That couldn’t be true. Regardless…“Aunt Dahlia, I love you dearly, but isn’t it time you let me out of the bubble?”
“What bubble?”
“You and Doreen going everywhere with me and never letting me be alone, except in my room. If she’d been here, I wouldn’t have had one moment alone with Caleb.”
“Yes, and Isaiah let me down. I gave him strict instructions to stay with you last night, but he went to his room. When I asked him about it this morning, he said he wasn’t a watchdog, whatever that means.”
Bless you, Isaiah.
Regardless, it had to end. “It was a one-time kiss. We’re leaving soon, remember?”
“Distance doesn’t stop love,” she said a little wistfully.
Oh no. From the sound of her voice, Aunt Dahlia must be in love with Mr. Augo. But the band didn’t need a lovesick musician.
How do you broach the subject of your great-aunt’s love life?
“What else has been bothering you today, darlin’?”
Ariel should have known Aunt Dahlia would sense her strain. “I’m not bothered. Concerned, maybe.”
“I saw this coming,” her aunt said. “You want to get your love life out in the open, and we always discuss everything, so let’s do that with Auggie too. This is about him, isn’t it?”
“It’s none of my business, but since you—got involved in my little short-lived romance, I’ll get involved with yours. Aren’t you two moving a bit fast? I know you’re old flames, but you hadn’t seen each other in—how many years?”
Her aunt let out a deep breath. “Auggie and I met when I was twenty and he was twenty-eight. It was love at first sight, and he is the love of my life.”
Apparently, Aunt Dahlia and Ariel didn’t discuss everything after all. “That is just about the last thing I expected you to say.”
They rode in silence for the space of a minute, Ariel’s mind spiraling as they rode out of the woods, her father and Ethan’s pumpkin fields now on both sides of the road. The bright noon sun loaned its warmth and did its best to bring a sense of brightness and levity to the conversation.
“Why haven’t you spoken of Mr. Augo before?” Good lands, would she soon have to call himUncleAugo?
“Be happy I’m speaking about him at all. You’re the only person I would share this with.”
Attempting to take in the information and its implications, Ariel focused on her docile mare’s steady gait. So much like her own mare, Arpeggio, on their Nashville ranch—dependable, safe. Predictable.
“We met at my recording studio,” her aunt said, her eyes turning misty. “I was breaking in, and he played for George Strait. I took one look at Augo and knew there’d never be another man for me. We saw each other every day until George went back on the road, and I stayed behind to record.”
Aunt Dahlia settled into silence Ariel didn’t dare break. How far Ariel had come from her humble beginnings. Sort of like her aunt’s East Tennessee cabin roots.
“We never could make our schedules mesh, especially when my career took off, and I had to go on the road for months at a time. I believed the Lord gave me this career, so I decided I was married to music.” She paused, her tone turning wistful. “After we broke up, I never heard from Auggie again until we got to the island.”
“Auntie, I can imagine your shock, seeing him at the inn that night.”
Aunt Dahlia gazed at the road ahead, seeming not to notice the sky as blue as her eyes, the colony of little yellow lady’s slippers in the meadow. “Neither of us had married, and I didn’t date anyone all those years.”
“But why, when you had such a beautiful romance?”
“Back then, we never thought our separation would be permanent. Every week, I expected things to cool down and people to get tired of hearing me sing. But they didn’t. I expected to work maybe five years and then we could get married and have a few kids.”
“Five years is a long time to wait.”
“That’s what we found out. In the end, we realized long-distance romance didn’t work for us. So we put it on hold, thinking we’d pick it back up after we stopped traveling. Auggie left the biz a year or so later, but I stayed on the road and stayed single.”
“So all the love songs you wrote were about Mr. Augo.”
“Yes, and some of them that I didn’t write but just recorded—I interpreted them to be about him too.”
