The Music Of My Life

I was in bed just starting to drift off about a month later when I heard my room door open. I never locked the door when it was just Kennedy and me in the house. I just sort of lifted my head off the pillow, wondering what was wrong in the house when she quietly slipped into bed alongside my naked body. When she snuggled hard up against me, I could tell she was also naked. She draped an arm and a leg over my body. Hey, I'm human. In seconds, I got hard... as a rock. She reached her hand down and took my rod into her hand, giggling as she did so. I lay there quietly for about five seconds, then removed her hand as I watched her smile turn into a frown.

"I'm sorry, Ken. I can't do this. Physically, I want to, but emotionally I can't. Too much water under the bridge," I said sadly.

I heard her sniffle back a tear. I wasn't proud of myself at that moment, but I had been burned twice by this woman. There wouldn't be a third time, no matter how much I desired her still-hot body.

"I'm sorry, Bobby. This is completely on me," she said. "I ruined us... twice. I was hoping, though..."

"I know, babe."

Interestingly, she didn't get out of bed. She brought her hand back up to my chest, rubbed my left nipple and then settled in. We both lay there silent for a few minutes, until I heard her breathing even out and knew she had fallen asleep. A couple of minutes later, I fell asleep, too, and actually slept like a baby. I was spooned around her when I woke up the next morning. I laid there for a few minutes, then felt her stir as she woke. She quietly turned around to face me, and we lay there looking into each other's eyes for about a minute.

"Thank you, Bobby," she whispered.

"You're welcome, babe," I whispered back.

Kennedy came into my bed the next night as well, the night after that and all the rest of the nights. We slept naked every night, but she never made another move on me and I never made a move on her. Neither one of us went on dates anymore. I don't know about her, but I made liberal use of my right hand when she wasn't around.

I still had one question left to ask, and I finally got to it one night right after we went to bed.

"Why, Kennedy?" I whispered, not figuring I needed to elaborate more. I didn't.

Lying in the dark, I could feel her tense. I heard her clear her throat.

"You were always so safe, so secure, a nice guy, Bobby. I always figured I could go back to you, and after a while you did let me the first time," she said in a small, thin voice. "The second time I actually sort of fell in love with Jimmy, although I think I fell more in love with the cocaine. You always used to bust on me for using, but he not only didn't bust me, he used with me. And he told me that with you out of the way, I could use whenever I wanted.

"It's sounds really stupid now. I know."

With the exception of us living like monks, life was good for the next couple of years, until one week where I had two long production sessions within a four-day span. Both Kennedy and I put in long hours for about a week, and while I was tired, I could tell that she was exhausted. I also noticed that she looked a little gaunt when she got into bed that night. I resolved to pay better attention.

Two weeks later I noticed that Kennedy appeared to be having problems with her stomach.

"It's nothing, hon. Just a little indigestion," she said when I asked.

I practically had to drag her to the doctor's office the next week when the little indigestion didn't go away. After feeling around on her stomach for a bit, the doctor set up some X-rays. X-rays led to what was supposed to be a simple biopsy for a small lump in her stomach. That led to the discovery of multiple cysts, which were determined to be malignant.

The oncologist gave Kennedy a year at most, even with heavy chemo and radiation, so after a long discussion she decided to opt out of both. She figured it was a quality of life issue. I reluctantly agreed.

That night when she climbed into bed she melted into my body and started to sob. I held her as tightly as I dared without crushing her. When she finally stopped crying, she looked up at me with nothing but... love in her blue eyes. I leaned into her and crushed her lips against mine. She responded as if I was the last man on the face of the earth, with a hunger I had never felt before from any woman. Then again, I had never before been with a woman who had a death sentence hanging over her.

We continued to kiss for several minutes before I ran my left hand down her body. Her moan told me everything I needed to know. I reached down and stroked her wet pussy. Her body started to quiver, then twitch, before she shrieked out a very wet orgasm.

I slid down her body to her boobs and licked her hard nipples like a starving man would lick an ice cream cone. I gently pulled on her left nipple with my teeth before sliding further south until I found her dripping slit with my tongue. She shrieked when I gave her clit a hard lick, then she went into full spasm when I licked backwards, scraping hard across her nub with the underside of my tongue. I moved my mouth down to her opening and gave her a full flat lick, scoring yet another hard climax. I felt her hands tangle in my hair as she pulled me up.

Her soaking pussy felt like an oven as I pushed all the way inside in one stroke. It had been more than 10 years since I had been inside this woman, and yet somehow, we still moved together completely in sync. It was slow and sweet and I made sure she got one more orgasm before I filled her with my seed. She cried as I softened and pulled out of her.

"God, I screwed things up. Thank you, Bobby, that was wonderful," she whispered.

Kennedy knew that what we enjoyed was a one-off, although we continued to sleep together in my bed up until she went into the hospital for what became her final few days. Without the chemo and radiation, her one year was reduced to a little more than five months.

Kennedy's parents came to visit us soon after she was diagnosed so we could all enjoy a final good week before she was too weak. They came back once she went into the hospital, as did my parents. Several of us were always with her that final week.

I was sleeping in the chair next to her bed, holding on to her left hand with my right, when I felt her give my hand a weak squeeze. I opened my eyes and saw her once bright blue eyes, now a washed-out blue, looking back at me. I leaned over and gave her a soft kiss on her lips. She gave me a tired smile and was gone. I was crying silently when the nurse, alerted by the telemetry at the nurse's station, came in to double-check her death. She was 41.

God, it was tough going back home to an empty house after having Kennedy living with me for the last several years. Although I hadn't been in love with her for a long time, I loved her as a close friend, a confidant even. I had come to rely on her not only in my personal life, but also in my business life. She had become Robin to my Batman, so to speak.

Her parents couldn't thank me enough for getting her cleaned up and taking care of her these last few years. I told them the truth; that I enjoyed having her in my life again. They made me promise to keep in touch.

As always, music was my salvation. I had my engineering and production work, and I still continued to write when the mood struck me, which seemed to be a lot less these days. Then a germ of a song got stuck in my brain and didn't let go. It wound up being all about Kennedy in an abstract sort of way.

The lyrics came easily. I struggled with the music; the tempo, the feel. I wrote mostly Rock 'N' Roll, occasionally some pop. I produced music of all genres, although there were some of which I really wasn't a fan. Country and western was one of those genres. Yet the more I played with the song, the more I realized it had to be country, even though I didn't write anything about my dog dying or my pick-up being stolen, or vice-versa. I re-worked it twice before I found it.

I was big enough in the industry that I probably could have asked anybody to sing it for me and they probably would have done so, but I walked around in a fog for a week pondering the who. Then I heard it, singing a jingle for an LA fast-food restaurant. It took me two days to track down the name connected to that voice: Alex Logan, a relative rookie to the music scene on the West Coast.

It took Alex 45 minutes to get over to my studio when I called him. He thought it was some sort of a joke when my name showed up on his caller ID. Once I convinced him it was no joke, he was out the door and in his car practically before the call ended message showed up on his phone, he told me later.

I conceptualized the song for him and even explained the whole backstory. We worked it out together for several hours before I felt he had it right. His voice was rich and full, but he also had a gravelly rasp giving it a raw, earthy tone. I accompanied him on the guitar only, deciding that there would be no other voices on the recording.

I played back the recording four or five times. I could feel Alex watching me intently, trying to figure out what I was listening for. I had taught myself drums many years ago, sometimes needing to hear out loud the drum line I heard in my head. I overdubbed a low-key line, and several hours later I had it.

I released "Kathleen" as a single, sending it out to a handful of country stations only. Knowing who I was, the stations starting giving the song airplay. I got a call from one of the major companies, who wanted to release it nationwide and distribute it. I agreed, and within a month Alex Logan had a number one hit and a recording deal. He gladly would have washed my car, walked my dog or done virtually any chore I asked of him.

I called John Valentine from Chess Piece and told him he and I needed to come up with 11 more country songs quickly for Alex's first album. Once I convinced him that he could write country, he was up for the challenge.

"Kathleen" and a second song from the album both went platinum, as did the album itself. Alex was going to be a major country star for many years to come if he didn't screw things up.

It wasn't unusual to hear from my agent, Ron Shapiro, on a regular basis, so I didn't think anything of the call as I answered while I was doing some post-production work on the latest Chess Piece album at Paramount a few months later.

"Are you sitting down right now, Bobby?" he asked.

Okay, never a good way to start a conversation. I sat down.

"I am now," I answered.

"You never told me you had any kids, Bobby. What the fuck?"

My brain went into overdrive. When the hell did I get kids? What the fuck was he talking about?

"What the fuck are you talking about, Ron? I don't have any kids. When did you start lighting up in the middle of the day?" I responded.

He was silent for about 10 seconds, then he kind of coughed and cleared his throat. I knew then that he was serious.

"Uh, Bobby, I'm holding an Ancestry.com document that says you are the DNA father of... Chelsea Marie Carpenter, of Chicago, IL, born 20 years ago...."

I zoned out at that point as I was trying to remember what the fuck was happening in my life 20 years ago. Oh, yeah, I was jettisoning Kennedy from my life after she cheated on me with Mike Rogers.

I never followed Kennedy's life after we split up. If she was pregnant at that time, I had no clue. If she was pregnant, would it have been mine, Mike's or somebody else's? Kennedy had never told me anything of having a child, although I did know she had one with Jimmy that she gave up for adoption. Could she possibly have done this twice? If she did, though, and I was the father, wouldn't I have had to sign some kind of a waiver? A lot of questions with no answers, especially with Kennedy in her grave.

I had done an Ancestry DNA test and had a family tree on the site for several years. I probably hadn't checked in, though, for a couple of years.

All right, I had the time and money to check this out. I decided to call this young lady and see if I could get some more information.

Chelsea Carpenter sounded surprised when she answered my call. I supposed I was calling a landline and she didn't have caller ID.

"Are you really the Bobby Winkler?" she asked tentatively after I properly identified myself on the phone.

"I suppose so," I answered.

We exchanged some basic info and pleasantries before I got right to the heart of the matter.

"I'm sorry, Chelsea, if I seem somewhat reluctant to just welcome you into my life with open arms, but I knew nothing of your existence until yesterday..."

"How could you not know about me," she interrupted. "Didn't you sign your rights away so I could be adopted?"

"No, I never signed anything," I responded. "Honestly. Your birth mother never told me she was pregnant."

"But wouldn't you have had to sign something?"

"I always thought so," I said.

"How about your adoptive parents? Do they know who your parents supposedly were?"

"Mom didn't tell me I was adopted until I turned 18," she explained. "She told me my birth parents were Kennedy Stevens and someone named Mike Rogers. Then Ancestry comes back and says my dad is someone different, someone named Bobby Winkler. They didn't have 'Mommy Dearest' in their database at all. So now I'm not really sure what to believe, but I know Ancestry's a real, legit company."

I set up a meeting at some lawyer's office in Chicago with Chelsea and her adoptive mother, Donna Carpenter. Her adoptive father, Sy, had died several years before, she explained.

The meeting two days later was eye-opening for me. Chelsea's adoptive mother not only claimed, but had documentation that said her birth parents were Kennedy and Mike. She had the forms giving Chelsea up for adoption with both supposed birth parents' signatures. She claimed that the first time she heard about me was when Chelsea did her DNA test.

The forms releasing Chelsea for adoption were signed by Kennedy and Mike. No DNA tests were done back then to confirm parentage.

Chelsea's adoptive mother would have given Kennedy a run for her money in terms of looks. She appeared to be about my age, with decent-sized tits and a nice ass.

Chelsea, her adoptive mother and I talked for about two hours, just getting to know each other. Chelsea was a sophomore at the University of Illinois. Her mother worked in a pharmacy.

Like a typical kid, Chelsea was incredibly impressed by who I was, or who everyone else said I was. She asked me all sorts of questions like any 20-year-old would. I invited her and her mother to my house for the upcoming spring break in a few weeks. I told them I would send them the tickets.

She gave her mother the puppy dog eyes but didn't say anything. Finally, Donna gave in.

"Okay, spring break it is," she declared.

I was about to get up and go when the question I feared most finally came up.

"So then from what we can figure, was Kennedy a bit of a... player?" Donna asked.

I looked around the room, gave a large swallow, then proceeded to explain about Kennedy and me, up until her death.

"She... she's gone?" Chelsea rasped. "Damn, that means I'm never going to meet her."

"You've also got a half-sister somewhere, too. She did the exact same thing several years later, with a different guy," I said. "I found out about that one."

"Jeez. I'm not sure 'player' comes close to describing her," Donna said. "Might be better in the long run that she's gone."

The kid looked unsure. I nodded at her.

"I'm sorry for the way things turned out, kiddo. I would have loved to have had kids," I said. "But I think your parents did a great job. All I can hope for at this point is that we can be friends of a fashion. Parents are much more than just sperm and egg donors."

Chelsea nodded at me with great big tears in her eyes. I walked over to her and held my arms open. She came to me and hugged me hard. I took a quick look over at Donna, who had an unreadable expression on her pretty face. I figured she was trying to gauge my reaction to her daughter.

*****

The three of us did some of the LA area tourist things the first few days, and ate at all the trendy restaurants. I had to use my status to get a table on short notice, but I didn't feel too bad about that, considering I rarely ever played that gambit. I might have been the most unrecognized celebrity in the state, and I liked that just fine.

It was a beautiful late spring evening when we got back from a great dinner, and I took a bottle of red wine, three glasses and one of my acoustic guitars out to my fire pit at the end of my patio in the back yard. I played the music, not the lyrics, to several of my hit songs while we sat around the fire pit and chatted. At first the women were reluctant to converse with me, thinking I was going to sing, but as I sat there, played and talked, they kind of figured things out and we started to really get to know each other.

"The last few years after I got your bio-mom cleaned up we would come out here and do this same thing. Sometimes she would sing, other times we would both sing. Sometimes we would just sip wine and I'd play. This was probably her favorite place in the world those last few years."

I looked up and noticed both women had tears in their eyes. It was time to lighten things up, so I played a fairly passable cover of The Eagles' "Hotel California" and "Take It Easy." They then asked me if I took requests, and we bantered back and forth trying to come up with a song they liked that I knew how to play. We arrived at "Sarah Smile" by Hall and Oates, and both women started to sing while I played. Chelsea dropped out after a minute and Donna bravely finished up solo.

"Wow, Mom, that was great!" Chelsea enthused, leaning over and giving Donna a kiss on the cheek.

I could see some of Kennedy in Chelsea. I couldn't find any of me, which was probably for the best. I could also see a lot of Donna, even though they weren't related biologically. That was nurture over nature. They shared a lot of the same mannerisms, the same giggle, the same tilt of the head. I could tell they were close as a mother and daughter. I envisioned they were a tight family when Chelsea's dad--her adoptive dad--was still alive.

Thanks to Kennedy, I was an outsider, and always would be. I wondered if she really thought Mike was the child's father, or was that just an easy way to sign away her baby. Then I remembered again that she actually gave two children away, and for about the millionth time wondered if I had ever really known who Kennedy was before I got her cleaned up.

We sang, talked and laughed a bit longer while we finished the bottle of wine.

I had earlier shown them my studio and gave them a demonstration of what I did, but the next day I took them over to Paramount and gave them a full tour, introducing them to everyone as a couple of friends from Chicago. John from Chess Piece had stopped by, just on the off chance that I'd be working so we could talk face to face about what the group wanted to do for its next production. He very graciously posed for photos with the two women and gave Chelsea an autographed T-shirt. I took the photos with Chelsea's phone, then John grabbed the phone from my hand and insisted I get my photo taken with the pair.

"A good-looking woman on each arm surely can't hurt your image, Boss-Man," he laughed, calling me by the nickname the members of the group hung on me several years ago during the making of an album.

Chelsea looked confused at the moniker, and John figured he should explain.

"When he's on the other side of the glass, he thinks he's world dictator," John said. "And considering how well our albums sell... well, I guess he's right."

There were several photos of the group around the studio, as well as photos of many other groups, as well, several of which I had worked with and knew well.