Page 3 of Collide

“Why is it Guitar Central knows these things before me?” The e-magazine isn’t really a rag, and surprisingly, as a kid of a famous entertainer, I do occasionally read it for the history of music. This particular news came across my feed because I have all my social media tagged for alerts about her.

My mother.

The once reigning rock queen Kit Carrigan.

“She didn’t want you to worry?” I hate it when my mother does this. She makes decisions for me, about her, about us, as if I’m a child and only mother knows best. “She knew you’d rush here, and she didn’t want you to give up on your dream.” Dream? It was my mother’s dream for me to go to college. I wasn’t against it, but when she was first diagnosed, I was eighteen and feared she’d die right away, so I didn’t want to leave her.

Nothing will take me from my babies. Not even cancer, she’d admonished. As if she could control the disease like she tries to control everything. Her love life. My life. Her band. She’s a diva in many ways but keeping her feelings close to her chest, and everything else on a short leash has made her a powerhouse in the industry. Female rock star. Advocate for single mothers. Speaker on breast cancer awareness.

“When did you find out?” I ask Uncle Tommy and then brace myself for the answer. I’m sure it’s probably been weeks because I’m always the last to know. “And why am I finding out from a tabloid?”

“You know you shouldn’t believe everything you read in that trash.” My uncle’s smoky voice, rough and scratchy, typically soothes me, but not today. Today, I vibrate with anger and a need for answers.

“Don’t avoid the issue,” I demand, my voice sterner than I feel. My legs still shake from the energy I expounded with Gage Everly. Yeah, I know who he is, but I can’t let a pretty face distract me from the issue at hand.

“I’m not avoiding. I’ll tell you anything you need to know.” Need to know? As if I didn’t need to know her cancer was back. He also means he’ll tell me what Mother has deemed appropriate and nothing more without her permission. It’s amazing to consider he’s her older brother when she clearly outranks him. She’s the success he wasn’t with Colt45, a band he started with his cousin, Denton Chance, and another guy named Tucker Ashe. They were a few-hits wonder until they crumbled. By then, my mother had arrived in California and was pregnant with me. She had the voice of a fallen angel, and she and my dad were trying to make it as a duo until his death.

“Well, what do I need to know?”

When Tommy’s head lowers, I know the news won’t be good.

“There’s nothing they can do this time.”

“How can that be true?” My mother had a double mastectomy, an aggressive measure to remove everything. She’d gone too long thinking the aches and pains and strange fevers were from the wear and tear of her profession. She didn’t take care of herself. When the doctors discovered her initial lumps—note multiple—they operated with the hopes of removing every dangerous cell. My mother did chemotherapy, which was hard to hide from the band and her fans, so she took a break and planned to do a few revival concerts for her comeback.

“Docs say it was in other places,” my uncle says with a hint of Southern twang. He and my mother are originally from Texas, but I’ve never met my grandparents. They disowned both their children for running off and following the devil of music.

“So they just missed it?” I shriek. He shakes his head. He knows more than he’s willing to tell, and even though I hate him for it, at the same time, I love him for trying to protect me. He’s always been there for me, especially when Mother became emotionally distant. She’d go through spells of coddling and then keeping me at arm’s length. Often, those times involved drinking too much and Hank Paige, the drummer of the band.

“I don’t know the particulars,” he lies, keeping his dark eyes from mine.

“But it’s bad, isn’t it?”

“Really bad,” he offers, his voice struggling. At least I have some honesty for once.

“Where is she?”

“At the house.”

I shiver with the thought of the cold, sterile home my mother keeps. It was only a house since we spent most of my life on the road. Tutors educated me. Mother didn’t want me away from her except for the times when she did.

“What about the tour?” I hate to ask. I don’t care one bit about tours, or audiences, or fans, but it’s the nature of being raised in this business. It’s a business, baby girl, providing us with food on our table and clothes on our back.Be grateful. She exaggerated because we had more than our fair share.

“We’ll need to cancel.” Mother would never give in, not even to cancer. I’d read the tabloids. The rumors of the band being on shaky ground. Hank Paige and his drinking. Denton Chance’s verbal displeasure. The carousing of Lawson Colt. They were a band led by a female phenom when the concept and profitability were dying out. It was no longer the 80s.

“How is she doing?”

“I think she’d like to see you.”

Then why didn’t she call me? Why wasn’t she the one to tell me?

“And tonight?” The Theatre is sold out.

“It’s our last.”

“Fuck,” I mutter.

“Don’t talk like that, baby girl.” He’s one to lecture me with his creative language.