Total pages in book: 122
Estimated words: 115706 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 579(@200wpm)___ 463(@250wpm)___ 386(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 115706 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 579(@200wpm)___ 463(@250wpm)___ 386(@300wpm)
Back then, I knew my grandfather’s health was failing, and that my mother would soon inherit the lake cabin, at which time she’d probably want to start going back to Prairie Springs during summers again, like we used to do when I was a kid. So, I included my second demand to make sure Mom never ran into Claudia and her kid in Prairie Springs and somehow put two and two together.
In the end, much to my lawyer’s surprise, Claudia wound up quickly accepting both of my demands without the slightest push-back. Regarding the Prairie Springs thing, she said, through her attorney, “Fine with me. I don’t want to go to Prairie Springs, anyway. My monster of a father worked there as a police officer for decades, and he still goes back frequently to visit old friends.”
What did Claudia mean when she called her father a monster? I didn’t ask, since I’ve got a monster of a father, too. I simply thought, “Join the club, Claudia.” And never looked back. For a while, anyway. In fact, the night I signed the agreement, I played my heart out for seventy thousand people and soaked in their applause like I hadn’t just done the shittiest, most despicable thing in my life.
A soft whimper wafts into my dark bedroom and prompts me sit up in bed. Was that Mom crying out in pain like she did the other night? I get up and creep down the hallway, but when I open the door to the guest room, Mom is fast asleep. I stand in the doorway staring at her chest for a long moment, making sure it’s rising and falling. When I’m satisfied she’s fine, I creep back to my bedroom, slide back into bed, and try in vain to fall asleep, once again.
If Mom weren’t here, I’d already have battled my insomnia by taking a handful of gummies and/or smoked a fat blunt or bowl and/or downed a half-bottle of Jack by now. Or maybe I would have gone downstairs to my home studio to bang on my drums. But I can’t do any of that with Mom sleeping down the hallway and her first infusion in mere hours. If Mom wakes up in pain, I need to be alert, not dead to the world in a chemically-induced coma or banging on my drums with earphones on.
I hear another whimper and freeze. That sounded like a baby crying. Am I imagining things, due to my guilt, like the guy in the “Tell-Tale Heart” story—the one where the guy who committed murder hears his victim’s beating heart from underneath a floorboard?
I head to my mother’s room again. Same result.
Fuck.
Fuck it.
I can’t live like this anymore.
With determination flooding my veins, I return to my bedroom, grab my laptop, flop into a chair, and quickly find an old email chain between Claudia’s attorney and mine. As I recall, Claudia was copied on one of the emails somewhere . . .
Here it is. Claudia’s personal email address. Bingo.
My heart thumping wildly, I tap out an email directly to Claudia Beaumont.
Hey Claudia,
It’s C-Bomb. Sorry to come at you out of the blue, but I got some bad news recently about my mother’s health. She’s got late-stage cancer, and the doc says the odds aren’t good she’ll make it more than a year. She’s starting chemo tomorrow, and we’re hoping she’ll beat this thing or at least buy herself more time, but these things are unpredictable.
In light of this new circumstance, I’m hoping to introduce the baby to my mother and sister in LA, as soon as possible. I know this is a one-eighty from what we agreed upon, but I’m hoping you’ll have mercy on me. Of course, I’ll fly you and the baby to LA and put you up for as long as you can stay. I’ll pay for a luxury hotel or you can stay at my place. I live in Santa Monica, right on the beach, in a big house with plenty of room.
If the visit goes well, maybe we can talk about amending our contract to include regular visitation rights for me. I’ve honestly been feeling tons of regret and guilt about—
I abruptly stop typing. What am I doing? For all I know, the visit might only confirm my initial hunch—that the kid is better off without me. With a sigh, I delete that last, incomplete paragraph and begin typing again.
To be clear, I’m not trying to change our financial agreement. No matter what happens, that thirty grand will always hit your bank account every month until our kid turns eighteen. I’m only asking you to have mercy on me in the coming months. My mother is the best person I know, and she sacrificed everything for my sister and me, so I want to give her the best gift imaginable before she passes. My mother’s the one who scraped together her pennies to buy me my first drum kit, Claudia. She believed in me, when nobody else did. I’m living my dreams now, because of her.