When rehearsal ends I feel bereft. Hearing Dixie sing was soothing balm to my jagged wounds and now that we’re done, the rawness is returning.

I don’t want to be away from them, don’t want to go back to an empty trailer on the side of the highway, but Dixie has her shield up and I am fluent in reading her emotions. So I pack up quietly and head to the truck I borrowed from Mr. Kyung to get here.

“Hey, man,” Dallas calls out. “Want to get some food?”

I do. I want to have a meal with the only two people in the world who’ve ever given a damn about me. I want to sit and talk and crack jokes and hear Dixie’s laugh. I want it more than I want food or water or air. But the flash of pain on Dixie’s face hits me like a slap. “Can’t. I need to get back to the Tavern. Jake covered for me but I need to get going.”

“All right. Holler at me if you need anything.”

“Will do,” I call out before climbing into the truck. I’ve only just shut my door when the one on the other side opens.

“Give a girl a ride? I feel like playing some more so I thought I’d drop by the Tavern, too. Work this new song out on that piano.”

“I . . . you . . . uh,” I answer, but it comes out jumbled and all run together so it sounds like a grunted battle cry of some sort.

Verbal skills have vacated the premises.

“Yes or no, Gav? If you don’t want me to ride with you it’s no big. Dallas can run me by there or I can just work on the song at home.”

I have no idea how she can be so relaxed, so nonchalant after what I did, how I treated her.

I love you, Gavin. Bigger than your mistakes and bigger than the pain you cause me.

“No, it’s cool. I mean, yeah. Yes, you can ride—I can give you a ride . . . I can . . .”

Fuck it all.

“So . . . that’s a yes then?” She hangs on to the door as if waiting to figure out if she should climb in or slam it in my face.

I nod. Sentences are apparently outside my realm of capability at the moment.

Staring straight ahead, I force myself not to stare at her arms while she buckles in. Dallas doesn’t look thrilled as we pull past him but Dixie’s a big girl now. She makes her own decisions. Not necessarily great ones, but they’re hers to make.

“I’m sorry. I’m so damn sorry that I hurt you, that I came there drunk, that your pain was some half-assed premeditated attempt on my part at setting you free from my bullshit. I saw today, though, that what Dallas keeps saying is true. I won’t ever really be able to cut either of you off because you’re my family and that won’t ever change unless either of you want it to.”

“We won’t,” she says abruptly. “Ever.”

I nod. Neither of us says much for a few minutes. It’s not uncomfortable silence, though, just intense and thick with emotions and words we aren’t ready to say just yet.

I sneak a quick look at her left arm but all I can make out are the words addicted and poison.

“Shoot,” Dixie says suddenly while looking at her cell phone in her hand. “I forgot. Crap. Can you just drop me at home?”

I turn the truck around and hop on a back road I know will be a shortcut. “Sure.”

“I’m so sorry. I hope I don’t make you late for work.”

“It’s fine. I don’t think the place will burn down without me.”

She laughs softly and the sound warms my chest. “I have this one kid . . . he doesn’t seem to like playing piano much but he shows up without fail. Barely talks, just kind of wanders over to the house. Reminds me of someone else I used to know.”

A warning bell goes off in my head but I’m not sure why.

“I checked around and his name is Liam Andrews but I don’t know much about him. I think he lives near you and I’m hoping he’s not crossing the interstate by himself. Can’t seem to find out much about his family.”

“Andrews, you say?” There is only one Andrews near me.

No, please, please do not let her be even remotely associated with Carl fucking Andrews.

“Yeah, why? You know him?”

My foot presses harder on the accelerator.

“Gavin!”

“Dixie,” I begin slowly, working hard to keep my voice even. “I am trying not to get worked up and or lose my temper while operating a motor vehicle. But you absolutely cannot have anything to do with Carl Andrews or his kid. Ever.”

“Um, well, I’m not sure Liam is his kid for certain. He’s just constantly angry. I was going to talk to you about him because he kind of reminds me of you.”

I’m mildy offended. “I’m not constantly angry.” She gives me a look that says she’s calling bullshit so I shrug. “Not constantly.”

“Okay, maybe I phrased that wrong.” She frowns and I can see from side-eying her that she’s thinking extremely hard and choosing her words carefully. “It’s like he’s struggling to . . . find . . . something. A reason to be afraid or upset or violent, or I don’t know. He’s just a really angry kid and he’s only seven years old. What is there to be angry about at seven?”

My grip tightens on the steering wheel and I watch my knuckles turn white.

“If Carl Andrews is his dad, trust me, kid has plenty to be angry about.”

Carl is the owner of the local crack house, the one my mom has been spending her time in lately. He was with her in the bar the other night and he and I are not on good terms at the moment. I know I am heading into something bad, I can feel it in my gut, but all I can think of is getting him away from Dixie and keeping him the hell away from her. And then the troubling thought tugging the edges of the blanket of rage currently covering my mind.

He got custody of that kid? How in the hell could anyone give that disgusting fucking animal a kid?

“ . . . drum lessons?”

I only catch the last part of whatever she’s saying because that’s the thing about actual fits of rage, they sort of block out all your other senses.

“What?”

Dixie sighs and holds on to the dashboard as I take a curve a little faster than I should. “I was asking if you’d be willing to give Liam drum lessons. He has a lot of anger and it seems to help you, playing, so I thought it might help him.”

“It does help me. But I’m not exactly kid friendly. You know this.”

She scoffs at me. “How do you know? Have you ever hung out with any kids?”

I contemplate this, desperate to focus on something other than the thought of Carl alone with Dixie in her house. “No. I guess not.”

“Then you don’t know, do you? You could totally be kid friendly. But even if you aren’t, this kid doesn’t respond well to friendly anyways.”

“No?”

She looks so sad for a moment I almost pull the truck over.

“No. And all my other kids like me—they hug me and call me ‘Miss Dixie,’ which is really sweet. But he just averts his eyes and keeps his gaze on everything but me.”

Her mouth does the quirky turn-down thing it does when she’s about to cry. Hearing her call them “my kids” helps me to appreciate how important giving lessons is to her. It’s about more than filling her time. It’s her way of sharing her gift even though she’s not performing much right now.

“Maybe he just doesn’t want the lessons but he isn’t sure where else to go. Maybe you’re the first smiling face he’s ever seen.” The sad truth is, that’s pretty much how I ended up on her porch all those years ago. And why I kept coming back.

She appears only mildly comforted by my words. “I am pretty fun. We play games and I give out candy. I even made him cookies. Special ones, just for him. I even put his name on them in icing.”

She’s a persistent one, my Bluebird. She will make you love her one way or another if it’s the last thing she does. Poor kid doesn’t stand a chance.

“Cookies, huh? You never made me cookies with my name on them.”

“Gav . . . I’m serious. I don’t get it. He’s like, I don’t know, afraid of me . . . or something. I don’t know why he keeps his shield up all the time but I can’t reach him no matter what I do and it breaks my heart.”