Epilogue
If life imitates art, then art looks something like this:
Squeals of delight and matching, dimpled grins when Paige sees Zara and Maren in New York City.
A cooler of Gatorade dumped over Liam’s head on the very last night of Penelope Parker’s summer tour.
Penelope jumping into Jake’s arms, kissing him soundly at the wrap party.
Shots and speeches and tears and signed T-shirts and promises like see you soon and I’ll never forget this summer as long as I live.
Hands clasped over the dashboard of a truck, which rumbles across a bridge from Savannah toward Tybee Island. It pulls up to a small one-story with overgrown shrubs, a pregnant single mother and her three-year-old waving from the front porch, cardboard boxes piled beside them.
Flights and car rentals and even more hotel rooms, but also studio time with friends and so. Many. Contracts.
Seventy-five hearts swelling in sync when Hailey and Candice kiss on their wedding day. A Bristol Motor Speedway T-shirt that Liam bought in town and hardly ever takes off. The Savannah Bananas baseball cap Paige stole from his childhood bedroom.
Champagne because he got an assistant coach job at a high school in his hometown. A spritz because she hasn’t worked a double in four months, then five. She records a few songs, releases them quickly. No advertising, little fanfare.
They gain quiet traction anyway. Nothing like the traction of commercial success with a major label, but people in the industry are paying attention. Paul is thrilled.
A few months of calm after the new year, time with Folly in Nashville before she gives birth.
A tiny, bald, scrunchy-faced life entering the world, and so much emotion surrounding it that three new songs come out of Paige in one day.
Kayla gives birth two weeks later. It’s a boy; she names him Henry, after her and Liam’s dad.
A new song she writes, which neither of them ever want a single other soul to hear. Another song she records, and another still that she passes along.
The new Etta Girls album drops that March.
The new Penelope Parker that April.
He knows how much she hates it—every second she has to be on that stage while accepting her Grammy for Songwriter of the Year, even with Penelope, Gretta, and Henrietta up there behind her.
But she smiles through it, tugging at the hem of her vintage designer dress, and says the words they’d practiced three times in the limo.
“I want to convey,” he recalls her saying a few days ago when they started drafting up a speech together, “how much it means to me, to have these songs resonate with so many people, so fast. And I want to thank my cowriters, and their labels and publishers, and my Belmont teachers and classmates, and Paul Friedman, and my family, and the other nominees, because WOW, I love their songs so much, and—how much time do I get again? I mean, if I win, that is?”
Liam’s lips quirk when he sees Paige glancing at the timer on the teleprompter. He knows how relieved she is that this portion of the ceremony isn’t televised. His girl changes all the time, and in some ways, she never alters.
“And to Liam,” she says at last, finding him in the crowd of Grammy guests. His eyes water when hers do, and she smiles down at him with all the love in the world. “Words aren’t going to cut it this time. But I know that you know what you’ve done for me.”
He does know.
Just like he knows what she’s done for him.
But here are a few things neither of them will ever know:
They’ll never know that a tired woman who thought she had no options finally leaves a bad relationship because of one line in one song.
They’ll never know that Maren Lancaster, lonely in her own way, hears a song about hometowns she has no idea her sister cowrote, and that’s what makes her break down, what makes her finally admit she’s finished with this life chapter.
She moves home to Bristol, opens a law practice, falls in love with a quiet man who owns the coffeehouse next door.
They’ll never know a few lyrics overheard on the radio are what make a mother who thought her children didn’t need her realize: maybe, possibly, they do.
They’ll never know that someone goes to the doctor because of a song, that it gives them courage to ask for the meds they need.
That someone decides to go back to school for that one thing they really love.
That someone else decides it’s okay they couldn’t afford college or never found the perfect time; they’re more than enough without it.
They will never know that because of Liam’s steadfastness, Paige’s melodies and words, they saved one singer’s fledgling career. Launched another’s.
They’ll never know that one song inspires a novel, which lands in the inbox of Paige’s sister Zara, a newly promoted book editor.
When she reads the manuscript, she cries her eyes out and can’t totally make sense of why.
She only knows that it’s a beautiful story and deserves to be shared with as many people as she can reach.
Someone gets a tattoo of the novel’s last three lines. Another person recommends it on social media, makes a playlist as a reading companion. It’s got Etta Girls and Penelope Parker on it, and at least ten other artists.
Somebody sets boundaries with their best friend.
Somebody apologizes early enough.
Somebody is brave, admits they’re lonely, and asks to be kept close.
All of this, and so much more, because on a warm, rainy day, on a sidewalk in downtown Knoxville, the college pitcher saw a girl out of the corner of his eye.
And the greatest force in the world whispered, Go to her.