Free Black Gold by Ruby Laska Page B

pulled off her shoes, hopping from one foot to the other in a way that made the tails of her blouse flutter, and took off running down the path, whimpering and cradling her shoes to her chest like they were newborn kittens.
     

CHAPTER EIGHT
     
    Chase stood in front of his closet, staring at the row of shirts. Every one of them was at least five years old. Five years ago was the last time he'd made any decent money, the summer he'd picked up a sweet construction job to supplement his teaching and the few singing gigs he scraped together.
    In May—after the funeral, after the reading of the will and the sale of the company that Gerald had instructed take place after his death, after the inheritance hit Chase's bank account—there was a day when Chase walked out the door of the cramped basement apartment he'd been renting and wondered if he should go shopping. He had certainly put off buying a lot of things: new clothes, a smart phone, a car that started when the temperature dipped below forty degrees.
    But he couldn't bring himself to do it. His father had left him enough money to live on for at least a couple of decades, more if he didn't upgrade his lifestyle. Chase finally could afford to tour beyond rural Arkansas, to spring for some time in the recording studios in Little Rock, to invest in headshots and a wardrobe to go along with his demo tapes.
    And standing in the doorway that fine spring morning, Chase suddenly understood that his dream—the ten years he'd spent practicing and writing songs and playing in every back room and roadhouse in the county—had all been for nothing. No, not for nothing—for Gerald. It had all been meant to prove something, to prove that he was worthy of his father's attention.
    But accompanying that blinding realization was a second one: it wouldn't ever have worked. There was only one version of Chase his father was interested in spending time with, and that was the imaginary son who would be exactly like himself. Gerald had been many things—a shrewd businessman, a motivating and fair boss, a wise investor—but he lacked the ability to appreciate that his only child needed to follow a different path. Now he was dead, and nothing that Chase could have done would ever have made Gerald love him.
    If I could buy tomorrow in a store...
    Of all the songs he'd written—and there were binders full of them, back in the storage unit, though he knew most of them by heart—"If I Could Buy Tomorrow" had been the song that most expressed his feelings about his father. It played in his mind the morning of the funeral as he polished his worn dress shoes and put on his only suit and drove to the church, where he sat in the middle of the crowd of employees and people from the business community who he'd never met, paying his unspoken respects. He'd written his longing and his sadness into that song, his wish that there could have been a day when Gerald accepted him the way he was: not a businessman, but a man who liked to work with his hands, who got satisfaction from honest labor and sweat. All the years of working in construction by day and singing at night, it was the construction jobs that Chase had most loved. He'd just never stopped and thought long enough to realize it. Would Gerald have accepted him any more easily if he'd become a derrick hand years ago? Probably not—but at least Chase would have accepted himself.
    That's what the song was about, acceptance and wishing and regret. So why had he sung it, of all things, for this stranger who had shown up at the worst possible time, to try to drag him back to a life he no longer wanted?
    And why, for the love of God, had she kissed him?
    His face was burning from the memory when Jayne pushed open his bedroom door and came to stand next to him, hands on her hips.
    "Sweet Mary, don't you ever knock?" he demanded. "What if I'd been in my skivvies?"
    "I've seen it all, living with four men," she said placidly. "Now, what are you wearing for