The response would have been, so what?
Lyla’s mom birthed those girls then made them the women they became.
I’ll tell you what, every day I work to make sure my girls have that.
Natalie hesitates over eating a chocolate chip cookie or gives the girls a look where I know she’s fretting when I’m making malts.
I say, “Eat it, baby,” at the same time wanting to find her mother and knock her teeth down her throat, because if that woman was there, she’d give my baby shit about having a fuckin’ cookie, goin’ on about carbs and middle-age spread, something the woman had been doing in one way or another to my wife the whole of her life.
And I make my girls malts.
They are, all three of them, the most beautiful creatures who entered my life, and I never let them forget it.
Lyla’s mom and grandparents taught me that.
And hey, Preacher taught me it too.
[Off tape]
So, you’re saying, conclusively, that you, McCade and Lyla were not a threesome and that you and McCade did not indoctrinate her into her status with the band when she was underage.
[Stares straight, speaks firmly]
Yeah, fuckin’ conclusively I’m sayin’ just that.
And you’re saying that McCade did not regularly railroad the band into his way of thinking and rule it with an iron fist.
[Shakes head]
Nope.
He got his way a lot and he pushed to get his way a lot and there were times, and not a few of them, when that was frustrating as fuck.
But he didn’t railroad anybody or rule with an iron fist.
Tom ruled with an iron fist.
[Laughs]
But that was his job.
Cynthia Peters, who became famous in her own right, went on to marry Bobby Sheridan.
[Shakes head]
Match made in heaven for the full, what? Nine, ten months those two idiots were hitched.
And famous?
I guess so.
She was no Pamela Des Barres. That woman knew what she was about, what she wanted, she went after it and didn’t give a fuck what anyone thought.
Cynthia was…
[Lengthy pause]
Not that.
Peters also married Josh Hardy.
Yeah. That’s probably why he’s still doin’ as much session work as he’s doin’.
Because they only lasted a coupla months.
But the asshole didn’t get a prenup.
Jen, Amber and my sister Sonia were all with me, waiting at the gate when…
Lyla:
[Off tape]
At the gate?
[Lengthy pause]
How old are you?
Twenty-two.
[Quietly]
Yes, well, doll, 9/11 changed the world. You were young. But everyone used to be able to go to the gate in an airport. Meet their loved ones the minute they got off the plane.
I guess I knew that.
Lana’s boyfriend worked in the Twin Towers.
Oh no.
[Heavy voice]
Oh yes.
As if that family hadn’t lost enough.
[Takes deep breath]
He had an engagement ring at his apartment. They found it after.
It took her a while. Jesse worried. He thought she’d never recover.
But [smiles sadly] unlike Penny after her loss, eventually, she got there.
After the plane arrived, I was straining to see down the ramp and there he was, the first one off.
He caught sight of me and smiled.
I dashed around the people in front of me and hit him like a ton of bricks the minute he cleared the gate agent.
I actually jumped him, literally, and did not care.
I wrapped my legs around his hips, my arms around his shoulders, he caught my ass in his hands, and we went at it.
I was kissing Preacher again.
I hadn’t seen him in six weeks.
An eternity.
I felt his shoulder jerk when the strap of his bag fell off and that was the only reason I stopped kissing him.
I lifted my head, looked into his brown eyes and whispered, “Hi.”
He stared at me with this funny look on his face that was part happy, part amused, part something else, and he whispered back, “Hey, cher.”
Lyla:
He’d never had a welcome home.
He really had never had a home.
Those jackals who raised him…
[Pause]
You know, looking back, that moment at that gate in the Indianapolis airport was when I really won Preacher McCade.
When I well and truly bagged the most beautiful man on the planet.
And the rest of that Christmas break, that break from the tour…
My claim was staked.
They had limos.
Jesse, Dave and Tim had one that took them to Mooresville.
Preacher and Tommy had one that took us home.
To Brownsburg.
My grandfather was a World War II vet and a school principal in Indy. He was a Glenn Miller aficionado and felt an indication of a loose woman was that her ears were pierced.
He was not impressed with limos.
My grandmother was never without red lipstick, tucked a hazelnut in its shell in her bra “for luck,” never dyed her hair after it turned white but rolled it in rollers and teased it bigger than Dolly Parton’s, and she lived for [raises hands and counts on fingers] nine things:
Her husband.
Her children.
Her grandchildren.
Shopping.
Drinking.
Eating.
Traveling.
Generally acting like a nut.
And getting a tan.
And not in that order.
She was impressed by limos.
And when Preacher angled his big body out of the back of ours, she fell in love at first sight.
I was nervous as all hell when Gramps met Preacher.
I knew Gramps was going to hate him.
It wasn’t the band, but it was.
It wasn’t that I’d skipped out on a week of school to follow the band around on tour, and it was.
It wasn’t that he had long hair and a beard, and it was.
It was that no one was good enough for Gramps’s girls.
Preacher did not give a damn about what anyone thought of him, so I was certain this wouldn’t go well.
My grandfather was of a generation where a man worked to earn an elder’s respect.
Preacher would work hard to earn a lot of things, but he was a take-me-as-I-come type of guy.
My grandparents meant everything to me.
Preacher meant everything to me.
They had to work.
But I was terrified it was going to be a disaster.
“Well, would you look at that!” Gram cried, walking right up to Preacher who was helping me out of the limo.
He got me to my feet, turned to her, she slammed her hands on his chest and smiled up at him.
She then patted his chest repeatedly and kept smiling up at him before she declared, “Well, aren’t you a tall drink of water?”
My Gram.
I was smiling when I introduced, “Gram, this is Preacher, Preacher, this is my gram. Mrs. Campbell.”
“Miz Campbell,” he murmured, trying to lift his hand in between them to shake hers, but, even though she wasn’t pressed up to him or anything gross like that, she ignored his hand and just patted his chest, still smiling up at him.
“Evelyn, darlin’. But you can call me Lynie,” she invited.