Page 49 of The Roads We Follow

Hattie’s laugh is cold. “No, she cares about our image, not about us.” She pushes through the curtain, leaving me no choice but to follow after her.

It takes a minute for my eyes to adjust to the dim, hazy light ofCarter’s Ballroom. Between the glare of the glossy floors and soaring, exposed trusses overhead, I feel dizzy in this shadowy sea of dancing bodies. I spot Mama first, in her black wig and nondescript cowgirl hat. She’s chatting it up with a dark-skinned man with a graying beard that brushes his collar. Adele is with them, appearing about as comfortable as a cop in a crowd of freshly released prisoners. I scan the crowd for Hattie and find her a minute later, swaying to the music and sipping an ice water.

Though I’ve never known my sister to have more than a single glass of wine on any occasion—social or otherwise—her choice in beverage allows me to take a full breath. If it’s space she needs tonight, I can give her that.

With my anxiety slowly ebbing, I face the stage, watching two men and a female banjo player exit as the emcee stirs up the crowd by throwing out meaningless trivia to gain participation before the main act. I’ve seen it all before—the circus that is life in the spotlight, although my mama hasn’t played in a venue like this for decades. And it’s then my mind recalls what it’s been fighting against ever since we pulled out of the hotel parking lot: Micah’s face when he heard my middle name.

A strange longing brews inside me at the thought of not seeing him again until the morning. The way he examined my face as he said my full name was as if I were a clue in his quest for answers. If only that were true. But I’m as lost in my own quest for answers as he is in his.

The drumroll coming from the front pulls my focus back to the stage.

“...so please put your hands together for tonight’s honored guest and our spotlight talent for the evening. Straight from the heart of Nashville, here’s Miss Cheyenne Avery!”

The crowd roars, and my jaw slacks.Cheyenne Avery?Surely it can’t be....

I twist to find Mama cheering at the top of her lungs while Adele looks positively stricken. I rush toward where they stand on thesidelines as my gorgeous niece takes the stage with the Martin guitar Mama gave her for her fifteenth birthday.

She greets more than a thousand people with a hearty, “How y’all doing tonight?”

The crowd’s response for her is deafening.

“What in the...” Adele grips my arm to steady herself and blinks up at the stage, bewildered. Her only child strums her guitar and speaks to the audience with the ease and confidence of a performer twice her age.

“Surprise!” Mama squeals. “Didn’t I tell y’all you wouldn’t want to miss this?”

“But how...” Adele, clearly dumbfounded, shakes her head. “How is she here? Her classes aren’t over yet; neither is her internship.”

“Don’t worry, Jana and I worked out all the logistics. Bruce was kind to book her during our trip. The best part is she’s all ours for the next twenty-four hours!” Mama hollers proudly.

Cheyenne’s background strumming changes to an intricate finger-picking pattern, and my eyes instantly flood with tears at the way her talent has advanced since last I heard her play.

“I’d like to dedicate this first song to my mama.” She peers into the crowd. “We don’t always see eye-to-eye, but it’s her tenacity and dogged determination that beats like a drum in my chest. She’s been my guiding light when I’ve felt lost, and she’s been my champion since the first time I poured a bowl of cereal without spilling the milk.” A collective laugh andawww.ills the room. “So thank you, Mama. Thank you for teaching me to stand up, speak out, and sing with my whole soul. I love you.”

I watch as my sister’s expression melts into a look so full of maternal love and admiration, I can’t help the sob that rises and breaks from my chest. I haven’t seen my oldest sister cry since the day we laid our daddy to rest in a private cemetery east of Nashville. But these tears are different tonight. Not tears of grief, but of pride.

And then my niece, the first newborn I ever cradled in my armsat the ripe old age of seven, opens her mouth and bares her soul, one perfectly sung note at a time.

September 3, 1975

Nashville, TN

Dear Chickee,

The three of us made it to Nashville in one piece: Luella, me, and our ever-faithful Lima Bean. We decided she deserved a name since she made it all the way here without a single complaint (other than the jam that prevents us from opening the back hatch).

We rented our first hotel room since Oregon last night and took extra time on our hair and makeup before going to our first meeting at TriplePlay Records. Luella had held out the phone so I could hear Russell Farrow’s reaction when she called him last night, and his elation at us being here, in his city, made us feel pretty elated, too.

When we got there, the three partners had ordered us lunch in their meeting room where they asked us all sorts of questions about our travels. When Luella told them about our rattlesnake incident in Amarillo, they were howling, especially when she reenacted our reactions to it. Between you and me, I’m still not quite ready to laugh at that story yet.

Dorian is the funny one of the three. He spent a year in Vietnam and seems to find humor in things most people would cringe at, but his jokes helped calm our nerves. Troy seems to know the most about the music industry and drives the kind of fancy sports car we’ve only seen in movies—he let us both sit in it, too! Russell is exactly as Luella described: intelligent, confident, kind, and eager to please, at least when it comes to her. I caught him watching her every time she turned her attention to something else.

When they finally asked us to play for them, we were ready. Our voices blended perfectly, and I didn’t miss a single chord on the guitar. When it was over, the three men were quiet. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t hoping for the same kind of response we received in San Francisco. But there was no applause or cheering, just a lot of staring at us and intensewhispering among themselves until we were asked to leave the room. When we were called back inside, they told us they were “optimistic about our potential but that we weren’t quite ready for the stage yet.” We assured them we were willing to work hard and do whatever they ask of us. That seemed to be the answer they were looking for.

Russell has a lead on an affordable apartment for us, and Dorian has a connection for a job at a downtown lounge popular with industry professionals. We’ll be waitressing. I hope you won’t be mad when I tell you this next part, but we have to lie about our age in order to work there. Luella is nearly twenty so it’s not as far of a stretch for her, but when I told them I was still eighteen, Dorian sang me three rounds of Happy Birthday and then gave me a new ID card.

I love you,

Lynn

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