Chapter 2 #2
I thought for a minute that one of the vultures had figured it out and followed me halfway to Barstow, but once the suspicious minivan finally passed me on the freeway, I saw it had only been a family with one of those stick-figure decals on the back window indicating that the mom and dad had entirely way too much sex, didn’t use protection, and couldn’t stay away from the dog shelter. Five kids and three great Danes?
It exhausted me just thinking about that life.
But it also made me smile.
Success could be… lonely. Really lonely. And since I could remember, I’d always wanted a big family. House full of kids. Doting husband who’d make cooking videos with me. Family camping trips, family reunions, just… family.
If I hadn’t had my memories of Mama to keep me sane, I would’ve run home to my overbearing father years ago. I probably would’ve given up on my dream and gone back to medical school.
Maybe if I had, I’d have that family. Jason had found the time to meet his person and fall in love. But he was lucky; doctors could trust other people.
I could not. The past two months had proven that in spades.
Thankfully, I hadn’t given up. On my own, without my father’s support, I’d found the will and the fight to realize a dream so big, I could never have imagined where it would take me.
But he’d been perfectly clear how much of a disappointment I was to him, and moments of doubt were never far from my mind.
Especially now, with the whole world looking down their noses at me.
But every time I doubted myself, I thought of Van.
Of that beautiful stranger who had stood coatless in the freezing and falling snow just to listen to me sing some stupid lullaby. The words he’d said to me in the parking lot that night before I drove away had been burned into my heart like they’d been branded on the muscle.
God, how I regretted driving away.
“You go follow your dreams, Eli. You sing like an angel.”
The words were sweet, but it wasn’t only what he’d said, but how he’d said it—the look in his eyes that told me he believed in me.
Me. A complete stranger. When I’d walked into Manny’s Bar that night, I had no idea just how much I’d needed to hear those words or look in those eyes or feel those soft lips against mine.
I could still feel the warmth in his fingertips brushing over my cold cheeks as he’d caressed my hair away from my mouth so he could kiss me.
But Van had just lost his brother. He was probably less inclined to get involved with anyone than I had been.
Although, if I’d stayed with Van that night, maybe I could’ve missed the conversation with my father, the one in which he told me in no uncertain terms that he would not be funding my “pathetic need for attention and approval because you miss your mother.” That particular memory had made an appearance in my nightly anxiety attacks for a long time.
But even though those words still brought me pain, if I’d never had that conversation with my father, I probably would never have found the strength to do this huge thing on my own.
His disapproval had fueled me like nothing else could’ve.
Because I hadn’t stuck to the plan he’d set out for me to become a doctor, like him, like my brother, and like my Grandpa, I wasn’t worthy in my father’s eyes. He didn’t support me, come to a show, or basically acknowledge I was alive.
So, I did it all on my own.
I’d become a household name. Won Grammys. Hit the top of the charts, over and over. Had millions of followers. Still, none of it mattered to my father.
I thought the fact that I’d never asked for his money, even back when I had to busk on Hollywood sidewalks for tips to be able to afford to eat, would at least make him respect me, but no such luck.
My brother and Mya said they supported me, and they came to my shows when they were close to one, if I called to remind them, but the judgment was there in my brother’s eyes.
In his voice on the phone when I called to tell him that my record had gone platinum or that I would be doing an interview and performance on Primetime LA.
“Oh, that’s great, Lizzie. Mya and I just watched a piece Primetime did on the situation in Haiti.
A friend of ours is there with Doctors Without Borders. Now that was a great interview.”
I may have been one of the top-selling country artists in the world, but I wasn’t a doctor. I never would be, and in my family’s eyes, music could never heal the way medicine could.
Utter. Bullshit.
No, music couldn’t cure cancer. It couldn’t fix a broken bone or heal an infection, but it saved lives all the same.
I’d received countless letters, emails, and DMs telling me how my songs had changed a person’s life.
How they’d stopped someone from feeling sad or lonely.
Had stopped them from harming themselves when they had been at their lowest point in life.
Music had the power to heal hearts. And that wasn’t nothing.
I let myself feel the warm pride that knowledge created inside me as I took the turn off the highway and headed north, away from Wisper on the western side of the Teton Mountains.
Cracking my window, I allowed the cold alpine air to fill the car.
I breathed deeply and let it wash away the restless thoughts scrambling my head.
I needed to focus on driving so I didn’t end up in a ditch or slide over the side of the mountain. Somebody would definitely figure out who I was if they had to haul me out of Joey’s nondescript sedan as it teetered on the edge of a cliff.
I could already feel my tires slipping on patches of ice here and there as snow began to fall. I slowed and concentrated hard on the road in front of me.
I hadn’t gotten the early start I’d planned on this morning. Having my reputation dragged through the mud while the whole world watched was exhausting, and I’d needed the extra two hours of sleep, but now, I regretted them because the sky had darkened all too quickly in the waning evening light.
The road up to the cabin was skinny. If another car tried to pass me, we’d both be in trouble. And if it were a truck? Shit.
I slowed more and began a silent prayer, begging to make it to Grandpa’s cabin uninjured and unstuck.
But just as I began to chant the third round of “please don’t let me get stuck, God.
I promise to say my nightly prayers and give more money to charity,” my tires slipped again, and then I was sliding backward.
I screeched, “Please! I’ll do a free concert for the entire country of Haiti. I don’t wanna die!”
Stupidly in my panic, I stomped my foot on the brake, and then I was spinning.
The car lurched to the side, and all I could see was a blurry, snow-covered forest, but then the spinning stopped, and I felt the front end of the car teetering on some edge.
I couldn’t tell what lay beneath the car or even which direction I was facing, and when I leaned toward the window and tried to look down, all I saw was snow and what I assumed was black ice.
Nighttime was descending around me quickly, and if my heart hadn’t already been beating out of my chest, it was now. “What do I do? What do I do!”
If I died on this mountain, Joey would kill me for wrecking his car.
Utter silence surrounded me, and the sound of my own voice made my ears ring.
All I could hear was creaking pine trees, and I was terrified that if I made the wrong move, the car would lurch forward, and neither Eli Winter nor Lizzie Whitley would ever be heard from again.
Is this karma for choosing the wrong life?
The air outside was still, save for the falling snow. I saw no people, no houses, no animals.
I saw nothing but white-coated trees.
Oh my God. Okay, think, Lizzie.
Right. It was only one more mile to the cabin according to the GPS map I’d thankfully downloaded to my phone in case I lost cell service.
Which I had, I realized as I looked at the non-existent bars on Joey’s fancy dash screen.
My phone was tucked into a pocket on my backpack in the back seat so I wouldn’t be tempted to look and see just how viral my personal disaster had become.
Dang it. Why hadn’t I gotten Mr. Moran’s number from Grandpa before I left LA?
But I could walk the last mile, no problem.
And then I’d find the caretaker’s phone number and call him from the cabin.
I knew my grandpa would have a list of useful phone numbers taped up on the wall by the old landline phone, and Mr. Moran would know what to do.
Okay. Good plan. But wait. What if the landlines are out?
I looked around the car, but I couldn’t reach anything important without risking my life.
My suitcases had been packed safely in the trunk.
I mean, I needed my clothes, but if the car toppled over the mountainside, I could make do.
Italian bra and panty sets could be replaced.
Hairdryers and really good styling foam too.
But my songbook was in the trunk with the acoustic Taylor guitar Holly had given me when I’d agreed to tell her story, and those were the only two things I couldn’t live without. If I could just get out of the car, maybe I could rescue them.
I pulled on my gloves and hat. Here we go.
As I grasped the door handle and leaned to my left to shove my door open with my shoulder, I pressed the button to pop the trunk, and when it opened, I heard the click, and the car lurched forward.
I gasped, and tears filled my eyes, but I didn’t dare move again.
I’m going to die. This is it. Everything I’d accomplished, and all I’d be remembered for would be dying in the snow under a crumpled pile of metal?
Would anyone care? Would my music live on without me?
Or would my memory just waste away because of Bryant and his lies?
God, it just made me that much madder. If I lived through this, I’d come out swinging.
I would make Holly’s movie even if I had to finance the production myself.
Guys like Bryant did not deserve to get ahead.
What he did to me and the lies he kept telling were just more proof that Holly’s story was important.
And so was mine.
A vehicle came around a curve in the road. The snow fell at an alarming rate, lit by round, pulsing headlights aimed right at me. But I could freak out about snowfall stats later. Right now, I needed to concentrate on not dying.
But it wasn’t a car; it was a huge pickup truck! Oh no. This was it. Death by hillbilly. The truck would try to pass me, probably lose control on the ice and hit me, and I’d slide to my doom.
But wait, a truck was a good thing because there would be a human in there!
Oh thank the baby Jesus. I’m saved.
Panic was making me insane. I had whiplash from the thoughts running through my head, and I forgot not to move and pushed on the door, and the second it began to open, the gargantuan truck honked at me, a repeated staccato siren that made my heart beat even faster.
Why was the hillbilly truck honking at me?
I froze, and damp, icy air filled the car. Why had I been driving without my coat? It lay across the back seat under the backpack carrying my damn phone, but I was too afraid to reach back there. What if the movement was the last straw and it sent the car over the cliff?
The truck stopped in the middle of the road fifty feet away, the door flew open, and a huge dog jumped out. It ran toward me, and I sat there shaking and trying to yell, “No! Stop!” If the dog even touched a paw to my car, I was certain I would be done for.
A man jumped out the driver’s side door after the dog.
He ran toward me, his boots sliding on the ice, and he waved his hands above his head.
He was yelling something. I couldn’t hear him clearly, but whatever he said made the dog stop in his tracks.
He sat on the road and waited for his owner, but he kept barking up a storm.
I couldn’t see the man very clearly. My windows were nearly completely fogged over, but I imagined it was Van running toward me. If I really was going to die, I wanted the last thing I thought about to be something that made me happy. Something that didn’t confuse me or make me doubt myself.
And that was Van. It was the look of acceptance and permission he’d given me that night in a parking lot. I remembered his kiss and the way his eyes had warmed and his whole body had relaxed when he heard me sing.
I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and pushed the door open another inch. There was the imminent-death induced whiplash again, but clearly, I’d be safer outside this three-ton death machine. But then I heard what the man was screaming and felt the car lunge toward the forest again.
“Stop! Don’t fuckin’ move!”
Just as my car lost its grip on the snow and ice-covered pavement, my door was thrown open so hard that I heard the metal bend.
I imagined Van’s strong arms wrapping me up in a warm embrace, but then real hands gripped my upper arm, and I was yanked unceremoniously out of the car as everything I held dear in this world rolled down a steep bank and landed with a loud crack and clamor at the bottom of a mountain.
The dog yipped and barked at my feet, and my savior stood silently behind me, breathing heavily. I burst into tears. My face fell into my hands, and I cried while I imagined Holly’s guitar and all the songs I’d written with her catching fire when the car inevitably exploded.
Why hadn’t I backed them up onto the cloud?