The memories that normally haunted her had retreated, but would sneak out to wound when she passed a playground of laughing children. She remembered the time when she and Dawson had been in the mall and had been watching a mother chasing after a squealing exuberant child who’d broken free, and who then careened into Dawson’s legs full tilt. “Whoa!” he’d said, catching himself and the little girl before they’d both hit the floor. A grateful mother had retrieved her child, but the wistful look on Dawson’s face as the mother and little girl had melded into the crowd had broken Lani’s heart.
That first summer had turned into autumn, and as the leaves had turned vibrant colors, Lani had turned a page in her book of life. And when she looked back now, she saw that the pain that shadowed her was becoming paler in the waning light of the past. “Love changes things,” Ciana had told her as they’d worked in the barn one rainy day. “It changed me.” And by the time autumn had come that first year, Lani had known that Ciana’s pronouncement was absolutely true. Love, indeed, had changed her.
The recording session in March for “Somebody’s Baby” went better than Sloan had expected. She was able to hold herself together, to sing multiple versions for mixing, and to ignore the ache inside her about the song’s history. When the EP was completed, Tom took Sloan and Terri into the sound booth and played all four songs. “I like it,” he said. “We’ll press it, send it out to top forty stations. It’ll be in stores in no time.”
Later in the week, sitting with Terri in the publicist’s plush office mapping out a schedule, Sloan ramped up her courage and said, “I want to take some time off.”
Terri looked up from the paperwork strewn on the conference table between them. “I’m having lunch brought in, and we’ll take a break then.”
Sloan took a deep breath and sat on her hands to control their tremble. “I want a real break, Terri…days, not hours. I—um—I need some time for myself to decompress.” In months ahead lay studio time for the expected album, as well as weeks of touring with more high-profile singers and bands. Summer and fall was life lived on planes and buses and in motel rooms in quickly forgotten cities. A life of burning through arenas and convention halls and stadiums, of rehearsals followed by performances, then packing up and moving to the next place.
“Are you serious? At this stage of career building?” Terri leaned back in her cushy leather chair, studied Sloan’s face. “We haven’t settled on the songs for your album yet, plus I’ve a long list of interviews lined up on radio stations. This isn’t a good time, Sloan. You’re hot, and we want to keep you that way.”
For a while Sloan thought about leveling with Terri but decided against it. She told herself it was to protect Kiley, but she knew it was really to cover the things she hadn’t aired to Terri months before. She’d grown up tough, turning herself deaf to gossip about her mother, to taunts from kids at school. Who needed them? She’d learned to go her own way in life, ignore what she could, leave behind what she should.
Sloan stood, went to the windows, and stared into sunlight at the ridge of brown hills in the distance. The letter, the lure of a potential sister, was all she thought about these days. “I wouldn’t ask if I didn’t need a break.”
She heard Terri rustle papers behind her. “Where would you go to chill out?”
“Nashville. Just for a few days. I’d like to kick back, reconnect, and celebrate. I do have friends, you know.” The white lie was partly true. The Slades at the bar where she’d worked singing and serving food and alcohol liked her, or they had until she’d left them without a word of goodbye and without a singer. But of course, it wasn’t really Nashville that Sloan wanted to revisit. She turned, leveled Terri a look, willed tears into her eyes. “Please.”
Terri steepled her fingers, her expression one of cool composure. If Terri refused, Sloan knew her plan to go look up Lindsey Ridley was sunk. “I’ll have Kiley arrange a doctor’s appointment for you.”
“I’m not sick. I just want a few days—”
“Well, you can’t go running off simply because you want to. You’re under contract.”
After the contest, Sloan had signed many pieces of paper, most she hadn’t bothered to read, but at the time it had hardly mattered to her because she’d been capturing her lifelong dream. She knew there were expectations and standards she had to meet, and that in many ways American Singer and the record label owned her. So while Terri’s proclamation about seeing a doctor seemed senseless, Sloan knew better than to argue. “Why a doctor?”
“Because the honchos in the front office will need a reason why their newest sensation is going on vacation.”
A day later Sloan found herself in the office of Dr. Chen, a kindly Asian man who gave her a thorough physical exam. He suggested that while she had no fever, she might have mononucleosis, so he recommended two weeks of bed rest, beamed her a smile, and sent her on her way. Apparently a doctor’s excuse was like a hall pass—necessary to skip school.
“You have ten days,” Terri said when she handed Sloan her plane ticket. “Get it out of your system, come back, and get to work. Your EP is getting air time, so we need to ride the wave.” Terri stood and knuckled the tabletop. “And for the record, don’t go nutsy on me in Nashville. The press loves a good ‘celeb fail.’ Be careful out there.”
Sloan understood that the limelight loved to zero in on blemishes. “I won’t do anything to hurt myself. I know what’s at stake.”
Terri offered a terse nod. “Have a good time. Just not too good.”
Three days later the car service picked up Sloan and her suitcase and drove her to LAX, where she caught her Nashville flight. She settled into first class wearing a pair of sunglasses, her pulse racing, knowing that the unhappiness and heartache she’d fled in Windemere had not gone away, and now, with the lure of a stranger’s letter, she was hurtling toward it like a runaway train.
A car service met her at the Nashville airport and drove her to a downtown luxury hotel, everything prearranged by Terri’s firm. As soon as Sloan checked in, she went to the concierge desk and arranged for a rental car to be delivered. She planned to drive to Windemere and meet this Lindsey face to face without any warning. Sloan wasn’t going to be scammed, but she wanted to know the truth, whatever it was.
The next morning she exited the interstate and drove familiar rural back roads, edged by lines of budding trees and open pasture land of freshly plowed red dirt. Wildflowers bloomed in long stretches of yellow, lavender, and white. She’d forgotten how pretty spring could be. In Los Angeles acres of concrete ruled the landscape. Plants were assigned to baskets hanging from lampposts or giant pots lining sidewalks. Fuchsia bougainvillea vines climbed fences and stucco walls to survive, and green grass was confined to patches of manicured lawns and apartment entryways, like the place where she lived. Without rain the LA hills turned brown, looked scruffy. Tennessee’s rolling hills were lush with green.
On either side of the rural road taking her to Lindsey’s was open farmland, with an occasional house and a roadside mailbox the only markers differentiating one person’s property from the next. Sloan slowed to follow the box numbering until she found the one from the letter. At the end of a long loose rock driveway was a redbrick ranch-style house with hedges of budding azalea bushes across its front. She turned in and parked near the front porch. No one came to the door when she pulled up, and thankfully, neither did a barking dog. She sat for a few minutes listening to birdsong, building courage. Then she went and peeked through a screen door. She rapped on the frame, making it rattle. “Hello. Anyone here?” No answer. “Lindsey? Mrs. Ridley?”
From somewhere in the back of the house, Sloan heard a crash. She jumped back, shivers racing up her spine. “Hello!” she called again. She heard a cry. Was someone hurt? In trouble? She didn’t know whether to run away or barge in. “Lindsey?”
Sloan tried the flimsy handle, swung the door open, and stepped into a furniture-cluttered front room. She called again. No response. S
he carefully wove around two sofas and several chairs, toward a hallway on the left. The narrow hallway was dark, with only one door standing open. The air was laced with a sharp medicinal odor. Sloan stepped cautiously into the room and saw a woman lying on the floor, blood pooling on a rug beneath her body. An IV stand also lay on the floor, tubes pulled from the woman’s arm, bags leaking clear liquids. “Oh my God!” Sloan rushed over, crouched next to the woman. “What happened?”
The woman didn’t open her eyes, only mumbled, “Help me.”
“I’ll call 911. Hang on.” Sloan fumbled for her phone, couldn’t find it, dumped her purse’s contents onto the floor, grabbed her cell, hands shaking, heart thudding, thoughts screaming, Go! Run. She managed to sputter out the address to the emergency operator, dropped the cell phone, and looked around wildly for something to sop up the blood. So much blood! She saw a towel on the arm of a chair, grabbed it, froze. The blood was coming from the woman’s arm and nose. She panicked, unsure of where to start, laid the towel on the woman’s arm, watched it stain bright red. All the while Sloan was saying over and over that help was on its way. Where was the ambulance? Why couldn’t she hear any sirens? Sloan tasted bile in the back of her throat.
She dabbed dripping blood off the woman’s face with a tissue that had lain in the heap from her purse. The woman was unresponsive. Her skin had a yellowish cast and deep dark hollows under lashless eyelids. A bandana wrapped around her head had slipped off, exposing the woman’s perfectly smooth hairless scalp. Sloan caught her breath, did a butt scoot to one side, her stomach heaving from the coppery smell of blood and chemicals. She was cupping her hand over her mouth, about to throw up, when from the doorway behind her a deep male voice barked, “Who are you, and what the hell have you done to Lindsey?”
Sloan screamed, looked up at a man coming straight at her. She scooted until she felt a wall against her back, and her brain rode a flashback. A man’s big hand groping for her, stretching, reaching, his fingers clutching at air just inches from her body. She pressed her back into a wall in the inky darkness. She shivered, terrified, unable to scream, her voice trapped in her throat. Smaller. She had to make herself smaller, thinner. She held her breath….
For a moment a black haze sucked at Sloan. When it cleared, she was again in the room of a woman unconscious on the floor. Sloan gulped air into her lungs. Can’t pass out, she thought. Can’t. The man advancing on her now glared her a warning that said, Stay put. She couldn’t have moved if she’d wanted to.
He turned, dropped to his knees beside the bleeding woman, and lifted her partway across his lap so that her head and shoulders were higher than her body. He stroked her cheek, “Help’s coming, sweetie. On its way. Hang on.”
Sloan sat stark still, afraid to move, as frightened of the man as she was of the woman on the floor. So much blood! Sitting ramrod straight, she finally heard the wail of a distant siren. Minutes later, two men and a woman hurried into the bedroom carrying medical bags and a collapsible metal stretcher. EMS.
One of the men gripped the shoulder of the man holding Lindsey. “We’ve got it from here, Cole.”
The man, Cole, handed off his patient, and the team went to work, slapping on a blood pressure cuff and starting an IV. As they worked, Cole rattled off some medical jargon, then added, “I heard the distress call on my scanner. I got here as soon as I could.”
The woman on the team asked, “Any idea what’s happened?”
“She might.” Cole gestured to Sloan. “When I got here, she was leaning over Lindsey.”
The woman’s gaze swept to Sloan. “I—I found her like that! All the blood—” Sloan stammered a recap of what she’d seen and heard after she had knocked on the door.
The team eased their patient onto the wheeled stretcher and began pushing it toward the doorway. One of the EMTs held the IV bag aloft.
“Go on. I’ll meet you at the hospital,” Cole told the crew. Once they’d left and the siren wail had faded, the room went deathly quiet. He crossed to Sloan, still sitting with her back scrunched to the wall. He crouched in front of her. “You okay?”
She was trembling, unsure she could stand just yet, shocked by what had happened to Lindsey, terrified of the horror she’d felt in an unexpected flash of—of what? What had happened to her in those few dark moments? She forced a nod at Cole.
“Sorry I yelled and scared you, but I didn’t know who you were. And when I saw the blood…” His voice had gentled. “Lindsey’s friend Gloria must have taken Toby to school and gone on to work.” He shook his head in disapproval. “Lindsey should never be left alone. I’ve told Gloria that a hundred times.” He held out his hand, but she didn’t take it. “I’m Cole Langston, Lindsey’s neighbor, next farm over. Also a paramedic with the town’s EMT unit but off duty today. When I heard the 911 call come in and realized it was Lindsey, I beat a path here, and now…Well…again, sorry.” He took a deep breath, offered her a contrite smile. “Who are you?”
“I’m Sloan Gabriel.”
“This is an awkward way to meet, but I’m really harmless.”
She hesitantly took his hand, felt warmth, and realized her hand was icy.
“Want to stand up?”
He helped her to her feet. “You’re not a local, are you? I would have remembered you.” A look of appreciation as he took in her blond hair, blue eyes, and trim body backed up his words.
She shifted under his scrutiny. She didn’t think him a handsome man. She’d seen her share of good-looking men in LA—models and struggling actors, but instead she pegged Cole as “outdoor-rugged.” He was muscular, broad across his chest and shoulders, had brown hair and amazing electric-blue eyes. His smile showed straight white teeth, and a deep dimple on the left side of his mouth turned his fierceness into charming.
“I live in Los Angeles. I just stopped by for a visit.”
“Look, I’m heading to the hospital. Want to ride with me so we can check on Lindsey together?”
She nodded, bent, grabbed her purse, refilled its contents, and followed him outside, where she saw a gleaming black pickup truck, the driver door flung open, the warning bell about keys left in the ignition still dinging. She glanced back toward Lindsey’s house. “Are you going to lock her front door?”
“You’re in Windemere, not LA,” he said with a disarming grin. “Besides, neighbors look out for each other. They all knew where the ambulance was going when they heard the siren.” He helped her into the truck’s cab, went around to the driver’s side. He started the engine and rolled down the driveway to the road, turned left toward town.
The day had grown brighter, warmer, and the smell of spring air was flowery. “Will she be all right?”
“Yes, this time.”
The landscape of small farms streaked past the truck’s window. “What’s wrong with her?”
Cole, his right wrist draped over the steering wheel, his other hand resting on the armrest, didn’t take his eyes off the road. “Cancer. Stage four. She must have fallen and torn out her IVs. Chemo thins the blood. That’s why she was bleeding so badly.”
“Cancer?”
Cole gave his passenger a quizzical look. “She’s very sick. Isn’t that why you came all the way from California? To see her?”
Sloan said nothing, simply bit hard on her bottom lip. She’d been blindsided by all that had happened that morning. It had been nothing like the controlled confrontation she’d planned in her head.
Cole turned into the parking lot adjacent to the main hospital, parked in front of a redbrick building with lots of glass. Inside he said, “Wait here while I check on her in triage.” He pushed open doors marked RESTRICTED AREA STAFF ONLY.
Sloan paced the small waiting area like a prisoner, struggled to quell her sad memories of Windemere General Hospital, a place she had never wanted to enter again. However, this building was new, built in the five years that she’d been gone. A brass plaque on one wall read THE ARIE WINSLOW CANCER CENTER.
Cole
returned. “She’s awake, and getting IV fluids. She’ll be moved upstairs into a room soon. She remembers you coming into the house, and she really wants to thank you.”
“Yes, I want to see her too.”
“We can go up after she’s settled.” He tipped his head. “Can I buy you a cup of coffee? There’s a coffee bar on the second floor that brews good java. I know I sure can use a cup, and I owe you a cup after scaring you half to death.”
The coffee bar was located within a spacious cafeteria flooded with sparkling sunlight, and was full of colorful tables with stainless steel trim and brightly painted chairs. Cole walked her to a red-topped table, where they sat and waited for the barista to brew their coffees.
“Place looks new.”
“It opened a couple of years ago, the pet project of Ciana Beauchamp Mercer. She owns Bellmeade, a working farm and horse-breeding spread west of town. Seems she had a childhood friend who died of cancer. Ciana gave money and raised more money to get this place built. I hear nobody says no to her.” He gave a wry smile. “Everything here is state of the art, and it’s a godsend for patients like Lindsey, who used to have to go to Nashville for treatment.”
Of course, Sloan knew the Beauchamp name because everyone in Windemere knew it, but she listened attentively, unwilling to confess her connection to the town. “How long have you lived here?”
“About four years. I grew up in northwest Indiana, where I got my EMS and paramedic training. My grandparents lived on that farm next to Lindsey’s, but Grandma died and I moved down to help Gramps. He died a year afterward and left me the house and property. I liked it here, the wide-open spaces, the people I met, winters that didn’t leave inches of snow and ice on the ground. Plus I had a free place to live, so I went for state certification, and here I’ll stay.”
Cole’s open, easy manner put her at ease. She liked the sound of his voice, the way he freely shared details of his life. Nothing she would do. Sloan had been gone for close to five years—she’d fled Windemere the first time to rejoin Jarred’s resurrected band in Nashville with her high school bandmates. The group had spent two summers touring and playing festivals, making a name for themselves, gathering fans…and then, as the band’s star was ascending, came the disaster that destroyed all their hard work and scattered them.