Tandy and I were driving to the cabin at Lake Barkley. I needed her to drive me for a couple reasons. First, it was a two hour drive and it helped to have a companion to help kill time. But second, and maybe most important, I was seriously queasy and that wasn't just from the thought of talking to Deacon about what I needed to tell him. It's really a pain in the ass when you have morning sickness, or in my case, all day sickness. It helped to be able to just lay back against the seatback and close my eyes while Tandy chattered on endlessly, periodically handing me a ginger hard candy. I only had to add a few "uh huh's" and "yeah's" and a word or two and Tandy was happy. And I could contemplate the whole idea of telling Deacon he was going to be a father.

To be fair, Tandy was driving me up to the cabin under duress. She had already made her position clear – don't tell Deacon, tell Teddy the baby was his, and move forward. But she had never really liked Deacon much and she didn't see the man I saw when he wasn't knee-walking drunk or trashing our house in a drunken rage or the man with tears in his eyes when he begged my forgiveness yet again. I think she was really driving me up here so that she could keep me from doing anything stupid. At least, stupid in her mind.

Since that last fateful time I was with Deacon, I hadn't seen him. He had trashed the apartment I'd moved into after I had moved out of our East Nashville home. I knew I probably should have made him leave – it was more my money than his that paid for that house – but truthfully, I was afraid if I kicked him out he'd end up on the street dead and I couldn't have lived with myself if that had happened. So I had packed up my things and moved to an apartment in the West End. It seemed easier that way.

The last time I had been with Deacon before he trashed my apartment, he had asked me to stop seeing Teddy Conrad, to marry him. He had invited me to the cabin and, still being weak where he was concerned, I went. I had broken up with him a couple months earlier, but he was still in my band, so the sexual tension was always there. Oh, I loved Deacon so much. He was in my blood, he was a part of me. Seeing him all romantic and sweet was all it took to get me to say yes that night. That got me to throw caution to the wind and spend all night wrapped up in his arms and his legs, making love over and over. I pushed away the knowledge that I had not brought my diaphragm with me and that I was playing with fire that night. But the next morning he was passed out on the couch and he didn't remember asking me to marry him. He didn't remember anything at all.

I couldn't believe it. He was spiraling down again. Only this time was so much worse than I'd ever seen him. He'd been to rehab three times. Three times! It didn't seem like he was ever going to make this work. I couldn't go through this anymore. I threw the ring he'd given me at his feet and turned on my heel and walked out. When I left the cabin that morning, it was for good. I saw him once more, that day a couple days later, when he showed up at my apartment out of his mind drunk and raged at me about Teddy, about abandoning him, about what a diva I was, and he broke every stick of furniture in my place. As far as I was concerned, that was the end for me. He ended up in jail. I gave Coleman the money to bail him out and put him in rehab, one more time, a longer program that hopefully would be the one to turn things around. I promised that I would try to distance myself from Deacon once and for all.

I meant it too, until the morning that I woke up and almost didn't make it to the bathroom to throw up. After a couple of days of that, dread poured over me. I had a knot in my stomach as I went to a drug store and bought a pregnancy test, wearing my best disguise. I actually bought five. I went home and closed myself in my bathroom – why I did that, I don't know, since I lived alone and no one would see me – and peed on that stick. I sat on the side of the tub waiting for the five minutes to be up. My hand was shaking, badly, as I picked it up and looked at it. I lurched for the toilet as it sunk in my brain that there had been a little pink plus sign, as bold and certain as it could be. I was fucking pregnant.

I did all the other four tests, but the result was still the same. I sat on the floor of the bathroom and cried, big sobs of despair. I had been dating Teddy Conrad for several months. He was a nice guy, treated me well, solid citizen. And he wasn't a drunk. I liked him. A lot. Even though I missed Deacon and I knew that my feelings for Teddy weren't the same as the all-consuming passion I had for Deacon, Teddy seemed like just the right guy for me. Our love life was nice, not exciting, but comfortable. I had taken a break from the pill, but had gotten the diaphragm just in case. Teddy always used protection. Always. So some of the sobbing was for the realization that I was going to have to tell him I was pregnant and that there was probably no way he was the father. And then where would I be?

Tandy was the only person I'd told. I needed somebody and she was it. I didn't really have friends. Oh, I was friendly with some of my country singer contemporaries, but there was always that competitive fire burning that would prevent us from being truly close. I didn't have friends from school because, number one, people thought I was weird because I liked country music, and number two, once Daddy had kicked me out of the house, I never went back to school. Deacon was my friend. Plus my lover, the love of my life, my soul mate, my partner. That was all I thought I needed. But Tandy had always been there for me. She looked after me after our mom died. And even though she was like a female Daddy, she was always there for me. I loved Tandy because she was my blood, but I also loved Tandy because she was my friend.

Tandy had been the one to fix me up with Teddy. She was tired of all the Deacon drama and, as soon as I kicked Deacon out, she had swooped in with this clean cut, handsome junior executive from a good, though down on its heels, Nashville family. An old guard family with little money to their name anymore. Tandy had met Teddy in one of her MBA classes and thought he'd be the perfect anti-Deacon. She was right – Teddy Conrad could not have been more different than Deacon Claybourne. I tried not to compare them, but it was hard. Although Teddy had many wonderful qualities, it was hard to totally turn my back on my tortured, beautiful Deacon. I didn't tell Teddy much about Deacon, just that it had been a complicated relationship and that I was exhausted from Deacon's inability to stay sober. I felt bad knowing how much this was going to hurt Teddy, who had been nothing but good to me.

I had showed up on Tandy's doorstep in tears. When I told her I was pregnant, her first comment was that she thought we were taking precautions. When I didn't respond to her, she scowled at me and let loose with a string of expletives, and then she pulled me into her loving embrace. As pissed as she was at me, I knew she would help me navigate through this. Which is why we ended up on the highway headed for the cabin Deacon had bought after he'd gotten out of rehab the first time and when I had been nominated for a CMA for the first time. I was just 21. Deacon was 24. We were young and foolish. Deacon knew better than to make a decision like that just out of rehab, but oh, that was my dream place for us. I got caught up in his excitement and I loved the grand gesture, so typical of him. But unhappy stuff happened there too. Too many drunken nights, with fights and Deacon trashing the place. And that proposal that he couldn't remember the next day.

Coleman told me that Deacon had left rehab last night. At first I was pissed. This was the fourth time I had put him in rehab. Who goes to rehab this many times? I couldn't believe that yet again I had thrown money away trying to get him clean and sober, once and for all. But I was also afraid. I suspected that he was back in the cycle and so when Tandy and I went to his house first and he wasn't there, I wept tears of sadness and frustration and anger. "Where do you think he might be, babe?" Tandy asked, even though I knew she didn't really care.

I looked at her and felt my stomach heave. I took several deep breaths, trying to calm myself, because I knew this was the emotion making me feel ill. Tandy handed me a piece of ginger candy, which seemed to help. "His truck's not here. He could be at a bar or he could have gone to the cabin."

"What do you want to do?"

Tears rolled down my face. "I want to make this all stop happening." Tandy rolled her eyes. "I know," I said, with a heavy heart. "I got myself into this all by myself." I brushed the tears away. "I feel like I need to find him. I need to tell him about the baby."

"Rayna…."

I frowned at my sister and held up my hand. "Stop it. I know how you feel. You don't need to tell me again. Just help me. Just be there for me. Can you do that?"

Tandy looked at me and then sighed. "Of course I can, sweetheart. Where do you want to go?"

I thought about that. I knew he could have gone to any one of a number of bars and sat there getting drunker and drunker, but Coleman had told me that he was mad when he'd been told he had to go to rehab, again, and that he was reportedly mad when he walked out. I knew there was quite a stash of booze at the cabin and my guess was that he had headed up there to drown his anger and sulk in private. "The cabin," I whispered.

Tandy nodded. "Let's go then."

And so that was why we were on Highway 24 headed northwest towards Kentucky that gorgeous spring afternoon.