A year had passed and I was still working on the album.
It was taking longer than I had planned. Longer than June wanted, longer than the label expected, longer than I had told anyone it would take when I first started talking about it publicly. But I was not going to rush it. Every time I got close to calling it done I would sit with the sequencing for a day and find something that was not right yet, a transition that needed work or a track that was good but not good enough for where I wanted to put it. I had loved music my whole life and this was the first time I had the resources to make exactly what I heard in my head. I was not going to waste that by being impatient.
June had stopped asking about a timeline. That told me she understood.
Everything else kept moving. The label was running. Claire and Imani both had projects building. The collaborations from the Grammy stretch had all come out and all of them had done something. Life had its own momentum at this point, which made it easy to forget to slow down and pay attention to the things that were not about work.
Today was one of those things.
* * *
Rue had been at UCLA for about six months when she called me and said she had gone to an audition.
She had not made a big deal of it beforehand. That was Rue. She did things and then told you about them after, not because she was being secretive but because she did not want the weight of expectation on something before she knew what it was going to become. She said she had been cast. She said it was a Disney show. She said it was a family thing, funny, not heavy, and that she thought I would like it. She did not say much else.
I had not pushed her for details. That was also Rue. You got what she gave you and you waited for the rest.
The show was called K.C. Undercover. Today was the premiere of the first episode.
I had the whole family over. Mom, Rue, Gia, Maddy. We were all in the living room when it started, Gia already on her phone, Mom already sitting too close to the TV the way she always did, Maddy on the couch with her legs tucked under her. Rue was in the armchair in the corner with her arms crossed, trying to look like she was not nervous and not pulling it off.
Rue was on the screen inside the first two minutes.
* * *
The show was funny.
Not in a way I had expected. I had braced myself for something that would be fine, something I would watch supportively and find decent and move on from. But it was actually good. The writing had some real jokes in it and the cast had chemistry and Rue was clearly having the time of her life. She was loose and quick and she made it look easy, which I knew from watching her at the acting studio was not actually easy at all.
Gia put her phone down after the first ten minutes. That was the real review.
Mom was laughing at things before the jokes fully landed, which was a thing she did, and Maddy was watching with that quiet focus she got when she was actually into something. Rue kept glancing around the room between scenes, checking faces, trying to read the room without being obvious about it. She was not being obvious about it at all, which meant she was being extremely obvious about it.
When it ended Mom was the first one to say something.
"That's my baby," she said. To no one in particular. Just out loud, into the room.
Rue looked at me.
"It was good," I said.
"How good."
"Good good."
She uncrossed her arms. That was as much as she was going to give us. Mom grabbed her into a hug before she could stop it and Rue let it happen, which was its own kind of thing.
* * *
I took everyone to dinner after.
The restaurant was the kind of place that was loud enough to feel like a celebration without being so loud you couldn't hear each other. We had a big table in the back, all five of us, and the food was good and the conversation was easy the way it got sometimes when everyone was in the right mood at the same time.
Mom kept turning to Rue every few minutes with a new question, most of which Rue answered in as few words as possible, which did not stop Mom from asking the next one. It was the most sustained conversation they had probably had in a year and Rue was tolerating it better than she usually would have. The show had softened something. Not permanently, just for tonight.
Rue ate most of her food, which I noticed meant she was doing good.
Maddy ordered something I had already told her she would like and then acted surprised when she liked it,
Gia was quiet through most of it, which for Gia meant something was on her mind. She was not the kind of person who was ever quiet.
I waited.
It came up near the end of the meal, when the food was mostly gone and the table had settled into that post-dinner slowness. Gia put her phone down and looked at me.
"I want to be a content creator," she said.
The table did not react dramatically. Mom looked at her. Rue looked at me.
"Like what kind," I said.
"Vlogging mostly. Day in the life stuff, maybe some fashion. I've been thinking about it for a while." She was not asking permission exactly. She was presenting it. There was a difference and Gia knew the difference. "I have ideas."
"You have a phone," I said.
"I know."
"So use it. Post for a month, consistent, and if you're still doing it after a month I'll get you the equipment."
She looked at me. "Real equipment?"
"Camera, lighting, whatever you need. But a month first. Every day or close to it. If you stop after two weeks because it got boring I'm not buying anything."
She thought about it for about two seconds. "Deal."
She picked her phone back up and I watched her open the camera app and start looking around the restaurant like she was already framing shots.
Maddy leaned over to me. "She's going to do it," she said quietly.
"I know," I said.
She smiled and went back to her drink. Mom was watching Gia with the camera and shaking her head slowly,
* * *
On the drive home I had the album in my head again.
I could not turn it off. It was always running somewhere in the background, the sequencing, the gaps, the things that were not finished. Maddy had fallen asleep in the passenger seat somewhere on the freeway, head against the window, and I drove with the music low and thought about what the album was still missing.
There was a track that needed one more pass. I had known it for two weeks and kept putting it off because I was close to it and sometimes you needed distance to hear something clearly.
I thought I had the distance now.
I got home, got Maddy inside and into bed without fully waking her, and then I went to the home studio and sat down and opened the session.
It was late. That was fine. The album was not going to finish itself.