JULY 15th, 1998, LOS ANGELES, CA

            IT WAS GETTING late. The sun was disappearing in the sky, its light growing weaker through the set of blinds that shaded Reagan's office window. She should have been home by now, but she wasn't. She was holed up in her office, staring emptily across it at the collection of framed posters she'd hung on the wall.

Normally, she would have never willingly stayed at work so late, especially when Gracie was home on her summer break. But Dave was also home, and if Dave was home spending time with Gracie, then Reagan felt less bad about hiding herself away like a coward.

The date on the calendar was bothering her. It was the fifteenth — the due date for the baby.

The weight of that loss had changed her. She'd been functioning on a steadily ticking countdown since she'd gotten pregnant in October, waiting patiently for all the things that Dave had promised. If things had gone as planned, they would have probably been at the hospital on that night, celebrating the birth of their second child.

Dave would be taking his hiatus from the Foo Fighters and Reagan would be dizzy with the happiness that she'd so intensely yearned for over the last three years.

Her life as it was now was a bleak contrast to all that she'd planned.

Sometimes, she told herself that if she could shake off the funk she'd that slipped into in January, things would be okay. If she could process the grief of what she'd endured and if she could accept who she'd married and the problems that came along with that decision, she would be fine.

Reagan had accepted that another baby wasn't going to fix the crux of her problems with Dave. It might have served as a temporary band-aid, which perhaps they both could have still used, but it was out of the question. Not only was she against trying for another baby, but she hadn't let Dave touch her since the miscarriage.

When she looked in the mirror, all she saw was the caricature of someone who'd gotten really good at lying her ass off. Not only had she lied to the people around her, but she'd lied to herself.

She was still depressed over that past January, but the real reason for her altered change in personality had more to do with the fact that she'd never have Dave exactly the way she wanted him.

It was the same old tug of war that she'd played between her brain and heart since she'd met him. Always torn between wanting what she'd originally envisioned with the love of her life, but also not wanting to tear apart his deepest aspirations.

Reagan understood now what Richard had been getting at the day after Gracie had been born and he'd visited her in the hospital. She'd been too young to grasp how tumultuous it was, being married to a person who was never there. And if he was there, all she could think about was the next time that he'd be gone, usually for longer than the amount of time that he spent by her side.

All of her thoughts felt poisonous. They seeped like black sludge in her brain, snatching all the light out of her life that she'd once revered. The only thing that had kept Reagan tethered to some fragment of a happy reality was Gracie. Only her daughter had managed to do that.

Reagan's eyes flickered to the phone on her desk. It hadn't rang, but she wasn't at all surprised. Dave had gotten used to the cold shoulder she was giving him awhile ago. It had all started right after he'd left again, right after she'd forced him out of the house and back on tour, after losing the baby.

She'd began to ignore his calls and slowly, she had stopped calling him back. If she did happen to pick up, Dave told her it was like 'pulling teeth' trying to get her to talk to him. When he had finally made it home just four days earlier for a brief break before the last shows of August, she'd resisted his attempts to hug and kiss her.

Deep down inside, Reagan was screaming. She wanted him to understand — as much as she loved him, she knew that she couldn't come to terms with his lifestyle anymore. Every step she'd so far taken away from him hadn't been made with the intent to hurt him. She'd only wanted to escape from her own pain, to spare him the dawning realization that she was growing tired of it all.

Another thirty minutes passed and finally, Reagan gave up the staring contest that she was having with her office wall. She collected her things and drove home, feeling numb the whole way there.

When she walked through the front door she saw that Gracie was still awake, running around the house with a cup full of apple juice. She threw herself into Reagan's arms when she saw her.

"Mommy, I missed you."

Hearing those words brought on a surge of guilt.

"I missed you too, baby," Reagan said, combing her fingers through Gracie's hair. It was soft, suggesting that Dave had already brushed it while getting her ready for bed.

"Come read me a book," Gracie insisted, tugging on Reagan's arm.

Reagan followed obediently, letting Gracie pull her down the hallway and towards the stairs. When they passed the living room, she caught a glimpse of Dave on the couch, a notebook in his lap and a pen in his hand.

He was writing song lyrics. She knew he was.

He didn't look up as he heard them pass.

In Gracie's room, Reagan pushed the thought of Dave away and tried to concentrate on her daughter. Throughout the fog she'd been in for the past six months, she had sworn to herself that she would never let it affect Gracie.

"Do you want to read this book?" Reagan asked, pulling one off of Gracie's cluttered bookshelf.

"No, Daddy already read me that one."

"Alright. How about this one?"

"Daddy read me that one last night."

Reagan sighed. Obviously, trying not to think about Dave was out of the question.

"I'll let you pick it then," she told Gracie. Gracie obliged, taking a full ten minutes to finalize her selection. Reagan read her the book slowly, letting Gracie's imagination run wild with every paragraph. When they finished, she helped her to the bathroom, making sure she brushed her teeth even though Gracie had learned forever ago to do it on her own.

Reagan was avoiding Dave and she couldn't deny that. Either way, Gracie was happy to have her there, always smiling and maintaining a bubbly attitude. She never stayed sad for too long, just like she hadn't mourned the loss of her would be-baby sibling. She'd handled it impressively after being told in childlike terms that her little brother or sister wasn't coming after all.

Reagan took Gracie to bed, soaking up another twenty minutes in which she wouldn't have to be alone with Dave. Once Gracie was lulled to sleep by Reagan's fingers caressing her back, Reagan knew there was no sense in hiding. She'd have to face him sooner or later.

She changed out of her work clothes, slipping into a pair of pajama shorts and a t-shirt. Childishly, she avoided choosing one of the many shirts that she'd stolen from Dave over the years. It was petty, but in a way, she didn't want to act as if things were alright.

He was right where she had left him downstairs. She paused in the entryway to the living room, digging her fingernails into her crossed arms and questioning her behavior, but she couldn't relent. She kept on towards the kitchen.

Things were starting to get maddening. Reagan knew how she felt and she had no issue validating those feelings, but it was almost humiliating that she couldn't express them to Dave. It wouldn't end well, she was certain. He wouldn't begin to understand if she'd tried to paint a picture of the huge wall that had been erected between them.

As she mindlessly made herself dinner, settling for leftover Kraft mac n' cheese that she'd made for Gracie that week, she heard Dave saunter into the kitchen. He was whistling and for some reason, the sound of it bothered her.

She looked up and saw him blocking the path she'd intended on taking away from him. He leaned against the wall, still carrying the tattered notebook that he'd been writing in.

"How was work?" he asked.

Although he'd been whistling just ten seconds prior, Reagan heard how tight his voice was. He was holding back.

"Fine," she answered, keeping her eyes trained on her dinner. She stirred it up with her fork, pretending to be more concerned with the noodles than she was with him.

"Just fine?"

"Yeah, just fine."

An awkward silence fell over them. To prevent herself from having to say anything else, Reagan shoveled mac n' cheese into her mouth hastily.

"You know, that was Kurt's favorite," Dave said, nodding at her bowl. There was a small smile in his voice, an attempt to soften the tension between them, but it had the opposite effect on Reagan. Hearing Kurt's name startled her. And then, it pissed her off.

"Why are you bringing him up?" she asked irritably, slamming the bowl down onto the counter.

Dave looked at her incredulously, like she'd smacked him across the face.

"Why not?"

"Because you never talk about him. You don't like to. So why are you bringing him up right now?"

"Jesus Christ, Reagan. It's not that big of a deal."

"It is to me."

His jaw locked, giving Reagan the impression that he was fighting back all the things he wanted to say to her but couldn't. Not without starting a fight.

"I'm trying," he said in a low voice that simmered. "I'm fucking trying everything that I can."

Reagan's eyes met his and she kept her face stoic. Her irritation was morphing into anger and that anger that was spinning out of control. It was a senseless kind of rage, the kind that exploded randomly after being buried beneath grief for so long.

"You could have tried without bringing him into it," she muttered. She strode past Dave, trying and failing not to knock into him as she started down the hall and towards the stairs.

She didn't have to look back to know that he was following her, walking just as briskly as she was.

"You want to hear what I wrote tonight?" he asked. He finally sounded pissed off, taunting her in a voice that betrayed how close he was to snapping. "Don't you want to hear the lyric I came up with?"

Reagan ignored him. She had to.

He recited his lyric anyway, trying to goad her into confronting him.

"I just kinda' died for you, you just kinda' stared at me," he read loudly. "It's pretty poignant, don't you think?"

Reagan had only made it to the second step of the staircase when she whirled around, glaring at him furiously.

"What the fuck?" she demanded.

"Well, I had to get your attention some way," he shot back.

"You didn't."

She turned around to continue bounding up the stairs, but Dave lurched forward and grabbed her by her wrist. He held her there, tightly at first, until his fingers loosened and he joined her on the second step.

"Tell me what's happening," he said, moving close enough into her that she felt his breath fan over her face. "Can you just tell me?"

"Nothing is 'happening,' Dave."

"Something is fucking happening and you can't act like it's not. You've been a ghost for the last six months, Reagan. I feel like I've been living on a whole different goddamn planet than you."

"Welcome to my world," she muttered.

"What?" Dave demanded. He put his hands on her arms and though his voice was scathing, he held onto her gently, trying to get her to look at him. "What did you just say?"

"You know what I said."

She shimmied his hands off of her and darted away from the stairs. If he was going to follow her in search of a fight, she didn't want them to be near Gracie's room. She didn't want her to wake up to the sound of her parents arguing.

"What else can I fucking do?" he asked, chasing after Reagan into the living room and throwing his notebook roughly to the ground. She felt cornered, like a freshly caged animal caught in a trap.

"I don't want to have this conversation," she said, pacing the living room as Dave matched each one of her footsteps. She gave up and sat down stiffly on the edge of the couch once she realized that he wasn't going anywhere.

He got down on his knees in front of her.

"We need to have this conversation. I need to have this conversation. You're killing me. Every day that you fucking avoid me like this, you're killing me."

"You've been gone," Reagan mumbled. "I haven't been avoiding you."

"Reagan, I've been halfway across the world from you before and I've still never felt as far away from you as I do now. And I mean that."

She couldn't look up from her lap because she was scared of what she might see. If she saw tears glossing over his brown eyes, she would feel a million times guiltier than she already did. If he was crying, then she knew she'd inevitably let him down with her inability to cry along with him. To feel anything at all.

"Talk to me, baby," Dave pleaded. One of his hands disappeared into her hair, clasping the back of her neck and pulling her towards him. "I'm fucking begging you. Talk to me."

When Reagan refused to speak, he continued to press.

"Is it about what happened in January? Because if it is, I'm still here, I'm still ready to have another baby. Just tell me when and we can try-,"

"I don't want another baby!" Reagan cried.

He immediately fell silent. She looked at him, searching for the evidence of the heartbreak she knew that she'd just caused him, but all she saw was a blank expression.

"You don't?" he said, struggling to get those two scarce words out.

"Do you really think that will fix everything?" she whispered.

He pulled away from her, slouching back onto the floor and pulling his knees up. With his elbows resting on them, Dave lowered his head.

"I don't understand," he said softly.

If Reagan could have given him anything in the world, it would have been the ability to make him understand. She wanted to crack her own head wide open if it meant that Dave would get a glimpse inside of her thoughts, a long look at her mental anguish that not even she fully understood.

It all felt too far gone for her to even waste time explaining.

"I'm sorry," she said, swallowing against her bone dry throat. "I can't do this tonight."

She got up from the couch and left the room, leaving him alone on the living room floor with his head still hanging.

_______________

SEPTEMBER 22nd, 1998, SEATTLE, WA

           It was the kind of hole-in-the-wall bar where no one would notice him. And even if they did, they wouldn't have said anything. Dave had chosen the bar for that specific reason, assured that the surly trucker-types inhabiting it wouldn't have given a shit if even the original members of Lynard Skynard resurrected themselves and strolled inside.

Well, he thought, pushing the bar door open, maybe they would if it was Lynard Skynard.

He couldn't exactly pinpoint what had possessed him to run away to Seattle for a few days. He would have much rather disappeared to Virginia, but he'd come back to Washington with a purpose. He was in dire need to be in the presence of an old friend.

God only knew how tired Taylor must have been at that point of listening to him. His drummer had made a multitude of suggestions on how to repair his crumbling marriage, but after Dave had contradicted every single one of them, Taylor always settled on one last quick fix.

'Why don't you just fuck and make up?' he'd sigh, shrugging his shoulders as if the resolution was staggeringly obvious.

'That would be great if she was actually letting me come more than five feet near her,' was Dave's repetitive response. 

What Dave decided he really needed was to talk to someone who'd known Reagan for as long as he had. Maybe nowhere near as well, but it would help to unload his problems onto another person that had spent a lot of time with her, at least more than Taylor had so far.

That was why he had sought out Krist.

Reagan hadn't even batted an eye when he'd told her that he was going to Seattle. He'd held back the details, hoping that maybe his vagueness would scare her, but she hadn't questioned him. All she'd done was nod and say 'okay' in a voice that didn't belong to her, the same voice that she'd taken to using with him ever since January.

Dave was going crazy. He could almost feel the synapses in his brain sizzling, flickering out, and bursting. At that point, he would have preferred her actually fighting with him. He'd never liked arguing with her from the start, but he was at his wit's end with her perpetual silence. He would have rather her screamed at him, even thrown shit at his head if she felt up to it.

Anything would have been better than the same stony look she wore on her face every day.

He surveyed the bar, scanning his eyes around the low-lit space until he saw Krist sitting amongst the empty stools. Breathing out a sigh of relief, Dave approached him.

Krist smiled as he walked up. "Some date. I thought you were going to stand me up."

His enduring ability to lighten Dave's mood worked it's magic. Dave chuckled, grabbing his friend into a hug that definitely would have earned them several questioning looks if the bar hadn't been deserted.

"Hey, man. It's been awhile."

"Longer than awhile," Krist said. "But hey, I don't begrudge you. You've been a busy guy."

Dave sat down on the stool next to him, folding his hands together on the bar top.

"You could've been along for the ride," he replied, reminding Krist of his initial invite for him to join the Foo Fighters.

"Nah. Being a nobody is my new favorite pastime."

Ordering a beer for himself, Dave noticed that Krist only had a glass of water in front of him.

"What's that all about?" he asked, gesturing to the non-alcoholic beverage.

"I'm giving sobriety a go," Krist explained.

"That explains the outfit," Dave jested, grinning at Krist's neat button down shirt and jeans. He looked more like a guy who'd just gotten off of work than the Krist that Dave remembered, but it suited him.

The bartender slid Dave's beer over and Dave picked up the bottle eagerly, taking a long pull from it. It calmed him down, but not by much. He'd never been one to rely on vices when shit hit the fan.

"So, you want to explain why you randomly called me yesterday requesting that I meet you in Seattle?" Krist asked, launching straight into the conversation that Dave had planned on slowly easing into.

He swallowed back another gulp of his beer. "Can't I thank you first for not asking questions when I did?"

Krist shrugged. "If you're lucky enough to have a friend come to you when they're in need, you should probably listen. I learned that lesson a long time ago."

Dave glanced away. While he'd always struggled to talk about Kurt for his own personal reasons, it had been even harder talking about him with Krist. It should have been easy talking about their mutually shared dead friend, but it wasn't. It always felt like there was a hollow gap fixed in between them whenever Kurt's name came up.

"What's up, man?" Krist spoke gently, bowing his head to match the way Dave had lowered his.

"Reagan," Dave said. He took a swig of his beer again and set it down forcefully. "It's about Reagan."

"I don't recall you as being the type to have issues with women."

"It's not just an issue. It's . . . it's a fucking disaster."

Dave hesitated, waiting for Krist to prod him further along, but Krist sat silently. He took a sip of his water and looked at Dave, making it clear that he was going to listen before offering any advice.

"I'm losing her," Dave continued. His voice cracked and he rushed to clear his throat. "I'm losing her and I don't know what the hell to do."

"You couldn't get rid of Reagan if you tried. I would know. I watched you two hang all over each other for four years straight."

"Something happened in January," Dave said, shaking his head. "We wanted to have a baby. We agreed that it was time and I told her I'd hang back in L.A. for awhile, right? She got pregnant and miscarried. It freaked her out. It freaked both of us out. She was thirteen weeks along when it happened."

Krist gripped his hand onto Dave's shoulder and squeezed. "I'm sorry, man. That's heavy."

"I figured she would be traumatized," Dave persisted, anxiously twisting his fingers around his cold beer bottle. "I knew that she was going to be fucked up from it because it happened at her parents' house. I told her I'd be there for her, but she pushed me away right after I hauled ass to Olympia to get to her. She told me to continue the tour."

He took a deep breath as the memories came flooding back. They were painful to sift through.

"So I left," he said. "I did what she asked and I assumed that maybe she needed time to grieve it on her own. I gave her space. But the second I left her, she just . . . changed. She stopped wanting to talk on the phone, stopped wanting to have any contact with me at all. I got back in July and it's been even worse in person. She won't come near me."

"You think she's still messed up over the miscarriage?" Krist asked.

"Yeah," Dave admitted, "I do. But I'm telling you, it's more than that and I know what it is. She's doubting the relationship. She's regretting the fact that she married me because I'm never around to be with her. She lost the baby and it opened up this twisted Pandora's box of shit."

"Fair enough," Krist said reasonably.

"Maybe, but it doesn't make sense. I've been home for almost three fucking months. I'm right where she wants me and she's still shutting me out, even when she's getting what she wants. Like she's already made up her mind that it's over."

"Has she? Made her mind, I mean?"

That was the very question that Dave had tried not to think about. Whenever it crossed his mind, it hurt worse than what he imagined being run over by his tour bus would feel like.

"Yeah. Yeah, I think she has."

Krist sighed heavily and rubbed his bearded chin, leaning back from the bar.

"I can tell you what I think," he said, "but you're probably not going to like it."

Dave almost let out a bitter laugh. Whatever Krist had to say couldn't have possibly been more terrible than the things he'd already considered himself.

"Try me," he said.

"Look, man. When you and Reagan got together, you guys were both pretty young. You know how that can be when you're in your early twenties. Maybe it's possible that your time together just ran out. It doesn't have to be a bad thing. Sometimes, it just naturally happens."

"But I don't feel that way," Dave said, suddenly distraught over the idea of Reagan having outgrown him. "I still love her. I can't even picture myself with anyone else."

"It's a shit thing to happen," Krist said understandingly. "Feels like the same thing is happening to me and Shelli."

Krist and Shelli were breaking up? Dave definitely hadn't ever pictured that happening. Yes, Krist had been an obnoxious drunk and he and Shelli had bawled each other out in plenty of fights, but they'd always appeared like they belonged together.

"I'm sorry to hear that," Dave said. He truly was.

"Eh," Krist replied, pushing his empty water glass away. "Like I said, it happens. Nothing you can do to stop it."

"I have to stop it, though. I'm not just going to sign a stack of divorce papers when she won't even talk about it with me."

"Why don't you ask her point-blank if she's done?"

Because what if she says that she is?

Dave hesitated to answer Krist's question, sucking down the remnants of his beer. Confronting Reagan like that, giving her the opportunity to walk out, didn't feel like a viable option. The mere thought made his hands shake as he set his empty bottle down.

"If she told me that she was," he said, "I wouldn't be the same. Ever again."

"You say that now," Krist hedged.

"No, I'm serious. It already feels like she sucked my soul out and that's with us still sleeping in the same bed. I would lose it if she left."

"It would hurt like hell, I won't lie to you. But you've got a lot of good in your life. She could leave you, but you know you'd be right back in the studio pounding out another record. You're so inescapably busy that it would be like your version of therapy."

Dave couldn't envision that scenario. He didn't think that he'd ever realistically give up the Foo Fighters, not for anything, but the image of him jumping into the development of another album or numbing his pain with another tour didn't seem realistic.

"I don't know," was all he could say.

Krist clapped his hand back onto Dave's shoulder, giving him a good shake.

"Whatever happens, things will work out for the best. And you'll always have Gracie. And you might even have me if you call a bit more often."

Dave laughed, but it was dry, void of the pleasure that he usually found in laughing.

"I'll work on that," he said.

"You can always count on me to meet you in a seedy bar on a fine September evening," Krist grinned.

Dave squinted his eyes. September. It was September. He'd been so out of it that he'd forgotten the date.

"September what?" he asked.

"September twenty-second," Krist replied, looking confused as to why his friend was inquiring about something so insignificant.

Dave closed his eyes, gritting his teeth together and closing his hand into a fist on the bar top as he bowed his head.

"What?" Krist asked.

"September twenty-second," Dave said hollowly. "Today marks eight years since the first night I met Reagan."