Facing the Music Read Free Page B

relationship to refill the well, but she didn’t dare start up something new with all this media scrutiny.
    “I’ll do my best, Kevin. I don’t know how much free time I’ll have with this charity circus you signed me up for, though.”
    “There’s no circus,” he insisted, literal as ever. “Just a county fair, a concert, and some other things Mrs. Chamberlain didn’t elaborate on.”
    “I wonder why.”
    At first, Ivy had thought she could get out of this thing. She had been too busy to come to Alabama for the charity concert when they first called. Then Sterling Marshall’s army of adolescents had cleared her calendar. When the grand matriarch of the Chamberlain clan, Adelia Chamberlain, called Kevin and personally requested Ivy, she knew there was no saying no. Ivy explained to Kevin that it would be like turning down a personal invitation to the queen’s garden party.
    “Going to your hometown to help out your community looks great. You’ll get a lot of good press for it. It will raise a lot of money. You’ll be a local hero.”
    “I want to help. I really do. I’m glad that I can put my music to good use here, but I’m pretty sure the entire town would just as soon spit on me, Kevin.”
    She heard him sigh heavily into the receiver. “They might. But they have no room to be picky. They need your help and they know it. If they treat you badly after you help them raise the money, shame on them.”
    “I’ll be certain to feel superior as they hurl insults and rocks in my direction.”
    “I thought southern people were supposed to be warm and welcoming.”
    “Only to your face.”
    “Ivy, I guarantee you the two weeks will fly by, your image will be repaired, and we can take your brilliant new songs into the studio when you get back to record your fourth and greatest album yet.”
    Well, that was a lot of smoke to blow up her ass. Today, she needed that reassurance. “When is the fund-raiser committee meeting again?”
    “Monday morning. That gives you all weekend to relax, work on some songs, and screw on your smiley face for the duration of your stay.”
    Ivy faked her best, brightest smile as she eyed the cabin that would be her home for the next two weeks. Hopefully her mama bought wine.
    Lots and lots of wine.

Chapter Two
    “I knew you were gonna break my hear-r-rt.” Ivy sat at the kitchen table and sang her new lyrics to the empty cabin. She had to hear it out loud before she could really decide if she liked it. So far, she didn’t.
    “You were . . .” She paused. “You were the worst song I’ve ever written in my li-i-i-ife.”
    She ripped the page from her notebook and tossed it with the others. A small pyramid of crappiness was forming in the corner. “Well,” she sang, “not the worst, but almost as bad as the last one.”
    That was her fifteenth do-over since she’d started working on her new album. She was second-guessing every word. Questioning every turn of phrase. Did this song sound like one she’d already written? Yes. A million times yes. There was only so much a girl could get out of man-hating, heartbreak, and electric guitars.
    Frustrated, she got up from her chair and walked over to the wide-open back door. The patio was screened in, which kept out the bugs and, today, a group of ducks that had gathered on the wooden steps to take advantage of her free performance.
    “Hope you enjoyed it, guys. That song was an exclusive, never to be performed again.”
    Ivy stepped out onto the porch and the birds scuttled off to the lake. They protested loudly at the sudden end to the concert, quacking and honking as they waddled into the water and skimmed out of sight. She watched until they had all disappeared, then flopped down into an old rocking chair and looked out across the still green water of Willow Lake.
    Maybe the fresh air and sunshine would help her think. People always lectured her about the benefits of clean air and sunshine when she was in California, which