Page 71 of I Dreamt That You Loved Me
Gabriel didn’t look the least bit surprised by this revelation. “I guess you’ve never heard of the Rogue Prophets, which is a good thing.”
“Iknowwho the Rogue Prophets are.” He sounded insulted that I would even dare to suggest such a thing. “I owned all their albums until that junkie stole my cassette tapes.”
Not the point, at all, but okay. I planted my feet on the dash and stared out the windshield. “I just thought you would have been more surprised.”
He cleared his throat. “I kind of figured it out. When I met your mom, I thought she looked familiar but wasn’t sure why. Long story short, I had a bunch of overdue library books at home and one of them wasFalse Prophet. There was a photo of your mom in there. That book was a load of garbage, by the way. That asshole must have really hated Nick Ashby.”
The biography was written by one of the founding members of the Rogue Prophets, my dad’s former best friend, Rob Davies. They met in primary school, and by the time they were thirteen, they were performing together at the local pub. They had a falling out and Rob got kicked out of the band. And while I don’t know the exact details and never read the book, I knew it was over my mom. “He was just looking to dish the dirt, which wasn’t hard to find.”
“It sounded like he had a personal vendetta. He had zero appreciation for everything your father contributed to rock music and couldn’t even begin to fathom Nick Ashby’s poetic genius. Davies was jealous of your dad’s talent, and it sounded as if he thought your mom should have been with him. That came through loud and clear. He had no business writing that biography.”
A rock and roll love triangle. My mother couldn’t stand Rob Davies. Even before that biography was published, she’d never trusted him.
“Then I guess we’d better not let him write yours.”
“No one’s going to write my fucking biography. I should put that in writing. If I die tomorrow, keep my journals in a safe place. The only person allowed to read them is you.”
“Just don’t die and we won’t have to worry about it,” I said. “I can’t believe you knew all this time and didn’t say anything.”
He shrugged. “I knew you’d tell me whenever you were ready. When you trusted me enough to talk about it. But since you never mentioned your dad, I figured you had some unresolved feelings about him.”
He was quiet for a minute, eyes on the road, and I stared at his profile.
“He was a great musician,” he said. “An innovative guitarist. A gifted wordsmith. His voice was limitless. Bluesy, raspy,powerful, intense but so nuanced. On some songs it’s so pure and clean.”
Now that I’d admitted that Nick Ashby was my dad, it was like the floodgates had opened. Gabriel couldn’t stop talking about him.
“I remember the first time I heard ‘Baby Blue’ on the radio. That song got stuck in my head and I couldn’t stop singing it. I must have been around twelve. When I bought the album, I read the liner notes, and it blows my mind to think I was listening to a song written about you all those years ago.” Gabriel shook his head like he couldn’t get over it. Neither could I, to be honest. “I loved his music and I have a deep and abiding appreciation for the Rogue Prophets, but I didn’tknowthe man.”
Sounded like he knewa lot. His blatant hero worship made me feel all prickly.
“Yeah, well, neither did I,” I said. That wasn’t entirely true, but my dad was impossible to pin down, so it felt true. “He came in and out of my life and never stuck around for long. But whenever he gave me any attention, I was so pathetically happy. I always try to remember the bad things, all the ways he let me down, and I try to block out the good memories, you know? Because if he loved me like he said he did, then why didn’t he stick around?”
Gabriel didn’t say anything. He reached for my hand and held it.
I looked down at our joined hands resting on the center console, and I thought,This is what love looks like. When someone holds your hand and doesn’t let go.
I blinked back my tears and stared out the side window.
He squeezed my hand. “It’s okay to cry, you know. It’s okay to feel sad and angry and hurt. And it’s okay to love someone who didn’t love themselves as much as you would have wished they did. It’s okay, Cleo.”
Gabriel made me feel so seen, like we were so in sync that he had an intuitive understanding of my emotions. “It’s been almost eight years. I shouldn’t even care anymore.”
“I don’t think time has anything to do with it,” he said. “My mom took off when I was six and it still bothers me. When I was a kid, I always thought that it was my fault. That she just didn’t love me enough to stay. But now I don’t think that’s true. I think she was just messed up and my father made her life a living hell. I think people leave because they have so much of their own shit to deal with and they don’t want to drag you down. In a weird, fucked-up way, I think that’s their way of showing you that they love you. By not burdening you with the heavy load they’re carrying.”
I’m not sure I believed that. It sounded like an easy out, but I got the feeling that he needed to believe it. That was how he justified his mother abandoning him. “Do you remember her?”
“I remember some things. We used to sing together in the car all the time. Joni Mitchell. Lots of Joni,” he said with a smile. “My mom had a really beautiful voice. There for a while, I thought she actuallywasJoni Mitchell.”
We both laughed.
“What was she like?”
He squinted against the sun pouring through the windshield. “Fragile. Beautiful. Sad. Even as a kid, I could feel her sadness. That’s why I like to remember us singing together. It was the only time she ever looked happy.”
“Have you ever looked for her?”
“When I was out in LA, I drove all around Laurel Canyon.” He let go of my hand to flick on the turn signal and change lanes and now we were flying down the highway with the summer breeze blowing through the windows and the sun melting the dash. “I had this crazy notion that she’d be there and thatsomehow, I’d find her. But I never did. After that, I just let it go. If she wanted to be in my life, she could have found me.”
