Stella searched the crowd to see that her father was yelling at the bartender, waving a gun around, and telling him to empty the cash register and give him everything he had. Stella felt as though she was somewhere out of her body, floating far above and watching. Slowly, Billy put his hand in hers, and she helped him to his feet, only for Harvey to come up and kick him in the stomach. Billy fell again, then wrapped himself in a ball. A record producer was no match for a mountain man like Harvey. Stella couldn’t believe how much she hated him right then.
And then, she thought of Sally. “Sally? Sally, where are you?” she called, searching.
“Are you talking about Carrie?” Harvey asked. “Sort of silly to pretend you’re someone you’re not, huh? But that’s what you Hollywood types do. Two-faced rich folks.”
Stella recognized that her father and Harvey only wanted the money that she and Sally had made through the years. They’d come here to take advantage of them, just as they’d always taken advantage of them. But she knew they couldn’t do it, that they weren’t the strongest men in the world, that her people in Tennessee certainly had guns of their own.
“You won’t get away with this,” she warbled, hating how weak she sounded.
But just as she’d thought, within seconds, a security guard had her father pinned to the ground, and another had taken his gun. Soon, Harvey was up against the wall, screaming the worst things she’d ever heard about herself.
“Sally?” Stella cried out. “Sally, where are you?” But in the madness of the whirling crowd, she couldn’t see her sister anywhere.
Stella bent down beside Billy and stroked his back. From the looks of things, Harvey had broken his nose. He’d probably broken his ribs and maybe his arm, too. Stella kissed his forehead, his arm. He moaned and refused to look at her until the ambulance came and took him away on a stretcher. Stella called out, “I’ll be at the hospital when you get there, baby! I’ll be there for you!” Through the door, she could see her father and husband dropping into two separate police cars.
Around her was mass hysteria and excitement. It was clear that something like this didn’t happen every day at Boo’s Country Western Bar. Where was Boo? On the way to the back office, she saw Boo’s teenage nephew, Matthew, mopping the blood from the floor. His eyes were buggy.
“Matthew, did you see Sally anywhere?” she asked.
Matthew shook his head. “Who were those men, Stella? And why did they call you those names?”
Stella didn’t have time to talk to him. She needed to get to the hospital. She needed to find Sally. The worst-possible thinghad happened, but everyone she loved was still alive. It was over. And she had a hunch that Harvey and her father wouldn’t get out of prison for a long while, not after stealing the money from the cash register, now after hurting Billy so badly.
Billy was important in the world. You couldn’t hurt him and get away with it.
As Stella hurried past the bar again, her legs were shaking so badly that she nearly tumbled to the ground.
“Stella?” A voice rang out from the dark corner, where a few guests remained, drinking their beer and talking about what had just happened. This was the kind of gossip that would keep people nourished for a long time.
Stella peered through the darkness to find Greta Vanberg, standing there in her exquisite fur coat—a ridiculous item in Nashville’s July heat. She looked formidable and terribly worried about her.
“I need to get to the hospital,” Stella said, before bursting into tears so powerful that they really did make her fall.
Greta hurried over to her and wrapped her in that expensive fur coat. “I'll take you there,” Greta said, stroking her hair. “I will take you, and it will be all right. I promise you that.”
22
July 1980: Nashville, Tennessee
For Stella, the drive to the Nashville hospital was a blur of tears. Greta drove like a maniac, speeding down the highway to Vanderbilt National Hospital, where she parked and ran next to Stella, making sure she wasn’t alone in her panic. Stella remembered what Greta had said right before her father and husband had come through the door of Boo’s bar. She’d said that Stella couldn’t trust Billy. But Greta was wrong about that. The men Stella couldn’t trust, the men she’d never been able to trust despite having grown up alongside them, had just torn her new life apart.
The emergency room was in a state of panic. There had been a major pile-up on the highway coming west into Nashville, and every chair was filled with terrified family members and friends. It was going to take ages to talk to someone at the front desk.
Greta touched Stella’s shoulder and said, “They are taking care of him. This is a good hospital.”
Stella wanted to ask Greta how she knew that. Greta was from Martha’s Vineyard and Germany, for goodness’ sake, so faraway that it stood to reason that Tennessee felt like a foreign country to her. But still, it sounded nice to hear that aloud. It sounded almost real.
Stella and Greta sat in the waiting room for a while. Greta told Stella to focus on her breathing, but when Stella started hyperventilating, Greta took Stella for a walk outside. The humidity of the day was fading, allowing Stella to inhale deeply.
Greta muttered, “No one should ever be this far from the sea.”
Stella laughed nervously and peered at her strange friend. “What are you still doing here?”
Greta closed her eyes. “I told you that I came here for a man. He deceived me, but he told me he wanted to make it up to me. He told me he wanted to start again. I plan to see him for dinner tomorrow. I do not know what will be said. I do not think I will ever love him. How can I possibly, after all he’s promised and all he cannot deliver? But I thought I would come see you perform one more time before I drive back to the Vineyard. I told you before. I felt a kinship with you, because of your music.”
Stella was touched. Again, she reminded herself that Greta Vanberg was a lonely, older woman. Music was for all sorts of people, but it was especially for the lonely.
“Thank you,” Stella said. “I don’t know what I would have done if you hadn’t driven me to the hospital.”
