“I WANT OUT.” Savannah paced the small bedroom she’d dreamed of running away from too many times to count in the past. The place she’d run to when the life she’d thought she’d wanted began crumbling around her.
Scratch that. Her Nashville life hadn’t crumbled—she’d imploded it with one stupid, huge, regrettable act. All because she’d felt uncomfortable on the stage she’d pushed to stand on. Now she’d fully realized her life in Nashville wasn’t what she’d truly wanted at all.
“It looks as if you’re going to get your wish.” Guy’s voice was heavy through the phone line. “They dropped three of the four acts this morning. You’re the only one they’re still holding tight to.”
Why? Why couldn’t they just drop her already? The sooner the record label signed off on her release, the sooner she could breathe. Genevieve would have no reason to spill her dirty little secret if Savannah was no threat.
She’d told Collin a white lie last night in the truck. Yes, she’d been uncomfortable on stage and talking to the press, and it was because of her past. Leaving Nashville was only partially about the press hounding her, though. It was also about Genevieve threatening to go public with Savannah’s affair—technically, one-night stand—with Genevieve’s road manager. And husband. If the press got wind of that...not even the quiet life she was picking up in Slippery Rock would be safe.
God, how could she have been so stupid?
Philip Anderson said all the right things—it was a business marriage, it was an open marriage, and Genevieve had drawn up separation papers.
He’d neglected to tell her the separation papers were more than five years old, had never been filed, and that, while he considered their marriage open, Genevieve didn’t.
She stood by her man.
While Savannah had sex with him on a tour bus.
Only Guy, Genevieve and Philip knew what she’d done, and she was more desperate to keep this dirty secret between the four of them now than the day she’d left Nashville. She’d packed her suitcase into the old Honda and gotten out of town as quickly as possible, on Guy’s advice. She’d stayed away from everything music related, as Genevieve had angrily ordered her.
“What are they waiting on?”
“What label heads are thinking never makes sense. Don’t worry, though, if Genevieve pushes and they drop you, we’ll find a home somewhere else,” he said, misreading her anxiety about being dropped. Savannah didn’t want a new deal. She wanted to disappear into the sunset.
She wanted more days spent in the sunshine with Collin, in bed with Collin, in a rainy truck with Collin. Away from the press. Away from the spotlight. She just wanted to be the Savannah that she was in Slippery Rock.
“I’m not sure I want that,” she said, and waited for Guy to tell her not to worry. She wasn’t disappointed.
“Savannah, I know touring with Genevieve was stressful, and I know your life since the reality show has been a whirlwind, but don’t let one executive trying to balance his revenue sheets make this decision for you.” His deep voice seemed to echo over the phone line. “You have a bright future. We’ll find a label that is a good fit—”
“No. I don’t—I can’t—It isn’t what I want.” She had to give him a legitimate reason not to return to Nashville, and she didn’t think having a crush on a guy from high school was the reason. “I don’t like living on tour buses, and being on those stages is... It’s almost crippling. The crush of people is too much and the music they pipe into my in-ear monitors is too loud and everything just starts to go hazy.”
Guy listened while she told him just how uncomfortable she was in front of the crowds, and how much she feared the media microscope that, to date, had barely existed.
“The media loves you. You never made a big deal of your ethnicity, but you can be that barrier-crossing artist. We can do a big spread ‘At Home with Savannah’ or something with one of the big magazines. You can control the story. You can be the first woman of color to make it into the top fifteen on the country music charts—”
“Only because of the reality show. As soon as I left the show, the song dropped like a rock.”
Guy ignored her. “You don’t need to worry about finding a new slot, the labels will be fighting for you.”
The thought sent a chill up Savannah’s spine. It had been a relief when her vote percentage hadn’t made the cut into the top three, and when the show single began sinking, the relief was even stronger. She’d felt like she could breathe.
She’d only taken the tour slot because her parents had sounded so disappointed when she hadn’t made that final cut. Selfishly, she’d wanted them to be proud of her so she’d ignored the anxiety she had when she performed during the show tapings, signed on to Genevieve’s tour, and dreaded every minute of it.
Now that she saw her chance to be free of the circus that went with being in the spotlight, she was desperate to hold on to that freedom. She didn’t want record labels fighting over her. She didn’t want crowds cheering her name. She hadn’t wanted those things before the incident with Philip, and she didn’t want them now because of what had happened with the man. She didn’t want her actions to reflect badly on her family.
She didn’t want Nearly-a-Boy-Scout Collin to know about any of that.
She wanted to be stronger than the woman who’d run from Slippery Rock two years before, and she wanted to be stronger than the Savannah who, instead of just walking away from a situation she didn’t like, imploded her life and hurt another singer, Genevieve, in the process.
“I don’t want the labels to fight over me, and you deserve a client who wants to be in that spotlight. Whatever you have to do, just get me out of the contract. I don’t want the attention.”
“Listen, you’ll change your mind in another week or so. I’ll call when I know more. You hang in there.” Guy hung up before Savannah could say anything.
She sat heavily on the edge of her bed. For the past few days she’d been able to put Nashville out of her mind, and she would be damned if she let it spin out of control again.
The strong woman she wanted to be wouldn’t hide in her childhood bedroom all day, Savannah decided. She straightened her shoulders and left her phone on the bed.
Mama Hazel was working in the kitchen. Dirty breakfast dishes were piled in the sink, but she was busy gathering ingredients for the market pies. Savannah put the drain plug in the sink and began filling it with hot, soapy water.
“Hummingbird, I’m just going to make more of a mess,” Mama said.
“We clean as we go. Isn’t that what you always told me?” Savannah began washing plates, stacking the soapy, clean ones in the other side of the sink for rinsing.
“I think I said that just to give you something to do instead of sitting at the table with those big eyes of yours,” Mama Hazel said with a smile. “I never knew what you were thinking.”
Savannah began rinsing the clean plates and stacking them on the drainer. “Mostly, I was wondering when I’d have to leave.” All the air seemed to be sucked from the room with her words. Mama’s hands stilled at the big island. Savannah peeked over her shoulder.
Mama Hazel stood at the big, butcher block island, floured hands covering her mouth, her eyes wide with shock. “Savannah,” she whispered.
“I didn’t want to leave,” Savannah said quickly. “I was afraid I would do something wrong and that you wouldn’t want me here.” She forced the words out fast, knowing that if she didn’t they wouldn’t come. The two of them—the four of them, actually, but she would start with her mother—had needed to have this conversation for a long time. She’d started it in the farmers’ market, but then backed away from it. She couldn’t keep leaving things half said. The woman she wanted to be would have this conversation. So Savannah took a deep breath.
“Oh, baby,” Mama said, and wiped her hands on her apron before crossing to the big kitchen sink. She gathered Savannah in her arms, and Savannah thought if she could just stay there everything would be okay. No one would have to know just how royally she’d messed up this time. She wouldn’t hurt her family.
She wouldn’t have to see that look in Collin’s eyes. He’d been sympathetic last night in the truck, but that had been a sanitized version of her life pre-adoption. She hadn’t told him about the dirt or the cold or the yelling voices she could sometimes still hear.
She hadn’t told him about the fear that maybe it was her fault she’d been left on those steps with a ragged piece of paper pinned to her chest. And she hadn’t told him that as a child, every time she started to feel comfortable in this house, she’d lashed out. Disrupted things in any way she could, just to see if they would send her away like the people with the angry voices had done. One of the psychologists Mama Hazel took her to called it Reactive Attachment Disorder. She hated that label. She hated more that the label was right.
“You could never do anything that would make me turn my back on you. Not then. Not now.” Mama Hazel stepped back. She pushed a braid behind Savannah’s ear. “Nothing.”
“I must have done something that made them leave me on a set of steps on a cold January day.”
“You don’t know that,” her mother said, shaking her head.
“You don’t know that I didn’t.”
Anger lit Hazel’s brown eyes, bringing out the golden flecks that both Levi and Savannah also had. “Of course I do. You’ve lived in this house for almost twenty years, and not one time have you done something so egregious that your father or I would turn you out. I can’t imagine you or any other child could ever do anything that would warrant that.”
“Then why?” Savannah gripped the dish towel in her hands tightly. It was a question she’d asked herself at least a million times, but until today she’d never been brave enough to voice the words aloud.
“I don’t know.” Hazel put her finger under Savannah’s chin, forcing her to look up. “I have to believe, though, that whoever it was had a heart, otherwise they would have left you anywhere except a police station.”
“I never moved. I didn’t run after her.” Savannah was positive the person who’d left her was a woman. She couldn’t put a name or a face on her, but she was positive it was a woman. “Why didn’t I run after her?”
“I don’t know.” Hazel was quiet for a moment. “I’ve always been grateful to whoever left you at that police station, Savannah. Grateful he or she didn’t just leave you on the side of a road or alone in an apartment. Grateful because, had they left you anywhere other than that police station, it’s likely you’d have died, and I would never have had the chance to be your mother.”
She chanced a glance at Mama Hazel, seeing nothing but sincerity in her gaze.
“You’re my baby, my hummingbird,” she said and put her arms around Savannah again.
“I love you, Mama,” she said, and realized she had never said those words out loud to anyone before.
Hazel sniffed. “I love you, too, Savannah.”
Savannah felt a little piece of her soul heal with the simple words spoken in a kitchen that was so familiar to her. All those nights spent in family counseling, all the days spent angry with her lot in life, all the times she’d been too afraid to ask the hard questions, rolled through her mind.
She’d wasted nearly twenty years of her life being afraid of who she was. Collin was right. She was Savannah Walters. What happened before she was given that last name didn’t have to ruin her future.
She was through being afraid.
“I’m not going back to Nashville.”
Mama held her at arm’s length for a moment, her gaze inspecting Savannah as if she expected her to have sprouted horns or wings or maybe a tail. “Are you feeling all right?”
Savannah wiped at the tears on her cheeks. “Despite the waterworks, yeah, I’m good. Better than I’ve been, maybe ever.”
“But you love singing.”
How many people were going to tell her what she loved? She liked singing. She was good at it. Saying that she loved it was an exaggeration.
“I saw singing as a way to do something that was me. Something that would make you all proud of me. Levi was the football star. I wanted to shine for you, too, and I knew I could sing, so that’s what I did.”
“But you didn’t have to do anything to shine. You shine all the time, just by being yourself.” Mama poured two mugs of coffee and motioned Savannah to the kitchen table.
“It doesn’t matter, it’s just what I thought. Still think, maybe. But being on the reality show and then joining the tour—” she shook her head “—made me realize that I like singing for me, not for crowds. The crowds and the noise and everything that goes along with a singing career make me feel like I can’t breathe.” She sipped her coffee, waiting for Mama to tell her she was wrong.
“Okay.”
Savannah blinked. Mama Hazel sipped her coffee and then added another spoonful of sugar from the little bowl on the table. “What? You’re an adult, Savannah. If you don’t want to be a singer, you don’t have to be a singer. What do you want to do?”
The million-dollar question, and one for which her answer was still a little murky. She liked being with Collin, but dating an orchard owner wasn’t exactly a career aspiration. She liked hanging out with Amanda, and she’d liked working with the kids in the Nashville music program.
“Do you remember that camp we went to after my freshman year?”
“The family camp.”
A halfhearted smile crossed Savannah’s face. “Therapy camp, Mama.”
Mama Hazel waved her hand. “We were there as a family—”
“Because I ran away from home and wouldn’t talk about it. We had daily sessions with a therapist, and then there were the horse therapy things and the bonding exercises.” And before she’d come back to Slippery Rock, it had been one of the happiest experiences of her life, despite the fact that she’d pretended she’d hated every minute of it. “Thank you.”
“For what?”
“For taking me there. I don’t think I ever thanked you for that.” Savannah thought about the week the four of them had spent at the camp, and an idea began to form in her head. “There was a music program I volunteered with in Nashville. It’s one of the only things I liked about being there. It was a mix of kids, some from rich neighborhoods, some from poorer. I think I’d like to do something like that.”
“Run a music program for kids?” Mama Hazel seemed to mull the idea over for a long moment. “You could talk to the school, I guess.”
“No, I’m thinking more like a camp that is musically based. For foster kids. A place for them to go, to be themselves, to have music. To keep music in my life, but in a way that I’m comfortable with.”
Mama reached across the table and put her hand over Savannah’s. Her darker skin was soft and smooth, her nails clipped short and painted a light pink. Savannah squeezed her mother’s hand in hers.
“I think that is a beautiful idea,” Mama Hazel said and patted her hand.
“Yeah?”
She nodded. “Yeah.”
Savannah drew in a slow breath. A music program. Her own music program, not for aspiring singers or songwriters or guitarists, but for kids who were just looking for something or some place where they could belong.
It was a scary thought. An exciting and scary and energizing thought. Now she just had to figure out how to make it work.
* * *
FOR THE FIRST time since Levi’s football injury three years before, Collin skipped out on their dart game at the Slope.
He pulled his old truck into the drive at Walters Ranch just before seven and walked to the door. Levi answered.
“I knew that look at the bar meant something,” his friend said, giving him a light shoulder shove. “She’s not ready.”
“Is this where you give me the big brother talk?” Collin entered the house. Mama Hazel and Bennett sat in their matching rocking chairs. Bennett watched the Kansas City Royals on TV while Mama Hazel worked on some kind of puzzle in a magazine.
“I figure you know the drill on that one, having two sisters of your own.” The two of them sat on the sofa facing the big brick fireplace.
“When will your house be finished?” Collin asked.
“Another week or so.”
“Then we just have to get Savannah out, and we’ll be empty nesters,” Bennett added from his chair, his deep baritone filling the room. “We didn’t realize we’d raised two kids who couldn’t live on their own.”
“Hey, I survived two years in Los Angeles and Nashville, thank you very much,” Savannah said from the stairs. She wore a short navy dress with thin straps at the shoulders and a skirt that swirled around her thighs. Collin swallowed hard.
“And I did four long years at college and another two and a half in the pros. It’s like you don’t like us or something,” Levi said.
Collin liked the banter in this cozy living room. He missed bantering with Mara and hadn’t yet figured out how to banter with Amanda.
“And now you’re both back. It’s like you two are homing pigeons,” Bennett said, laughter in his deep voice.
“You hush, we love having both of our children at home,” Mama Hazel said diplomatically.
“You’d just like us better in our own homes, we get it,” Levi put in.
The play-by-play was fun to watch and almost familiar to Collin, although his memories were of Bennett, Hazel and Levi teasing like this and Savannah mostly off to the side. Interesting that she was joining in now.
That joining in meant something. He hoped it meant he could start thinking about Savannah in the long-term instead of this open-ended but short-term thinking he’d been doing.
A few minutes later they left the house. Collin handed Savannah into the truck and backed down the lane.
“Nice look. I wondered if you had any pants that reached past your knees,” Savannah said.
“Made a special trip to Shanna’s Closet. Did you know she carries menswear now, too?”
“Really? I thought those probably came from the sporting goods store at the marina,” she said, gesturing to his khakis.
“Ouch.” Collin put his hand to his heart as if he’d been punched, making Savannah laugh. “And here I was going to tell you how nice you look.”
“This old thing?” She grinned. “Where are we going?”
“The Overlook,” he said, mentioning a restaurant with wide windows and the best views of the lake.
“Nice choice.”
“Well, Bud’s closes at seven thirty, and Merle gets annoyed if too many people eat the fruit off his drink setups.”
They passed the rest of the drive in companionable silence, with Savannah appearing to focus intently on the fields they passed.
Once seated with glasses of wine on the table, she said, “I’m not going back to Nashville.”
It was the farthest thing from Collin’s mind and he shook his head. “You have to, it’s your job.” He paused. “Not that I want you to go back. Unless you want to go back.”
“I don’t, and singing isn’t going to be my job much longer, even if I did.” She fiddled with her napkin. “The label is cutting new artists, trying to level their revenue lines. Four artists were on the chopping block, and three of them are already gone. I’m the last.”
“I’m sorry,” he said, but he wasn’t. The thought of Savannah staying in town made him happy. He was a jerk.
“I’m not. I told you the other day I didn’t like the attention of the media, but it’s more than that. I didn’t like being on stage at all. All those people watching me, I couldn’t relax.”
“You might have gotten used to it.”
“That’s what my manager said, or at least, it’s what he implied. He also said there will be a feeding frenzy for me when the label makes the announcement.” Savannah kept fiddling with her napkin. “I told him I didn’t want to continue on.”
“And he said?”
“He said what any good manager would say to a fledging artist who he feels has cold feet—that I don’t really know what I want.”
Finally she looked at Collin and what he saw in her gaze wasn’t fear or uncertainty. There was a bit of what he thought might be discomfort, but mostly her gaze seemed sincere.
“But you know what you want.”
“I do. Kind of. I don’t want to be in the spotlight, and I’m not a role model, but I do know some people who would make good role models. I want to figure out how I can put those people in touch with foster kids. I might not have gotten bounced around like so many fosters do, but there is still a stigma attached to being in the system. I’m thinking about creating a music camp just for those kids. I want to do something that matters.”
Collin didn’t really know what to say. “You want to make a difference.”
“Apparently, I do.” She sounded as shocked as he felt. But having said it, she put the crisp, white napkin in her lap and reached for a piece of bread from the basket the waitress had brought with their wine. “I thought I just wanted to show my parents that I could do something, and maybe that’s part of what this is. I just don’t want any child to feel the way I felt for so long. Like they don’t belong or that they might be sent away again. Kids deserve better than that.”
“Savannah,” he said, and reached across the table to take her hand.
“Do you know my parents went into family counseling with me four different times? Every single time, I would just sit on the couch and try not to talk because I was afraid of the things I might have said.” She bit into the bread.
“You’re not afraid now?”
She was quiet for a long moment and some other emotion, something he couldn’t put his finger on, crossed her face. “Oh, I’m still afraid, just not of Mama or Dad or Levi.” She glanced at him.
“What brought all this on?”
“I had a rooftop talk with Levi a few days ago. I made myself talk to my mother this morning, after my manager called. And when you and I talked last night, it’s like something opened up inside me. I think it’s been trying to open for a while, but I just kept hiding away from it, letting life happen to me. I still have questions, but I’m making peace with some of the answers.”
Collin raised his glass and, when she did the same, he clinked the glasses together. “To facing the music,” he said.
* * *
THAT NIGHT SAVANNAH lay in Collin’s arms in his loft apartment over the barn. She watched the night sky through his bedroom window. A few high clouds skirted in front of the moon and thousands of stars twinkled in the sky. And the man in bed with her wrapped his arms around her waist while she slept.
It was the most protected she had ever allowed herself to feel.
Savannah lifted Collin’s hand to her mouth, kissing his fingers. His answer was a light snore at her shoulder.
Between last night in the truck and tonight at the restaurant, she had placed nearly all of her fears at his feet. He hadn’t run away. Hadn’t told her not to call. Hadn’t used the clichéd “it’s not you, it’s me” excuse and left the restaurant.
He’d toasted her decision.
There was only one secret left and she hoped she would never have to voice it. If she didn’t have to talk about it, she could pretend she hadn’t fallen that far down the self-destruction rabbit hole.
The truth was, she didn’t want to face what she had done in that trailer, not really. She wanted it to just be in the past. To lie there silently until she forgot it. Forgetting had to happen sooner or later. After all, she’d already managed to forget seven years of her life.