Daron's Guitar Chronicles Volume 12

969 Who's Going to Ride Your Wild Horses

Who's Going to Ride Your Wild Horses

Maybe it was the blow to the head. I don't know. Maybe that whole day would have been weird no matter what. Weird and surreal and unbelievable.

It wasn't intentional. The blow to the head, I mean. Landon was properly sugared up and running around like a kid should on Christmas, playing with all his toys simultaneously and wearing a number of the red ribbons from his presents in his hair and a few of the bows stuck to his pajamas. At one point he launched himself from the La-Z-Boy recliner into my lap on the couch, except I wasn't quite ready for it. We knocked heads and there was a moment when I thought he was going to cry. Instead we burst out laughing. I'm not actually sure which of us started laughing first or if it was spontaneous.

"You used to do that all the time as a kid," Janine said sourly.

I rubbed the top of his head and my cheekbone simultaneously. "Leap off the furniture?"

"No. Laugh when you fell down or something." This was apparently an annoying trait to her, or maybe she was annoyed about something else. She huffed. "Come on, Lanny. Time to get some real clothes on."

Ziggy turned from fiddling with the stereo, where he was putting in a mix tape of some kind, to Claire. "Is that true?"

"That Daron used to laugh when he got hurt? I don't remember that," she said. She was perched on a dining room chair, methodically nibbling her way through a plate of Christmas cookies. "I remember him being a very quiet child. For a boy especially."

A prickle spread across the back of my neck, as if a ghost of Christmas past was breezing by, freezing my thoughts in place. Did she not remember—or not want to—that I had to actively silence myself to keep her from raging at me? If it weren't for headphones I would have gone insane.

I mean, on the one hand my childhood hadn't been that long ago. I was twenty-three. It wasn't like she was ancient and we were talking about the previous century or something.

But Claire always had selective memory and selective vision. She saw what she wanted to see and believed what was convenient to believe. That wasn't news. It still made my skin crawl.

My pager distracted me by buzzing in my pocket. I was making sure to carry it that day so if Carynne or any of the sane people I knew wanted to say Merry Christmas I'd know to call them back. A New York number I didn't recognize popped up. Huh. What were the chances that was Digger? High enough that I didn't rush to the phone.

Just thinking of him made me skittish enough that when the doorbell rang, I jumped before remembering we were waiting for Remo to arrive to do the rest of the gift exchanging. I went to answer it to sidestep any other uncomfortable reminiscing.

It was not Remo at the door. It was a skinny but sculpted blonde, her stylishly long raincoat unbuttoned over a white turtleneck. I could smell alcohol, though. Her forcefully cheerful facial expression fell into confusion as she looked at me and said, "What in the holy hell are you doing here?"

"Hi, Lilibeth." I shrugged. "Merry Christmas. I'm here to console our terminally ill matriarch. How about you?"

She grabbed the screen door handle like she was going to rip it off the hinges and beat me over the head with it. "Take that back, you little shit! We don't need your sarcastic bullshit!"

I had grabbed the handle on the inside to prevent her from doing so. I could see her makeup was somewhat imperfectly applied, her lipstick askew. "Nice to see you, too. I thought you were spending the holidays with your new–?"

"Shut up! Shut up! You think I want my face rubbed in it? Let me in!"

Before I could finish taking a breath to reply to that, she started pounding on the door frame. "Let me in! Let me in!" Then she promptly collapsed in a tearful heap on the doormat.