1
TALLY
‘Hi,I got a mangled body in the trunk’isn’t the most elegant way to greet your estranged ex-husband, but it’ll skip over the awkward small talk.
And it beats the question burning on my tongue. It goes a lot like,‘Why did you break up with me on the morning after our wedding?’Nowthatwould be an instant mood killer and as fate would have it, my ex is my only chance to escape a prison sentence.
How ironic.
My tired eyes strain to focus on faded road markings flying by, illuminated by my car’s headlights. Mountains loom over one side of the cracked asphalt like immovable wardens, the other side hemmed in by an impenetrable tree line with mist swirling around ancient trunks.
I pass a familiar metal sign leaning in tall weeds and my palms start to sweat.
Welcome to Redbird Creek.
I swore I’d never set foot in my Eastern Kentucky hometown again and I kept that oath like my life depended on it—until tonight.
Returning wasn’t much of a choice. I have nowhere else to go.
Killing somebody really shows you who your true friends are, and it turns out I have none.
The world would laugh at me if I admitted my loneliness out loud.‘How can country star Tally Creed be lonely when she’s always surrounded by people?’they’d ask.
But they don’t get that fame feels a lot like being trapped in a glass box. Everybody sees me, all the time, but they can never get close. I can’t let them.
Those folks are good enough to share drinks with, not troubles, and they sure aren’t the type to help with covering up a murder. They’d rather sell the story to the highest bidder.
Cameras rolling or not, everything in my life is a performance. Yeah, even my non-existent dating life and PR stunt relationships. Any moment of weakness could be used against me and soon I’d find my private business detailed in some trashy tabloid.
When I scrolled through my phone contacts, wondering who’d make the best accomplice for burying a body, I came up empty. Except for a tiny, hopeful, extraordinarily unwelcome, stupid voice in my head whispering the name I cursed a million times over:
Rustin McAllister. My ex-husband.
But in that moment, I didn’t remember the morning he broke my heart.
I remembered the boy who beat up the kids at school who made fun of my frizzy red mane. Back then, the curly girl method wasn’t a thing and my furious brushing only made things worse.
I remembered the boy who slept on the floor so I could have his bed when my Momma had one of her drunken hissy fits and locked me out of our trailer as punishment.
I remembered that he made me feel safe.
Because I didn’t just lose my husband. I lost my whole world.
Before Rust became my partner on stage, long before he became my boyfriend, he was my best friend.
After the annulment, I prayed every night that he’d call or write, begging me to take him back. But twelve years passed and he never called. He never wrote.
And I moved on long ago, because holding fast to my anger and grief would’ve killed me. I still had a dream to fulfill, even without him.
Music was all I had left.
I burned every picture of us—except the faded half of our wedding polaroid, that I carry in my wallet. But it’s not because I want to remember his warm brown eyes or his easy smile.
I keep it for the same reason Momma only kept Daddy’s old guitar and his mugshot when he went out to get cigarettes and never returned: As a warning.
Never fall in love again.
Unlike Momma, I wasn’t pregnant when I got dumped. I reckon I should call that a stroke of luck cause I saw what that betrayal did to her. It broke her. The only comfort she found was at the bottom of a bottle.
