The song is about leaving home and finding your way back, and the people who wait for you, who keep the light on, who love you even when you don’t deserve it.
I stand in the parking lot of my great-aunt’s bar, in a town I had never even heard of a week ago, and feel something crack open in my chest.
I do not know what Mavis saw in me. I do not know why she thought I belonged here.
But standing here in the dark, under the shadow of the Blue Ridge Mountains, listening to Presley sing about home, I feel something I have not felt in a very long time.
Hope.
The Copper Creek Bed and Breakfast has betrayed me.
“I’m so sorry, honey,” Mabel says, wringing her hands as if she is genuinely distressed. “The bluegrass festival starts tomorrow, and I’ve got folks coming in from three states. Every single room is booked solid through Sunday.”
I stand in her doily-covered parlor, my overnight bag at my feet, trying to process what she is saying. It is Saturday morning, and I have been in Copper Creek for less than forty-eight hours, but I am already homeless.
“Isn’t there another hotel? A motel, maybe?”
Mabel shakes her head, her silver curls bouncing. “Nearest one’s forty-five minutes down the mountain, and honey, they’ll be full up too. This festival brings in folks from all over. It’s our biggest weekend of the year.”
Of course it is. Of course, the one weekend I desperately need accommodation is the one weekend where every available bed within a fifty-mile radius is occupied by banjo enthusiasts.
“Okay, what about a vacation rental? Airbnb?”
“A what now?”
I close my eyes and try to count to ten in my head. When I open them, Mabel is looking at me with a sympathy usually reserved for lost puppies or people who have received bad medical news.
“You know,” she says slowly, “Mavis’s apartment is empty, and it’s yours now, isn’t it? It seems a shame to let it go to waste when you need a place to stay.”
The apartment. The charming, eclectic, aggressively quirky apartment above the bar that I am not sure I want to own. The apartment where my great aunt lived for thirty-five years, surrounded by cowboy boots, concert posters, and a life I cannot begin to understand.
“I couldn’t possibly.”
“Why not?” Mabel interrupts, tilting her head like a curious bird. “It’s got everything you need. A bed, a bathroom, a kitchen. And again, it’s yours, legally speaking. Harlan drew up those papers himself, didn’t he?”
She isn’t wrong. I mean, the apartment is mine, at least for the next six months. And my other options appear to be sleeping in my car or driving forty-five minutes to a motel that is probably full.
“I suppose,” I say slowly. “It would be the practical choice.”
Mabel smiles like she has just solved world hunger. “That’s the spirit. And don’t you worry about a thing. I’ll send some of my blueberry muffins over with Pastor Dale’s wife. She’s heading your direction anyway.”
Before I can protest or ask why Pastor Dale’s wife would be heading toward a honky-tonk bar, Mabel is ushering me right out the door with promises of baked goods and assurances that everything will work out just fine.
I sit in my car for a long moment, staring at the façade of the bed and breakfast that has just evicted me. Then I pull out my phone and do something I have been avoiding since I arrived.
I call my best friend.
Cynthia answers on the second ring.
“Eleanor, finally! I’ve been dying to hear about this mysterious inheritance. Is it fabulous? Oh my gosh, please tell me it’s fabulous. Is it like a villa in Tuscany? Maybe a penthouse in Manhattan?”
“It’s a honky-tonk bar in the Blue Ridge Mountains with a giant neon boot outside.”
Silence.
Then, “Oh. I’m sorry. I think I misheard you. It sounded like you said?—”
“Yes. A honky-tonk bar called The Rusty Spur, complete with a neon cowboy boot sign and a disco ball.”
