Chapter 22
For Stella, the drive to the Nashville hospital was a blur of tears.
Greta drove like a maniac, speeding down the highway to Vanderbilt National Hospital, where she parked and ran next to Stella, making sure she wasn’t alone in her panic.
Stella remembered what Greta had said right before her father and husband had come through the door of Boo’s bar.
She’d said that Stella couldn’t trust Billy.
But Greta was wrong about that. The men Stella couldn’t trust, the men she’d never been able to trust despite having grown up alongside them, had just torn her new life apart.
The emergency room was in a state of panic. There had been a major pile-up on the highway coming west into Nashville, and every chair was filled with terrified family members and friends. It was going to take ages to talk to someone at the front desk.
Greta touched Stella’s shoulder and said, “They are taking care of him. This is a good hospital.”
Stella wanted to ask Greta how she knew that. Greta was from Martha’s Vineyard and Germany, for goodness’ sake, so far away that it stood to reason that Tennessee felt like a foreign country to her. But still, it sounded nice to hear that aloud. It sounded almost real.
Stella and Greta sat in the waiting room for a while. Greta told Stella to focus on her breathing, but when Stella started hyperventilating, Greta took Stella for a walk outside. The humidity of the day was fading, allowing Stella to inhale deeply.
Greta muttered, “No one should ever be this far from the sea.”
Stella laughed nervously and peered at her strange friend. “What are you still doing here?”
Greta closed her eyes. “I told you that I came here for a man. He deceived me, but he told me he wanted to make it up to me. He told me he wanted to start again. I plan to see him for dinner tomorrow. I do not know what will be said. I do not think I will ever love him. How can I possibly, after all he’s promised and all he cannot deliver?
But I thought I would come see you perform one more time before I drive back to the Vineyard.
I told you before. I felt a kinship with you, because of your music. ”
Stella was touched. Again, she reminded herself that Greta Vanberg was a lonely, older woman. Music was for all sorts of people, but it was especially for the lonely.
“Thank you,” Stella said. “I don’t know what I would have done if you hadn’t driven me to the hospital.”
“It is no trouble,” Greta said.
They returned to the waiting room, where Stella inquired about Billy Long’s injuries. The woman at the front desk asked Stella about her relationship to the injured person, and Greta interjected, saying Stella was Billy’s wife. At that moment, Stella felt her baby flutter in her stomach.
The attendant went off to check on Billy, and Stella waited with anticipation, eager to see him. Eager to hold his hand and explain. Eager to kiss him again.
But when the attendant returned, she said Billy Long had told her he wasn’t married and didn’t want to see anyone. “He said you must be mistaken,” she said. She gave them an awful, cold look.
Stella bit her tongue to keep from crying. She’d cried enough today. She turned on her heel and left the hospital, sure that Billy would wake up tomorrow and want to see her immediately. He was probably just rattled or confused. Tomorrow, she could explain everything. She just had to be patient.
Outside, Stella explained to Greta that she had to go home and find her sister. “My guess is that she went there to hide out and wait for all this to end,” she said.
“I come with you,” Greta said.
“No,” Stella said, exhaustion overwhelming her.
Greta winced, and Stella hurried to explain herself.
“You’ve been wonderful. Really. You’ve been my guardian angel tonight. But I really need to find my sister and regroup. We’ve been through so much together. I can’t let this one night ruin everything.”
Greta nodded somberly. “You must do what you need to do.”
They got in the car. Greta drove Stella to the house she’d purchased for herself and her sister, where Stella thanked Greta another three times and hugged her in the front seat of the car.
Stella got out, waved, then limped her way up the front walk to the door.
As soon as she opened the door, she called, “Sally!” But the house was empty and filled with shadows.
As an afterthought, she tried, “Carrie?” then cursed herself.
She and her sister weren’t Heidi and Carrie any longer, no matter how loudly their father had screamed those names.
Stella continued to creep around, turning on lights and trying to calm herself down.
Everything looked exactly as it had before they’d gone to the bar tonight.
Her water glass remained in the sink, and there was still a grocery list on the fridge.
Sally wasn’t there, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t coming back soon.
She hated where Isaac lived. She never slept there because she thought it was too dirty, too chaotic. She wouldn’t stay there long.
Stella collapsed on her bed and didn’t undress before falling asleep.
Nightmares chased her through the long dark hours till she awoke, gasping and sweaty, in the light of the dawn.
Immediately, she took a shower, then called Isaac’s place.
The phone rang and rang. Nobody answered.
Rather than wait around, she walked to Boo’s bar and picked up her car, which she drove to Isaac’s place.
There, she banged on the door until Isaac’s roommate Scott answered and told her, “Isaac didn’t come home last night.
” And then he coughed and said, “But I heard about what happened. That was wild. Are you okay?”
Stella couldn’t answer because her throat was too tight.
She turned on her heel and ran back to her car, trying and failing to come up with a way to fix this.
Immediately, she drove to the hospital, where she managed to slip past the front desk and make her way to the ward she knew Billy was in.
Furtively, she walked from door to door, poking her head in, until she found him—Billy Long, his nose bandaged and one of his legs raised slightly higher than the other.
He was looking out the window. He looked much older than he had yesterday, as though the attack had aged him ten years.
Stella thought she was going to throw up.
Was now a good time to tell him about the baby? Was that a way to restructure his mind and his priorities and remind him of how much he loved her?
When Stella reached the side of his bed, she sat gently and reached for his hand. Slowly, he slid his gaze over to her. He didn’t move his hand, but it felt strange and cold in hers.
“What are you doing here?” he asked.
Stella’s voice was meek. “I wanted to make sure you’re all right. And…” She felt crushed. “And I’ve been so worried about you. I’m so sorry about what happened. Billy, I never thought…”
Billy raised his free hand to silence her. “You’re married,” he said.
Stella let her head loll back ever so slightly. “I was. In my past life. But we had to escape that life, Billy. It’s hard to explain. We…”
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Billy asked. He looked alien and awful with the bandage on his nose. His eyes were bloodshot.
Stella searched herself for answers. “I wanted to pretend it wasn’t true,” she said finally.
“I wanted to be Stella McGee and only Stella McGee. And the thing is, Billy, it worked. Sally and I have the best song on the charts! This is just a blip, you know? And my father and Harvey will be in jail after this.”
Billy closed his eyes. “It’s not a good look, honey. People don’t like it when a woman leaves her husband, especially not for someone like me.”
Stella felt that he was making things up as he went along. She couldn’t fathom why that would be so. “I love you, Billy,” she said. “And I’m…” She wanted to tell him she was pregnant. She wanted to finally, finally give him every ounce of her truth.
But just then, the doctor came in to talk about Billy’s healing. Billy asked Stella point-blank to head out. Stella staggered to her feet, nearly taking a tumble. “I can wait outside,” she said to Billy.
“You can’t be in here,” Billy said. “We aren’t married. We aren’t related.” He turned his attention to the doctor, as though she were no longer there.
Over the next few days, Stella continued the search for her sister.
But it was increasingly clear that Sally was no longer anywhere in Nashville, and neither was Isaac.
Stella could picture them, speeding across the wild American night, talking fast, feeling as though they’d escaped something horrendous.
But why would Sally abandon Stella like that? Didn’t she remember that Stella had done everything for Sally from the get-go? Stella felt her heart growing sour.
When Billy got out of the hospital, he arranged for his lawyer to meet with Stella and dissolve the contract they’d set up for future work together.
Stella nearly threw the contract back in the lawyer’s face, then thought better of it.
She didn’t want to seem anything like her violent father or husband.
“I want to talk to Billy before I sign anything,” she said.
“Billy’s in Los Angeles,” the lawyer said. “He won’t be back till the end of the year. He has a few more clients out there. He’s working on cutting all ties with Nashville.”
Stella’s mouth went dry. “Sally has to be here to sign the contract, too.”
“Not legally,” the lawyer said, reminding her of how they’d set up the contract from the get-go. Stella was in charge.
“But I can sing by myself,” Stella told him, raising her chin. “I’ve written many of our songs myself. I’ll perform those. I’ll write more!”
“You can write as many songs as you want to.” The lawyer shrugged. “I can’t help you with that. And neither can my client, Billy Long.”
It felt like a smack. But Stella reminded herself it wasn’t over. She was still young.
When it was clear that Sally was going to take her sweet time calling to tell Stella where she’d run off to, Stella went to Boo’s Country Western Bar and asked if she could perform solo.
Boo took one look at her and grimaced. “Can I talk to you?” he asked, pulling her into the back room, the same room where she and Sally had hid out during their father and Harvey’s attack.
“This is not easy,” Boo said, clasping his hands. “But Stella, are you by chance pregnant?”
Stella crossed her arms over her stomach. Shame made her face go hot. Boo sat down and put his face in his hands. “I should have protected you from all this,” he muttered.
Stella didn’t know what to say. “I didn’t need to be protected,” she said. But around her, her life crumbled to nothing.
The thing was, nobody wanted to see a single McGee sister sing on stage, not without the other one by her side. More than that, they didn’t want to see a pregnant McGee sister, raising a child out of wedlock. It was 1980 and the South. Everyone would give her a hard time.
Stella returned home, dumbfounded. In one fell swoop, she’d lost everything.
By chance, she considered Greta Vanberg and wondered if she was still in Nashville.
She’d said she was leaving just as soon as she saw that man, but maybe Stella was lucky.
Maybe she was still around. She called the hotel where Greta was staying and was pleased to hear she was still in Nashville.
Greta invited her to dinner at the hotel.
“I’m driving away tomorrow,” she explained.
Stella dressed in a simple, loose-fitting black dress and drove herself to Greta’s hotel, where Greta waited for her in the empty dining room.
When Stella entered, Greta looked at her with more tenderness than Stella had felt from anyone in the previous days.
Stella burst into tears, and Greta wrapped her arms around her and consoled her as best as she could, using some German words and some English.
For the first time in her life, Stella felt properly mothered.
She couldn’t get enough, not now that Sally was gone, and she was more alone than she ever had been.
When Greta suggested that Stella come to Martha’s Vineyard for a little while, Stella leaped at the chance.
“I’ll leave your number with people in Nashville so Sally can get ahold of me,” she said, knowing that Sally would one day change her mind, that she would one day remember Stella and want to apologize and fix their friendship.
“She’s hiding, and she’s scared, but that won’t be forever,” Stella said. “She’ll come to the Vineyard.”
“She’ll be welcome there,” Greta agreed, although Stella could see from her face that Greta wasn’t entirely sure if Sally would come after all.
Stella packed only a few things into two suitcases, plus all the money she and Sally had made.
She sold the house and her car for cash, then leaped into Greta’s vehicle and watched Nashville melt into the backdrop.
Greta and Stella kept the country radio station on as long as they could, although eventually, tragically, it faded out, and they found themselves in the north.
The music was different here. Stella would have to find a way to understand it.