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Natalie exhaled now as she decided where to go next, towards the amusement end of the fairgrounds or to the stage where some local musicians would be playing. It had been a long time since she’d allowed that memory to enter her mind, and she usually didn’t let it linger, but for some reason today, she almost felt like she was able to spend a while with it.
She could still remember that feeling of the remote slipping out of her hand, dropping to the wood floors, the batteries falling out and rolling across the boards, as she watched Amelia try to leave her own home, reporters shoving microphones in her face, all of them scrambling to get their questions out.
Amelia had looked like she was going to keep going and get into her car but she stopped suddenly, and one of the reporters shouted over the rest.
“Do you want to comment on the rumors that you’re secretly gay and in a full-blown relationship with Natalie Spencer?”
Natalie could see Amelia’s jaw clench, and she waited for Amelia to say something, but another reporter jumped in.
“Your husband has been caught cheating before. Is this marriage just a publicity stunt? Kept together for the sake of your careers?”
Amelia gripped the door handle and yanked it open, giving her some space before she said the words that Natalie would never forget. “I love my husband. There never has been or ever will be anyone else. Let alone a woman.”
And then Amelia escaped into the front seat of her car, shutting the door on the surge of reporters closing in on her, all shouting her name.
Natalie was crying before she even realized it, silent tears streaking down her face as the TV anchor moved on to the next scandal. She had no idea how long she’d stayed on the couch, in a daze, completely blindsided by the fact that people were speculating that they were together and simultaneously realizing that it didn’t matter. They weren’t together at all apparently. The last seven months had meant nothing to Amelia.
If only that had been the end of Natalie’s problems.
More photos emerged. Natalie still had no idea who had hidden outside her home, waiting for Amelia to leave her place in the middle of the night, Natalie giving her one last kiss in the doorway before reluctantly parting ways like they did most nights.
It was hard to deny those photos.
But Amelia did.
And while Amelia and Mason were rebuilding their image, staging dates and romantic getaways, they were also erasing Natalie’s career, telling anyone who would listen that Natalie had seduced the younger Amelia, feeding that angle to the press to run with.
Natalie had been twenty-five and Amelia twenty-one. Natalie thought that argument was ridiculous, both because Amelia had been the one to start their affair and because they were both adults, able to make their own decisions, whether they were right or wrong.
Natalie never gave an interview. Never gave her side of the story. She had nothing to say. She wasn’t going to out Amelia who had confided in her that she never should have married Mason, that her manager encouraged her, telling her that their careers would benefit from it. AndNatalie was pretty sure that she was the only person in the world who knew that Amelia was gay.
Somehow she wasn’t bitter. She probably should have gone to therapy at some point over the years, but she never did. Although she had written countless songs that must have helped her process everything, more than she could have realized. It was just second nature to her to pour her heart out into her lyrics.
Natalie’s footsteps slowed, someone bumping into her shoulder, apologizing as they walked past. The faint melody drew her in, her feet carrying her toward the stage, and it took her a few seconds to register what she was actually hearing.
The melody was slower, with an acoustic guitar playing the intro rather than a dobro, but when the young woman started to sing the familiar lyrics, Natalie couldn’t walk away.
Instead, she was weaving her way through the crowd until she was at the edge of the front row, her eyes locked on the beautiful blond-haired woman whose voice was so raw, so full of emotion, that Natalie might have assumed that this woman had written those lyrics.
Except they were hers.
This was the song that had made Natalie famous, and she couldn’t remember the last time she’d heard it on the radio, never mind seeing someone cover it.
Natalie stood transfixed, tears coming to her eyes as a quiet came over the crowd. They were as mesmerized as she was, and they gave this woman their full attention as her fingers slid seamlessly across the frets, her voice even more powerful as she sang the last chorus.
Natalie lost herself in that moment. It was almost like she was having an out-of-body experience. It was a fantastic performance, but she couldn’t simply stand there and appreciate it as a lover of country music. It was her song, the one she’d written when she was sitting on her bed when she was sixteen, when she realized that she liked her best friend a little too much.
The lyrics didn’t lay any of that out, and no one would ever have guessed that was what Natalie had been thinking at the time, but she knew, and never in the hundreds of times that she’d performed that song did it bring her back to that moment when she’d jotted down those lyrics as it did now.
Natalie felt her lips sliding into a smile as she clapped along with everyone else, a few whistles cutting through the night air from the crowd behind her. The woman on stage nodded, silently thanking the crowd, a grin on her face, and for a split second, Natalie felt like she was looking straight at her, like she knew who Natalie was, because there was an intensity in her gaze, but the moment was gone.
“Thank you!” The woman took a bow and acknowledged the audience for a few more seconds before walking off stage.
Natalie exhaled as the crowd dispersed, almost lightheaded from the array of emotions that she’d just had, going all the way back to reliving that night that Amelia broke her heart, but that was a distant memory now, her mind still in disbelief that she’d just witnessed someone performing her song.
And not just anyone. That woman had talent.
Natalie had to find out who she was.
