“Did Colt tell you I’m not going on the road?”
“Honey, we have a stable full of talent itching to tour who couldn’t write a hit song if Dolly Parton and Taylor Swift were holding the pen and whispering in their ear. What we don’t have is the next Gretchen Peters. The new Diane Warren. I’m betting that could be you.”
“But I don’t... But why?” I asked.
Dewey chuckled. “The label likes Grammys. Your new song, ‘For Better or Worse’? That’s real special. You got a real gift. Something to say. Let me talk to your people, and we’ll get this contract thing worked out.”
I don’t know what I said after that.
“Well?” Amy asked when I ended the call. Her eyes were hopeful. Worried.
“That was Dewey Stratton. The label wants to offer me a songwriting contract.”
“Oh my God. Oh my God, Bethie!”
“He wants to call my people,” I said dazedly. “I don’t have people.”
“I will be your people.”
For some reason, this struck me as funny. I laughed. “You don’t know anything about the music industry.”
“So what? Trey will know where to start. Oh my God.” Her face lit. She grabbed my arms. “We have to tell everybody!”
She dragged me to the kitchen, shouting the news. Everybody pressed around, Mom and Dad, Meg and Jo and Eric. I was swarmed, surrounded by family, filled with love. Swamped by hugs, congratulations, and questions I couldn’t answer. Jo cried.
“What’s going on?” John asked, appearing at the door, Daisy and DJ in tow.
The twins’ birthday party was in twenty minutes. Sometime during the explanations, I slipped upstairs to change my clothes. My reflection stared back at me, stunned and happy and with, yes, a hint of pride.
The spiral notebook was by my bed. Empty, the way I had been for so long.
A sweet heaviness settled in my stomach. A fullness, a softness, an ache. I listened to my family’s voices, coming up the stairs.You have something to say.
I flipped open the glittery cover. Stroked the blank pages.
For the first time in a long time, I thought I could see how to fill them up again.
CHAPTER 32
Amy
Birthday pennants fluttered in the breeze. The sky was hot and blue. The farmyard teemed with chaos, color, and life like that painting by Miró,The Harlequin’sCarnival. Five-year-olds were everywhere.
I was painting, too. Face painting—butterflies, rainbows, and kittens on the girls; tigers, pirates, and dinosaurs on the boys.
“Very gender normative,” Jo said when she stopped by my “booth” with Robbie on her hip.
“Hey, I’m a commercial artist,” I said. “I give the people what they ask for.”
I painted a lightning bolt on Robbie’s forehead, like Harry Potter, and Jo and Robbie wandered off smiling.
The water balloon toss had started, bright bombs splashing on the ground. I noticed tall Alec taking a lot of hits, one of them landed by pink-haired Nan, who was here as his... date? Beth was comforting one of the party guests, Jenny Snow’s daughter, whose balloon burst in her hands before she had a chance to throw it.
Mom came around with towels and Meg with Popsicles. Our father and John were supervising the fishing hole. Eric strode around with DJ on his shoulders. Dan was in the baby goats’ enclosure with Daisy and Sallie Moffat’s little girl.
Trey came up from the dock, where he was in charge of boat rides. The two kids with him dashed off to join the balloon toss, Robbie toddling in their wake. Trey lingered, talking with Jo.
Carefully, I repaired a bumblebee on Kaylee Upton’s cheek before sending her back into the water battle.
