Page 74 of Lost and Lassoed

Riley giggled. “Dad says we’re not supposed to say that word.”

“We’ll let it slide,” I said, trying not to laugh. Riley nodded.

“There are a lot of amazing drummers who are girls, Sunshine,” Teddy said. “Meg White, Karen Carpenter, Sheila E”—she was getting excited. “We’ll listen to them, and you’ll see how badass they are.”

“Can you drum?” Riley asked.

“I can,” Teddy said. “But I haven’t for a while.”

Riley’s eyes went wide. “Drum, drum, drum!” she said. She looked at me—she was vibrating again. God, she was going to be tired tonight. “Dad, tell Teddy to drum!”

Teddy flipped to face me, and her ponytail hit me in the face. “Hey,” I said, “watch where you swing that thing.” I didn’t really care, though. “You can’t leave us hanging,” I said. Teddy rolled her blue eyes, but it looked like she was trying not to smile. She walked over to the drum kit. Riley immediately vacated her seat and handed the drumsticks to Teddy.

“What do you say, Hank?” she said as she sat down. “Should we give them a duet?” Hank’s eager nod was accompanied by a hearty laugh. He looked twenty years younger with the guitar across his lap.

Teddy took a deep breath and cracked her neck like she was gearing up for the biggest performance of her life. She nodded a few times, counting her way in, then hit it. The beat sounded familiar—I couldn’t place it until Hank started picking at his guitar—“Fortunate Son” by Creedence Clearwater Revival.

I watched Teddy and her father in awe. They were connected by the music. It was like Teddy was playing the drums with her entire body—not just her arms or her foot on the kick drum.

Hank’s face had gone full rock star. I knew he’d been a drummer, but damn, he was playing the shit out of that guitar! When Teddy’s and Hank’s eyes met, they grinned at each other and got even more into what they were doing—letting the music totally take over.

Riley was jumping and clapping and dancing in the middle of the garage, and I pushed off from the garage door to meet her on her makeshift dance floor.

She squealed when I grabbed her hand and gave her a twirl. Her delighted giggle was the only thing that sounded better than the music Teddy and Hank were playing. As my daughter and I danced together, I knew this moment would be one of those memories that I thought back on at every big moment in her life—when she got her driver’s license, graduated from high school, college—when she got married, if that’s what she wanted. I’d put it in the same place as all the other memories I had of Riley, as well as of my mom, my dad, and my siblings, holding it close to me.

I’d think about the time my daughter and I danced together in Teddy Andersen’s garage.

I picked Riley up and held her close to my chest. I looked over her shoulder at Teddy, who was smiling at us as if she was thinking the same thing, and I was struck with an overwhelming feeling of happiness, and something else I couldn’t name, that Teddy was here too.

Chapter 33

Teddy

When I was a kid, I had a bad habit of drawing on—well, everything, including the couch and especially the walls. I drew on them constantly—paper was too small a canvas for what I wanted to create, especially when I was upset, which is when I drew the most.

My dad could’ve yelled at me or gotten mad—honestly, he probably should have—but he didn’t. He redirected me. He told me that if I stopped drawing on the walls, the outside of the garage was all mine. He said I could draw on it, paint on it, throw glitter on it—anything I wanted—as long as I stopped drawing on the walls (and furniture) in the house.

As a kid, the garage seemed so much bigger than the walls in the house, so obviously—much to Hank’s relief—I picked the garage.

After that, the back of the garage became my own little world—at least when it was warm enough for me to be outside for long periods of time without risk of hypothermia or loss of limb. I planted flowers and hung twinkle lights, and I painted.

I painted when I was happy and I painted when I was sad, but mostly, I painted when I needed to think. And right now, I desperately needed to think.

So today, I was painting. I hadn’t done it in a while, not like this. I pulled my hair up, put on an old pair of shorts and a paint-stained T-shirt, pulled out my paints, and got to work.

When I painted, the same thing happened as when I was listening to music or working on clothes; it was like the front half of my brain turned off, which made room for the things that were all jumbled in the back of my brain to start working themselves out.

And my brain was filled to the brim with thoughts of August Ryder. A man I’d always respected but had never liked until recently, and I think the feeling was mutual.

I tried to pinpoint it—the moment things had changed—but I couldn’t. There wasn’t one moment that stuck out for me—just a bunch of little ones, like lit matches I’d kept throwing onto the box of dynamite that was Gus, and eventually one had hit the fuse and blown up everything I’d ever thought I knew about him.

Or maybe we were the lit matches.

Before, when I thought about Gus, I thought about who he was in relation to other people—Emmy’s brother, Brooks’s best friend, Riley’s dad. Now, when I thought about him, I thought about who he was in relation to me—someone who understood my fears and wants and burdens and didn’t scoff at them or even try to take them away—I think because he knew that they could be heavy, but it was the heavy things that I loved the most.

It was weird, to feel so strongly about Gus in one way andthen in an entirely different way. I wondered how I could have crossed the spectrum of feelings that I felt for him so quickly, but those feelings also felt like two sides of the same coin.

There was this little voice in the very back of my head that wondered if my desire to be loved and settled in my life was pushing me to feel something that I otherwise wouldn’t, but I didn’t think that was the case.

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