“Eighteen!” Lindsey and Candice said in unison. The same age as Sarah.
The articles stopped abruptly midway through 1980.
“I don’t get it,” Candice said. “They had wonderful voices. They had real talent. And by the sounds of things, people really liked them. They came out to see them. Why didn’t they have the same careers as Dolly Parton?”
Henry and Lindsey were quiet for a moment. But then, Henry clicked his finger against that date—1980—and looked back up at Candice.
“Candice, how old are you again?”
Candice did a quick round of math, then sat back down in her chair. Candice was forty-five. She was born in 1981, the year after Stella and Sally’s career had apparently gone belly-up.
It stood to reason that pregnancy and marriage had gotten in the way of Stella’s career, they guessed. But why had they never heard about it? Why didn’t they know about their Aunt Sally? And were Sally and Stella really from the north, from the Vineyard, from where Stella had always said she was from? Or were they actually country darlings, their voices filled with twang?
13
1978: Nashville, Tennessee
By February of 1978, Stella and Sally had a standing gig at Boo’s Country Western Bar. Every Friday night, from eight to nine, they performed country classics, as well as a few of their own creations. They were immediately adored, not only by people passing through Nashville but also by Nashville locals, who came out to see them and congratulate Boo on his “incredible find.” Boo always grinned knowingly, although Stella remembered that she’d thought he was going to fire her that day she’d used that musician’s guitar. She’d been messing around, and she’d nearly destroyed their lives.
Times were still tough, of course. Stella worked hard at the bar almost every single night, and Sally was still roughing it at high school, trying to make up the time she’d lost back home. There was a small chance that she would have to take summer courses this year, although Sally was resistant.
One night at the bar, when only a few regulars were sitting around with their beers, Sally and Stella sat at the bar top and ate burgers from the kitchen and talked about their music. Sallyhad really taken to songwriting, showing a musical prowess that surprised and electrified Stella. Sally showed Stella some of the lyrics she’d been working on, and Stella and Sally sang the harmonies quietly, their half-eaten burgers abandoned. Stella knew they had to get their new songs on stage pronto. She wanted to show Boo that already, they were getting better and better.
Sally’s seventeenth birthday was coming up. Stella resolved to get them a concert for the night before so that they could celebrate Sally’s new year. It had been an outrageous time, a time of upheaval and fear. But since they’d left their mountain town behind, they hadn’t heard a peep from their father nor from Harvey. They had a little cushion money in the bank, and Stella was beginning to really think everything was going to be all right.
Boo agreed to host a concert for them the night before Sally’s seventeenth birthday. Sally and Stella set to work promoting themselves by making posters, knocking on doors, and inviting everyone in Nashville to the event. They wrote nearly an entire album’s worth of new songs, and they practiced every minute that they weren’t at the bar or at school.
On the night of the concert, Sally and Stella dressed in their new cowgirl getups and got on stage to perform in front of a bigger crowd than they’d ever had before. Needless to say, they brought down the house. They had three encores, and eventually, Boo had to come out to the microphone and tell everyone the show was really over this time. Sally and Stella were exhausted, but they couldn’t sit still. They hugged everyone. They hugged each other.
Out of the corner of her eye, Stella spotted Sally hugging Isaac—the kid who’d picked them up hitchhiking outside of their mountain town—a little longer than was necessary. Stella felt a twinge of regret. She worried that Sally would marry Isaac andabandon their music project. Stella had resolved never to marry again. She couldn’t legally, after all, and she didn’t want any messiness that came with revealing her old identity to someone. But she also didn’t want any man to get in the way of her dreams again.
She’d escaped Harvey, but she knew there were different Harveys out there, waiting to ruin her life again.
Stella went to the bar and grabbed herself a beer. She was nearly twenty and served beer herself nightly, and nobody told her no. When she turned back around to drink it, she nearly ran headfirst into Billy Long, a semi-famous record producer who’d made his mark on Nashville’s scene. Stella had served him numerous times at the bar, but she’d hardly spoken to him. She hadn’t known he was coming.
Billy looked her in the eye, and she felt her heart drop into her stomach. There was something about that man’s energy, something that made her feel electric and alive. She supposed that was why Billy was so famous and why he could make others famous too.
“That was something else,” Billy said. His accent was Georgian.
“Thank you,” Stella said.
“Who’s signing you?” Billy asked.
Stella nearly fainted on the spot. “I beg your pardon?”
Billy smiled wider. “I want to sign you. It has to be me.”
Never in Stella’s wildest dreams had she imagined this. A handsome record producer, demanding that he sign Stella and Sally on his label. She followed him to the corner, where they sat in a booth and discussed his vision for Sally and Stella’s future.
“I know you’re protective of your sister,” Billy said. “And I know you’ve got a business mind. It’s been clear from the get-go how you’ve been working with Boo and trying to get a name for yourself going while holding down a job here.”
“I’m practical,” Stella said.
“I’m offering you a world where you don’t ever have to be practical again,” Billy said.
It was the most romantic thing that anyone had ever said to Stella. “What do we have to do?” she asked him.
Billy outlined a strategy. He wanted to hear all of their songs. He wanted to fine-tune them and figure out which could be their first single, which could be thrown out, and which would make the album. “We’ll work on the album all year long and release it in 1979,” he said. “There will be a big buildup before the release. We’re trying to make stars out of you. You’ll be on everyone’s minds. Your album will be played on every radio station.”
