Chapter 20
Present Day: Martha’s Vineyard
Lindsey read the letter aloud. “I see something of myself in this young woman. I hear her sorrows about her family. I understand how frightened she is. I was never able to use my voice or write songs, but if I had ever had such talent, I might have written songs like this. (Imagine me, Rita! A country singer! A German country singer! Ha.)”
It was clear from the early letters that Greta wanted to be a haven for Stella, though she never exactly explained why. There was no mention of Sally McGee, which mystified Candice to no end. Where was Stella’s little sister? Why had any of this transpired?
The second week of July, two things happened.
Sarah called to ask Candice point-blank if she and her father were getting divorced. Candice hadn’t found a way to grapple with the language of divorce, and she sat dumbly on the beach before saying simply, “We are.” If Nathan got angry with her for being honest, she wouldn’t care.
Sarah cried quietly, then told Candice she was happy for her. “I love you, Mom,” she said. “And I miss you. I wish I had stayed on the Vineyard a little bit longer. But…”
“But the film,” Candice remembered.
Sarah updated her mother on the film's goings-on, then had to get off the phone to attend a rehearsal.
Candice expected Nathan to call her and yell at her for affirming what Sarah knew, but he never did.
Their correspondence was limited to text, relaying information as they prepared for the divorce.
The second thing that happened was that Candice decided to go to Nashville, Tennessee.
She told her siblings about her plan over dinner and fully expected them to tell her it was crazy.
But both Lindsey and Henry were now fully invested in the story of Stella and Greta.
Although Henry couldn’t come to Tennessee because of a work thing, Lindsey decided to clear her schedule and come along.
Candice didn’t ask what needed to be cleared from Lindsey’s schedule.
She seemed busy with nothing save for social hangouts with other islanders.
The day Candice and Lindsey packed up the car and headed out was also the day Gwen sent the construction crew to begin the redesign of the Harbor House. Henry cut them off at the door, saying he was still in the middle of contesting the will. “You don’t have a right to be here,” he told them.
Rather than stick around and deal with this mess, Candice and Lindsey got in the car and sped to the ferry.
Lindsey had plotted a course from the Vineyard to Nashville, a route that would take nineteen hours and two full driving days.
When Henry suggested they fly to Nashville instead, Lindsey and Candice scolded him.
“That’s no fun,” Lindsey had said.
Now, they were on the road. Candice had recorded Stella and Sally McGee’s album onto her phone, and she played it now from the speakers, loving the crackle of their mother’s voice as they sped down the highway.
Lindsey threw her head back, laughing, and said, “This is the weirdest thing that’s ever happened to me. I swear.”
“I don’t know what’s weirder,” Candice said. “Mom’s mysterious past or the fact that you and I are going on a road trip together on purpose.”
Lindsey cackled. “Mom would be shocked.”
Candice considered Sally, the missing McGee sister. They’d googled both her and Stella extensively and found no information, which was part of the reason they were going to Nashville. “Wouldn’t it be great if Sally was still there?” Candice dared to say.
“She could fill in so many missing gaps,” Lindsey agreed.
But Candice didn’t want to talk about it too much. She didn’t want to get her hopes up.
Instead, their conversation shifted to their mother and father and all they still didn’t know.
“When Dad died, I didn’t talk to Mom for six months,” Lindsey confessed.
Candice was surprised, although she knew how close Lindsey and Ben Winthrop had been.
“It hurt too much,” Lindsey said. “Dad was my best friend and my confidant, and suddenly, when I called home, all I got was Mom, and Mom was so distant and so cold. She didn’t know how to connect with me. With any of us, I guess.”
Candice knew what her sister meant. “It only got worse when Dad died,” she said. “She didn’t know how to fake it anymore. And Dad made her really happy, I think.”
“She stopped knowing how to be happy,” Lindsey agreed.
Candice grimaced, thinking about herself, about who she would be now that she wasn’t going to be a wife anymore.
Since she’d confessed to Frank that she was getting divorced, she hadn’t seen him once.
But it wasn’t like she’d expected him to chase her, now that she was available.
She hadn’t expected anything from him. She’d simply wanted to tell him the truth.
When Candice and Lindsey reached Nashville, it was ninety-five degrees and sticky with humidity.
They crawled out of their air-conditioned car and checked into their hotel rooms. Rather than go into her own room, Lindsey followed Candice into hers, and they lay on their backs in the air-conditioning, drinking ice-cold water to regain their strength.
The drive through the mountains had been glorious and soul-affirming, but it really felt as though they’d traveled an incredible distance.
Candice couldn’t believe that years and years ago, Greta Vanberg had traveled the same roads.
She’d come to Nashville to meet some guy—and she’d met Stella McGee instead.
When they regained their energy, Candice and Lindsey got dressed for the night, grabbed salads at a little restaurant near a few honky-tonk country bars, then went to see some music.
The country had changed a great deal since Sally and Stella had cut their album, but the energy remained the same: heartbreaking lyrics alongside twangy, gorgeous melodies.
After drinking a half glass of wine at the first honky-tonk place, Lindsey popped up and grabbed Candice’s hand.
“Dance with me!” she cried, so they hurried into the middle and danced, Lindsey taking the “men” role.
They cackled happily. At some point, a guy approached them, asking to take over, but they said no and asked for a picture instead.
In the photograph, Lindsey and Candice looked more like sisters than ever. Their smiles were enormous and pretty. Almost immediately, Lindsey posted the photograph to her social media, then exclaimed, “Frank already liked it!”
Candice felt her heart rattle. “Already?”
Lindsey showed her phone, and Candice suddenly grew so nervous she had to sit down. She laughed at herself, then ordered another glass of wine. “Sorry,” she said. “I don’t know what came over me.”
Lindsey waved her hand. “We’re not here to dance, anyway. We’re here to research.”
Soon after, they went back to their hotel for the night, where they both slept like babies and prepared for the day ahead.
Candice and Lindsey were at the library's front door at eight thirty on the dot, where they asked to see the records office for the town of Nashville.
There, they pored through birth announcements, searching for some sign of Stella or Sally McGee.
Eventually, it seemed clear that neither of them had been born here.
“But they played so much here,” Lindsey pointed out. “Maybe we could find something about that?”
It was a good idea. But this search led only to beautiful newspaper photographs and write-ups about the McGee sisters.
Lindsey and Candice took photographs on their phones of the spreads, the headlines labeling the McGee sisters as the “next big thing” in country music, and the joy that radiated from their pretty smiles.
“They were so much younger than we are now,” Lindsey said softly.
Before they left, they asked the librarian for help tracking down Sally and Stella McGee. The librarian typed on her computer for a while, searching the databases, but she found nothing after 1980. It was really like they’d disappeared off the face of the earth.
“But we know they didn’t,” Lindsey said as they left the library, disappointment heavy in their hearts. “We know Mom went to Martha’s Vineyard with Greta. We know she had us.”
“Where does Dad come into the story?” Candice wondered.
Lindsey raised her shoulders. “I’m starving,” she said. “And I think I want to dance.”
They decided to do exactly what they’d done the night before: salads and wine and dancing.
They went to a different country-western bar, one that seemed old-world and vintage.
It could have been 1955 or 1979 or 2026.
Again, they danced for a little while, till they exhausted themselves.
At the bar, they grabbed a glass of wine, sat, listened to music, and watched the others bounce around.
Candice was beginning to wonder if they’d hit another dead end.
The bartender was older than they were, maybe in his sixties. Not so much younger than their mother might have been. He hummed along with the music as he poured drinks. “Where are you ladies coming in from?” he asked.
Lindsey and Candice smiled.
“Is it that obvious we’re from out of town?” Lindsey asked.
“Honestly? Yes,” the bartender said, laughing.
“We’re from out East,” Candice said.
“Martha’s Vineyard,” Lindsey offered.
“Heard it’s beautiful out there,” he said. “Wouldn’t have thought people out there are into country music.”
“You’d be surprised,” Candice said, smiling.
“Actually, we’re here because our mother used to be a country star here in Nashville,” Lindsey said.
Candice cast her a look of surprise. She didn’t want to be one of those people who talked about their miseries at the bar.
“Is that so?” The bartender acted like he’d heard that before.
“Her name was Stella McGee. She sang with her sister, Sally,” Lindsey went on.
The bartender’s face transformed. “Stella and Sally McGee?”
Lindsey and Candice nodded. He knew something. Candice couldn’t breathe.
The bartender called behind his shoulder for backup from another bartender, then asked them to follow him. They trailed him down a hallway and into the back, where another band was getting ready to go on stage. They were drinking beer and adjusting their guitar straps over their shoulders.
Adrenalized, Candice fought her urge to reach over and take Lindsey’s hand, because there, hanging on the wall over the couch in the backroom, was a photograph of Stella and Sally, performing on that very stage.
Beneath it was the text: Stella and Sally McGee at their very first performance, here at Boo’s Country Western Bar.
“Boo’s Country Western Bar?” Candice asked.
“That’s what it used to be called,” the bartender said.
“Boo was my uncle. Great guy. He died some years ago and left the place to my brother and me. But I worked here for years and years before that. I saw everything. In any case, this was where the McGee sisters got their start. It wasn’t a long career.
It couldn’t have been after what happened. ”
Candice felt as though she’d been smacked. “After what happened?”
His eyes darkened. “You do know what happened, don’t you?”
Lindsey and Candice both admitted they didn’t. Candice felt she’d failed their mother, though maybe their mother had failed them by keeping up her endless lie.
The bartender gave them a mysterious look. “Everyone around here thought she was dead,” he finally offered. “But meeting you two now, it does my heart good. It means she made it out.”