Total pages in book: 75
Estimated words: 78227 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 391(@200wpm)___ 313(@250wpm)___ 261(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 78227 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 391(@200wpm)___ 313(@250wpm)___ 261(@300wpm)
But my father?
He gets me. He understands me in ways my mother doesn’t.
He’s the one who looked me in the eye and told me he would support me whether I became an operatic mezzo-soprano or not.
Whether I chose to settle down with a man or a woman.
He’s the one who told me—after two and a half years of New York auditions—that it was okay to stop. It was okay to stop putting myself through the hard work and determination only to have my dream crushed again and again.
It’s okay, he said.
It’s okay to look for a new dream.
My mother, of course, wanted me to keep trying. After all, I was her firstborn daughter—Aurora Maureen Pike. I carry her name as my middle name. I’m known as the great beauty of the family—as she was. Even though both my sisters are beautiful as well, my mother expected greatness from me.
But the great things she expected of me? They all had to do with my beauty. She wanted me to be an operatic mezzo not because of my talent or because of my love for singing, but because I would be on the stage, showing my beauty to the world. She wanted me in local pageants, as she had been, and was visibly disappointed when I refused. And of course…she wanted me on the arm of the handsomest man in town.
At least I’ve given her that one—Brock Steel is not only one of the handsomest men in the world but also one of the richest.
But as for visibility? She didn’t get her wish. I’m not onstage. As a music teacher in Snow Creek, Colorado, I’m seen by no one.
But my father sees me.
He has always seen me.
The person below the polished exterior. After all, I did nothing to earn my beauty. I was born that way. And that is one thing I do have to thank my mother for.
But I am not my face. I am not my body.
My father was always the one person who knew that. Who understood that. Who saw what lay beneath the pretty face.
He is, and always has been, my hero.
My hero—with a tube down his throat, his eyes still closed, hooked up to machines, and a huge dressing on his chest covering the incision the surgeons made to heal his heart.
He’s doing wonderfully, all the nurses say.
It’s not that I don’t believe them. I do. But this is my father. My big strong father.
Seeing him this way? Intubated and hooked up to machines?
It breaks my heart.
I let out a quiet and ironic chuckle at my own thought. A broken heart. People throw that term around as if it has some kind of literal meaning.
But the only literal meaning of the phrase is what I’m looking at right now.
My father, who had a broken heart.
The doctors assure us it’s fixed now. He’s recovering nicely, and he’s shown signs of waking. In a few minutes, they will extubate him.
Maybe I should have waited until then to see him.
He’d still be hooked up to the machines, of course, but at least he wouldn’t have that horrible plastic thing shoved down his throat.
My brother, Jesse, stands with me.
Callie and Maddie are outside the room. So is our mother. They couldn’t take seeing Dad like this. I’m not surprised at my mother, but I’m a little disappointed in Callie and Maddie. My sisters are strong.
But apparently not strong enough to see our father in such a state of weakness, completely dependent on machines.
In truth? I’m not either. It’s heartbreaking.
God, that stupid phrase again!
It will never have the same meaning for me.
A nurse in green scrubs bustles in. She takes notes of Dad’s vitals and then turns to Jesse and me. “I’m going to extubate him now. Do you want to leave?”
Jesse and I look at each other. My brother lifts his eyebrows, and I nod.
“I’ll stay,” he says.
“I will too.”
“Are you sure?” the nurse asks. “It can be uncomfortable for the patient.”
I grab hold of my father’s hand. “I’m not leaving.”
“Neither am I,” Jesse says.
Jesse is as close to our father as I am. Partly because he’s the only boy, and partly because he’s the oldest.
But partly because Jesse, like I am, is a musician. We get our musical talent from our father. He plays the guitar and the piano, and he started teaching us both when we were four years old. Dad also has a beautiful singing voice.
When I was small, I asked him why he decided to be a rancher and a winemaker—I mean, the man doesn’t even drink—rather than a musician.
His words struck me.
“Because my music is for me, Rory. Only for me. It’s not for anyone else, and if I make it my work, I will no longer enjoy it.”
Funny how Jesse and I both went into music as our vocation when our father so clearly never wanted to. But as I look at him now, his body broken and hooked up to machines, I wonder if he wasn’t right.