Chapter 9

Thanks, Mama4dukes for being my Beta!

To celebrate hitting 100 reviews I'm adding Chapter 9 early! The reviews keep me publishing. So please read and review! I'd like to thank those who have already reviewed. I read each and every one! RR

Song for this Chapter: A Little Dive Bar in Dahlonega by Ashley McBryde

Thirty-eight degrees is pretty cold once the breeze starts blowing through the trees. I'd only gotten a couple of hours of sleep, and I'd woken up cold and hungry. I hadn't eaten anything in well over twenty-four hours and I knew my dad would be hungry when he got up.

After stoking the fire and adding a couple of good pieces of ash wood to the firebox. I put a full pot of water to the top of the woodburning stove hoping it would boil before Dad came down from the loft.

I grabbed my guitar and decided to go on the porch to see if I had any music in me this morning. I knew my dad was a light sleeper, so I thought that giving him some space might let him sleep a little longer.

I knew that last night's talk had worn him out. Like I knew the conversations I'd planned out for today were going to be just as rough, if not worse for him to hear in some ways than yesterday's had been.

I guess it was all the talk about mom last night and the cold morning air, but my fingers started picking out an old Fleetwood Mac song. For some reason the lead singer's voice always made me think about my mom. I'd made it through Landside and Gypsy, and was half way through Dreams when I noticed Dad standing in the doorway.

He was smiling as he leaned against the frame. "Stevie Nicks?" I quickly stopped playing and made my way inside. We were having coffee and oats for breakfast, and I didn't want to keep him waiting.

"Do you like the older type of music, Bells?" Dad asked, strumming the guitar that now stood by the door.

"I like a little bit of every type of music, Dad. I write mostly folk and country. I guess I write about what I know. Heartbreak, silly life events, the people I've met along the way," I shrugged my shoulders, "things like that." I'd put the coffee on to brew and the oatmeal into the hot water from the stove.

I was dreading today. I mean, I'm happy as can be about my dad taking this time to be with me. Time to hear me out, but dragging up all of these old memories was making me edgy and anxious.

"When did you start smoking Bells?" Dad asked halfway through breakfast.

I sheepishly looked up at him and answered, "I was working at a bar in Carter County Tennessee, it was called Johnny's. They didn't serve food, but the Cokes and DrPeppers sure flew off the bar." Dad gave me a funny look so I continued.

"Carter County is what they call a moist county. They serve booze within the city limits, but you can't sell it at a bar. So we served the Coke's, and the people brought in their own booze of choice. There were bands and other entertainment. For a girl with no ID who wanted to make some fast cash, Johnny's was the best place for me to be. I picked up the habit when one of the bartenders offered me one. I'll try not to smoke around you, Dad."

"Nah, you're not 18, and you don't live under my roof. You want to kill yourself slowly with those things. Go for it."

After finishing breakfast, all of it's clean up. Charlie and I ended up dragging a couple chairs down to the river. I'd had fishing poles and some bait supplied.

Though I don't believe my dad was in the mood to fight some fish. When he knew he was about to get ambushed again by his own daughter.

"New Orleans and Tennessee. Where was the place you liked the most?"

"Waxahachie, Texas, or maybe Dahlonega, Georgia." They flew out of my mouth faster than I could catch it. Shit!

"Whatawhat Texas?" Dad questioned, his eyebrows almost touching his hairline.

"Waak-shu-ha-chee Texas, Dad"

I didn't know how much I really wanted my dad to know about my new real life, but I was going to go out on a limb here and tell him about one of my home spots.

"I actually own a small-ish ranch southwest of Waxahachie. It's not much. A smaller home, barn, acreage, and some horses. It's the one place I can go to and just be myself. I don't ever have to hide there. It's one of three places in this world where I can get a proper night's rest." I smiled thinking about why that was.

"Whatever you call it? It puts the first real smile on your face I've seen in a long time." Dad said over his coffee cup. I just bobbed my head in response.

The sun was rising, and we both sat there in quiet contemplation for a while.

Every once in a while, we'd hear or see a fish jump out of the water, but Dad never once made a move to get a pole.

The quiet is nice, but I hadn't always thought that.

"You know the quiet… it's what started me with music?" I started talking about 10 minutes after sunrise. "When running was so new and fresh, any little pop or creek would have me running for the hills. So when the quiet would get to be too much. I'd pick up your old second-hand Martin and get lost in the sound."

"How do you sell a song?" Dad questioned. I don't know if he meant it rhetorically or not.

So I answered him. "For me?" He nodded his head. "I started writing songs as another discretion, to tell the truth. If I wasn't working, or moving, or driving, or doing something. I couldn't stand it. In the still and quiet my mind, it would play out all of the worst scenarios over and over again... Listening to the chord's play helped me to settle down. After some time, grabbing the guitar was just something I did when I got home from work. After learning all of my favorite songs and playing the hell out of them," I chuckled to myself, "I started putting different words to the songs I'd learned. Changing a cord here or the pace there. It evolved over a few years, and I started playing and singing in the bars instead of working at them."

"Okay, so that's how you learned to write, but how do you make a living from it? Let's face it, kid, to own this place and another in Texas, you must be making some money at it. Not to mention the planes!" Dad was using his hands as he talked. I knew this must really be bothering him.

"At my lowest point… I was in a bar in Dahlonega, Georgia. I'd spent some time bumming around Tennessee and started singing in a bar there. When things went tits up. I took off to another small town about 4 hours south of Knoxville, and wouldn't you know it… more car troubles." I shook my head.

"I'd had it, Dad. I mean, I was missing you. I wanted to go back to Jacksonville and visit Mom's grave. I was homesick. I was lonely. And I was ready to throw in the towel. I'd just turned twenty-one, and I celebrated it all alone. I was done. I had nothing. No car. No money. No job." I stopped talking, blew out a massive breath, and closed my eyes. Remembering that night-how I walked into that town feeling one way and left feeling hopeful for the first time in so long.

"So what do twenty-somethings do when they've had it? They go to a bar. I was sitting with my back to the door," I held up my head to stop my dad from going apeshit. The first rule of safety: never have your back to the door.

"I was on my third drink and I truly didn't know how I was going to pay for them, when I saw this beautiful couple seated in a booth near the stage. She was drop-dead gorgeous. I mean, if I went for girls? I'd totally do…" I stopped talking when Charlie dropped his coffee cup to the ground. I smiled and continued.

"Anywho… while everyone was watching the band, this couple was watching me. When I saw their eyes, I knew that Icky Vickie had finally caught up to me. And as I said earlier, I'd had it. So I stood up for the barstool, nodded to the bartender, and walked right out the front door. I didn't see or hear anyone yelling about my unpaid tab, and the bouncers weren't chasing me down. So I figured that the couple must have been nice enough to pay my tab before they drained me dry."

Charlie's hands were shaking slightly and I knew if I looked at him his face would be either ghost white or purple.

"I walked about a quarter of a mile down the road before heading off to tree covered mountains, near where my broken down car was sitting. I could feel them following me, but I didn't really care at the moment. I figured Vickie's game of cat and mouse had finally come to an end and I just wanted some peace, Dad." I stopped talking for a second.

"I called you that night while I drove. I threw the cheap phone out the window as I went. But I felt some peace thinking you wouldn't worry about me for a while since I'd just called you. I had no place to go, no money to get there, and I was out of options."

"After getting about 25 feet into the treeline, I turned around to face them, and then I just waited. That's when I saw them both clearly for the first time. And he said," I closed my eyes as I remembered.

"Well would you lookie here darlin', I believe we've got ourselves a live one," a southern male voice drawled. "You are a pretty little thing, maybe, we should take you home with us."

"She would make a lovely playmate, honey." a female voice purred.

"Well, whatever you've come here to do, just do it quickly and get it over with, will ya?" I grunted back at them, and they laughed.

"You're Isabella, right? Edwin's girl?" the male asked.

"No! I'm Izzy; Edwin killed Isabella!"

"Well, I gotta tell ya, darlin', you're the best-looking corpse these eyes have ever beheld." I watched as his eyes raked me up and down.

Leaving that memory, I started laughing, like belly laughing. I believe my dad thought I'd finally lost my mind. I held up my hand to stop him from getting up out of his chair when I started again.

"Dad, their names are Peter and Charlotte. They'd heard about me from both Icky Vickie, who was looking for me in NOLA, and from the Cullen's. Peter's got a strange gift that sort of gives him the upper hand when he needs it. They'd seen me play in Knoxville, and they'd followed me to Georgia, but not for Vickie but for themselves." I was still laughing.

"They took me to their home and kept me safe. Then, sometime later, Peter's got some friends in the music business, and he set me up for an interview with them… ASCAP is a songwriter's dream. You can send your music to them, and they put it through their computers to make sure you're not copying someone else's work. Then, they pay you about $100 per song. The songs go into a catalog that artists search through. If a song sells, the writer gets what's called a royalty fee plus a signing bonus. Every time that song plays on the radio, or an album is sold, the writer gets a percentage of those sales. That's how I make a living writing and selling my music."

"And those vampires, Peter and Charlotte," Dad asked, finally looking at me face to face.

"I bought a small-ish ranch near Waxahachie, Texas, off them last year. The Whitlock Ranch. It's been there for more than 250 years. Hell, they still live there. They're my ranch hands." I said, laughing at the thought of what Peter would say about being called something as lowly as a hand.

Thank You Frannie Sage for being my 100th Reviewer! Once I hit 200 I'll post 2 chapters in a day again! Until then see ya next Friday! Hugs