Buckingham Nicks A/U Series: That's What Love Is All About

The Hard Times Can Tear You Apart

Santa Monica, California
Friday, July 5, 2024
(1:30 am)
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"...And if you threw a party...invited everyone you knew...you would see the biggest gift would be from me, and the card attached would say thank you for being a friend..."

Stevie was sitting up in bed, Lily and Luna beside her, staring at the TV playing a Golden Girls rerun she could not summon the strength to pay attention to. She had gone upstairs to bed shortly before one, not saying a word to Lindsey as he cleaned up what remained of the mess in the kitchen after Lori, Julia Sara and Amber had all pitched in before going home. The two little white dogs beside her made snorting sounds in their sleep, and Stevie looked down and thought, two sleeping babies. She thought of the old phrase that had been the code she and Lindsey had used decades ago when Julia and Aaron were babies, born a year apart. "Two sleeping babies" meant that the kids were asleep for the night, so they were free to do whatever they wanted with their night - sleep, talk, watch TV, make love, or all of those things. She thought of Lindsey downstairs, probably trying to work out an explanation for withholding important information from her while smoking a joint out on the deck.

Stevie thought back to the night Julia had told her the story of Jodie's affair with Tricia Kent. She had heard the obvious hurt in her daughter's voice, the fresh sting of betrayal even though, it had since been revealed, the betrayal had occurred a year earlier. She wondered what would have made Julia unburden herself to her father but not to her mother. Of course, she knew that Julia and Lindsey had always had a special relationship, more so than he'd ever had with their other three children. It's probably because of the eight years of her life that I spent being over-prescribed klonopin and slipping further and further into the abyss, she thought. Julia was his partner a lot more in those days than I was. Stevie had long-since apologized for what Julia's therapist had called her "parentification" during her addiction, but she knew enough to realize that the bond Julia had always shared with her father had only strengthened in the years her mother was slipping further and further away from reality.

She thought of Jodie, Christine and John's only son, the baby boy she'd loved like her own who had grown up to be her son-in-law, the father of two of her grandchildren. She'd been so staunch in defending him since they'd announced the divorce last May, and she was slowly coming to the realization that what was making her so upset tonight was that she felt like a fool, taking Jodie's side over her own daughter's because she hadn't been given all of the important with which to make an informed decision. How dare Lindsey keep this a secret, allowing her to walk around in ignorance while her daughter was suffering and she sided with the person responsible? A fresh set of angry tears sprang to her eyes as she thought about it all, and she hated that she was so angry with someone she loved so much.

"Stevie?" Lindsey's voice from the other side of the door, coupled with his light knocking, broke into her thoughts. "Stevie, will you please let me in so we can talk? I hate that you found out this way...I want to explain...Stephanie, will you please let me in?"

With a defeated sigh, Stevie said, "It's not locked."

Behind the door, Lindsey breathed a sigh of relief. In the fifty-three years he'd been sharing a bed with Stevie, she'd only locked him out and refused to speak to him for the night four times - three of which had been in Sausalito while they were on the verge of breaking up during the infamous recording of Rumours. The fourth had been a more extended locking out - It was in 1987, when his refusal to tour Tango In The Night had nearly ended their marriage.

He opened the door to the bedroom slowly and closed it behind him. He looked sheepish in the glow of the TV screen, and Stevie almost felt sorry for him. Despite how angry she could get at Lindsey - and she could really be angry with Lindsey at times across the span of nearly six decades - she could never maintain her anger for long because she'd always wanted to stop midway through yelling at him and comfort him because he was being yelled at. She knew, too, that he'd always felt exactly the same way in return.