“Oh, Ms. Ryder, I can’t take your clothes on top of everything else,” AnnieLee said.

  Ruthanna almost seemed to flinch, and her fingers tightened around her mug. “No one’s worn them in a long time,” she said quietly. “So you just go on ahead and take whatever you like.”

  Chapter

  19

  Ruthanna woke to sunbeams filtering softly through sheer French linen curtains. Her window was open, and she could hear the low hum of bees in the apple blossoms outside. She lay in bed for another minute, thinking about the girl down the hall. Dark-haired AnnieLee Keyes was like a half-broke horse: bold and skittish at the same time.

  Ruthanna wasn’t sorry for telling her to go home—or somewhere else, if home wouldn’t do. The music business was different than it used to be, and Ruthanna Ryder herself wouldn’t want to be finding her way through it these days.

  She sat up slowly and stretched, working out the kinks in her neck as she walked into the bathroom. After a quick, cold shower—another one of Maya’s ideas for improving her health, which was perfectly good already, thank you very much—she put on a cream-colored linen jumpsuit that her former stylist had sent her for her birthday in May. Ruthanna had fudged her age for so many years she barely knew what number she’d turned, and she certainly didn’t care to think too hard on it.

  She pulled her hair into a loose ponytail and then headed downstairs through the big, silent house. It hadn’t always been so quiet in these rooms, but a lot had changed over the years. Some things for the better, she thought, and quite a few for the worse.

  “But time marches on,” Ruthanna said out loud, a truism for sure and the name of a Tracy Lawrence song, too. She hummed the melody as she fixed herself a pot of coffee, making a lot of noise as she did so to let that nervy girl upstairs know that she was awake and it was okay to come down.

  Then Ruthanna got the wild idea to make pancakes. AnnieLee needed to put some meat on her bones, and Ruthanna figured she could live vicariously by watching AnnieLee put away a stack of flapjacks. Meanwhile, she could sip her coffee and wait for whatever nasty spirulina smoothie Maya would show up with and then badger her into drinking.

  Ruthanna kept humming as she worked, remembering how much she liked having someone to care for. She didn’t want the girl moving in permanently, of course, but it would be nice to keep her around for a little while at least. Maybe they could do a bit of gardening together. The roses were just beginning to bloom, and the lilies would be coming up soon. She had thousands of them, from every corner of the world.

  When she’d finished making the pancakes, she stuck them in the oven to keep them warm, and then she sat down to read the paper. Her assistant would be arriving any minute, and she looked forward to introducing the two women. AnnieLee certainly wouldn’t challenge Maya to a fight, would she? That would be something to see, Ruthanna thought.

  It was nearing 9 a.m. when she finally decided to go upstairs and wake her guest. She knocked lightly, and when there was no answer, she slowly pushed the door open.

  The bed was made, and the room was empty. A scrawled note lay on top of one of the throw pillows.

  Dear Ms. Ryder,

  Thank you so much for everything. I want you to know that I took a pair of sweatpants and two shirts from that closet. And…well, I also borrowed the guitar that was in there. The case was real dusty. I know you didn’t offer me that, but something told me you wouldn’t have refused me if I’d asked. I promise to take good care of it, and I’ll return it just as soon as I can.

  All my gratitude and admiration, and then some,

  Firecracker

  “Well, I’ll be damned,” Ruthanna whispered. She felt a rush of so many feelings at once that she couldn’t have put words to any of them. Then she crumpled the note in her hand.

  Chapter

  20

  Ruthanna was standing in the rose garden when Maya got out of her Lexus bearing two bright-green smoothies.

  “You’re looking thoughtful this morning,” Maya said, handing her one of the cups.

  “I guess I am,” Ruthanna said. “Thanks for—whatever this is.”

  “Spinach-celery-kale-pear. You’ll like it.”

  Ruthanna gave the drink a dubious sniff. “I let that girl Ethan discovered stay here last night, but she vanished sometime before six a.m. Why do you suppose she did that?”

  “I don’t know,” Maya said. “Did anything else vanish with her?”

  “She took a guitar. But she left a note about it.”

  Maya clucked her tongue. “This is very unlike you.”

  Ruthanna acknowledged that it was. But something about that girl had touched a nerve.

  “Should I go count the silver?” Maya asked, half joking.

  “That won’t be necessary,” Ruthanna said. “AnnieLee wouldn’t do something like that. But if she did, would I really even care? I mean, when was the last time we used that stuff?”

  “Oh, I remember,” Maya said. “It was—” But then she snapped her mouth shut and turned quickly on her heel, walking up the steps to the house.

  Ruthanna felt a jolt of pain as she remembered, too. A gorgeous June Sunday, a celebratory brunch for her daughter—

  But she wasn’t going to think about that now.

  She turned and followed Maya into the kitchen and watched as her assistant brewed another pot of coffee.

  “You gonna have some?” Maya asked. “I’m making this so strong it’ll lift weights.”

  “Sure,” Ruthanna said, pushing her mug over. “There’s pancakes in the oven if you want some.”

  “Do I ever,” Maya said. “I don’t know how a person’s supposed to just have juice for breakfast.”

  Ruthanna took an exploratory sip of her smoothie. “It’s not bad, though.” She folded herself into the window seat. “I really like that AnnieLee. I wanted to help her, but I don’t think I told her what she wanted to hear.”

  Maya peered at her over her glasses. “What’d you say?”

  “I told her to get out of Nashville as fast as her tiny little feet could carry her.”

  Maya snorted. “In other words, you crushed her dreams.”

  “If you want to be negative about it, go ahead,” Ruthanna said. “But I was trying to save her, actually.”

  Maya sat down at the table with a plate of pancakes dripping with syrup and melted butter. “You think she took your advice?”

  “Not hardly,” Ruthanna said. “I think she’s as stubborn as—”

  “As you are?” Maya interrupted.

  Ruthanna grinned. “Basically.” She took the cordless phone down from the wall and held it out to Maya. “Can you call Jody at BMH?” she asked. “If the girl’s going to stick around, I guess the least we can do is let some people know she’s here.”

  “Can I eat while I’m doing it?”

  “Obviously.”

  Maya took the phone and dialed as she chewed. She had the number memorized, but Ruthanna knew Maya still had her old Rolodex if she needed it. A shared penchant for doing things the old-fashioned way was just one of the reasons they worked so well together.

  Maya put the phone on speaker as soon as Jody picked up.

  “Please, dear God, tell me Ruthanna’s got a new song,” Jody said in lieu of “Hello.”

  “She’s got about a hundred,” Maya said. “But you know her feelings on the matter.”

  “Unfortunately, I do,” Jody said. “Let me say that all of us at BMH Music look forward to the day she changes her brilliant and infuriating mind.”

  “She does have something for you, though,” Maya said. “A new singer.”

  Ruthanna could practically hear Jody’s eyes roll. “I don’t go out anymore. I can send one of my underlings—as a favor to Ruthanna, of course. She around?”

  Ruthanna waved her hands. Noooooo, I am not here.

  “Not at the moment,” Maya said smoothly. “All right, so you’re going to sit home and binge-watch British baking shows while you let some kid discover her? Sign her to a publishing deal and take all the credit?”

  Jody gave another theatrical sigh. “What’s her name?”

  Maya looked over at Ruthanna, and Ruthanna quickly wrote the name on a piece of paper and held it up.

  “AnnieLee Keyes,” Maya read.

  “Yeah, I don’t love that,” said Jody.

  “Why?”

  “AnnieLee? Keyes? It sounds like she should be stick-thin and toothless, playing spoons on some Appalachian porch with a bunch of flea-bitten hounds steaming around her bare feet.”

  “Hell, tell us what you really think,” Maya said.

  “Okay, it’s not that bad,” Jody said. “But it’s not good, either.”

  “Well, change it, then. That’s what they did with Ruthanna Ryder.”

  “I wasn’t responsible for that, as you know, but whoever was had a fine idea. Pollyanna Poole? That’s a name for a baby doll—you know, the kind that opens its eyes and pees in its diaper.”

  Ruthanna couldn’t keep her mouth shut any longer. “You’re pretty opinionated today, Jody Decker,” she said. “But if I was singing those songs, you know people would’ve listened, even if my name was Toot-a-lee McDoo-Doo.”

  Maya giggled while Jody somewhat awkwardly cleared her throat. “I didn’t know you were on the line, Ruthanna,” she said. “Is this girl we’re talking about a friend of yours?”

  “I barely know her, to tell you the truth. But I’ve seen her, and she’s something else.”

  There was a pause. “Is she pretty?”

  Ruthanna wasn’t at all surprised by the question—everybody liked a good-looking package to promote—but it still bothered her. She sat back and crossed her arms.

  “You’ll have to go see her to find out,” she said.

  Chapter

  21

  AnnieLee strode into a bar called the Lucky Horseshoe a few minutes before four o’clock happy hour. She was clean, well rested, and only moderately starving, a state of being far better than usual these days. The guitar bumping against her thigh gave her an extra boost of confidence. She’d written another song on the eight-mile walk back to the city proper, and she was excited to see how it played. She had an instrument now; she only needed a stage.

  As her eyes adjusted to the bar’s dimness, she looked around for someone to appeal to. A neon Budweiser sign flickered; a couple watched a golf game on the big TV; four fan-tailed, multicolored fish swam lazily in a small tank near the lowest row of liquor bottles.

  She was about to try her luck elsewhere when a tall, ruddy-cheeked woman came out of the back, a bar towel slung over her tanned, tattooed shoulder. She wore her long blond hair in two fat braids, but her brows were thin and painted almost black. She slid in behind the bar, washed her hands, and then began polishing pint glasses. She didn’t look up at AnnieLee.

  “Hi there,” AnnieLee chirped.

  The woman’s eyes shifted from her glass to AnnieLee, and then down to the guitar she was carrying. “Hello,” she said warily.

  “I was wondering if you’d like to hear some live music tonight,” AnnieLee said. “Performed by me and my new guitar.” She patted the case protectively. When the woman didn’t say anything, AnnieLee added, “I’ve played at the Cat’s Paw a lot. They love me there.”

  The woman lifted one of her overplucked eyebrows. “Do they, now?” she said.

  “I’d say so,” AnnieLee said. She wondered if she should mention Ruthanna Ryder—how they were practically friends now, even though AnnieLee had snuck out of her house just after the sun came up. But she was pretty sure the woman wouldn’t believe her, for one thing. And for another, she didn’t think Ruthanna would appreciate being name-checked like that. She’d told AnnieLee to go find a real job, after all, not traipse around Nashville looking for a place to perform and using her name as grease for the wheels.

  “So why aren’t you singing at the Cat’s Paw tonight?” the woman asked. She wasn’t unfriendly, but she looked like she could snap AnnieLee in half.

  “I’m branching out,” AnnieLee said. “Trying new things.” She glanced around her. “I thought this looked like a good place to play. I, um, like your fish.”

  The woman looked over at the tank and her expression softened. “They’re pretty, aren’t they? Like a painting that moves.” Then she turned back to AnnieLee. “We have live music Friday and Saturday nights. The rest of the time, we use that.” She gestured toward a giant, old-fashioned jukebox.

  AnnieLee walked over to it and peered through the smudged glass. Hank Williams. George Jones. Kitty Wells. “How come the newest song you got in here is at least twenty years older than I am?”

  “The jukebox only plays 45s,” the woman said proudly. “It’s an antique.”

  AnnieLee scanned farther down the list. It was nothing but classics: “I Walk the Line,” “Crazy,” “Coal Miner’s Daughter,” and “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry.” “Friends in Low Places” was as close to contemporary country as it got.

  Then AnnieLee turned back to the bartender. “I can play all of those songs,” she said.

  “Congratulations.” The woman had opened a magazine and was flipping through it.

  “What I mean is,” AnnieLee said, “I could be your jukebox.”

  The woman flipped another page, squinting at it as though she needed glasses. “I love Rebel Wilson,” she said thoughtfully. “I wish she’d record a country album.” She looked up at AnnieLee. “What?”

  AnnieLee talked quickly so the woman wouldn’t go back to her People. “It’d be really fun,” she said. “If someone wants to play any of the songs on the jukebox, they can just ask me to play it instead. They won’t even have to put a quarter in!”

  The woman gave AnnieLee a quick up-down. “I’m sure the guys would want to stick more than a quarter in you,” she said.

  AnnieLee shuddered but decided to ignore this. “Everyone will get a big kick out of it—I know they will,” she said.

  A small, needling voice in the back of her head reminded her that she did not in fact know every single one of the songs. But she’d grown up listening to all of them, and singing most of them, and she hoped she’d be able to fake the rest well enough. Three chords and the truth, right? Or six, maybe seven—plus some decent fingerpicking?

  She could see the bartender thinking it over. “Tuesdays are a little slow,” she said, more to herself than to AnnieLee. “And it’s not like I’d die if I went a day without hearing ‘Folsom Prison Blues’ straight from the Man in Black’s mouth.”

  “You don’t have to pay me,” AnnieLee said. “I’ll sing for my supper.”

  The bartender snapped her magazine shut and stood up straight. “Supper?” she said, tossing her thick braids behind her back. “I’ve got the best chili dogs south of the Mason-Dixon, girl, so let’s not get ahead of ourselves.”

  Chapter

  22

  Following the bartender’s curt instructions, AnnieLee perched herself on a stool by the jukebox and waited for someone to walk over and request a country classic.

  And waited.

  And then she waited some more. Soon an hour had gone by—sixty lonesome, tedious minutes during which she sat there unnoticed, cradling Ruthanna’s beautiful rosewood guitar on her lap and tapping her feet on the cement floor.

  Maybe no one saw her because it was two-dollar Tecate Tuesday until 6 p.m., and they were too busy knocking back cans of Mexican lager to notice a dark-haired girl hunkered in the corner. And maybe it’d be too loud to hear her play anyway. But AnnieLee had no intention of calling it quits. She told herself that she was just doing what she had to do for her art. For her love of music.

  Anyway, there were far worse ways to spend a Tuesday night; this she knew from experience.

  She shifted around on the uncomfortable stool and sighed. Then she hummed the beginnings of a new melody. Later she killed a few minutes thinking of words that rhymed with bored: chord, sword, horde, snored…

  As she watched the bar clock tick its way toward six and her stomach began to grumble, AnnieLee realized that her reason for sticking it out at the Lucky Horseshoe had shifted. It was no longer about dedication or pride; it was about dinner. She wanted one of those chili dogs, damn it, and she wasn’t going to leave until she’d earned it.

  Ingrid, the bartender, had told her to sit tight and wait for someone to come up to her, but hunger finally wore AnnieLee’s patience too thin. When a man in a Charlie Daniels T-shirt passed by on his way to the bathroom, she leaned out and called, “What’s that you said, mister? You asked me if I could play ‘The Devil Went Down to Georgia’?” It was the only Charlie Daniels song she could think of.

  The man turned toward her in confusion. “Huh? I didn’t—”

  “Well, I can’t play it, actually,” she interrupted, giving him her brightest, most irresistible smile, “because I don’t have a fiddle player. But you look like a man of great taste and discernment, so what if I played you a little Willie Nelson instead? Say, ‘Yesterday’s Wine’? I know George and Merle went to number one with their version, but I’ve always loved Mr. Nelson’s take on the tune.”

  Still looking somewhat baffled, the man told her that he wouldn’t mind hearing the song at all, especially not from a pretty little thing like her. And AnnieLee swallowed her objection to being referred to as such, and thereby tricked her way into her first live performance at the Lucky Horseshoe.

  When she’d finished the song and the sound of the final E chord had faded into the background noise, she thought the Charlie Daniels fan would move along on his personal errand. But he stayed there, peering at her curiously, as if she were some kind of rare bird.

  “I never heard it sung like that before,” he said. “Can you do ‘On the Road Again’?”