Epilogue: Maybe Things Are Fine

                                    

                                          
The Hollywood Bowl
Hollywood, California
Monday, October 3, 2022
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Will Buckingham pushed past several people and wound up apologizing to Waddy Wachtel for stepping on his foot in an effort to approach his stepmother after her sold-out concert at the Hollywood Bowl. 
Stevie was surrounded by people and in deep conversation with his Uncle John, who had been in the audience tonight along side Jimmy Iovine. His sisters had asked him if it was true that Kendall Jenner was in the audience, and he'd managed to snap a picture of her at one point during "Enchanted" and send it via Snapchat to his sister LeeLee on the sly. He was heading out to Calabasas tomorrow morning to visit his mother and his two younger sisters, LeeLee and Stella, as it was his stepfather's birthday and they were going out to dinner. 
Tonight was his father's birthday, however, and he'd chosen to celebrate it at the Hollywood Bowl, watching his wife perform in her first solo tour since the pandemic. Their family dinner was going to occur after the show, Stevie having trained Lindsey over the course of twenty-five years of marriage to stay up later...although no one but his stepmother, the Nightbird, could make a night last until morning. His friend Harry Styles still laughed about the night Stevie hadn't left his house in London until six in the morning with her crew of ladies - Lori Nicks, Sharon Celani, Karen Johnston and Mary Torrey. 
"My Beautiful Boy!" Still dressed in her usual black stage outfit, Stevie threw her hands upward and abandoned John McVie to hug her stepson, who she hadn't been sure would be able to make it to the show tonight. 
"Hi, Stevie," he said as she hugged him tight. "Great show as usual. Is my dad around?"
Stevie released him from her clutches and teased, "Oh, so it's your dad's birthday and I'm chopped liver?" She smiled at him and gestured in the general direction behind her. "He's off behind me somewhere with Robin, trying to call the restaurant to make sure they have the dinner order set. You're coming with us to the restaurant, right?"
"Yup, totally," said Will. "Are you going to pick on him about the salt and the fat and all tonight?" Stevie had been like a mother hen to Lindsey four over three years since his heart attack and triple bypass surgery, and especially recently, since his bout with Covid had been causing him a few heart problems that had caused him to cancel his European solo tour. 
"It's the man's birthday, kid," Stevie said with a grin. "Even old-lady, overbearing Stevie Nicks knows to leave that alone."
Will went to go find his father as Stevie picked Vanessa Carlton's little daughter Sydney out in the crowd and greeted her with a big hug. He found his father and his sister Robin standing beside Karen, who was on her phone and waved to him with a big smile, and the Buckinghams all hugged. 
"Happy Birthday, old man," he said to Lindsey, who was seventy-three today. With his thinner face and his gray-white hair, it was a stark difference from the picture that was the Lock Screen of his phone - Fifty-something Lindsey and Stevie holding hands in Golden Gate Park with himself and his sister Robin at two years old, wearing sun suits and baseball caps reading San Francisco rulez, Robin holding onto the leash of Stevie's late dog, Sara Belladonna, who he'd played with every time he was at their home in the Pacific Palisades until she was put down at sixteen. The picture was taken on their last trip to Northern California to see his grandmother Ruth before she died in 1999. 
"We're keeping the old jokes at a twice-per-person minimum, kid," Lindsey teased his son. "Did you see Stevie? We have to leave for the restaurant in twenty minutes if we're going to make the reservation."
"I did," Will said. "Last I saw she was out there somewhere hugging up on poor little Sydney McCauley."
Lindsey chuckled. "Sounds about right. Well let's get this whole birthday dinner moving so I can go home to bed. I'm old."