Chapter 13
Times were still tough, of course. Stella worked hard at the bar almost every single night, and Sally was still roughing it at high school, trying to make up the time she’d lost back home. There was a small chance that she would have to take summer courses this year, although Sally was resistant.
One night at the bar, when only a few regulars were sitting around with their beers, Sally and Stella sat at the bar top and ate burgers from the kitchen and talked about their music.
Sally had really taken to songwriting, showing a musical prowess that surprised and electrified Stella.
Sally showed Stella some of the lyrics she’d been working on, and Stella and Sally sang the harmonies quietly, their half-eaten burgers abandoned.
Stella knew they had to get their new songs on stage pronto.
She wanted to show Boo that already, they were getting better and better.
Sally’s seventeenth birthday was coming up.
Stella resolved to get them a concert for the night before so that they could celebrate Sally’s new year.
It had been an outrageous time, a time of upheaval and fear.
But since they’d left their mountain town behind, they hadn’t heard a peep from their father nor from Harvey.
They had a little cushion money in the bank, and Stella was beginning to really think everything was going to be all right.
Boo agreed to host a concert for them the night before Sally’s seventeenth birthday.
Sally and Stella set to work promoting themselves by making posters, knocking on doors, and inviting everyone in Nashville to the event.
They wrote nearly an entire album’s worth of new songs, and they practiced every minute that they weren’t at the bar or at school.
On the night of the concert, Sally and Stella dressed in their new cowgirl getups and got on stage to perform in front of a bigger crowd than they’d ever had before.
Needless to say, they brought down the house.
They had three encores, and eventually, Boo had to come out to the microphone and tell everyone the show was really over this time.
Sally and Stella were exhausted, but they couldn’t sit still.
They hugged everyone. They hugged each other.
Out of the corner of her eye, Stella spotted Sally hugging Isaac—the kid who’d picked them up hitchhiking outside of their mountain town—a little longer than was necessary.
Stella felt a twinge of regret. She worried that Sally would marry Isaac and abandon their music project.
Stella had resolved never to marry again.
She couldn’t legally, after all, and she didn’t want any messiness that came with revealing her old identity to someone.
But she also didn’t want any man to get in the way of her dreams again.
She’d escaped Harvey, but she knew there were different Harveys out there, waiting to ruin her life again.
Stella went to the bar and grabbed herself a beer.
She was nearly twenty and served beer herself nightly, and nobody told her no.
When she turned back around to drink it, she nearly ran headfirst into Billy Long, a semi-famous record producer who’d made his mark on Nashville’s scene.
Stella had served him numerous times at the bar, but she’d hardly spoken to him. She hadn’t known he was coming.
Billy looked her in the eye, and she felt her heart drop into her stomach. There was something about that man’s energy, something that made her feel electric and alive. She supposed that was why Billy was so famous and why he could make others famous too.
“That was something else,” Billy said. His accent was Georgian.
“Thank you,” Stella said.
“Who’s signing you?” Billy asked.
Stella nearly fainted on the spot. “I beg your pardon?”
Billy smiled wider. “I want to sign you. It has to be me.”
Never in Stella’s wildest dreams had she imagined this. A handsome record producer, demanding that he sign Stella and Sally on his label. She followed him to the corner, where they sat in a booth and discussed his vision for Sally and Stella’s future.
“I know you’re protective of your sister,” Billy said. “And I know you’ve got a business mind. It’s been clear from the get-go how you’ve been working with Boo and trying to get a name for yourself going while holding down a job here.”
“I’m practical,” Stella said.
“I’m offering you a world where you don’t ever have to be practical again,” Billy said.
It was the most romantic thing that anyone had ever said to Stella. “What do we have to do?” she asked him.
Billy outlined a strategy. He wanted to hear all of their songs.
He wanted to fine-tune them and figure out which could be their first single, which could be thrown out, and which would make the album.
“We’ll work on the album all year long and release it in 1979,” he said.
“There will be a big buildup before the release. We’re trying to make stars out of you.
You’ll be on everyone’s minds. Your album will be played on every radio station. ”
Stella dared a gasp, then felt foolish.
Billy leaned back in the booth. His dark curls spilled across the cushion behind his head. “You don’t believe me,” he said.
Stella laughed. “I don’t make it a habit to believe anyone at first.”
“That’s that business mind of yours,” Billy said, reaching for a cigarette from the pack he’d thrown on the table between them. “Hold on to that. Always trust your instincts. What else do you have?”
Throughout the next three months, Stella and Sally worked harder on their songs than they ever had. Billy had arranged for a first session in the recording studio in July of 1978, and they didn’t want to waste anyone’s time when they got there. Not theirs, not his.
The morning they were scheduled at the studio, they woke up early, practiced their scales and harmonies, did their makeup, put on their outfits, and walked the half-mile to the iconic studio, which they’d now passed by a thousand times, it seemed like.
They’d seen countless country stars coming in and out.
Now, they were entering, as though they counted themselves among them.
It was only when they arrived and started talking to the various staff members at the studio itself that Stella realized they hadn’t spoken to one another at all that morning.
It was as though they were both too lost in their heads to realize.
They’d been too nervous to eat, but food and coffee were waiting for them.
Stella urged Sally to eat something, but Stella herself stuck to coffee, and Sally followed her lead.
When Billy came in, he was friendly and professional, treating them like every other star who’d come in, surely.
But just before they went into the studio itself, Billy caught Stella’s eye and smiled in a way that made Stella feel singular.
She didn’t understand it, but she felt something bubbling between them.
Maybe she needed to ignore it. Or maybe ignoring it would destroy their career before it had even begun?
All of Stella and Sally’s practice served them well.
That first day in the studio, they recorded four songs, back-to-back, before Billy called it for the day and invited them out to eat.
Over steak and potatoes and red wine (which Stella muttered to Sally not to drink, as she was far too young), Billy explained to them that he’d seen numerous artists come through that studio. “But you’re the real deal,” he said.
Stella told herself not to get her hopes up. She told herself to keep her head down, to keep working. But she could see that the words deeply affected Sally. Probably, Sally already had dreams of dropping out of high school and traveling the world with her guitar.
After that first night with Billy, Sally and Stella floated home, chatting happily about what came next.
When they reached their door, Isaac was waiting for them.
Sally’s smile was so enormous, the only real clue Stella needed to understand that Sally and Isaac were in love.
Sally threw her arms around Isaac and squealed, “We’re going to be famous! ”
Isaac cackled. Overwhelmed with happiness, Stella invited Isaac into the apartment, where they put on records, danced, and ate dessert.
Sally told Isaac everything that had happened that day, without leaving anything out.
She even told him, “I think Billy really likes Stella. Really, really likes her.”
“That’s silly,” Stella told them both. “Billy travels constantly. He works with studios all over the world. He works with Debbie, Sonny, and Minnie Walden.” What she meant was, he’s probably already forgotten about me.
That night, Stella thanked Isaac again for picking them up in his truck that fateful day. “You changed our lives,” she said. “You’ll never know how much it means.”
Isaac blushed. He was hopped up on sugar and love. “You changed my life, too.” He shrugged. “I’ll never forget it.”
Over the next few weeks, Stella, Sally, and Billy cut that first album together.
Billy was easy and fun to work with. He genuinely loved music and never seemed in a bad mood.
When they were finally finished recording, he threw a big party for them at the recording studio, telling everyone there that the girls would be big stars.
Frequently throughout the night, Stella caught Billy looking at her in a way that startled her.
She’d begun dreaming about him about once a week, but she’d told herself that it didn’t matter.
But that night, for the first time, Billy came over and asked her to dance. Lots of others at the studio were paired up, slow-dancing to an old sixties track that everyone still loved. Sally was in the arms of Isaac, as usual. They were teenagers in love.
Stella couldn’t say no to Billy’s offer.
She was drawn to him in a way that made it difficult for her to breathe.
As they began to dance, slowly and gently, she brought her eyes up to meet his.
She thought about her wedding to Harvey, how frightened and empty she’d felt.
She wondered what it would be like to get married to someone like Billy Long—then reminded herself that that was impossible.
She was already married. Her name wasn’t Stella McGee.
It was too much to explain.
“You’re so beautiful, Stella,” Billy said then.
Stella didn’t know what to say, so she kept quiet.
Things went back to normal after that. Sally was in her senior year of high school, and Stella was still working nights at Boo’s Country Western Bar.
But slowly, Billy began to get the word out about Sally and Stella’s album.
It was going to come out in February of 1979, and he told everyone he encountered that it was “going to take over the charts.”
Three times before the end of the year, Billy took Stella out to dinner. This was difficult to schedule, as Stella was so often needed at Boo’s and Billy was so often out of town. More than that, Stella didn’t want to give Billy the idea that she was falling in love with him, even though she was.
Sometimes, Boo teased Stella about her future. “You won’t need me anymore,” Boo sang in a sad country-western twang. “I did everything for you, but you still went away!”
Stella laughed, but she could see that Boo was sad about losing her soon to “a life of fame and fortune,” as he put it.
“We’ll still come play at the bar all the time,” she promised.
“That’s what they all say, Sugar,” Boo said.
Stella felt a tenderness toward Boo, one that told her she would always keep in touch with him, even when she and Sally were living in a mansion in Los Angeles, even when they were performing on late-night talk shows. Even when they sold out studios.
Yes, Stella had begun allowing herself to dream big.
In the back of her mind, of course, she was worried about Harvey and her father, about what they would do when they saw “Heidi’s and Carrie’s fake names but true faces.
” But she imagined that they’d be protected by their money, by all the important people who believed in them, by Billy.
Maybe everything would be brilliant. Maybe it would be beyond her wildest dreams.