He went to the kitchen next, tearing through any drawer he could think of. After that he set his sights on the basement but only found organized boxes of holiday decorations and box of photo albums that had at least ten years of dust on them. It told Danny that his father just let time go without regard for what it meant. For what time could do for a person, for a life. He thought about what time did to Liv’s father and it made him angry. He took the basement steps two by two and thought about going to the garage but knew better.
As he stood in the foyer of the house, his hands were shaking fists. These were the exact times when he needed Johnnie the most. But Johnnie wouldn’t get it, even if he was there. Johnnie didn’t have the same relationship with their father as Danny did. Danny tried so hard -
so hard
- all the time. Johnnie just accepted it. All the time.
Danny had one place to look... one last place to find what he needed to make some kind of peace with his father.
Upstairs.
In the bedrooms.
Danny nodded, feeling a sudden surge of happiness. That would make the most sense of all. That’s where his father would hide everything.
The steps seemed like there were a thousand feet tall. Danny remembered back to all the Christmas mornings when he and Johnnie would race down the steps to see the tree, the lights, if Santa Claus actually came.
At the top of the steps, Danny turned right and stared down the hallway. The longest, darkest hallway of his life. The bathroom and linen closet were on his right with two bedrooms on the left. But the door at the end of the hall was his parent’s bedroom. Never once did Danny believe it to be his father’s bedroom. No way. It was his parent’s room.
Always and forever.
Danny thought he heard the sound of a car engine and listened for a second but it stopped. He set his sights back to the master bedroom. He charged down the hall, his heart racing, his body aching from pain and love. A strange mix brewing in the deepest parts of his body. He wanted out of Bakersville once and for all but he couldn’t leave his heart behind, again. But he knew he couldn’t tell Liv to leave everything. To leave her house, her cabin, her father.
Danny opened the bedroom door as a terrible thought came to him.
Why didn’t this place burn down?
It was true though, something Danny felt he deserved to think. Crabley’s didn’t deserve the fate it suffered, especially at the hands of some Chasing Cross fans that got a little too out of control.
The bedroom stood like a relic of a different time. The look, the smell, the decorations. Everything screamed Danny’s mother but the aura of his father hung. It seemed odd that it wasn’t more than a week ago his father slept in the room. In the bed.
The closet was partially opened.
That’s where Danny started.
The top shelf was full of boxes.
Danny took the first box down with care. He opened it and found pictures and documents. More old papers, most of the corners ripped and ruined. None of it made sense to Danny. None of it had purpose. The second box fell and Danny tried to catch it, , but the lid opened and papers poured out and behind Danny. He kicked the items around and found nothing he wanted to find. There were two more boxes on the top shelf and Danny knew what he was going to do. He grabbed the tops of both boxes and pulled. They fell to the floor, the ancient cardboard crumbling to pieces as the contents poured everywhere.
Not a thing of importance inside.
Not a damn thing.
Danny dug around the closet and found nothing. Just clothes. Even on the floor... it was organized sets of shoes and rolled up belts. Everything in order. Everything the way
Big John
wanted things in his house.
And that’s what it always was.
His house.
It was never the house of a family. Of a wife, mother, husband, father, and two sons. Never a family of four. Never with a cat, a dog, or even a goldfish.
It was
his house
.
Big John
’s
house.
Nothing more.
Nothing less.
Even now, as Danny searched the bedroom, he felt trapped in his father’s clutches. The ironic part was that the house was technically and legally his. He and Johnnie owned the house, the land, the car, the shed, the garage, even the lawnmower their father had been pushing when his life came to an end.
The boxes on the floor, Danny owned.
The useless contents, Danny owned.
Right down the perfectly made bed.
Danny turned to the bed and tore the covers of it. The sheet came next, followed by the fitted sheet. It was just a mattress staring back at Danny.
That’s when it hit him again.
Under the bed.
That’s where people kept their secrets, right? A shoebox of secrets.
“Danny... are you okay?”
The voice startled Danny as he fell to his knees. He looked around the room, half expecting to see his mother and father standing there. On top of such a delicate moment, why not throw some ghosts in the mix? And he hadn’t even been drinking.
When he saw Liv standing in the doorway to his parent’s bedroom, he stood back up.
“Liv? What are you doing here?”
“What are you doing in here?” she asked, looking to the mess on the floor.
“I’m looking for it.”
“For what?”
“The reason why I came back.”
“The reason?”
“I mean, sure. I can’t change the past, Liv. I can’t go back and undo what I did. And look at you... you have a good life. I know it’s hard. I know it’s so hard with your father. But he’s there. He loves you so much. And I came back here to find out if my father loved me.”
“What do you expect to find in this room?” Liv asked.
Liv had been around
Big John
enough times to really understand him. Her eyes showed that to Danny and her eyes showed a truth Danny didn’t want to face. Besides Liv, he really could have used his big brother. Even just to talk to him. To bring him off the ledge. To calm him down. To put a guitar in his hands and force him to play.
“There has to be something here,” Danny said. “About it. About me. About us. About it all.”
“Oh, Danny,” Liv said. “You can’t...”
Danny put his hands under the mattress and flipped it up and over with ease. It sailed across the room against the wall, knocking a frame to the floor.
“Danny,” Liv said.
Danny found nothing under the mattress. He bent more and flipped the entire bed over. He fell to his knees when he saw bare carpet.
Nothing.
Not a damn thing.
Danny felt the emotion collapse all around him. Just as Liv touched his back.
“Danny, I’m so sorry,” she whispered. “You knew him... how he was...”
“He didn’t care,” Danny said, maybe truly admitting it for the first time.
“Danny...”
“No,” he said. “He didn’t care. Ever. I left and I gave everything up.” Danny looked back and up at Liv. “Including you... the only person who I truly loved and who loved me.”
**
Liv stared down at Danny. She’d be a liar if she didn’t admit to herself that it was sort of nice to see Danny suffering like he was. Over her, not over his father. She couldn’t believe that after all these years he still cared so much about his father and his worthless approval. Danny had all the approval he needed each time he stepped on stage or released a new album with Chasing Cross. The millions of fans that spanned year after year were the approval.
But it wasn’t the same, and that much Liv could respect.
It was like watching her father slip. Those moments when he got angry, mean, or flat out didn’t know who Liv was, she felt pain that probably matched something close to what Danny felt inside right then.
“Danny, I still love you,” Liv said. “I never stopped loving you. I never will.”
Danny put a hand out and Liv took it. She pulled at him, bringing her to the floor with him.
“I’m a freaking mess,” Danny said. “The band is gone. Johnnie is over it all. He just... turns the switch. I can’t. I can’t leave you, Liv.”
Liv touched Danny’s face. “Come with me. Right now.”
“Where?”
“To my cabin,” Liv said. “I... have something to show you.”
Danny shook his head. “I can’t do anything right now. I feel like burying myself in a bottle and flying out of here.”
“You want to leave?”
“I could be on a plane in an hour or two. I could be in Los Angeles with the rest of the band...”
Liv felt her heart aching. Danny looked serious.
He wouldn’t leave like that, would he?
Drunk?
On a private jet?
Acting like some burned out rockstar?
“Danny, stop talking like this,” Liv demanded. “Get up and come with me right now.”
Danny looked at her and finally smiled.
“I love it when you’re mean to me.”
Liv slid her hand to the back of Danny’s head and pulled at him.
“You don’t know mean,” Liv whispered, trying to hide a smile. “Come with me, Danny. You don’t need this house. These memories. You know who he was... and if anything, it’s best off where he is right now...”
“I know,” Danny whispered. “I just wanted that feeling. That proud feeling. Of my father showing his pride for me.”
“You’re such a dummy sometimes,” Liv said. “You have Johnnie.”
“Not right now.”
“Because you’re not some punk kid looking for his big brother. You’re a punk man now I guess...”
“With a beautiful woman staring at him,” Danny said. “And I’m acting like a punk.”
“You have the right to do so. Now stand up and let’s get out of here.”
“I don’t want to come back here,” Danny said as he stood up.
“Then don’t. Pay someone to clean it out.”
“And then what?” Danny asked. “Burn it down?”
“If that makes you happy, why not?”
Liv couldn’t help but be honest. She knew her time was counting down with Danny. Eventually he’d have to leave. And if she couldn’t have him forever, Liv at least wanted Danny to leave happy. It wouldn’t fill the void in her heart, but it would fill his.
(16)
The cabin really was beautiful in the daylight. The trees formed a nature made canopy over the cabin, giving it some shade. No more than fifty feet from the back door of the cabin was the pond. Danny knew there was some good fishing to be done at the pond but thinking of fishing only made him wonder if his father had fished the pond. It was a private pond but
Big John
fished where he wanted.
Liv took him by the hand, leading him up the steps to the door. She looked back at Danny as she opened the door to the cabin and asked, “Do you trust me?”
“Of course I trust you,” Danny said. “Do you think, even for a second that I don’t trust you?”
“Just want to make sure,” Liv said.
She opened the door and she and Danny walked into the cabin. Danny felt out of place, as if he’d never been in the cabin before. Even when he looked at the couch, the spot where he and Liv made love for the first time after all those years, he still felt out of place. Liv made it a point to walk to the couch, stand behind it, and put her hands on the top of it. She looked at Danny with the burning desire that drove him mad. The intention deep within her eyes could take all his pain away and replace it with romance.
“I have something I want to show you,” Liv said.
“I’m not going anywhere,” Danny said.
“Oh yeah?”
“Well, yeah… I don’t have a car, and even if I left I probably would not be able to find my way back…”
Danny thought about adding the word
home
to the end of that sentence, but what was home? Sure, Danny had his own place, somewhere else, far away from Bakersville, but it wasn’t a real home. It didn’t have Liv in it.
“Wait here,” Liv said.
Danny watched Liv walk with a little hesitation in her step towards the bedroom.
“Since when am I not invited into the bedroom?” Danny called out.
Liv looked over her shoulder and smiled at Danny. She said nothing; she didn’t need to say anything, her eyes spoke louder than words would’ve. And just like that she disappeared into him.
Danny waited and looked around the cabin thinking about what happened at his father’s house.
Had he really trashed the bedroom? And what did he find?