He Kissed His Muse. I Wrote Every Song. novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: The Airstrip at Dawn

Grandfather meets the twins in Charleston with their rooms already made up, Linnea refuses the chair he offers and asks only for her songs, and a process server arrives with a custody filing signed by Colt's mother.

The jet landed in Charleston as the sun came up, and my grandfather was standing on the airstrip in his gray overcoat.

He was smaller than I remembered.

He was seventy-nine now, and he leaned on a cane he hadn't needed when I left.

Gus was asleep on my shoulder with his stuffed fox hanging by one ear.

Birdie walked down the steps beside me in her yellow raincoat, which she had refused to take off since Los Angeles.

She stopped at the bottom and looked up at him.

"Are you the king?" she asked.

"Of a company," Grandfather said. "It's a smaller job than it sounds."

"Do you have a dog?"

"Two. They're asleep. They are not early risers."

Birdie considered this, nodded, and took his free hand without asking.

My grandfather looked down at her small fingers in his and did not move for a moment.

I had come home ready for a fight.

I hadn't expected to need a minute.

"Linnea," he said.

"Don't," I said. "Not yet."

"All right."

The car took us up the long drive under the live oaks, and I watched the house come out of the fog.

Nothing had changed.

The white columns, the gravel, the front door that had always been too heavy for me.

I had walked out of that door at twenty-four with one suitcase and a notebook.

He had told me a songwriter was a hobby and a board seat was a life.

I had told him I would rather have the hobby.

We had not spoken since.

Upstairs, two small rooms had been made up beside the one that used to be mine.

Two beds, two quilts, a night-light shaped like a fox.

I stood in the doorway holding my sleeping son.

"You had rooms ready for children you have never met," I said.

"I read about them," Grandfather said from the hall. "In the trade papers. Your husband mentioned them at an interview, once."

He said it plainly, without any weight.

I put Gus down on the nearest bed and drew the quilt up over the fox.

Birdie climbed onto the other bed in her raincoat and shut her eyes at once, which meant she was listening.

We went down to the library and left the door open a hand's width.

Grandfather poured coffee for me and did not pour any for himself.

"I'm told your husband's label has already put out a statement," he said.

"Colt isn't my husband this morning."

"The statement calls Miss Pettigrew his creative partner."

"Of course it does."

I wrapped both hands around the cup.

"I don't want the chair," I said.

"I haven't offered it."

"You were about to."

His mouth moved, almost a smile.

"I was about to offer it at length," he said. "I had notes."

"I want one thing from you. I want to know that what I signed when I was twenty-five still holds."

"It holds."

He said it too quickly, and then he made himself slow down.

"Every song Mr. Hargis has ever sung is licensed from Songbird. Songbird renews the license every year, in writing, and may refuse. That was your own clause."

"Then he can't sing any of it without me."

"Not a note. He opens his stadium tour in Nashville in three weeks. His whole set list is yours to give or take."

I set the cup down.

For six years I had asked Colt for every small thing, and he had given me what he chose.

Now the choice was mine.

"Good," I said.

"Linnea, if you're going to do this, you should know what you're taking on."

"I know what I'm taking on."

"You don't," he said gently. "Not entirely."

Before I could ask what he meant, a guard knocked at the library door.

He was a big, quiet man who had guarded this house since I was a girl, and his face was tight.

"Ma'am. Sir. There's a man at the front gate with an envelope."

"For whom?" Grandfather asked.

"For Mrs. Hargis."

I went to the gate myself.

The process server stood outside the iron bars with a cardboard cup of coffee and a young, bored face.

He asked my name, and I gave it, and he slid the envelope through the bars.

It was already open at the corner, and the first page was a petition for emergency custody.

Petitioner: Darlene Hargis.

It said that I had taken two young children across state lines in the middle of the night, without their father's knowledge, to live with a family I had hidden from them for years.

At the bottom, where the father's signature should have been, there was only a line.

It was empty.

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