Losing Faith (6 page)

Trista walked over to her daughter. “Honey, you can’t take off like that. You’ve got to stick with me.”

Savannah looked up at her with red, tear-stained cheeks. “I don’t wanna go, Mom. My friends are here. Trey’s here. I love him, Mom.”

Trista dropped her luggage and took a seat next to Savannah. “I know. Trust me, I know. I was just two years older than you when I fell in love. And I…I didn’t want to lose him either.”

Savannah looked at her mom. “Daddy?”

Trista nodded, and her jaw tightened as she tried to keep from crying. “That’s right.”

“I can’t remember him anymore. I used to have memories of him. Pushing me on the swing. Carrying me on his shoulders. And I still do have those memories. But he’s…fuzzy. I feel like I’m losing him again.”

“Oh, honey. You’re never going to lose your father.” Trista placed a hand on her heart. “He’s always going to be right here.”

“I wish he were here now.”

Trista ached for her daughter. She gathered Savannah in her arms. “Me too, honey.”

Chapter 7

Seth

Seth stared at the unforgiving clock in the rented Malibu. Nashville to Fort Wayne would normally take about seven hours, but in this weather, all bets were off. Ten hours was probably optimistic. Considering the luck he had had lately, optimism was the only thing he had left, and that was in short supply. He glanced at the guitar case lying in the back seat and looked at the photograph of Faith. He had to get to her.

The storm sent large snowflakes careening toward the windshield, reminding him that as rough as things had been thus far, the journey had just begun.

As if reading his mind, Frank said, “Don’t worry. We’ll get there.”

“I’m not worried,” Seth lied.

“You’ve been looking down at that clock like it’s going to disappear if you take your eyes off it.” Frank flashed a faint smile. “Relax. It’s going to be a long ride.”

“I’m fine.” Seth turned to Frank. There was something familiar about him. “Have we ever met?”

Frank glanced over at Seth. “I don’t think so.”

It was his eyes. Something about them registered a familiarity that he couldn’t quite place. “Are you from Nashville?”

“No. Just visiting.”

“Business?”

Frank looked at Seth, but he didn’t answer him right away. Then he turned his focus back to the road. “You could say that.”

“I’m from Fort Wayne, too,” Seth said.

“What brought you to Nashville? Business?”

Seth stole a page from Frank’s book. “You could say that.”

“I’m originally from Chicago,” Frank volunteered. “I was born and raised there. Then about twenty-five years ago, I met my wife, Emma, a small-town girl from Fort Wayne, and the rest was history. What about you?”

Seth rubbed the tattoo on the back of his hand. “Born and raised Hoosier. Lived there with my father until I was twenty-two. Came to Nashville for the music.”

“I saw the guitar.” Frank motioned to the back seat. “You some sort of musician?”

Seth smiled. Where had this old guy been for the past year?

Frank looked puzzled. “Did I say something funny?”

Seth shook his head. “No. I’ve dabbled a bit in music. But I haven’t done much with it over the past year. I’ve been…busy.”

“So what takes you back to Fort Wayne? Is that where your girl is?”

The windshield wipers whipped back and forth, reminding Seth of the storm he had driven through the night he first missed his flight almost two months earlier. Except this time the windshield was getting hit with large flakes of snow. It was a night he’d never forget. He had lost more than a flight that night. “Yeah,” he replied. “She’s waiting for me there.” Or at least, that’s what he’d like to believe.

“How old is she? If you don’t mind my asking.”

“No.” Seth shook his head. “She just turned seven last week.” He took out his wallet and pulled out a picture of her in her basketball uniform.

Frank flashed a smile that Seth recognized. A father’s smile. “She’s beautiful.”

“Her name’s Faith.”

“Well, she looks very happy.”

Seth didn’t respond. Her happiness had been something he had spent countless hours contemplating for the past seven months. He knew that she was in good hands. He just hoped that she’d be ready to come with him when he got there. “What about you?” Seth asked.

“What about me?”

“Do you have a girl or a boy?”

Frank shot him a curious look.

“You look like a father.”

“That obvious, huh?” Frank turned toward the road. He was silent for several seconds before responding. “My little girl hasn’t been little for a long time now.” Frank’s smile, warm enough to shatter the bitterness of the blizzard they were forging through, told Seth how much he loved his daughter. “Never a dull day.” Then he turned to Seth. “Can I give you a piece of advice? From one father to another?”

Seth nodded.

“Cherish each and every day. They grow up faster than you realize. Then one day you’ll wake up, walk into the kitchen for your morning coffee and breakfast, and turn to an empty chair at the table and wonder, ‘Where did it all go?’” Frank paused for several seconds, clearly reliving his past. “Well, that’s just a piece of advice from an old man.”

Seth thought about the first time he had seen Faith. He had sung a soft song to her and watched as her eyes struggled to open as they followed the sound of his voice. It was the first time he had cried since his father had passed away. “Faith is the first thing I have ever done right in this world,” he told Frank.

“I certainly doubt that.” Frank leaned forward and wiped some fog from his side of the windshield. “Oh, no.”

“What is it?” Seth’s eyes followed Frank’s line of sight until he saw the cause of worry. And just like that, the ten-hour trip he’d been hoping for slipped through his fingers as quickly as Faith had seven months ago. “Are you kidding me?” Yellow flashing lights lit up the orange sign on the side of the road. ROAD CLOSED 5 MILES AHEAD. “Now what are we going to do?”

Seth slowed the Malibu. “The storm must be worse here than in Nashville.”

“There has to be a small town or a rest stop or something ahead. We can get off at the next exit and figure out a way around this mess,” Frank said.

A small town, an exit, a way around this mess. It all added up to more time. Time he didn’t have. Time Faith didn’t have.

“There,” Frank said, pointing to a green exit sign. “That’s got to be the last exit before the road closes.”

Seth eased onto the ramp, slowing his speed. He watched as the speedometer dropped further and further. They drove a few miles for what seemed like hours looking for a small town, but bad luck had seemingly followed them. A lonely stretch of snow-covered road led to more snow-covered roads. “Over there!” Frank pointed to an isolated gas station surrounded by barren fields.

Seth pulled into the nearly empty parking lot of the BP gas station.

“We should probably fill up now,” Frank said. “The last thing I want is to get stuck in the middle of nowhere with no gas.”

Seth nodded. “You want me to get the gas?”

“No, I can do that. Why don’t you see if you can talk to the attendant and find a way out of this mess?”

“Sounds good.” Seth opened his door. A powerful wind caught it, nearly tearing it from his grasp.

“I’ll be in after I top her off.”

Seth nodded and shoved his hands into his pockets, making his way through the snow. Each foot disappeared into a cloud of white powder, reminding him of winters they used to have growing up in Northern Indiana.

A digital bell rang when Seth opened the door, sounding his arrival. The man behind the checkout counter gave him a nod. “Can I help you?” His accent was as thick as butter. Tennessee through and through. He stood well over six feet tall and had tufts of dark hair springing from a red baseball cap.

Seth quickly scanned the counter before picking up a state map. “My friend and I just got off I69. Looks like the road is closed just north of here. Do you know of another way?”

The attendant stared at Seth and produced a Pepsi can from behind the counter. Without so much as blinking, he spit brown liquid into the can and set it back down. “You from around these parts? You sure do look familiar.”

Seth just waited, knowing that the clerk would figure it out. Yep, there it was. The clerk smiled. It was a smile of recognition. The same smile Seth had enjoyed during the beginning stages of his music career but had grown to hate since. “I do know you,” the clerk said, nodding. “You’re that famous country singer. The one who just got out of one of those fancy rehab joints.”

Seth nodded. The rehab singer. Nice. “What do you say, buddy? Is there a way north?”

The tall attendant slapped his hand on the counter. “Man, my girlfriend ain’t gonna believe this. She has your last CD.” He leaned forward and placed a hand to the side of his mouth, whispering, “Not my cup of brew. A little too girly for me.”

Nice. He took the high road. “Well, I’m glad your girlfriend likes it.”

“She sure does. She pulls out the CD booklet and stares at it when she listens to it.” He scratched his head. “I guess she likes reading the lyrics.”

Seth thought it wise not to tell him that his last CD hadn’t come with printed lyrics. A decision made by his manager, Adam.
If your fans want to read the lyrics, they’ll Google them like every other person,
he had said. Instead, the booklet had been filled with photos of Seth. Shirtless photos. “So how do I get north, buddy?”

The attendant looked down at the map Seth had set on the counter and started drawing instructions on it with a pen. Good thing he had planned on buying this one, Seth thought. The clerk added a few more directions and handed him the map. Seth looked down at the chicken scratches and hoped Frank would be able to make better sense of them than he could.

“Thanks, man,” he told the cashier. “How much do I owe you?”

“It’s on the house.”

Seth unfolded his wallet. “No, I insist.”

“Tell you what.” The man pulled out a greasy napkin from a McDonald’s sack and slapped it down on the counter. Then he pulled a pen from behind his ear and handed it to Seth. “You write my girl a nice autographed note, and that should settle it.”

He had been asked more times than he could count to sign an autograph for a fan. He used to enjoy it. Now it seemed…phony and pointless. “Sure. What’s her name?”

“Darlene. And say somethin’ smooth that you singer types like to say to chicks.”

“Somethin’ smooth.” Seth tapped the end of the pen on the counter, trying to think of something that would make the Randy Travis look-alike happy. Then he scribed the autograph and handed back his pen.

The clerk read the message. A smile wide enough to cover half of Texas formed on his face. “Oh, you’re good. She’s gonna love this.” He folded it up and tucked it into his back pocket.

The bell rang again, and Frank walked inside, stomping the snow from his boots.

“I’ve got directions,” Seth said, holding up the map. He headed toward the door, looking back to thank the attendant, when something hard slammed into him. “What the?” He turned to find a man with curly brown hair standing in front of him. “Oh, sorry. I wasn’t paying attention to where I was going.”

“It’s no problem,” the man said. “I should’ve been watching where I was going, too.” Seth looked down at the little boy by his side, and it hit him. It was the same father and son who had stood near him at the airport, the ones who had given him the idea to rent a car. Seth smiled down at the boy.

The man placed his hands on his son’s shoulders and pulled him to the side away from Seth.

“Listen, man, it was an accident. I just wasn’t paying attention.”

“Daddy, isn’t that—”

“He’s no one, son. Just a guy who should really watch where he’s going.”

“Is there a problem?” Seth asked.

The man sneered. “No problem. In fact, why don’t you let me buy you a drink? After all, you are a drunk, right?”

And there it was. The new look of recognition that Seth had been receiving lately.

“Is there a problem?” Frank asked.

“No problem. But your friend should really watch where he’s going. That’s how people get hurt.”

Seth’s jaw tightened. Enough was enough. Threatening e-mails and a mailbox full of pissed off “fan mail” was one thing. But standing in front of a judgmental prick who knew about as much about him as the paparazzi did was all he could take.

Frank set a hand on Seth’s shoulder and pulled him back. “He’s sorry. It was an accident. Won’t happen again.”

Seth looked down at the little boy, a spitting image of his narrow-minded father and as innocent as his own little girl. He forced a smile. “Won’t happen again.”

Frank and Seth took a few steps back before turning to the door and exiting the gas station. Seth’s face cooled from an angry one hundred and fifty degrees down to ten in an instant, waking him from the rage, from the shame that had become his life. They made their way through the blinding snow, now blowing horizontal due to the high winds, to the car. Seth took one last look at the gas station before getting inside.

“Did you know that guy?” Frank asked.

Seth shook his head. “No.”

Frank rubbed his hands together like he was trying to start a fire with them. “What was that about then?”

Seth absentmindedly rubbed the tattoo on the back of his hand as he searched for a way to explain it, to make sense of it, but nothing came to mind. How did you tell someone you barely knew about the biggest mistakes you’d ever made? Mistakes that would forever define Seth Storm.

He turned to Frank and said the only thing he could, “Faith.”

Chapter 8

Trista

Trista slammed her hand on the steering wheel. “Not now!” This was why she should have stayed in line for a rental car. A dependable vehicle. An unrecognizable vehicle. But they had spent too much time at the airport already. That, and Savannah wouldn’t stop drawing attention to them over that rude cowboy standing in line. What a jerk that guy had been. Cute, but still a jerk. Seth Storm. Not anyone she had ever heard of before, but then again, she hadn’t ever developed a taste for modern country music.