OUT OF THE RED ↝ dave grohl

eighty-one.

"Baby, I —,"

"Dave, she hasn't stopped saying 'da' for weeks now. Talk to her just for a second."

Reagan pressed the phone to her chest and hollered for her siblings.

"Kody! RaeLynn! Mom, get Gracie!" She put the receiver back to her ear. "My mom will grab her, just one second."

"What is it?" Kimberly yelled from the living room.

"Reags, I really gotta' go, Steve is going to bust a blood vessel in his head if I don't get behind the kit in five seconds. I'll talk to Gracie tonight, okay?"

"But —,"

"I love you. I love her. Tell her I love her, okay?"

And then the line went dead.

Reagan held the phone away from her face, staring dully at it. It wasn't so much that Dave had hung up on her that hurt, but rather it was the implications behind it. He was busy. He was clearly struggling. The phrase 'in over his head' hardly covered the heartache that had been amassed over the last few months between him and his band-mates.

Things felt like they were edging out of control and ultimately, there was nothing Reagan could do to fix it, especially from Richard and Kimberly's house in Olympia.

"What's all the screaming about?" Kimberly huffed, entering the kitchen. Gracie was wrapped in her arms.

When Reagan locked eyes with her daughter, her worries melted away like a block of ice puddling into water. She lit her face with a wide smile, hoping that it would in the very least reassure Gracie that nothing was wrong. Gracie may have been too young to understand, but in lieu of the vow that Dave and Reagan had taken to not allow any Nirvana drama affect them, Reagan always put on a happy face for Gracie. By default, she was included in that vow.

"Guess who I just talked to," she beamed. Gracie smiled ear to ear, revealing the several teeth that she'd sprouted over the last few months. Much about her had changed. She had a soft, feathery
nest of brownish-auburn atop her head now and her eye color had finally turned. They were blue, just as Dave had predicted. A stormy, grey blue, piercing and beautiful all at once.

They may not have been the same shade as Dave's warm brown irises, but they were still the most wholesome pair of eyes that Reagan had ever looked into.

"Mamamamamama," Gracie babbled, outstretching her hands and flapping her fingers. Reagan scooped her into her arms and nuzzled the top of her head.

"I talked to Daddy," she murmured into Gracie's ear. "Daddy. Say Daddy."

"Da," Gracie blurted with enthusiasm. Reagan hoped that when she said it, she was imagining Dave's face, however an almost-one-year-old might do that. One thing had been made certain and it was that Gracie adored her father.

"She can say 'mama' just fine, yet she calls David 'da,'" Kimberly remarked, smoothing her hand back over Gracie's head.

"We're working on it."

"It's probably because she's too attached to you. That child barely lets you out of her sight for a minute before she starts crying. Are you still co-sleeping? I told you not to co-sleep."

Reagan held Gracie tighter. "She cries for me in the middle of the night. What am I supposed to do?"

What Reagan didn't add was that she secretly enjoyed having Gracie nestled next to her at night when Dave was away. It made her feel less lonely and it occupied the unused side of the bed. Instead of curling her fingers against empty sheets and feeling pain when her conscious mind realized Dave wasn't there, she felt the reassuring warmth of her daughter.