"I still don't know what I think about this," Rayna murmured to her sister as they took their spots in the front row at the Bluebird. "She's only 15."
"Oh come on now," Tandy patted her hand. "She's amazing, you know that."
"I do know that," Rayna grumbled. "And everyone else is going to know it too."
"You can't hold back the wind," Watty said with a knowing smile from his spot across the table.
Maddie was playing two songs with Deacon tonight. It was her first time performing here.
Rayna knew as soon as the first verse came out of their little girl's mouth, as soon as this town got a notion of how amazing she was, it was going to be impossible to hold Maddie back.
Maddie had a gift. Both her girls did. But Maddie's was different. She had half the genes of a world class guitar player and half the genes of a country superstar singer. She could write, play, AND sing. That was a pure lethal combination.
Watty had come to hear Rayna's little girl sing. And Lucy as well. For once the Yankees cap was nowhere in sight. Teddy was here too, at a safe distance in the back row, some new woman on his arm. She looked nice. He looked happy, and she was glad. Glad they'd both finally found the happiness they deserved.
Rayna watched as Watty and Lucy hugged each other and said hello like old friends.
"I get to ask my question first today," Rayna said. "How in the world do you two know each other?"
"My darling, Miss Lucy and I have known each other since before you were a glint in Lamar and Virginia's eye."
Lucy laughed. "Oh you know, back when Watty was playing with his band, he was a struggling musician, and I was a struggling reporter for the Tennessean. We ran in the same circles, helped each other out once in awhile. That's how I came across your mother as well." Lucy's eyes twinkled. "And Watty, I remember you talking all about Virginia's little girl."
Watty nodded in agreement. "It is indeed a small world. I remember the first time I heard her sing," he recalled, turning to Rayna. "I went to the house to see Virginia, and you were in the front room, all the dolls lined up, giving them a concert. You were belting out "Amazing Grace" so loud I swear they could hear it in Memphis."
Rayna couldn't hold back a smile. "You never told me that before."
"I knew," he confirmed, "that some day I was going to see you on a stage, Rayna. And I was right. " He excused himself to go speak with some record execs that had just walked in.
Rayna was taken back through time. Watty had always been there for her, and she owed him everything….
###########################################
She ran away from home only once in her lifetime, although she thought about it just about every single day from the age of 12 on up.
It was the year she was fourteen. A fourteen year old girl in the middle of teenage hell. Her mother was dead. The girls at school didn't like her because she liked country music. And probably because she could sing better than any of them. Tandy was sixteen and too busy dying her hair, smoking cigarettes behind the gymnasium and trying to get attention by getting into trouble to pay any mind to her little sister. For Rayna, music was the only thing that saved her.
"Please," she begged and pleaded with her father. "Please let me try out for the school musical. It's Peter Pan, and the songs are so amazing. They already even asked me to do it. I almost don't have to try out and it's my part. The director asked me herself."
She'd taken two busses here, to his downtown office to ask him.
"This is not up for discussion," Lamar said, not even looking up from his desk and the legal contracts he was reading. "No daughter of mine is going to embarrass me singing childish theatre songs on a stage. I told you the church choir would be acceptable, and that is it."
"But Daddy," she protested. She didn't want to sing in the gol damnation church choir. Singing about God and Jesus and all that, sure it was pretty. And she believed in all that stuff. But it sure wasn't what she wanted to sing about.
"I said no, Rayna."
She tried again, and again she was shut down.
"Fine," she said, her frustration bubbling over. "Maybe I'll just run away from home. Nobody cares about me anyway. If you want me to sing to Jesus, I'd rather be dead like mama. I bet you can sing anything you want in heaven, even country songs."
Lamar stopped reading. He raised his eyebrows and looked at her over his glasses. And didn't say a word.
She lifted her stubborn chin and turned to walk out of her father's office without shedding one tear.
Rayna didn't get on the two busses to go back home. She wandered around the city for so long, the sun went down. She sat outside Tootsie's and listened to the music. It made her heart ache, and it made her miss her mama real bad, all those nights she'd laid on the big four-poster bed listening to Virginia sing along to the record player, singing along with her.
She wandered farther out from the center of the city, onto the side streets and store fronts she rarely visited. It was really dark now, and she was a little bit scared at she sat on the bench in the park and pulled a tattered brown journal out of her shoulder bag and started writing.
It had been her mother's. When they'd taken all of Virginia's things out of the drawers and closets, Rayna had found it on top of the stack. Just carelessly thrown there, ready to go away with the other things to charity.
Sometimes it made her feel better to read it. Sometimes it made her feel worse when she read the things she didn't understand. It was only half full, only half the pages written on.
So now, it was hers. She wrote her own feelings in back next to her mama's. She tried to write songs sometimes, or what she thought songs would sound like.
She didn't know where to go or what to do, but she was scared. And alone.
So she went to a payphone and dialed the one person who she knew would understand.
Uncle Watty.
His new wife Anna answered the phone, and worriedly passed it on to him.
"It's Rayna," she said in a small voice. "Can you come and pick me up?"
He was there in a half hour.
Watty took her home to Belle Meade. He had to. She was fourteen. She had a long ways and a lot of growing up to do before she could be on her own.
"Listen," he said to Rayna as they sat in the driveway of the massive Belle Meade mansion. There were police cars, officers already descending on them. "Don't do this again, okay? It's not safe."
The poor girl looked so heartbroken, so lost.
"I'll help you," he said, against his better judgement. Lamar Wyatt would have his head on a platter if he found out. "If you need something, you come to me and Anna. I'll help you find a way to sing. But don't run away. It never gets you anywhere."
"Promise?"
"Promise."
With a defeated sigh she climbed out of his car. "Thanks, Uncle Watty."
"Be a good girl, my little songbird. We'll figure it out."
##################################################
"You didn't do that play, did you?" Lucy asked.
Rayna shook her head slowly. "No. The look on my father's face when I walked in the door that night….he wasn't even worried. He said "I knew you'd be back."
"He thought he broke you." Lucy murmured. "He thought he got his way and he broke you."
She nodded. "But Watty did help me. I used to have this friend named "Susie Stewart" when I was younger. As far as Lamar knew I was always over at Susie's house studying, or riding Susie's horses, or working on a community service project with Susie. Boy, Susie and I were real close those first two years of high school," she shook her head and laughed at the memory. "Watty or Anna used to pick me up from our meeting spot in Lutz park, and take me to the studio, or to a voice lesson, or to make demos. I don't know how long we thought that would work, but it did. For awhile."
"How did he catch you?"
"When I was sixteen, my father ran into Susie's mother downtown. I believe he said her exact words were "oh, how is Rayna? We haven't seen her in years. We're just in town visiting family." Rayna winced. "I remember that day very well. Because that was the first night I played at the Bluebird. And the first night I met Deacon. And the night Lamar kicked me out of the house."
In front of them, Deacon took the stage with his guitar, and Maddie came out behind him with her own guitar, nodding shyly to the crowd. They all clapped and cheered. Rayna got a lump in her throat.
Lucy nodded wisely. "You never forget the nights that change your life forever."
Rayna looked at the stage as her daughter's beautiful voice floated out towards them. "No," she said. "You certainly don't."