16

You have a really beautiful voice. I’ve never heard anything like it.” Kelli found herself staring at Alison, so she focused her attention on the plate full of food in front of her. She didn’t think she could eat a single bite.

“Thank you.” Alison took a sip of sweet tea. “What about you? Do you enjoy music?”

“I enjoy listening, that’s about it.”

“Mom plays every musical instrument known to man. Don’t you, Mom?” Beth leaned across the table toward her mother.

Alison shook her head and smiled at Kelli. “My daughter is blessed with the gift of exaggeration, as you have already witnessed several times this afternoon.”

“She’s witnessed nothing of the sort.” Beth made a snarly face as she took a bite of corn on the cob. The teasing affection between mother and daughter was foreign to Kelli. Surely it couldn’t truly be this simple and uncomplicated and . . . loving. There was no way her father would have taken her from this to a life with Mimi. Obviously there was something darker here. They were just putting on a good front for the church people.

Kelli cleared her throat. “How many instruments do you play?”

“I’m fairly proficient in piano, guitar, and violin—I teach piano lessons two afternoons a week and on Saturday. I can pick at a mandolin and a flute. But I’m pretty sure there are a lot more instruments out there than those.”

“My mother has the gift of modesty to the point of outright lying. Fairly proficient? Really? She used to be a professional musician, in a band that traveled all around the South playing events.”

“Really?” How had Kelli missed this in her research?

Alison actually blushed. “It was nothing, really. There were four of us. We got some local jobs, things like that.”

“If by ‘local’ you mean any state in the Southeast, then yes, you played locally. Kenmore always says that if you hadn’t quit, you would have been famous by now. He said there was some guy talking to y’all about a record deal when you stopped playing.”

Alison waved her hand dismissively and took a bite of her sandwich.

The polite thing to do at this point was to let the subject drop, as Alison obviously wanted. Yet there was one question Kelli knew she simply had to get an answer for. “What made you quit?”

Alison shrugged. “A lot of things, really.” She stirred the baked beans on her paper plate.

“There was an accident.” Beth glanced toward her mother. “My father and sister were killed in a boating mishap in South Carolina, while my mother, brother, and I were at a show in Tennessee. It was the last concert she ever did.”

“Their accident made you stop doing the thing you loved, something you have such a gift for?” The words flew out of Kelli’s mouth too soon for her to stop them.

Alison shrugged. “Beth and her brother were still young, and the grief was overwhelming and confusing. I didn’t want to do anything that would take me away from them when they needed me most.”

Beth reached over and hugged her mother. “And she was always there for us.”

“I’m so sorry.” Kelli didn’t know what else she could say.

“What she’s not telling you is that same daughter and son begged her to take up music again a couple of years later, and she wouldn’t.”

“To tell you the truth, I just didn’t have the heart to do it anymore.”

“Do you sing, Beth?”

“Nope. Not at all. My brother inherited the musical gene, somehow it skipped me altogether. What about you?”

Kelli shook her head. “My singing is so awful I don’t even sing along to the radio if there are people around. It’s one of my great regrets, because I really love music.”

Beth smiled and clapped her hands together. “You know what? You should take a singing lesson from Mom while you’re here. I guarantee she can free your inner musician.”

Alison shook her head. “Beth, you need to lay off. You’re backing Kelli into a corner, and you just met the poor thing.”

Rand added, “My wife likes to take on ‘projects.’” He made air quotes around the word. “Looks like you might be the next victim in her crosshairs. Better run for cover while you still can.”

Beth cocked her head to the side, opened her mouth to speak, then stopped. A few seconds later she turned to Kelli. “I hate to admit it, they are right. I do apologize. Usually I don’t get this worked up with someone I’ve just met. Weird though, I feel like I know you better than I do, for some reason. Please forgive me.”

“Nothing to forgive. Now, tell me about your baby. Do you know if it’s a boy or girl yet?”

Beth put both hands on her stomach. “We are being very intentional about not finding out the baby’s sex. We want to be surprised.”

Kelli nodded. “Good for you. When are you due?”

“Not until October. That gives me plenty of time to check out carousels and rocking horses”—she glanced toward Rand—“and decide what I’m going to do with Sprout’s room.”

“Sprout?”

“Like I said, we don’t want to know the sex, but it drives me crazy when people call my baby ‘it.’ So we went in for the first ultrasound, and Rand commented that the baby kind of looked like a bean with a heartbeat. After that, we bestowed the temporary name of Bean Sprout, which I’ve shortened to Sprout, and the terms he and she are always alternated. No one is going to call my baby an ‘it.’”

“But it’s okay to call her Sprout?”

“Yes, I’m sure he won’t mind a bit.” She folded her arms across her chest. “See how easy that was? You said ‘her,’ I said ‘he.’ It’s the perfect solution, don’t you think?”

“Sounds perfect to me.” Truth was, Beth’s quirkiness reminded Kelli of the part of Denice she loved best. And she completely understood Beth’s earlier comment when she’d said she felt like she’d known Kelli longer.

All of a sudden, Kelli was overcome by a deep ache. For the past twenty-four years, she had not even known these women existed, and now she sat here speaking with them and realized what an empty spot there had been inside her all these years. Why would her father have done this?

I met my mother and sister (that was an unexpected surprise) at church today. So far, they seem like really nice people. Super nice. I can’t think of one reason why my father would have chosen Mimi over the Alison that I met (except that she was fifteen years younger and more of a hottie, maybe). I’m sure there’s more to the story, though, there usually is. Beth seems pretty free and loose with information. If I could arrange to be around her another time or two before I leave town, it would definitely be helpful for gathering information. She’s not going to know anything about why my father left, I suppose, but she can fill in a few blanks. I’ll see how I can finagle myself into contact with her again this week.

It might mean staying long enough to go back to church next Sunday.

Kelli spent most of the rest of Sunday in a funk. She walked around the town square, then visited the only shop that was open on Sunday—a pharmacy that carried a little bit of everything, from toys, to porcelain figurines, to T-shirts. A young family was standing in the toy aisle, dressed liked they’d probably just come from church—father, mother, young boy, and an infant. Had her own family come to this very store when she was a baby? Had she been in this aisle before, feeling loved and secure, part of a happy family unit like this family appeared to be?

This line of thought cannot be healthy. She went back to the hotel, planning to pack and get out. She’d done what she’d come to do—see her family, everyone but her brother at least. It had been foolish to think she could waltz in here and dredge up some deep, dark secret that would help her understand what had happened, then waltz out again without any problem. It was time to move on.

She pulled her cell phone out of her purse, where she’d had it turned off all day. There were three messages—two from Denice just checking in and a third from Kenmore.

“I called to offer you the job at the store—hopefully you’re still interested. I’m about to spend the afternoon fishing, so I’ll be out of pocket for the rest of the day. Why don’t you come by tomorrow, so we can talk face-to-face? I’ll be there all day, from about seven to seven. Stop by whenever it works out for you ’cause I’m not going anywhere.”

Seven to seven? No wonder the poor man was willing to offer a job to any stranger who darkened his door. At that moment, Kelli regretted that she wouldn’t be staying around to spend more time with him.

She fell back on the bed and stared at the ceiling for a long time, her stomach hurting with the conflicting knowledge and emotions and memories from her entire life. Where was the truth?

Was she going to return home now and act as if nothing had changed? Keep moving forward while always wondering what had happened behind her?

No. Not if she could help it. Not if she could find some answers.

She put her clothes back in the closet. She was going to see Kenmore tomorrow. Who knew what would happen from there, but she wasn’t ready to give up just yet.

For my fifteenth birthday, we threw a party at our house. This was a big deal, probably fifty kids, biggest event I’d ever thrown. Dad and Mimi barbecued hamburgers and hotdogs for everyone and then retreated back into the house while the yard full of teenagers cranked up the music and acted like teenagers.

Janine Bradley, one of the popular girls who I’d invited more for reasons of social pressure than because I really wanted her there, came stumbling over. Her eyes were at half-mast and she reeked of alcohol. “Killer party, Kel,” she said, like we were the best of friends. She took a big swig from her 7-Up bottle, which obviously contained something other than soda.

“Janine, I promised my folks there wouldn’t be any alcohol here. You need to get rid of it.”

“Ha!” The party had suddenly grown quiet. I could feel the eyes staring at us from all around. “Your mother’s the one that gave it to me. I think we should get her out here to do shots with us.”

“That’s enough, Janine.” Denice had come to stand beside me, her shoulder just touching mine.

Janine looked around, suddenly seeming to realize that we were drawing all the attention. “Hey, it’s not like we all don’t like her or anything. Especially you, right, Randy?” She turned toward Randy Staggs, the boy who I’d spent the entire year crushing on, and laughed that kind of laugh fueled by a moment in the spotlight and too much alcohol. “All of you boys have a crush on her, am I right?”

The yard had gone deathly quiet by now, Gwen Stefani’s voice coming through the speakers providing the only other sound.

Randy came strutting over, nudged right up against Janine. “You’ve got to admit, she is hot.” He reached over and took the bottle from Janine’s hand and poured the rest of the contents down his throat. He seemed to choke for a second, but then wiped his hand across his mouth. That’s when he looked toward the back door, a big smile on his face. “Definitely hot.”

Mimi had come out on the back porch, a drink in her hand that had no pretense of being anything other than the 7 and 7 that I knew it was. Her tank top was low-cut, showing off the rewards of her most recent foray into plastic surgery. She stuck her hand in the air, moving in time with the music. “Great song. You all should be dancing.” And she began to sway back and forth in time with the beat, showing absolutely no restraint, occasionally screeching along with the lyrics, “Ain’t no hollaback girl.”

The boys all moved a little closer, which prompted several of the girls to start doing their own dance in order to draw some of the attention away from Mimi. Everyone was laughing and hooting and having a grand old time.

Denice whispered in my ear, “Forget her. She’s not worth it and neither are any of them.”

That was the last time I ever invited anyone to my house, birthday or not, with the exception of Denice—and then Jones, once he came along a few years later. For the past ten years, it’s been only them. I was too embarrassed to do otherwise.