“If it serves the story, sure. Why not?” Nathan laughed again.
Unable to stop herself, Candice raised her finger and paused the video. She was shaking, but she hoped that her daughter couldn’t see.
“It’s a good interview,” her daughter said. “Dad’s killing it.” But her daughter looked at Candice as though frightened she’d just done something wrong.
“He always does,” she said. “Good night, sweetie.”
When Candice left her daughter’s room, she couldn’t calm herself down enough to go to bed, so she returned to the kitchen, made herself a mug of tea, and roamed the halls until she found herself at the door of her mother’s study. Even back when her father was alive, Stella had spent long hours in the study by herself, reading and taking notes. As far as Candice knew, she’d never written anything, not essays or poems or stories. But she’d needed a private space, she’d said, so that she didn’t become a stranger to herself.
Candice entered for the first time since coming to Martha’s Vineyard, surprised that it seemed that neither Lindsey nor Henry had come in, either. A maid still came to the house once a week, so the study was spick-and-span, of course. But it still felt haunted, as though her mother might appear near the window, a book pressed against her ghostly chest.
Something that surprised Candice about the space was the record player. She hadn’t remembered her mother having one,nor a collection of so many old records. Feeling nostalgic, she flicked through the vinyls, remembering songs from long-ago days. One of them, an old Dolly Parton album, reminded her of her mother singing in the kitchen. Her mother had had a wonderful voice, although she’d very rarely sung in front of anyone. Her kids knew, and their father probably did. That was it.
Stella Vanberg hadn’t exactly been the type to go out for karaoke.
Lost in her own nostalgia, Candice put the Dolly Parton album on the record player and played the first track, her eyes closed as she visualized her mother at the kitchen counter, singing, her hips swaying from side to side. Before Candice had gotten older and more self-conscious, she’d danced in the kitchen, often with Lindsey’s hands in hers. They’d wanted to perform with their mother. They’d wanted to be in on her game.
Toward the back of the stack of vinyls was an unlabeled record in a dusty blue jacket. It looked mysterious next to the others. Although Candice had once been very accustomed to blank CDs, she’d never seen what she assumed to be a “blank” record. She wondered if something was on it, something special to Stella Vanberg and Stella Vanberg alone. But before she got a chance to put the record on the record player, she heard the sound of cackling from the foyer. It was Lindsey.
Abandoning Dolly Parton and the mysterious record, Candice hurried into the foyer to find her sister slipping into her leather jacket and laughing, still, with someone on the phone. She’d shaded her eyes in coal, and she looked gorgeous and wild and free. For a moment, Candice forgot that they were in their forties. Lindsey acted as though she were sneaking out.
“I’ll be there,” Lindsey said, then lifted her eyes to find Candice in the doorway. “Oh! You’ll never guess who just walked in,” she added to whoever she talked to.
Candice shivered. Whoever Lindsey spoke to was someone Candice clearly knew, too.
“That’s right,” Lindsey said. “My big sister. Should I ask her to come?”
It seemed there was affirmation on the other end. As soon as she was off the phone, Lindsey grinned and said, “You have to come out with us.”
“I can’t,” Candice said, searching her mind for an excuse, anything. But her children were old enough to stay home by themselves, and it wasn’t like she was going to get any writing done tonight.
“What’s stopping you?” Lindsey asked.
“Who is it?”
Lindsey’s grin widened. “A few old friends from the Vineyard. People we grew up with who never left. But there’s a rumor that someone is coming who you might really want to see.”
Candice widened her eyes, pretending not to know what Lindsey meant. But of course, there could only be one person she’d tease Candice about: Frank Delaware.
“Lindsey, come on. I’m married,” Candice reminded her.
“I’m not asking you to divorce your husband,” Lindsey said, giving Candice a look that Candice found difficult to decipher. It seemed to say to her:Your husband doesn’t keep his marital promises to you, so why do you have to keep your promises to him?
It took only a half-minute more of convincing, but eventually, Candice was upstairs, changing into a sundress and putting on a touch of lipstick (not her most provocative red shade, but something deep and quite hot, she knew). Even Nathan hadn’t been able to stop kissing her when she’d worn it—even Nathan, who’d grown tired of her.
9
1977: Nashville, Tennessee
It was the surprise of Heidi’s life that Isaac—the scrawny eighteen-year-old who’d picked them up from the side of the road—was true to his word. Just as soon as they reached Nashville, he set Heidi and Carrie up with a room over the top of a restaurant that sold barbecue sandwiches and onion rings. The rent was affordable, provided that Heidi got a job as soon as she could. When Carrie suggested that she get a job, too, to help make ends meet, Heidi grimaced and told her she could, but only if she committed to school as soon as it began.
The second night after their arrival, Heidi and Carrie were invited to the barbecue restaurant downstairs. Isaac and a variety of friends and people of all ages from all over the world who’d come to Nashville to make country music greeted them warmly and fed them more barbecue than Heidi had ever eaten at once. Back in their small town, food had been hard to come by. She’d always gone hungry at the end of the night.
When they finished their meals, Isaac’s friend Jefferson, a guy in his mid-forties, ordered them all pints of beer, thenleaned over the table and asked Heidi and Carrie what their story was. Heidi was immediately frightened. She didn’t want to tell anyone about Harvey and her father, how she’d been responsible for “kidnapping” her little sister, and also for Harvey’s accident on the stairs. It was possible that they were coming after Carrie and Heidi.
“We can’t be found,” Heidi said finally, pressing her lips into a line.
Jefferson understood immediately. “Consider new names for yourselves, girls,” he said. “People come to Nashville from all over the world and reinvent themselves. There’s no reason in the world that you can’t do the same.”
