Chapter 24
The drive from Nashville, Tennessee, to their mother’s hometown of Hainesborough, Tennessee, took no more than six hours.
Candice and Lindsey alternated driving, both of them quiet, flicking through radio stations and drenching themselves in country songs.
When they spoke, they agreed it felt as if they were driving into another dimension.
As though, when they arrived, they would meet an alternate version of their mother, and maybe even alternate versions of themselves.
They tried out their Southern accents, cackling.
But it felt serious, terrifyingly so.
When they pulled into the little mountain town, it was a little after six in the evening.
According to the map, which barely loaded because their data struggled to reach them this deep in the mountains, there was a little restaurant down the road.
It was maybe the only public place in the entire town.
They went there, hoping to get advice and maybe some food.
The restaurant was more like a sports bar, with television screens showing four different types of sports and long tables and barstools.
At this time of night in such a tiny town, it was hopping, with men and women and families sharing platters of chicken, pizza, and other greasy bar food.
Everything smelled of onions and grease.
Lindsey and Candice grabbed two seats at the bar, remembering how easy it had been to talk to Matthew and how quickly that had led them to the truth.
The bartender was a man in his thirties who didn’t seem as interested in serving him as he was in watching at least three of the four sports on the various televisions.
He smacked his thighs and said, “Come on, guys!”
When he did come over to take their order, Candice and Lindsey opted for white wine and grilled cheese sandwiches. “And we’ll share some fries,” Lindsey said at the last minute, giving Candice a funny smile.
“They’re good,” the bartender said. He smiled at Lindsey, as though sure she was flirting with him, then tapped their order into the screen and said, “What are those accents? If you don’t mind me asking.”
“We’re from Massachusetts,” Candice said.
“Got a couple of Yankees here,” the bartender said, laughing. “Did you ladies take a wrong turn on your way to the mall?”
Candice wanted to roll her eyes. But Lindsey knew that the fastest way to get answers was to be agreeable, it seemed, so she laughed and said, “You know how it is deep in these mountains. We didn’t know which way was up!”
“It’s hard if you don’t know the roads up here,” the bartender said seriously, as though he planned to abandon his shift and guide them through the woods himself.
He poured their wine and settled over the bar, his eyes on Lindsey.
“I don’t work tomorrow, if you want a little tour.
City folks always lose their minds when they see what we have up here. Waterfalls. Bears.”
“Oh no!” Lindsey shrieked.
“They’re not so dangerous,” the bartender said. “But I always bring my gun, just in case.”
Candice shivered. After hearing what had happened at Boo’s Country Western Bar, after hearing what their grandfather had done (waving a gun around, threatening everyone), the last thing she wanted to hear about was more guns.
“Are you ladies married?” the bartender asked.
“We’re not, actually,” Lindsey said. “We’re sisters, traveling around.”
“Sisters! You don’t look that alike,” the bartender said.
Candice’s stomach flipped. They didn’t look alike because—as they’d just learned—they were only half siblings.
Candice had a different father, a father named Billy Long.
She hadn’t yet braved searching for him online.
Maybe this was because she was so enraged at what Billy had done to her mother.
Or maybe it was because she was worried he’d passed away, and she’d have to figure out how to mourn a man she’d never known—the man who’d fathered her and left.
For what felt like ages, Lindsey pretended to flirt with the bartender, who eventually introduced himself as Willy. Willy confirmed that he was in his thirties, that he’d lived in this town his entire life, that he was divorced, and that he had three kids of his own.
“Three kids!” Lindsey cried. “That’s a lot.”
“Don’t worry,” Willy said. “My ex-wife takes care of them ninety-nine percent of the time.”
Lindsey was the perfect actress. She didn’t betray how gross she probably thought that was.
Candice thanked her lucky stars that Nathan had always been a very willing participant as a father.
He’d always wanted to take on at least 50 percent of the work.
He’d wanted to know their children as people, as growing and changing humans in the world.
By the looks of things, most of the other fathers in this bar were loving, just as Nathan was. Many of them pointed at the screens, trying to explain the sports to their children. Many of them made sure their kids were well fed and well cared for. This bartender was not like them.
He was probably more like Stella and Sally’s father, Michael Kimpel.
He was probably more like Candice’s real father, Billy Long.
It took ages for Lindsey to twist the conversation back to their mother. “You know, the truth is, our mother is from here,” she said, throwing her head back in a way that made her hair flourish.
Willy was amazed. “You’re kidding! I know everyone. Everyone who’s everyone, and everyone else besides. What’s her name?”
Candice and Lindsey exchanged glances before Candice came out with it.
“Her last name was Kimpel,” she said. “But she called herself Stella, later on.”
Willy the bartender’s jaw dropped. “You’re not talking about Stella McGee?”
Candice and Lindsey were quiet.
Willy took a long sip of his beer, as though hearing that name did something to him, emotionally. Of course, he was so young that he had no memories of Stella McGee, nor of whatever name she’d had before she escaped from this town.
“I know the Kimpels,” he said finally. “One of her brothers took over the family house. Calvin Kimpel. He still lives there with his wife, Gina, their eldest son, Trevor, his wife, Izzy, and their five kids. I can give you a map to the property, if you want.”
“We’d like that very much,” Lindsey said, smiling.
Candice watched as Willy drew out a childish map from the sports bar to the house where, she assumed, her mother had grown up.
Going that far back in a town like this, it was probable that her mother had been born in that very house.
It wasn’t like hospitals were anywhere around here.
Mountain people liked to keep to themselves, she guessed.
“What about Sally McGee?” Candice asked finally, holding the map in her hands.
“Oh, you mean her sister,” Willy said. “The younger one. I believe her name was Carrie Kimpel.”
“Did she ever come back?” Candice asked.
“Oh no. Neither of them ever came here,” Willy said. Excitement shimmered in his eyes. “Not till you two walked into this bar! What are the chances? I can’t wait to tell my mama.”
Candice and Lindsey agreed that it was too late to visit Calvin, Gina, Trevor, and his five Kimpel kids up at the Kimpel house that evening.
Taking Willy’s advice (hopefully for the last time), they grabbed two rooms at the local bed-and-breakfast, where they slept fitfully and woke up to a massive breakfast of biscuits and gravy.
Neither of them could eat it, but they drank their weight in coffee and were on their way by ten.
With five kids, they assumed, the Kimpels would be up and around and unperturbed by surprise visitors. That, and it was a Saturday, which meant that hopefully, Trevor Kimpel wouldn’t be at work. They assumed Calvin was retired, although it was impossible to know for sure.
When they reached the Kimpel house, they stopped at the base of the driveway and gazed up at the house their mother had once known like the back of her hand.
It was scrawny and run-down, with broken and rusty bicycles in the yard and a rusted-out truck in the back.
Plastic toys were scattered everywhere, and the house was in dire need of a paint job.
Several windows were broken. There was also a sign out front that read BEWARE OF DOG, although Candice saw no dog to speak of.
Maybe it was a fake sign to keep people away.
“This can’t be where Mom is from,” Lindsey breathed as they approached.
Candice didn’t know what to say. It felt impossible that their long, arduous journey had brought them here. But their mother had been secretive. This was her biggest secret.
They’d found her out. Would they regret it?
Calvin’s wife, Gina, was the one who answered the door. She was a woman in her mid-sixties, with tired eyes and gray, frizzled hair. From the kitchen came the sound of a baby crying.
“Can I help y’all with something?” she asked. Hers was the biggest Southern accent of all.
Candice and Lindsey had practiced what they’d say when they got here. They’d imagined all kinds of routes forward. But something about Gina told Candice that she knew nothing.
“Excuse me, ma’am,” she said. “I’m sorry to bother you. But is your husband, Calvin, home?”
Calvin was home. He was out back with Trevor and two of the boys.
The boys were throwing a baseball around while Calvin and Trevor drank coffee and grunted about what sounded like sports.
Candice and Lindsey followed Gina out back, where Gina announced them as “friends of the family, they say. I don’t know.
” She returned to the kitchen and the baby without another word.
Calvin and Trevor looked at Lindsey and Candice with confused expressions. Candice could imagine how bizarre this was. Why would two Northern women stop by your house like this? What did they want?
“Morning,” Lindsey said brightly.
“Morning,” Calvin and Trevor said. They stood and scowled. They probably thought Lindsey and Candice wanted their money somehow.
Candice decided to come right out with it. “We’re your sister’s children,” she said to Calvin. “We don’t even know her real name. But we’re hers.”
Calvin’s face fell. One of the little boys scampered up and tugged at his hand, wanting his attention, but Calvin batted his grandson away.
After a long pause, he said, “You mean Heidi, I guess. You look more like Heidi. Both of you do.”
Lindsey and Candice couldn’t speak. This was the first time they’d ever heard their mother’s real name aloud. Heidi Kimpel. Candice didn’t know what to make of it.
Of course, Heidi had probably become Heidi Summers after she’d married Harvey, she thought. She’d done the math and realized that her mother had married Harvey when she was eighteen. The same age as Sarah now was. Too young for any young woman to marry anyone, least of all someone so much older.
“Aunt Heidi had kids, huh?” Trevor said, sounding doubtful.
“She did,” Candice said. “And we have a brother.”
Lindsey tucked a strand of hair behind her ear.
Calvin was quiet for a long time before he said, “She didn’t ever tell you her real name?”
“No,” Candice said.
Calvin looked down. “She didn’t want Daddy to find her.”
“We know about what happened in Nashville,” Lindsey said.
Calvin grunted. “Everyone knows, don’t they?”
Candice didn’t want to say that they’d only just heard the story. She didn’t want to waste any time. “We just want to understand,” she said. “We want to know what she was like before she left.”
As though exhausted, Calvin dropped back into his chair and pressed his hand against his forehead. “She’s dead, isn’t she?”
“She is,” Lindsey said. “She died in May.”
They held that silence for a beat longer than the others. Candice couldn’t fathom what it meant for Calvin to grieve a sister he hadn’t known for years.
For the next two hours, Calvin sat with Lindsey and Candice and told them the story of their mother, or at least, “The Heidi I remember. My older sister.” He explained that she was basically a stand-in mother for all of them, because their own mother hardly ever left her bed.
“Daddy was set on having her married off, and suddenly, she was gone.
He also made her drop out of high school.
I remember that being really hard for her.
None of us knew why school was so important to her.
But I did feel for her. I worried that she was sad sometimes. But everyone we knew was sad.
“The problems really started when Daddy told Carrie she had to drop out of school, too. Heidi did not want that. She insisted, and then Daddy hit Carrie, and everything went to heck. Within a day or two, Heidi and Carrie had skipped town. We had no idea what to do. For a little while, Daddy and Harvey searched neighboring towns, but what you have to understand is, we didn’t have money.
They couldn’t take time off work to search farther.
Not long after, Harvey got another wife—a sort of wife, although he couldn’t marry her since he was already married—and Daddy forgot all about Carrie and Heidi.
That is, they forgot until that album started making the rounds.
That made Daddy and Harvey wildly upset.
Harvey started drinking more than he ever had.
He started getting ideas. They asked me to go with them to Nashville to fetch them, but I had kids. I had things to do.”
“What did you think of what they were doing?” Candice asked quietly.
Calvin thought for a moment. “I thought Heidi and Carrie needed to come back and take care of their families. I thought it was stupid that they’d gone away. Then again, I thought it was great to hear my sisters on the radio. I told everyone about it. I felt famous, a little bit.”
When it was time for Lindsey and Candice to go, Calvin disappeared inside for a little while and emerged with a single photograph.
It was black-and-white, taken in the sixties, and it featured a little boy and two little girls, both with braids.
On the back, it read: Heidi, Calvin, and Carrie, 1968.
A shiver went down Candice’s spine.
Calvin told them to keep the photograph if they wanted to. But, because she sensed it was his only one, Candice insisted that he keep it. “I’ll take a picture of it with my phone,” she said, lining up her phone with the photograph. She took several, her eyes filling with tears.
She’d never seen her mother as a little girl. She’d looked perfect. She’d had no idea what was waiting for her in her future. All she’d known was this.