Page 105 of Night Songs

I stared at her, unwilling to confirm or deny this.

“I want those answers, too,” she said. “I’ve had the same questions for almost thirty years.”

I studied her face, considering if this was a trap.Is she trying to lure me into a false sense of security?I imagined men outside the studio, waiting to grab me and force me into a van so they could take me to whatever local facility Micah had picked out.

Despite the things she had kept from me over the years, there was still a part of me that trusted her implicitly.

But I’d learned that even, or perhaps especially, the people you loved and trusted the most could betray you.

“Let me help,” she pleaded.

“How do I know you won’t just tell Micah where I am?”

She thought for a moment, then pulled out her phone and, sidling closer to me, showed me her conversation with Micah. His last text was from an hour ago, and it said:Still no word?

I imagined him hunched over his phone, eyes bloodshot, and I pushed the image away.

Hess typedSorry, no word yet.into the text box and hit send.

It didn’t prove anything—she could still contact him. But I needed her help—I had less than four days left. And as long as I kept my guard up, I could still escape at any time.

“All right.” I paused. “I still haven’t found the name of the town.”

She nodded. “So what’s our next move?”

“I think we should go to the records office in Pigeon Forge and see if there’s anything in the physical files there. It’s all I have to go on.”

“That sounds like a good plan. It’s too late to go out there tonight, so why don’t you come back to my place? Tima and Phoebe are there, and maybe you can pick their brains more. We can leave first thing in the morning.”

She could trap me there. I will wake up, and there will be people waiting to take me away.

“Rhea, all I want to do is help. I promise.”

What choice did I have? I had to see where this would go. I had the strong sense that she might hold the key to this mystery.

36rhea

2010

THREE DAYS LEFT

Hess drove us out of the countryside, and I stared out the window, avoiding conversation. She turned on the radio, and Elvis Presley’s ecstatic, mournful rendition of “Unchained Melody” filled the car.

We hit town and rode past Broadway in its roil of families on vacation and bachelorette parties ducking in and out of honky-tonks in plastic cowboy hats, the street littered with bottles. Musicians in Old West costumes played in every window, the sound blaring from the doorways. I remembered the lyrics of the first track onNight Songs:

I roll down my beloved Broadway

Seedy clubs where music used to play

I saw a man in a spandex bodysuit singing half-heartedly in the street for the wasted tourists, some of them barely able to stay on their feet.

Shadows in the corner booth

Nashville is rottin’ at the tooth

I wondered if Nashville had ever felt real, or if it had always felt like a parody of itself. When Belle arrived in the sixties with a dream, had it felt real then? And now, every night, did they pantomimethattime in the past, that onerealtime?

I could feel Belle’s story and mine converging, becoming two tracks running side by side. Hurtling toward the same cliff.