“No,” Lani had said softly. “I’m okay with watching her. She’s always been a terrific singer, and the world should hear her.” Lani had squeezed Dawson’s hand. “Please believe me. I wish her only happiness.”
He had believed her because this was Lani’s basic character—sensitive and compassionate, except when it came to herself. Lani had come a long way over the last year but could still be her own harshest critic, fair to all except herself. At the end of last summer, as autumn leaves had begun to turn vibrant colors, through sheer force of will she had made up her mind to begin again. “Because of you,” she’d whispered one night in his arms. “And because I can’t have you and Mel fighting about me anymore.”
She’d hunkered down, kept her horse but quit the Bellmeade job, returned to college, finished her RN degree, and graduated that December. In January she had returned to part-time work at Windemere General. She remained living with her sister and nurtured a sunny disposition, but Dawson could tell when old ghosts wiggled their way out of Lani’s subconscious to haunt her, often times showing up in routine and ordinary circumstances. Of course, seeing Sloan on a national television show in a singing competition wasn’t ordinary or routine. Watching Sloan in fifty-five-inch living color hadn’t been easy for him either.
When Sloan had announced to the camera that she came from Nashville, he had said, “She altered history. What’s wrong with being from Windemere?”
“She’s moved on, Dawson. A person has to move on…ready or not.” He thought Lani’s words more telling than she might have realized.
On that first night of the show, he’d clicked off the TV, drawn Lani to him, and slowly, leisurely kissed her eyelids, her cheeks, her mouth, the hollow in her throat, until he’d heard her breath catch. “It won’t hurt to miss the show tonight, love. We’ll catch it next week.”
And so week after week they had watched Sloan’s heart-shaped face, full lips, sky-blue eyes, and perfect cheekbones illuminate the screen in liquid crystal clarity. She’d wowed the judges, the live audiences, and the millions of viewers who’d voted for her from their phones and computers. She had left the other contestants in the dust.
The ding of the elevator call button snapped Dawson out of his reverie. Seeing Sloan in person had thrown him off balance. He breathed deeply, fought to regain composure and reconnect with his current world. He should tell Lani about running into Sloan. But Sloan had said she wouldn’t be in town long. Why needlessly stir up old ghosts? Perhaps it would be best to say nothing. He jammed his finger onto the button for the orthopedic floor and rode up to visit his worker.
Cole walked Sloan across the ER lobby and out into the warmth of the afternoon, he feeling as if he’d happened upon a wreck with unseen damages, she pensive and withdrawn. The body language and undercurrent of tension between Sloan and Dawson when he’d walked up unnoticed belied Sloan’s claim that Dawson was simply an “old friend from high school.” Plus they had spoken in code—recognizable to his trained ears by the cadence of words ripe with hidden meanings.
Once Cole and Sloan reached his truck, he said, “I hope you can hang around for more than a few days. They couldn’t tell me upstairs how long Lindsey might be here.”
Her mood darkened, but he was pretty sure the changeover was more about running into Dawson than about Lindsey. She said, “I—I want her to get better, but I can’t wait around too long. I’ve a big summer schedule ahead—rehearsals, and an album to record.” All she truly wanted was to get information from Lindsey, return to LA, and forget Windemere. “When she’s released, will you call me? I’ll give you my cell number. In the meantime, I’ll be in Nashville.”
“Shucks, lady, we have hotels in these parts too.” He waggled his eyebrows and grinned, hoping to improve her mood.
“No thanks.” He held out his phone, and she tapped in her name and number and handed it back, saying, “For your eyes only.”
He opened the passenger door for her, and she offered a perfunctory smile and climbed into the truck, leaving Cole to understand that whatever had happened between Sloan and Dawson, no matter how long ago, wasn’t yet over. Not by a long shot.
When Cole pulled up to Lindsey’s house, the screen door flew open with a bang, and a small boy streaked outside and down the porch steps. He hopped onto the truck’s running board on the driver side before Cole turned off the engine. “Hey, slow down, Little Man.”
“Where’s my mama? Did something bad happen to her?”
“Hold on, buddy. Let me get out.” The boy hopped down, his face a mask of fear. Cole stepped out of his truck, and Sloan followed from the passenger side, coming around the truck’s back end to stand near Cole. “Let me introduce someone to you. This is Sloan Gabriel.”
The boy barely glanced at Sloan, frowned, and crossed his arms. “I want my mama.”
Cole crouched in front of the boy in order to look him in the eye. “Your mom is doing all right, but she took sick. This lady found her and called 911, and we took her to the hospital.”
The boy eyed Sloan with more interest. “Who is she?”
Cole stood. “A friend of your mom’s.” He took the boy’s shoulder and nudged him closer to Sloan. “Where are your manners? Is that how you meet somebody?”
The boy looked pouty but held out his hand. “Nice to meet you, Miss Sloan. I am Tobias Ridley…Toby.”
“You have nice manners, Toby, and call me Sloan,” she said, smiling and shaking his hand. How small it lay in hers. She felt a tug on her heart. “Your mama’s all tucked into bed at the hospital and was feeling a whole lot better when we left.”
Toby’s upturned gaze never left Sloan’s. His eyes were large, light brown flecked with green, and his russet-colored hair lay straight and sweat-matted to his forehead. His face held a smattering of freckles, his reed-thin arms were tanned, and both elbows looked freshly scraped. He wore a Titans football team shirt, but it was too small and rode up on his belly. His shorts had a torn side pocket, and he was barefoot.
At that moment the screen door reopened and a heavyset woman stepped out. “Hi, Cole. Didn’t hear you drive up. Was back in the kitchen frying up supper.”
Sloan thought it amazing that the woman’s thick drawl could turn every word she spoke into multiple syllables.
“Hey, Gloria,” Cole said as the woman came toward them. “We took Lindsey into the hospital this morning.”
“Widow Jenkins come over and told me, so I knew if Lindsey was in the hospital and with you, she was in good hands.”
Cole shook his head, looked exasperated. “Why weren’t you here with her this morning? She was on IVs and shouldn’t have been left alone.”
“I had to take Toby to school ’cause he missed the school bus. But just when I let him off, the nursing home texted saying two people didn’t show up for their shifts, and they had an emergency, so…well, I just kept going. I’m real sorry, Cole. She was sound asleep, and I left her a note.”
Sloan guessed that the note must have gotten lost in the chaos.
“Why didn’t you call one of the neighbors or me? I was off duty. You could see my truck in the driveway.” He gestured to a house a quarter of a mile away. “And I posted a list of our neighbors’ phone numbers on the refrigerator. Lindsey fell, Gloria…if Sloan hadn’t happened to stop by…” He shook his head.
Gloria blinked back tears. “I called at lunchtime, but her phone went to voice.” Gloria’s contrite blue eyes sidled over to Sloan. “I had to pick up Toby after school too. I’m real sorry, Cole. You know I love Lindsey and didn’t mean her no harm. I cleaned up her room and started supper. I figured you’d be coming back ’cause of the car sitting there.”
“My rental,” Sloan said.
Cole knew Gloria had the best of intentions. He nodded, and gesturing, said, “Sloan Gabriel, meet Gloria Harrold.”
Gloria focused on Sloan and took a step backward, and her expression shifted from remorse to astonishment. “Oh my word! Are you Sloan Gabriel the sing
er? You’re here…standing in our yard? I recognize you! I do. From the contest. I watched every minute of that contest and voted for you every single time! And here you are standing in our front yard. Please…come on inside. I’ll fix you some sweet tea. I—I can’t tell you how wonderful it is to meet you to your face. You’re so pretty.” Gloria gushed, her accent thick, words coming fast and accented…cain’t and purty.
For a moment Sloan thought the woman might throw her arms around her, and she took a step backward.
“My mama watched you on TV too, and when you sang, she cried.” This from Toby.
Sloan’s gaze swept from Cole, angry at Gloria, to Gloria awash in adoration, down to Toby, who kept staring at her. Surrounded by three people she hardly knew discussing the woman who might be her half sister lying in a hospital bed, Sloan felt dazed and outnumbered. She glanced over her shoulder at her car. “I—I have to go.”
“No, no!” Gloria said, rushing at Sloan. “Stay for dinner. We got plenty. I’ll tell all my friends you had supper here!”
Cole stuck out his arm, cutting Gloria off. “Let’s not knock her down. Sloan will come back when Lindsey comes home, won’t you?”
“Yes…sure. I will.”
Keeping himself between Sloan and an excited Gloria, he gently took her elbow and walked her to the car. “Sorry. Didn’t mean for you to get caught in the middle of that. Gloria’s a good person, and Lindsey couldn’t make it without her, but she should have never left Lindsey alone. So what if Toby’s late to school?” Cole raked his hand through his hair, offered Sloan an apologetic smile. “Listen, I promise to keep you updated. Fair enough?”
He opened the car door for her, and she got in, but before she could start the engine, Toby shouted, “Hey, singing lady, Sloan.”
Sloan froze, felt color drain from her face. It had been a while since she’d heard someone call her that….Toby’s innocent term singing lady had shaken her to her core. “Y-yes?”
“Thank you for helping my mama today.”
“Yes, thank you,” Cole echoed, eyes narrowing as her face turned pale and colorless.
With shaking fingers, Sloan thrust the key into the ignition and started the engine, and once she was on the rural road, she pushed her accelerator to the floor, speeding to the interstate and Nashville. And away from this town with all its memories.
She talked to Terri, lied about spending a day in the spa and resting, told of plans to go places with her friends. In reality Sloan was as restless as a caged cat, waiting for Cole’s call. She spent her days poolside, or shopping but buying little, and spent her evenings on Music Row, Nashville’s famous area made up of restaurants and bars, almost all with stages or floor space for live performances by bands and singers. She thought about stopping in at Slade’s Saloon, where she’d gotten her start as a soloist, but decided against it because she really didn’t want to reconnect with her former life.
To blend in with large groups of tourists on nights out, she dressed simply in T-shirts and capris, wore a ball cap with her ponytail pulled through its back band, and kept makeup to a minimum, half-anxious she’d be recognized, half-disappointed when she wasn’t. She moved from place to place, sat alone, nursed a drink, listened to the music, and made notes in her phone about songs she thought she might like to try out for her album. If a guy hit on her, she left the bar and merged with the foot traffic, returned to her room alone, willing her phone to ring. Four days later, Cole called.
“How’s tomorrow look for you coming over?” he asked.
“She’s home?”
“Yes, and I’m off shift tomorrow too. Not that either of you want me there when you meet, but I wanted to be around if I was needed.”
“Is she well?”
“She’s stronger.” Cole paused. “But she’ll never be well.”
Sloan drove over the next morning, but this time when she rapped on the screen door, Lindsey opened it dressed in jeans and a T-shirt and wearing a soft terry cloth turban of bright pink. She wore makeup and a smile that crinkled laugh lines around her mouth and eyes. “Please come in! And tell me I look better than the last time you were here.”
Lindsey’s voice, soft and Southern, was as light as sunshine. Sloan couldn’t stop staring at her, searching for some resemblance to herself. “A whole lot better than before.”
“Toby’s at school, and Gloria’s at work, so it’s just you and me. I have a tray of pastry and tea for us. We can sit on the sofa.”
The room still seemed overstuffed with furniture, but all was tidy, tabletops cleared, décor pillows fluffed. The air smelled faintly of lemon oil and fresh linen, and the medicine smell was gone. Sloan followed Lindsey to the worn sofa, where they sat together in front of a coffee table that held a serving tray. Sloan twitched nervously, feeling conflicted about this woman, only seven years older than her and dying of cancer.
“Hope you don’t mind tea instead of coffee. I love coffee, but the medicines I take make the smell of it unpleasant for me.”
“Tea’s fine.”
She watched Lindsey pour steaming liquid from a teapot into matching finely painted flower-splashed porcelain cups. “This was my grandmother’s on Mother’s side. We used to have tea parties with it when I was a child.”
Sloan was out of small talk. “Tell me—” She stopped, swallowed down her jitters, took the cup and balanced it on one knee. “Please tell me why you think we’re related. I—I’ve never met anyone from my family. Are you my sister or not?”
Lindsey’s gaze roamed Sloan’s face. “I see Daddy in your eyes and your chin, in the cleft.” She traced her finger down her own chin with a similar cleft but not as deep. “His was shaped just the same.” Goose bumps skittered up Sloan’s arms. Lindsey bent down, retrieved a large scrapbook from the floor beneath the coffee table, and held it out to Sloan. “Look at this, and I’ll let you decide.”
Sloan replaced the teacup and saucer on her lap with the heavy oversized book, and flipped open the cover. Fancy cursive letters said The Rock N Roll Legend of Gerald (Jerry) Sloan and the Pace Setters. Lindsey said, “You come by your voice honest, you know. Daddy had his own band. He played guitar and he was lead singer. He loved the music of the eighties. In the nineties they played Southern rock.”
Sloan turned the pages, saw a faded photo of four guys, one at a piano, a drummer sitting with his drum set, another holding a slide guitar, and in the center, standing in front of a microphone and posing with a guitar, a grinning Jerry. He looked tall and rangy and had blond hair to his shoulders. The image was blurry, but she stared hard at his face, judging, measuring, evaluating.
“Here’s a close-up,” Lindsey said gently, and turned a page to an eight-by-ten full-on head shot in glossy black and white, a professional publicity photo. Jerry had had high cheek bones, a smooth forehead, blond hair, and a cocky grin. Sloan saw his cleft chin clearly.
“Daddy was very handsome, don’t you think?” Lindsey said, smoothing her palm across the photo’s surface. “He was twenty-three when this was taken. He was just starting to get a buzz from the music world.” Lindsey turned a few more pages to show off playbills, flyers with performance dates, and reviews from newspapers and regional music magazines. “Everything was print in those days. None of these magazines exist anymore, but getting your name in them at the time was important. His band cut two albums in Muscle Shoals, Alabama. Sold quite a few and was getting radio air time too. I have the albums in a file drawer if you want to take them and listen.”
“I will.” The old vinyl albums would require a phonograph, and Sloan didn’t have one, but certainly Kiley could find one for her. Sloan flipped through more pages thick with informal pictures of the band playing inside bars with sawdust floors, or playing in grassy fields, surrounded by clusters of adoring fans, mostly teenage girls. There were fuzzy, muddy-looking photos of hotel room interiors, tabletops littered with bottles of beer and liquor, and photos of pretty half-dressed girls smoking and laughing, lying across the
beds with the guys. Sloan honed in on Jerry in each photo, always with a different girl.
“Mom took most of those pictures. She and some of her friends followed the band and partied after the shows. That’s how they met. She was a ‘groupie.’ ” Saying the word made Lindsey smile.
Sloan thought about her days with Jarred’s band, the days from high school and also her second time with the group and the tragic and disturbing way it had ended. No going back. “The band looks pretty successful. What happened?”
“People’s tastes in music changed. Grunge bands and punk rock came along, with Kurt Cobain and Nirvana, and the heyday of Dad’s music world went away. Venues dried up. Broke his heart because making music was all he knew and all he wanted.” Lindsey flicked her hand. “History now.”
Sloan understood. Her own hunger to sing had been all-consuming when she was growing up. Musicians, music genres, bands, and singers came and went like a flavor of the month at an ice cream store. Adaptability was the key to success. Talent was necessary, but so was luck, being in the right place at the right time.
Lindsey pointed to a photo of Jerry with his arm around a petite dark-haired woman. “This is Karen, my mother.” In the scrapbook’s next pages, the images changed from ones of the band to ones of Karen and Jerry, first in wedding garb, then of Karen pregnant, then of her holding a baby, followed by pages of Lindsey morphing from a newborn into a curly-haired girl in flowery dresses and shorts sets. There were photos of holidays and birthdays, of new toys, a pink bedroom draped with gossamer layers of tulle and lace and pictures of fairies and mermaids. And there were photographs of Jerry kissing Lindsey’s chubby cheek and cuddling her on his lap. Sloan’s insides twisted. No Daddy Dearest in her memory banks.