by Lori Wilde
Dedication
For John
Sat Nam
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Dedication
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Epilogue
From the Recipe Book of the First Love Cookie Club
Acknowledgments
About the Author
By Lori Wilde
Copyright
About the Publisher
Prologue
Virtuoso: A person with notable technical skill in the performance of music.
Christmas Eve, 1997
Nashville, Tennessee
“Always remember . . .” Lorena Colton cupped her ten-year-old son’s face in her palms, and stared deeply into his eyes.
She lay propped up in the hospital bed against three hard plastic pillows, and wore a thin white gown with tiny blue squares printed on it. The room smelled of Lysol, wilting flowers, and something darker, uglier. Her skin was spaghetti-squash yellow, and her lips the color of sidewalk chalk. A tube, attached to a bag of liquid, twisted into a vein in her arm like a clear plastic snake.
“Always remember . . .”
Cash hauled in a breath, fisted his hands at his sides, and shifted his gaze to the smiling, paper Santa Claus taped to the wall above his mother’s head, and waited for her words of wisdom.
“Never fall in love.”
Granny stood at the end of the bed, a deep frown pulling her mouth down, arms folded tight over her chest. Grandpa hovered near the closed door, Stetson cocked back on his head, looking just as stony, but less certain of it.
“Love is a trap,” Lorena rasped, her lungs rattling thick and wet. “Don’t fall for it. You’re special, Cash . . .”
She paused, coughed violently into a tissue. Wheezed. Started again. “You’ve got talent. So much talent.”
A hot shiver ran through Cash, landed hard in his belly. Burst. Bloomed.
“You can be somebody.” Her voice was low, her lips cracked and dry, eyes glistening with fever. “Don’t ever let a pretty face and hot body suck you into giving up your dreams.”
“Lorena!” Granny snapped. “That’s a horrible thing to tell a child!”
Summoning the last bit of strength in her, Lorena glared at Granny. “Cash is destined for great things, but not if he lets an ordinary life trip him up. He needs to know that.”
“He needs love. Everyone needs love,” Grandpa said, stuffing his long broad hands into the pockets of his faded jeans and hunching his shoulders forward.
“Then let him love Euterpe.”
“Who the hell is Euterpe?” Grandpa looked confused.
But Cash knew. His mother had been telling him about the Muses since he was a toddler.
“Euterpe is one of the nine Greek Muses.” Lorena’s voice grew softer still, losing strength the longer she talked, flickering, fading. “Euterpe . . . is the goddess of music, song, and dance.”
“There’s no such thing as a Muse.” Granny moved to cover Cash’s ears with her palms. “Stop filling the boy’s head with nonsense or he’ll end up just like you.”
Cash squirmed away from Granny, perched on the edge of his mother’s bed.
“Told ya we shouldn’t have sent her to that fancy school,” Grandpa mumbled. “It gave her funny ideas.”
“You’re the one who bought her the guitar,” Granny accused.
“Falling heedlessly in love got me here.” His mother struggled to sit straight up, her eyes flashing fierce for the first time since his grandparents had brought him into the room. For a moment she was her old self again. “Not education. Not the Muses, and certainly not the guitar. Music is the only decent thing in my life. My only saving grace.”
What about me? Cash bit his thumbnail. Aren’t I decent?
“I passed it on to you, Cash.” Lorena collapsed back onto the pillows that crinkled when she landed. “The music. My talent. That’s why you can’t ever let love lead you astray. You can make it as a musician where I failed.” Her voice was thin, evaporating.
He could hardly hear her, and he leaned closer.
“You can be famous, Cash, and rich beyond your wildest dreams. Just don’t let love lead you astray. Not ever.”
“This is wrong.” Grandpa shook his head like a windmill trembling in a West Texas sandstorm. “Wrong in so many ways.”
“Hush.” Granny grabbed his elbow and pulled him aside, and said in an angry whisper, “She’s dying. Let her say what she needs to say. We can fix it later. We won’t fail him the way we failed her.”
“Pick it up.” Lorena looked at Cash and waved a wispy hand at her guitar propped in the corner. The guitar she had never let him touch.
Cash hesitated, wondering if he’d misunderstood, wondering if it was a trick. Mom could be fickle like that. Tell him to do something, and then get mad when he did.
“Go on,” she prodded.
Granny and Grandpa huddled near the door, looking as uncertain as he felt. Granny laid a restraining hand on Grandpa’s shoulder, shook her head.
Cash eased toward the guitar, and cautiously picked it up.
“It’s yours now,” his mother said. “My Christmas gift to you.”
His heart caught fire, flamed. She was giving him her Gibson? It felt wonderful and terrible at the same time. Why was she giving him her most beloved possession?
Cash frowned, chewed his bottom lip. He didn’t like this. Giving away her guitar made no sense.
No. No. A creepy feeling crawled over the back of his neck.
And yet, and yet . . . he wanted that guitar. Wanted it with every muscle, cell, and bone in his body. Wanted, yearned, craved.
His mother closed her eyes, her hands flopping to her sides as if they were too heavy for her to hold up, and her chest barely rose when she inhaled.
“Mommy?” Cash called her the name he hadn’t said since he was a toddler. These days, he mostly called her Lorena, because she asked him to. She didn’t want people thinking she was old enough to have a son his age.
“Play for me, Cashie,” she murmured without opening her eyes. “Play ‘Stone Free.’”
From the doorway, Grandpa snorted. Granny nudged him in the ribs with her elbow. “Wrong,” Grandpa muttered. “So wrong.”
Reverently, Cash cradled the Gibson, sat in the chair next to his mother’s bed, his fingers strumming the first notes of the Jimi Hendrix anthem to restlessness. His mother’s favorite song. The first tune she’d ever taught him to play on the cheap pawnshop guitar she’d given him for his sixth birthday.
He sang the lyrics about freedom and rebellion. Sang as if he would never have the chance to sing again. Sang with all the heart and soul he possessed.
Sang and sang and sang.
Several nurses crowded into the room, watching him with wide eyes and opened mouths. Impressed.
Cash paid them no mind. He was playing for his mother. Giving it his all. Everything. Left nothing on the table.
His fingers flew over the strings, his voice ringing out clear and certain with each guitar lick. He’d never played so masterfully.<
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He was the music and the music was he.
No separation. No thought. Nothing but experience.
Sound. Vibration. Rhythm.
Jimi Hendrix lived inside him, through him.
As Cash sang the last line, the last words, “bye-bye baby,” Lorena—his mother, the woman he’d tried so hard to please but could never seem to make happy—smiled softly, took her last breath, and finally flew free.
Chapter 1
Rubato: An important characteristic of the Romantic period. It is a musical style where the strict tempo is temporarily abandoned for a more emotional tone.
December 2, twenty years later
Twilight, Texas
Backstage at the one-hundred-forty-year-old Twilight Playhouse, Paige MacGregor wriggled into her skimpy “Santa Baby” costume, finger-pinched red Lycra leggings up around her waist, flashed her doughy-white belly to the full-length mirror, and quite possibly the ghost of John Wilkes Booth, and swore off Christmas cookies forever.
According to local lore—and open to heated debate—after assassinating Lincoln, Booth escaped, and hid out in Twilight, Texas. He assumed the name John St. Helen and got a job as an actor. On his deathbed, St. Helen, aka Booth, supposedly confessed his true identity.
“Sorry, John,” Paige apologized. “But if you don’t want to see the sad evidence of my total lack of self-control, you shouldn’t haunt theaters.”
She was the first of the five Santa’s helpers to arrive, and the quiet of the old limestone building offered momentary respite from the extravagant Dickensian hullabaloo ruling the town square. Paige took a deep inhale, exhaled long and slow.
Breathe.
At the narrow oval window overlooking the flat roof of Perk’s coffee shop next door, Earl Pringle’s pet crow, Poe, pecked at the pane—tap-tap-tap—and glowered at her with murderous intent.
Poe was a moody cuss. You couldn’t judge Twilightites by him. He was tiny for a crow, barely larger than a female grackle, which might explain his grumpiness. He cocked his shoulders and flared his wings as if trying to convince her that he was a ferocious raven.
Paige pretended to startle because she knew what it was like to be on the short side, and hey, everyone needed an ego boost now and again, even small crows trying to prove themselves worthy of poetic names.
Poe gave a loud “Caw,” satisfied that he’d scared her, and flew away to find new folks to terrorize.
She moved to the window clouded with decades of dirt and grime, called, “Go forth and nevermore.”
Hey, were those snowflakes?
Her obsessive-compulsive gene wished for window cleaner and a rag, but her curiosity overrode that urge. She undid the rusty latch and, with some effort, shoved open the window for a better view at the street below. The smell of dark roast and yeasty pastries teased her nose, and watered her mouth.
No. No more sweet treats.
Behind the theater and the town square, Lake Twilight stretched sapphire blue, a dazzling jewel in Hood County’s crown. If she leaned out the window far enough and craned her neck to the left, she could just make out her uncle Floyd’s houseboat where she was crashing for the holidays, and/or until she reglued the fractured shards that were her life back together.
Delicate white flakes coasted silently from the sky, sprinkling trees, roofs, cars, and heads of passersby. Her West Texas heart leaped joyously.
She’d grown up in barren desert surrounded by oil and sand, far away from water and snow. And she was thrilled by the white stuff here in North Central Texas, even though she knew the ground was too warm for it to stick. For this one spectacular moment, Twilight looked like a shaken snow globe.
She took another deep breath, savored the sight for as long as she dared, then reluctantly pulled back inside and shut the window.
With a dreamy sigh, she kicked off her Skechers and plunked down onto the creaky rocking chair. The paint was distressed-dingy white, chipped by advanced age and a vast collection of butts.
Paige zipped up knee-length, black-vinyl, spiked-heeled costume boots. Topped her chestnut, chin-length pageboy with a green elf hat, and examined the results in the mirror.
Turned sideways, sucked in her gut.
“What do you think, John? Give it to me straight. I know I’m no Eartha Kitt, but put me in a couple of Spanx and I can pull off this hot elf thing. Right?”
She spun around to get a rear view, but her ankle turned in the stiletto boot and she had to grab hold of the mirror to keep from toppling over. “Okay, okay, Spanx and deportment lessons.”
It had been years since she’d worn stilettoes. She took a second look, brushed her hair back from her forehead, and reapplied her lipstick. Good enough. Time to clear out. The other assistants would be here soon and they’d need the dressing room.
Carefully, she minced down the stairs, past the stage where the hands were setting up, and went into the auditorium.
The Twilight Playhouse was one of the oldest existing US theaters that still hosted performances, and it was the only building on the town square to have kept its primary function since the town was founded in 1875.
The theater predated the township, having been built the previous year. Next door to what was back then a saloon, but was now a fine dining restaurant nostalgically dubbed 1874.
Not that Paige could afford to eat there.
The playhouse had undergone a historically correct renovation a few years back when Emma and Sam Cheek took over as owners, so while everything looked the way it had almost a century and a half ago, and the exterior was one hundred percent original, the auditorium itself was essentially brand-new.
The theater seated three hundred people, and during the month of December, every performance sold out. This year’s Christmas play was Elf and on Saturdays and Sundays they held a two p.m. matinee in addition to the evening performance.
Numerous green wreaths, with red velvet ribbon streamers connecting them, hung from the white limestone walls, festive and inviting. Stacks of programs sat on the apron of the stage, waiting for Santa’s helpers to pass them out to theatergoers.
From the slip of light filtering in through the open side doors, the colossal Italian crystal chandelier aggressively created rainbows, dappling the stage and orchestra pit in luminous prisms that twinkled and danced.
Someone had suspended a wedding-bouquet-sized clump of mistletoe from the chandelier’s central branch, inviting the audience to indulge in stolen kisses.
Aww, Christmas in Twilight.
Paige picked up an armful of programs, tucked them into her elbow, and tottered over the thick rose-patterned carpet to the theater lobby. No one was at the main reception desk, but rummaging sounds came from the closet on the other side of the room.
“Emma?” Paige called.
“Nope.” Colorfully tattooed, multiple-pierced, purple-dreadlocked Jana Gerard popped her head from the closet.
“Oh it’s you, Jana.”
“Sorry to disappoint. Emma hopped over to Caitlyn’s flower shop to replace the blooms.” Jana waved at the wilted poinsettias that sat in baskets on the long marble countertop.
From the closet, Jana dragged a life-sized cardboard cutout of an acoustic guitar protected by a sheet of thin clear plastic. The playhouse had used the guitar to adorn the lobby for the summer performance of Oklahoma.
“What’s that for?” Paige tilted her head.
“Sesty’s decorating for the Brazos Music Review fundraiser tomorrow night, and Emma said we could borrow the guitar.” Sesty Langtree was a local event coordinator, and one of Jana’s two bosses.
A few years back, Jana had moved to conservative Twilight from keep-things-weird Austin, and with her flamboyant appearance, she stood out like a scarlet rose in a planter box of white lilies.
No one knew much about Jana and rumors dogged her heels, which were usually clad in leather motorcycle boots stubbed with metal spikes. The speculations about Jana’s past ran the gamut from the absurd—she sh
ot a man for cheating on her—to the sublime—she’d donated a kidney to a sick lover, friend, parent, sibling, child, what have you, but alas, they’d tragically died anyway.
While the truth of Jana’s abandonment of the state’s capital city for the hinterlands of the close-knit tourist town of Twilight was probably much more mundane, she did nothing to quell the hearsay, and at times actively flamed it. Offering sly smiles and lurid winks.
Paige understood the temptation toward mysteriousness. Even though she had relatives in Twilight, and she was not nearly as exotic as Jana, she, too, had been the topic of whispered speculation.
“Need any help?” Paige asked as Jana hoisted the cardboard guitar onto her back.
Jana eyed her. “You’ve got your hands full, and I’m not real confident in your ability to walk a straight line in those heels.”
“Me either,” Paige admitted, but she put down the programs and moved to open the left side exit door.
“Thanks,” Jana said.
“Excuse me.” Paige raised her voice to the tourists packing the sidewalk. “Woman coming through.”
The throng shifted, cutting a narrow path for Jana to join the flow of foot traffic.
And she was off, swallowed up as the crowd closed ranks again. The only visible sign of her was the bobbing cardboard guitar surfing over heads.
Right then, the other four Santa’s helpers came bustling in through the door that Jana had just exited, snow-dusted and laughing. They greeted Paige merrily, and trundled off to the dressing room.
All the Santa’s helpers had been told to get into costume early so the actors could have the dressing rooms at one-thirty. It was now 12:55. The helpers would work the lobby, greeting guests, passing out programs, manning the cloak room, guiding visitors to their seats, and selling refreshments at the bar.
“You’re gonna do great,” Paige said, giving herself a first-day-on-the-job pep talk. “Just don’t trip and break your neck in the dang boots and you’ll be fine.”
She spied the droopy poinsettias. A little water and time out from under the heat vents and they would rebound. Taking the initiative, she watered the plants and temporarily relocated them to the closet.