Abbi Glines: Rush Too Far

T hey say that children have the purest hearts. That children don’t truly hate, because they don’t fully understand the emotion. They forgive and forget easily.

They say a lot of bullshit like that, because it helps them sleep at night. It makes for good, heartwarming sayings to hang on their walls and smile at as they pass by.

I know differently. Children love like no one else. They have the capacity to love more fiercely than anyone. That much is true. That much I know. Because I lived it. By the age of ten, I knew hate, and I knew love. Both all-consuming. Both life-altering. And both completely blinding.

Looking back now, I wish someone had been there to see how my mother had sown the seed of hate inside me. Inside my sister. If someone had been there to save us from the lies and bitterness she allowed to fester within us, then maybe things would have been different. For everyone involved.

I never would have acted so foolishly. It wouldn’t have been my fault that a girl was left alone to take care of her ailing mother. It wouldn’t have been my fault that the same girl stood at her mother’s graveside, believing that the last person on earth who loved her was dead. It wouldn’t have been my fault that a man had destroyed himself, his life becoming a broken, hollow shell.

But no one saved me.

No one saved us.

We believed the lies. We held on to our hate. Yet I alone destroyed an innocent girl’s life.

They say you reap what you sew. That’s bullshit, too. Because I should be burning in hell for my sins. I shouldn’t be allowed to wake up every morning with this beautiful woman in my arms, who loves me unconditionally. I shouldn’t get to hold my son and know such a pure joy.

But I do.

Because eventually, someone did save me. I didn’t deserve it. Hell, more than anyone, it was my sister who needed saving. She hadn’t acted on her hate. She hadn’t manipulated the fate of another family, not caring about the outcome. But her bitterness still controls her, while I’ve been delivered. By a girl . . .

But she isn’t just a girl. She is an angel. My angel. A beautiful, strong, fierce, loyal angel who entered my life in a pickup truck, carrying a gun.

T his isn’t your typical love story. It’s really too completely fucked up to be charming. But when you’re the bastard son of the legendary drummer from one of the most beloved rock bands in the world, you expect serious fuck-ups. It’s what we’re known for. Add the selfish, spoiled, self-centered mother who raised me into the mix, and the outcome isn’t pretty.

There are so many places where I could start this story. In my bedroom, as I held my sister while she cried from the pain of our mother’s cruel words. At the front door, as she watched, with tears streaming down her face, while my father came to take me away for the weekend, leaving her alone. Both of those things happened often, marking me forever. I hated to see her cry. Yet it was a part of my life.

We shared the same mother, but our fathers were different. Mine was a famous rocker, who brought me into his world of sex, drugs, and rock and roll every other weekend and for a month during the summers. He never forgot me. He never made excuses. He was always there. As imperfect as he was, Dean Finlay always showed up to get me. Even if he wasn’t sober, he came.

Nan’s father never came. She was alone when I was gone, and even though I loved being with my dad, I hated knowing she needed me. I was her parent. I was the one person she could trust to take care of her. It made me grow up quickly.

When I asked my dad to bring her along, too, he would get this sad look on his face and shake his head. “Can’t, son. Wish I could, but your momma won’t allow that.”

He never said anything more. I just knew that if my mother wouldn’t allow it, then there was no hope. So Nan was left alone. I wanted to hate someone for that, but hating my mother was hard. She was my mom. I was a kid.

So I found a place to focus my hate and resentment at the injustice of Nan’s life. The man who didn’t come to see her. The man whose blood ran through her veins yet didn’t love her enough even to send a birthday card. He had his own family now. Nan had been to see them once.

She had forced Mom to take her to his house. She wanted to talk to him. See his face. She just knew he would love her. I think, deep down, she thought Mom hadn’t told him about her. She had this fairy tale in her head that her father would realize she existed and swoop in and save her. Give her the love she so desperately sought.

His house had been smaller than ours. Much smaller. It was seven hours away in a small country town in Alabama. Nan had said it was perfect. Mom had called it pathetic. It hadn’t been the house, though, that haunted Nan. Not the small white picket fence that she described to me in detail. Or the basketball hoop outside and the bicycles leaning against the garage door.

It had been the girl who opened the door. She’d had long blond hair, almost white. She had reminded Nan of a princess. Except that she’d been wearing tennis shoes with dirt on them. Nan had never owned a pair of tennis shoes or been near dirt. The girl had smiled at her, and Nan had been momentarily enchanted. Then she’d seen the pictures on the wall behind the girl. Pictures of this girl and another girl just like this one. And a man holding both their hands. He was smiling and laughing.

He was their father.

This was one of the two daughters he loved. It had been obvious, even to Nan’s young eyes, that he was happy in those photos. He wasn’t missing the child he had left behind. The one her mother kept telling her he knew about.

All those things our mother had tried to tell her over the years that she had refused to believe suddenly fell into place. She had been telling the truth. Nan’s father hadn’t wanted her, because he had this life. These two beautiful, angelic daughters and a wife who looked so much like them.

Those photos on the wall had tortured Nan for years afterward. Again, I wanted to hate my mother for taking her there. For shoving the truth in her face. At least when Nan had lived in her fairy tale, she had been happier, but her innocence was lost that day. And my hate for her father and his family began to grow inside me.

They had taken from my little sister the life she deserved, a father who could love her. Those girls didn’t deserve him more than Nan did. That woman he was married to used her beauty and those girls to keep him from Nan. I hated them all.

I eventually acted on that hate, but the story really starts the night Blaire Wynn walked into my house with a nervous frown and the fucking face of an angel. My worst nightmare . . .

I had told Nan I didn’t want people over that night, but she’d invited them anyway. My little sister didn’t take no for an answer ever. Leaning back on the couch, I stretched my legs out in front of me and took a drink of my beer. I needed to hang around here long enough to make sure things weren’t going to get out of hand. Nan’s friends were younger than mine. They got a little rowdy sometimes. But I put up with it because it made her happy.

Mom running off to fucking Paris with her new husband, Nan’s still-inattentive father, hadn’t helped Nan’s mood lately. This was all I could think of to cheer her up. For once in her life, I wished my mother would think of someone other than herself.