DISCLAIMER: This is a fictional story based on the style of VC Andrews. The basic idea is mine.

SUMMARY: Summer Wallace's ambitious Momma longs to become the next big thing in country music. Momma uproots her two young, impressionable daughters to follow her dream of becoming famous, and her hopes of providing her daughters with a better life. But is the price of her young girls' innocence worth it?

AUTHOR'S NOTES: I had originally had four chapters of Summer before the Great Computer Crash of Aught-Two swallowed almost every fic of mine into the Black Hole of Ficcage.

A DEADLY SECRET

- - -

All people have secrets, I suppose.

Some are worse than others, however, and my secret is one of those kinds.

The kind, that if you keep it too long, begins to grow and grow, until it's larger than you are, and you can no longer control it, like Frankenstein's monster.

The kind of secret that is like a wildfire, devouring anything and anyone in its path.

The secret I was made to keep very nearly destroyed me in the process, as well as my beloved Momma, and my darling little sister Jewel.

- - -

Although our lives were not perfect by any means, we certainly were quite lucky with the lives God has chosen to provide to us. Jewel and I had a loving momma who would move Heaven and Earth for us, and dear grandparents who doted on us to no end.

Even though we weren't rich, we were still happy. All the money in the world wouldn't have made us any happier, I thought, but it turned out Momma didn't feel the same as I.

Momma had always possessed these crazy, far out dreams she said being married to my father never let her express. When Daddy moved away when Jewel and I were just toddlers, Momma decided she was going to become a country singer, and proved a better life for the three of us.

I, being the precocious child I was, told Momma that we didn't need to be famous. We were happy as clams living in Lynchburg, Virginia with Grandma and Granddad.

But Momma was blinded by the promise of success in Nashville, and set out to make her dreams of fame and fortune come true.

Somewhere along the line, she met Nick Olsson, a scout with a talent agency in her old childhood town of Wedgewood, Virginia. Nick promised Momma she would become the best country singer under his tutelage, and so here we were.

Packing our bags, once again, to chase another one of Momma's pipe dreams.

I didn't have the greatest feeling about this Nick Olsson, but Momma would hear none of that. She was certain Nick was the answer to her prayers of loneliness and her driving desire to become famous.

If only she knew what the cost would be, in the end.

If only she knew.

If she had known the cost that the Reaper would eventually come to collect from us, she would never have gone to Wedgewood in the first place.

- - -

TBC