Chapter 2 Hunter #2
I reached the gate to Wes and Margaret’s property, which sat at the end of a private road off the main coastal highway, tucked into the jagged cliffs just outside Willet Cove.
Two acres of oceanfront land that had been worth a reasonable amount when they’d bought it twenty years ago and was now worth something they would have embarrassed him to say out loud.
Wes and Margaret had built the house together, back when he was fifty and ready for a quiet life away from Nashville.
By then he’d signed three acts that went platinum and managed careers that had defined a decade of country music.
Margaret had grown up in California and spent thirty years following Wes through the noise and ambition of Nashville.
He figured she’d given him enough. The next thirty could be spent by the sea, where she’d always wanted to be.
They were still here. Still madly in love. If dancing around the kitchen was any indication, they remained completely crazy about each other.
The house itself was a sprawling shingle-style mansion.
Weathered and grand at the same time, with massive stonework and windows that soaked in panoramic views of the Pacific from every room.
A wraparound deck ran the length of the ocean side, anchored by a towering chimney that made the whole place feel equal parts New England coastal and rock-and-roll retreat.
Below the main house, a multi-tiered terrace dropped down toward the cliff edge, where a saltwater infinity pool had been carved into the hillside, flanked by smooth boulders and manicured hedges.
Inside, the estate was exactly what you’d expect from a man who had spent years at the intersection of serious money and serious music, opulent and eclectic in equal measure.
Vintage guitars hung alongside abstract art on walls.
He and Margaret had chosen bright colored fabrics and walls, with velvet drapes and leather furniture.
Bookshelves stuffed with novels and biographies and music theory.
Photographs from Wes’s long career decorated a grand piano in the living room.
Wes and Margaret young and squinting into the sun on their wedding day; Wes backstage somewhere in the eighties with three country singers he’d managed; Wes and my father, side by side, guitars in hand, laughing at something just outside the frame.
Wes and Ray. Young and hungry. Gunners, Wes called them.
Two men from nothing who’d arrived in Nashville at the same time with the same goal.
Make good music. They did it too, albeit differently.
Wes became one of the most powerful men in the industry.
My father became the best session guitarist in town.
Ray Sloan had been the man every producer called first. His name appeared in the liner notes of hundreds of records, in small print on the back.
He played on every important album in Nashville for twenty years.
At his peak, he played three sessions a day, six days a week.
He was rarely home, choosing to work rather than spend time with his family.
The top session men played constantly, not because anyone forced them to but because the call list was competitive and turning down work meant someone else got the gig the next time.
My father couldn’t say no to an evening session, a Saturday morning session, or a holiday session.
Subsequently, my mother left when I was ten.
She’d been Elena Hunter before she married my father, which was where I got my name.
She’d followed my father to Nashville from Portland, Oregon, at twenty-two, in love and certain that love would be enough.
She’d made her life around a man who was perpetually absent, in a city that wasn’t hers, without the roots or the community that might have made it all bearable.
Elena made countless dinners that grew cold and sat through weekends alone.
When I was born she hoped the baby would change things.
It didn’t. Ray loved me, yet showed up inconsistently—a weird dichotomy I couldn’t understand.
By the time I was ten she’d been a single mother for a decade while technically being married.
She left a note on the kitchen table. I need to start a new life.
With a man who isn’t locked in a studio twenty hours a day.
Even at ten years old I knew what she meant.
She’d met someone else. A man who didn’t work constantly.
Unfortunately, he was also a man who had no interest in taking on a stepchild.
This was confirmed later, as it all unfolded.
My mother moved to Florida with a man twenty years her senior.
Carl Webb was rich as sin and equally controlling.
To be with him, she had to leave my father and me.
After that I heard from her once or twice a year.
She always ended the call with a promise to come visit.
She never did. Too many fundraising galas and lunches at the club with her new fancy friends and time on the new husband’s yacht to make time for her son in Nashville.
She was still down there, as far as I knew. Still with Carl, or someone like him. Still not calling. I’d stopped waiting for the phone to ring a long time ago. But she was with me all right. She’d given me the gifts of insecurity and abandonment issues. Those never left, even though she did.
After she disappeared, my dad shut down the way men do when they don’t know how to grieve or express their feelings.
He worked more. Came home even less. For a few months, I ate a lot of cereal and waited for whatever was going to happen next.
I also learned how to play guitar, alone in that apartment, listening to the records my dad had played on, memorizing licks and technique and a growing appreciation for just how talented he was.
Then Wes and Margaret stepped in. She started bringing me over for dinner at their house a few times a week.
Soon, it was almost every night. She started taking me to school and cooked my dinner and let me play guitar as long as I ate my vegetables.
By the time I was eleven I had a room there.
By the time I was twelve it was the only home I knew.
When my marriage fell apart, Margaret had been the one to tell me to come and stay with them out in California. “Just until you get your legs under you again. Stay with us. Figure out what you want to do next.”
I’d been too gutted and too tired to argue, so I’d packed my guitars and what I could fit into two suitcases, gassed up my truck and driven west. That had been a year ago. I was still figuring out what was next.
However, I know without question, that Wes and Margaret Callahan saved my life when I was a kid. They became my family when I needed one. Beckoned me home decades later when I needed them yet again. And I loved them as fiercely as I loved anything in the world.
The lights were on in the kitchen and I could see them at the table, so I decided to pop in and say hello before heading to my cottage at the back of the property.
I knocked twice and opened the kitchen door. “Hey, ya’ll. Okay to come in?”
“Yes, get in here. We’ve been waiting for you.
” Margaret was at the table with her crossword, reading glasses pushed up into her silver gold hair.
Despite her age, she wore it long, with a streak of deep violet near the left temple that she’d added sometime in February.
“I’m still a little rock and roll,” she’d said at the time. “Don’t you boys forget it.”
Tonight, she was wearing something soft and expensive-looking in a neutral color, her good turquoise ring, and dangling earrings. At sixty-eight she was lean and straight-backed. Apparently that’s what yoga and a whole food diet did for a person.
Wes was across from her with a biography, a glass of red wine at his elbow. Tall and lanky, with a quick smile but serious eyes, he’d aged well. His hair had gone white over the years, but he was one of those lucky guys blessed with thick hair that hadn’t thinned.
“You eaten?” Margaret was already pushing back from the table.
“I work in a bar, Margaret.”
“Were there any vegetables at this so-called dinner?” Margaret asked.
“Do sweet potato fries count?” I asked.
She rolled her eyes. “In a pinch.”
“Come sit and have a glass of wine with us,” Wes said. “We have some exciting news.”
“What’s that?” I asked, already at the cabinet to pull out a glass.
“Ivy called,” Wes said. “She’s coming for a visit.”
“Really? But I thought she was on tour?” I poured a glass of wine for myself from the bottle on the counter.
“It’s over. And she’s worried about you,” Margaret said. “Something about the most talented songwriter in the industry hiding away playing bartender.”
I sighed before taking a sip of wine. “I can’t just sit around, not doing anything. Especially since I’m not actually writing these days.”
“You’ll get it back,” Margaret said. “Which is why Ivy wants to come visit. She’s hoping you two can do one of your magical collaborations. She’s desperate for material for her new album.”
As much as I’d love to see one of my best friends, the idea of her needing something from me that I might not be able to deliver made me sweat.
“She’s dropping her record label,” Wes said.
“No way. Why?” I asked.
“You know why,” Wes said.
I did. They treated Ivy like a commodity rather than an artist. Called her sweetheart and honey and acted like they were doing her a favor every time they recorded an album for her when it should have been the other way around.
She’d made a lot of fat foxes rich in Nashville. She was tired of being exploited.
“She’s asked Wes to produce her new album,” Margaret said.
I nodded. “That’s a darn good idea. How do you feel?” I asked Wes. He had an incredible recording space downstairs that hadn’t been used for a few years. “You ready to get back on the horse?”