“Did you guys have a family band?” Sarah asked. “Like the Carters?”
AnnieLee laughed. Yeah, right. “Well, my folks were too busy making ends meet to play music as much as they might’ve liked. It takes a lot of sweat and time to grow your own food.” She paused, and then added, “Or to hunt and kill it.”
“So were you survivalists?” Sarah asked in a fascinated whisper. She said survivalists the way AnnieLee might’ve said aliens. She was clearly a city kid.
“Well, we didn’t exactly use the term, but sometimes it did feel like surviving was just about all we were doing.”
As she went on, talking about the beauty and hardship of growing up in the woods, AnnieLee could see Ethan out of the corner of her eye, sitting with his arms crossed and his brow furrowed. She knew what he was thinking: that she’d never told him anything, even though he’d asked a dozen times, but suddenly here she was, blabbing on to this stranger, answering every question as though she’d been waiting her whole life to be asked it.
How could AnnieLee explain to him that this was just another performance? He wouldn’t get why she had to do it. And she couldn’t ever tell him.
“AnnieLee?” Sarah’s voice called her back to the interview.
“Sorry,” she said, trying to regain her focus. “Okay, well, here’s the depressing part of my story, if you want to hear it. My parents are dead. The fields are full of weeds. The house still stands, but no one’s in it. Unless you count some possum, or maybe a family of raccoons.” As AnnieLee spoke, she could imagine the cozy cabin and the green meadow around it, and for a moment she mourned her happy wilderness childhood as if it had actually existed.
She shook her head, clearing the image. “Anyway. It was a fine place to grow up. But a valley in the middle of nowhere starts to feel small after a while, and I guess I started hoping that music might be my ticket out of there.”
“It seems like it was,” Sarah said. “Can we talk about the inspirations for your songs?”
AnnieLee was prepared for this, too. “They come from my life,” she said. “And so they’re true, but only up to a point. I want to tell stories that everybody can relate to. And I want to wrestle with the big questions, too—you know, ones about love, or about being brave, or about learning how to trust yourself.”
“Maybe you’ll write a song about refusing to wear a gown when you’re told to.”
AnnieLee laughed. “Who knows? I just might.”
They talked for another half an hour or so until Sarah said that she’d gotten great material. They stood up and shook hands, and Sarah thanked AnnieLee for her time, and left.
“Finally,” AnnieLee said, walking over to Ethan’s table. “I’m starving. Let’s go get burgers and milkshakes.”
But Ethan only looked at her searchingly for a moment before shaking his head. “No, but thanks,” he said. “I think I’m going to head back to the hotel. Our flight leaves early in the morning.”
He strode outside, and she gathered up her things and hurried after him, figuring that she could convince him to find an In-N-Out as they rode together in the hired car.
But though the car and driver were waiting for her outside the tea shop, Ethan Blake was nowhere to be seen. And she didn’t lay eyes on him again until they got on the plane to go home.
Chapter
50
When Ethan opened the door to his truck, which he’d left in the Nashville airport’s economy lot, a blast of hot, stale air rolled out. He gritted his teeth and slid onto the scorching vinyl seat. AnnieLee clambered in the passenger side, and a few seconds later, the engine started up with a roar.
“Are you going to talk to me now?” AnnieLee asked as Ethan piloted Gladys out of the lot.
He didn’t say anything until they got onto the freeway. It took a little while for the old truck to come up to speed. “I wasn’t not talking to you,” he said.
She snorted. “Oh, okay, sure. You were just asleep the whole flight home, I guess.”
Of course he’d been faking, leaning back with his eyes closed and a Merle Haggard playlist on his iPhone. He hadn’t expected AnnieLee to fall for it, but he’d needed to be alone with his muddled thoughts and Merle’s hard-living anthems. And she’d played along and let him be.
Now, as the early fall air came rushing in through the window, he wasn’t any closer to figuring out how he felt about the trip, or his role as chaperone, or AnnieLee Keyes herself.