she loves involved, Mom needs to learn hers.”
“Mom did not screw us up, honey,” he said quietly. “Bottom line, she didn’t. I don’t want you thinking that.”
“Dad.” She said his name on such a powerful gust of air, he felt the phantom of it brush his cheek. “It’s not fair Mom lets you bear that cross on your own. It’s not. But it’s not my business. It’s between you two. That said, I love Bowie. And Sully and Gage. And I found Judge through Bowie. He’s family. They’re all family. And Mom has got to learn that the world might adore Imogen Swan, but in her family, that world doesn’t revolve around her.”
“Chloe,” he said gently. “You’re being far too hard on her.”
“I’m done talking about it,” she huffed.
“Try to see things from her perspective,” Tom urged.
“I’ll do that when I’m not this mad. But just to say, you weren’t her first in this. Uncle Corey broke them up, and it was absolutely insane how he did that. We were all so blindsided by it when we found out, no one has noticed that way back in the day, out of the blue, Duncan done her wrong, she’d loved him since she was eight, and she didn’t fight for him either.”
And the shrapnel from that particular shell tore straight through him.
Chloe continued, “I’ve ranted about this to Judge, and it isn’t just because he loves me, and he respects you, and he’s a man that he’s on my side. He’s thrown Mom is being like this. And I’ve ranted to Matt about it. Matt always takes her side, but he was exceptionally quiet when I was telling him about her latest sulk, and how she’s shut Bowie out, her usual modus operandi. And I think he’s thinking things through.”
“I can’t believe you spoke to Matt about this,” Tom said, disappointment in his tone.
“It’s time he got his head out of his ass. He learned you were human, now he needs to learn Mother is too.”
“I’ll repeat something I say often to you, Chloe, and share this really isn’t any of your business. Marriages have difficult times, and your mother and Bowie’s marriage is new.”
“It isn’t my business now,” she concurred. “And I hope it won’t be.”
He had to agree.
Just not verbally.
“Try to give her some time and grace.”
“N’importe quoi,” she murmured. “I need to get ready. Judge and I are going to a matinee.”
“What are you seeing?”
“Moulin Rouge.”
“Enjoy it, honey.”
“Will do, Daddy. And…Dad?”
“Yes, Chloe.”
“You really don’t have to protect her anymore.” Before he could recover from that detonation and reply, she said, “Love you,” and rang off.
He drew in breath and stared at the power of Stella Gunn as he tried to shake off his conversation with his daughter.
Mika and Cadence were in the kitchen, preparing Sunday brunch, all of them fueling up in order to go to Queens to visit MoMA PS1 because Cadence had a paper in modern art due, Mika wanted some inspiration, and Tom had never been there.
He’d come downstairs to take the call in private.
Now he needed to let the call go and get back upstairs.
However, his eyes hit on the microscope as he turned, and he decided finally, after decades, to give himself time to experience it to its fullest and view all the slides.
She had Sky set under the lens. Randomly, he viewed them as Join, Brotherhood, Us, Dreamer, Sharing and Life.
And there it was.
The point.
The beauty.
The meaning of life under a microscope.
Because even after his conversation with Chloe, seeing those words magnified, he was injected with the positivity of them.
Exactly as the artist intended.
And exactly the homage it represented intended the same.
He was smiling when he straightened from the piece, turned and stopped dead.
Teddy was standing in the doorway to the hall.
Tom hadn’t heard him come in.
With one look at the man, Mika’s PA and friend, Tom braced again.
“So they cook for you, do they?” he asked, either having been upstairs, or probably smelling the bacon.