Yeah? So was he. “Show me whatever you have so I can get back to work.” The sooner the better.
She held out her phone. “Push Play.”
He lifted an eyebrow. “Really?” Was this her on camera, being interviewed somewhere? Talking in Nashville on TV about how sorry she was she’d outed his mother’s secret?
Would that help things? Or make them worse?
He honestly didn’t know.
“Just … please. Wait, come inside so you can hear it better.” She hurried to unlock room one. Emily Dickinson raced ahead and leaped onto the bed.
Taft remembered the one night he’d slept in her bed. His heart hurt so much it might stop beating. It would be easier, probably.
Lana sat on the edge of the bed, too. She pointed at her phone, which he was still holding. “Watch it. So then I can pass out.” Her breathing was as shallow as his was.
“Fine.”
On the small screen, he hit the play button.
Lana sat in a kitchen he didn’t recognize. She smiled at the camera and flashed her Sorry! tattoo. She held an orange guitar and strummed it slowly. E minor, always a good chord to start a sad song.
* * *
I wear sorry on my sleeve like it’s a bracelet.
I hang sorry round my neck for you to see.
I put sorry on at night like it’s my perfume.
In the hopes that someday you’ll come back to me.
* * *
The scene faded, and went to a voiceover. Lana’s voice, “I screwed up. I told the media he wasn’t Palmer Hill’s son.”
They were – astonishingly – in Sully and Ellen’s home. There was Ellen, looking pale.
He glanced at Lana, who gestured for him to keep watching. While the simple chords of the song kept playing behind the words, he heard Ellen say, “But he was Palmer’s son.”
Lana’s voice: “Wait. Palmer knew?”
Ellen smiled beatifically. “Of course he did. He knew from the start.”
The scene went back to Lana singing at the kitchen table.
* * *
I put sorry on at night like it’s my perfume.
In the hopes that someday you’ll come back to me.
* * *
Voiced over, came Ellen’s words: “Taft was his pride and joy. That was all, full stop. He couldn’t have been any prouder of the boy if he had sired him. Palmer thought – like we do – that love is where you find it.”
* * *
In the hopes that someday you’ll come back to me.
* * *
As the last chord died, Lana looked back into the camera. She pressed her thumb into the tattoo at her wrist and kissed it. At the camera, she mouthed, “I’m sorry, Taft.”
Taft’s heart landed somewhere on the floor, along with every conscious, rational thought he’d ever had. “What – you went to talk to them?”
“They’re your family. I needed to apologize to them, too.”
“I –”
“You don’t have to say anything. Taft, I’m sorry. I’ve never done something as wrong-headed and stupid as what I did to you, and I sincerely apologize to you.”
“Lana –”
“I put this on YouTube this morning, and linked it with a comment over at the one Sully posted. My friend Jilly helped by notifying the media. Even if you can’t accept my apology, which I would understand, I want the whole world to know I mean it.” She stood and reached into her jeans pocket. “And this is another small apology. I didn’t even screw this one up.”
It was a phone number. Not hers, it wasn’t a familiar area code. Taft searched her face. “What is this?”
“Your half-sister’s phone number.” Lana put up her hands. “Before you get mad at me, I didn’t call her or contact her or anything. I’ve got a private investigator friend, and she dug up the info in like ten minutes.”
“My …” Taft had no words.
“You don’t ever have to contact her if you don’t want to. I thought I’d just give you the option. My sisters are two of the most important people in the whole world to me.”
Words came to him then, words he meant with all his heart. “I shouldn’t have told Adele about your song.”
“You shouldn’t have,” Lana agreed. “But I’m glad you did. Now they know about the worst day of my life. It was a pretty bad one for them, too.”
I love you. The refrain swam in his head. Thinking the words made him feel drunk. He wanted to say them to her, but did he have the right, any right at all, to say them?
Lana looked down. “I can’t believe my dog is sitting on your foot.”
He hadn’t even noticed Emily Dickinson had placed herself there again. “I know.”
“Come on, tell me how you made that happen.”
Taft felt a blush creep over his face. “I strapped a piece of bacon under my sock.”
“Seriously?”
“She’s been driving me crazy, and I couldn’t stand it that she hated me. A man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do, Lana Mirabelle Darling.”
Lana’s mouth dropped open. “You know my middle name,” she whispered.
“I also know it means gift.” He’d looked it up.
“More like surprise.”
“Surprise gift, maybe.” Inside Taft’s chest, his heart had started thundering again, and he doubted anything would be able to slow it.
“Oh.” Her voice was small and her eyes were huge.
Taft shook Emily Dickinson off his ankle. He stepped toward Lana. This – everything mattered, everything hinged on this moment.
“I love you,” Taft said.
Tears filled Lana’s eyes. “Oh!”
He kissed her then, and under his lips, he felt her say the words back. He couldn’t hear her over his heartbeat, over the blood pounding in his ears, but he could feel them, taste them.
I love you, she said. I love you, I love you.
By the time he could hear the words out loud, the door was closed and locked, the curtains were drawn. By the time he heard them a second time, they were naked. By the time he heard them a third time, he and the woman of his dreams were making love, and much later, when she whispered them to him a fourth time, he realized that it was going to take a lifetime to get tired of hearing her say it.
“Hey, Birdie.”
“Yeah?” Lana chewed idly on the knuckle of his thumb, while on the floor, Emily Dickinson humped his tool belt.
“Can I have that song for my album?”
“The sorry song?”
“Yeah.”
“Sure. You’ll have to buy it from me, though.”
“How much?”
“A million kisses.”
“Sounds fair.” He started paying her that very moment.
Epilogue
I’m the kind of woman who sings with her sisters.
It felt good.
Okay, it also felt weird – but still nice – to be standing on the small stage in the Golden Spike Saloon, looking out over what seemed to be the whole town and then some. How Adele and Nate had managed to pack in so many people was anyone’s guess, but the fire marshal was beaming at the door, so they hadn’t gone over capacity. Yet.
In each corner were lights, and camera-people swung through the room, capturing it all.
Adele was at the mic, driving the action as usual. Thank goodness she didn’t mind having that role. Lana sure as hell didn’t want it.
“Okay!” Adele held up her arms, and her round belly showed clearly under her white T-shirt. “Pipe down! We’ve got a real treat for you up next. Thanks for listening to us play a few oldies but goodies.”
“We love you, Songbirds!” The words were shouted from the very back of the room.
Molly grinned at Lana. Lana had literally forgotten how it felt to have her voice twining with her sisters’, the way they intuitively found the old harmonies and reached for new ones as they went. It had felt a little bit like flying, singing on stage with them.
Adele
said, “We love you, too, Darling Bay. Thanks for coming out. Remember that every dime you spend at the bar tonight goes right into Migration, and we’ll be passing around a hat in a little while, too. Please give generously. Now, Molly and I are going to leave the stage in the capable hands of our baby sister, who’s back in town. You might know her as the one who’s fixed up the hotel. She might have checked you in when you got to town. You may have seen her walking a small dog who barks so loudly she cracks crystal. But Lana’s actually the rockstar of the family –”
“Really?” Lana said into her mic. “The rockstar?”
Adele raised an eyebrow. “Are you engaged to be married to a cop?”
Heads swiveled to look at Molly, who blushed.
“No,” said Lana.
“Are you pregnant, by any chance?” Adele touched her belly.
“Hell, no.”
“By default, you have to keep being the rockstar, then.”
Lana tugged at her cowboy hat. “Well,” she said smoothly into the mic. “There are worse things, I think.”
Adele nodded. “So give our baby sister a big, Darling Bay welcome, won’t you?”
Lana tuned her E-string. It wasn’t out of tune, but it gave her something to fiddle with while she ran through the words in her mind. Nerves – she was wound so tight with them. That morning, when she’d woken in Taft’s arms, she’d groaned. Do I have to do this?
It’s going to be televised. It’s an opportunity. But no, darlin’, you don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do.
It wasn’t true. Sometimes you did have to do exactly the last thing you’d ever wanted to.
Sometimes you just had to be brave and run off the cliff, hoping for someone to call a helicopter for you if you got hurt. Lana pressed her thumb into her tattoo and then smiled at Taft, who leaned against the bar.
His grin was huge.
His blue eyes didn’t move from hers. Next to him stood a tall woman who had the same dark-blue eyes. His half-sister, Martha, had desperately wanted to meet him but was apparently as anxious as Taft had been to reach out to her. Taft and Lana had driven to meet her the week before. He and Martha had spoken for an hour, and then for four hours the next day.
They were taking it slow, but Lana had overheard him introducing her as his sister to the mayor, and her heart had just about burst with the sheer outrageous joy of it.
Now, as she stared at him, he winked.
He loved her.
“I’m the luckiest woman alive.” Her voice shook, which ticked her off, so she hurried to continue. “For a while, though, I was the unlucky one. The loner. The one who didn’t fit.”
The crowd grew quieter.
“You might have seen the rumors in the country tabloids, but I’m going to confirm them for you right now. I was raped.” The air left her lungs, and quite clearly, she heard a woman in the back say, Ohhhh.
“I didn’t say those words for a long time, because I didn’t have the language for it. I was assaulted, that’s what I told myself. I put myself in a bad place, and I got too drunk and out of control. I’d asked for it, so I deserved what I got. I was ashamed of every part of myself. I pushed the ones I love most away because of the shame, and because of the angry lies I fed myself to try to cover it up.” Lana couldn’t see them, but she could feel her sisters behind her. Loving her.
In front of her, Taft’s gaze didn’t waver.
“It turns out I didn’t deserve it. Period. And if I can tell just one woman watching that it wasn’t her fault, it makes my story worth telling.” Lana looked away from Taft and into the camera. “If you were too drunk, if you were too young, if you were in the wrong place at the wrong time, even if you made every single wrong decision possible, what happened to you when you got hurt was not your fault. It was never your fault.” The words caught in her throat. “That’s why I wrote ‘Blame Me.’ I was trying to heal myself. I didn’t know it then, but I was trying to heal you, too.”
Lana looked down at the guitar. Just a few pieces of wood and metal, but her music had saved her. It wasn’t too much to hope it could help someone else, too.
“Now, I’d like to invite a man up to the stage you may have heard of.” A light laugh rippled through the room. “Taft Hill, you gorgeous beast of a country boy, would you come join me on stage?”
He dipped his head in response. The crowd parted for him.
Then he was next to her. He picked up his guitar and slung the strap around his neck. “Hey, Birdie.” His deep voice raised goosebumps on her arms.
“Hey there.” Lana could fly – she knew she could. But she didn’t want to. She wanted to stay right here. “Will you sing with me?”
“You sure you want some nobody bastard who never knew his father to sing on this stage next to you?”
“Nope.” They hadn’t planned what they’d say. Lana leaned into the not-knowing and just spoke what was in her heart. “I want the man who was raised by a wonderful father named Palmer Hill to sing with me.”
“What if I don’t sound like him?”
She shrugged. “Who could? If you sound like yourself, like the Taft Hill I’m in love with, that’ll be more than enough for me.”
Taft grinned then, and leaned down for a kiss.
A cheer from the crowd rose, and above it, they heard Norma, who was sitting with her tarot cards at the bar. “I see a platinum record in your future! I see it right here!”
Lana didn’t care about a platinum anything, when it came right down to it.
She cared about her sisters.
She cared about the hotel.
And this man – this one right here, with his lips pressed against hers.
I’m the kind of woman who falls in love.
So Lana kissed Taft back.
Thoroughly.
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Rachael Herron is the bestselling author of the novels The Ones Who Matter Most, Splinters of Light and Pack Up the Moon (all from Penguin), the five-book Cypress Hollow series, and the memoir, A Life in Stitches. She received her MFA in writing from Mills College, Oakland. She teaches writing extension workshops at both UC Berkeley and Stanford and is a New Zealand citizen as well as an American. You can find her at RachaelHerron.com.
* * *
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Keep Reading
Keep reading for a sneak peek at the first book in the Darling Songbird series! And don’t miss a minute in Darling Bay! One unforgettable town, three standalone series (read them in any order!). So many ways to fall in love!
* * *
THE FIREFIGHTERS OF DARLING BAY:
Playing with fire has never been this fun…
Blaze: Tox and Grace - Book 1
Burn: Coin and Lexie - Book 2
Flame: Hank and Samantha - Book 3
Heat: Caz and Bonnie - Book 4
Or get all four together on sale, HALF OFF! Save $5.97!
The Firefighters, Boxed Set
* * *
THE SONGBIRDS OF DARLING BAY:
Nashville meets the Gilmore Girls in this heartwa
rming new trilogy of estranged country-singing sisters seeking true love (and their way back to each other).
The Darling Songbirds, Book 1, March 2016
The Songbird’s Call, Book 2, September 2016
The Songbird Sisters, Book 3, April 2017
* * *
THE BALLARD BROTHERS OF DARLING BAY:
The Bachelor meets The Property Brothers: Love, property, and construction. What could possibly go wrong?
On the Market, Book 1, June 2016
Build it Strong, Book 2, January 2017
Rock the Boat, Book 3, August 2017
* * *
STANDALONE NOVELS:
Women and families finding their ways back to what really matters: each other:
The Ones Who Matter Most
Splinters of Light
Pack Up the Moon
* * *
CYPRESS HOLLOW ROMANCES 1-5:
Knit-lit with more heat than just wool could ever provide:
How to Knit a Love Song
How to Knit a Heart Back Home
Wishes & Stitches
Cora’s Heart
Fiona’s Flame
Eliza’s Home (Historical Novella)
* * *
MEMOIR:
Rachael’s life as seen through the sweaters she’s knitted:
A Life in Stitches
* * *
KEEP READING FOR A SNEAK PEEK:
On the Market
Felicia Turbinado put her rental car into park and glanced back down at the address she’d scribbled on a Post-it. The numbers she’d written matched those on the side of the purple house, yes. So this must be it.
The Songbird Sisters Page 26