“Younger. By one hour.”
Finn’s eyes snapped to mine in shock.
“What? We were twins,” I explained, his reaction confusing me.
“Identical twins?” His voice sounded funny.
“Yes. Mirror-image twins. Ever heard of that?”
Finn nodded, but the expression on his face was so inscrutable that I thought maybe he needed more explanation.
“If we stood looking at each other, it was like looking in a mirror. Everything was reversed on our faces. I have this mole on my right cheek?” I touched it, drawing his eyes to my face. “Minnie had the same mole, in the same place on her left. I was right-handed, Minnie was left-handed. Even the natural part in our hair is exactly the mirror image of each other. We didn’t ever think much of it until we got into high school and took biology. There was actually a unit on twins. We didn’t realize there was a name for what we were.”
“Mirror-image twins,” Finn said quietly.
“Yeah.” I nodded. “In identical twins the egg actually splits, but in mirror-image twins, it splits later than usual. Quite a bit later. The original right half of the egg becomes one twin and the left half becomes another.” I remembered the text book definition perfectly. I was a half. Minnie and I together made a whole. How could I possibly forget something like that?
“How did she die?”
I looked out the window and laid it out. “Minnie died of leukemia. She was diagnosed when we were fifteen. She got well for a while. Remission. But she got sick again two years ago, and everybody kind of played it down so that I wouldn’t get distracted, so that I would keep singing and touring and sending money home. That was my job. Send money home.”
“You weren’t there when she died?” Finn’s voice was hushed, reverent even.
“No,” I answered woodenly, my attention on the landscape, letting the trees rushing past whisk away the emotion that was brewing beneath the words. “They didn’t tell me until after her funeral, a week later. I was on tour, see. And Gran didn’t want me to cancel the dates. We’re talking big money, sold out shows, powerful interests. Obviously, much more important than Minnie’s funeral or my feelings on the matter.”
The anger came whooshing back, and I opened my mouth to take in more air to release the heat in my chest, but everyone knows that you have to suffocate a fire. The rush of air down my throat only fed the flames. I sat, gasping, my face turned away, and then I held my hand over my mouth in a belated attempt to dampen the blaze. I wondered if Finn could see the smoke curling between my fingers and out my ears. I was so hot with fury that I reached out and unrolled the window, fiercely turning the old handle, letting the icy wind fill the interior of the Blazer and nip at my face and kiss my cheeks. Clyde didn’t complain about the cold or try to speak over the bellowing wind, and I closed my eyes and wished it would whisk me away. But I leaned my face too far out, and without warning, my hat, Bear’s hat, was snatched off my head. I watched it tumbling down the freeway, lost to me, just like Minnie.
Suddenly I wanted to throw everything out the window. I wanted to start grabbing things and hurling them out, as if tossing things out the window would purge me. It was the same feeling I’d had when I started attacking my hair in the dressing room.
But I couldn’t do that. I couldn’t throw my newly acquired things out the window. I couldn’t throw Finn’s things out the window, either. I had to get a grip. I grabbed the handle and starting winding, watching the space narrow, listening to the wind wane and finally cease altogether as the pane reached its destination. I sneaked a look in Finn’s direction. He was looking straight ahead, just waiting. I shrugged.
“According to Gran, she didn’t tell me because Minnie was gone, and me crying at her funeral wasn’t gonna bring her back.” I didn’t cry now either.
“Gran said we all knew it was coming, and that we had all said our goodbyes a hundred times. But I hadn’t said goodbye. Not even once.” I was proud of how calm I sounded. Clyde just continued to drive, not commenting, but I could feel the intensity of his attention, and it spurred me on.
“When they told me, I threw a fit worthy of a pop princess. I broke things, and I screamed and cried, and I told my Gran I hated her and I would never forgive her. And I won’t either. And then I packed my bags and headed home to Grassley. Which was fine with Gran. She had waited to tell me until I had a week-long break for Thanksgiving. It was the first time I’d been home in eight months. But when I got there, nobody was home but my mama. Daddy had moved out, Cash was in jail, and Hank just got out of rehab for the umpteenth time—he’d moved into Gran’s house in Nashville. And Minnie was in the ground.
“I spent a week with my mama, and she seemed like she was handling it all pretty well. She told me my dad got an apartment in Nashville not far from Gran’s and is pursuing his dreams. Isn’t that special? I think I’m paying for that, too. I have been making money for my family since I was ten years old. And I don’t have a relationship with any of them anymore. I never had much with my brothers in the first place. Cash was okay, but Hank has always scared me a little. Hank on drugs is even scarier. Gran’s the only one who can stand him. It’s because they’re two mean peas in a pod. Minnie, and my parents, I suppose, were my reasons for keeping on.” I shrugged like it wasn’t that important.
“When Thanksgiving was over, I was an obedient little Bonnie Rae, and I went back out on the road. I didn’t go back home for Christmas. I just kept working, and last night, I finished my tour.”
“So your parents have split up?”
“Yeah.” I leaned my head against the window. “I found out a couple of days ago that Mama’s got a boyfriend, and he’s moved in with her. We can all just go our own way now, I suppose. It’s just . . . everything I thought I was working for was just a lie. You know? Money makes things easier. It can even transform your life, but it doesn’t transform people. And all my money couldn’t save Minnie, and it sure as hell didn’t fix my family.”
“Is that why you wanted to jump off that bridge?”
“Maybe. I don’t know. I kind of lost it last night. Gran had a surprise for me during one of my songs. That set me off, I guess.”
“What was it?’
“Gran had someone make a film, a series of shots of Minnie, pictures of us together. Pictures of her last days. And they ran it on the screen behind me as I sang ‘Stolen.’”
I heard Clyde curse under his breath, just a whisper of sound, but his sympathy chipped at my composure. “I couldn’t sing.”
What an understatement. I couldn’t sing because I could only stare at that huge screen. In that moment, I had nothing left that was mine. Gran had stolen everything. Every part of me. Just like the song said. And then she’d sold it all. And I had allowed it.
“What did you do?” Clyde asked.
“I walked off the stage. Bear and Gran were waiting backstage, just like always. I told them I was sick. That I couldn’t go on. The concert was almost over anyway. My exit only made the moment more meaningful, Gran said. Everyone would understand, she said.”
The heat was building again, and I started to pant. I paused and leaned back against the seat, collecting myself. I ran my hands through my hair, over and over, the short silkiness evidence of what came next. I continued more calmly.
“Bear walked me back to my dressing room, and then he went back down to take care of some other security issues. Gran went out on the stage and made my apologies, apparently. I don’t really know. I chopped off my hair, pulled on this sweatshirt, took Gran’s purse, and I left. And here I am.”
“You took your Grandma’s purse?”
I laughed—a loud gasp that popped my ears and burst the bubble of anger that I’d been floating in. After all that, Mr. Finn Clyde was worried about Gran’s purse?
“Yep. I sure did. Mine was still on the tour bus.” I pulled the purse from where it sat between my feet and started pulling items from it. Gran’s phone, handfuls of bills, her wallet with
her shiny credit cards.
“I was a minor when I got started in the business, and Gran has always controlled the money side of things. Her name is on every one of my accounts, and I’ve never taken her off.” I was pretty certain she paid the balances on these cards from accounts with my name on them. So I didn’t feel too bad that I’d used one of them at Walmart and then again to fill up Clyde’s gas tank in Albany.
“I should probably give her purse back to her, huh?” I rolled down the window and threw the designer bag out onto the freeway. I kept the wallet and the cash, though. And the Tic Tacs. Orange Tic Tacs are tasty.
“I should probably let her know I’m okay too. But I can’t actually call her since I have her phone, now can I?” I laughed as if that was the funniest thing in the world. The phone vibrated in my hand like it was laughing with me, and I almost dropped it. Instead, I decided it was probably time to face the music.
“Hel-lo?” I said in my best sing song voice.
“Bonnie Rae?”
“It’s Gran!” I said to Clyde, as if I were thrilled to hear from her.
“Bonnie Rae? Who are you with? Where are you?”
“Why, Gran, I’m with Clyde! Haven’t you ever heard of Bonnie and Clyde?”
“Bonnie Rae? Tell me where you are!”
“You know what, Gran? The tour is over. I am an adult, and I am officially on vacation. You need to leave me alone for a while. And Gran? You’re fired.” And then I returned her phone the same way I’d returned her purse.
“POSSIBLE SIGHTINGS TODAY of country singing sensation, Bonnie Rae Shelby, who reportedly left the stage without finishing her concert at the TD Garden Arena in Boston, Massachusetts last night and disappeared into thin air. Police were called in several hours later after her manager and security team were unable to locate her. In a statement made early this morning, police reported there were items stolen from her dressing room, prompting them to get involved, although it is still too early to file a missing person’s report on the twenty-one year old singer.”
FINN CALLED IT a day about five o’clock that afternoon. He was drooping at the wheel and promised we would get an early start the next morning. We pulled into a simple, roadside motel, one with a six or an eight on it . . . I didn’t pay much attention to the name. I was too busy worrying that he was going to sleep for a few hours and cut loose of me. I was ready for a shower and clean sheets myself, but not if it meant being alone somewhere between Boston and Cleveland without a friend in the world. I told him as much, and he sighed like he was getting a little tired of my insecurity.
“We’ll get adjoining rooms, okay? We’ll leave the door between them open for as long as you want,” he said.
“Done.” I jumped out immediately, grabbed my two duffle bags, and headed inside. The desk clerk looked like she’d had even less sleep than Clyde and I, the bags between her eyes dusky and plump, and she hardly looked at me as I made the request for two adjoining rooms and plunked down Gran’s card. I didn’t want to use the cash if I didn’t have to. Having it made me feel less vulnerable. Maybe it was my hillbilly blood, wanting to stick it somewhere safe, or maybe it was just the tangibility of the bills, but I wasn’t parting with it.
I signed the receipt with a granny flourish, our names were almost the same, after all, and had the keys to the two rooms in my hand before Clyde even made it inside. He looked like he wanted to argue about the fact that I’d paid for both rooms, but then he sighed and took his key from my hand. He shot a glance at the desk clerk and was visibly relieved when she seemed oblivious to us, already tuned back into the TV in the lobby. A pair of skaters twirled across the screen, and I realized she was watching the Olympics. I’d forgotten they were even going on. We left the desk clerk to cheer for the red, white, and blue, and made our way to the second floor.
True to his word, Clyde opened his door between our rooms, and the little bilious knot in my stomach eased immediately.
I didn’t want to turn on the TV because it would drown out the sound of Clyde moving about in his own room, a sound that was comforting to me. I realized part of my problem was that I wasn’t especially good at being alone. I rarely was, and rarely had been since I’d been crowned America’s sweetheart and had hit the road running . . . or singing. Before that, I’d lived in a double-wide trailer with six other people, and there had been no such thing as solitude. I wondered if it was an acquired taste. I thought maybe I could learn to like it, and I definitely wanted more of it. But not now.
FINN ORDERED PIZZA, keeping his promise to himself that he wouldn’t let Bonnie buy his dinner, though she’d paid for his room, which had cost a whole lot more. He heard the shower in her room start up and relaxed a little, knowing he was as alone as he was going to get for the near future.
She was the most peculiar girl he’d ever met. Sad, sassy, temperamental, introspective, funny . . . and all of that in the space of ten minutes. She was troubled. That much was obvious. But she wasn’t scared of him, surprisingly. He wasn’t sure what to do with that information, and he felt a flash of guilt that she might be afraid if she knew his story as well as he knew hers, which was fairly well considering he’d done a lot of listening throughout the long day. After she’d told him about Minnie she seemed spent. So he’d asked her to sing to him, thinking she would roll her eyes and refuse him, or give him some line about being on “vacation.” Instead, she’d been happy to oblige, and he’d marveled at her lack of artifice, considering she was who she was. She’d plopped one red boot up on the dash and regaled him with one ridiculous song after another.
She sang a song called “Little Brown Jug,” which was apparently about moonshine, and one called “Goober Peas,” which was about, well, goober peas, whatever the hell they were. Another song, “Black-eyed Daisy,” wasn’t too bad. Bonnie said her dad changed it up, singing Black-eyed Bonnie, because her eyes were so dark. Something about Cherokee blood back in her mother’s line, and she and Minnie got what was left of it. There was a song called “Nelly Gray” that seemed to make her sad, and she’d stopped singing it abruptly, half-way through a verse about a girl being taken away in chains. He was sorry she stopped. He’d liked the story in that one.
Bonnie said the songs were the ones she grew up singing, the songs of Appalachia that her dad had taught her and that had been passed down through the generations. She could apparently play several instruments, some of which he’d never heard of, like one she called a mouth bow, which was basically a stick, rounded like a bow, with a guitar string strung from one end to the other. Bonnie said folks hadn’t always used a guitar string. They used to use a stick and a cat gut.
“A cat gut? You mean like an intestine?”
“Yep.”
Clyde was pretty sure she was lying. Fairly sure. Not really sure at all.
“You don’t like these old-timey songs, huh, Clyde?” she had asked. Funny . . . he had told her his first name but she’d kept calling him Clyde.
“This isn’t what you sing at concerts, is it? People don’t still listen to these songs, do they?” he’d asked, incredulous.
“Sure they do. But, no. I sing new country. Cross-over country. Some of it sounds like pop music—in fact it’s so close the only difference is a few steel guitars and a fiddle. And me. I add my own whine and twang to give it that down home feel.” She had winked at him then, and Clyde found himself smiling with her like he was an idiotic fan. “I get lonesome for these old songs, though.”
Finn didn’t especially like the old songs, and he was pretty certain she enjoyed the fact that he didn’t. Bonnie Shelby was a tease. But he liked hearing her sing. And Bonnie could sing, no doubt about it. It was as effortless and sweet as cold water sliding down his throat on a hot day. And she seemed to love doing it. She was a performer, a storyteller, a commanding presence even in the front seat of his old Blazer. He could see why she’d been so successful. He could see how America had fallen in love with her.
He remembered her now. He’d
seen her on TV many years ago. Nashville Forever had been one of the only shows they had been allowed to watch when they earned a little recreation time. They all complained because it was country music, not exactly the popular preference among the guys.
She’d been a wisp of a girl—all hair and eyes. She’d grown up since then. He remembered thinking, watching her sing, how young she was. But she had seemed absolutely fearless. And when she’d smiled, everyone in the audience had smiled with her. She’d even won over some of the hard asses who complained about her song selection but found themselves rooting for her anyway. Finn had only seen the show a couple of times. But he remembered her. He hadn’t realized she’d won. It seems she’d not only won, but she’d gone on to be a big star, apparently. A big star who wanted to kill herself.
Finn grabbed a quick shower and was just pulling on a clean T-shirt and a pair of jeans when the pizza arrived. He shot his head through the open adjoining doors to tell Bonnie and could still hear the shower running. It sounded like she was singing in there too. He stopped, wanting to hear her again, and realized she wasn’t singing this time. She was crying. He backed out of her room like he’d inadvertently seen her naked, and realized he would be less embarrassed if he had. Naked, he could deal with. Naked he would even enjoy. Tremendously. But tears? No.
She stayed in her room for another hour. He heard the shower cease, heard her pad through her space, riffling through bags, flipping through the channels, and then turning the television off again. Finally, she popped her head into his room and asked if she could “have a slice?”
Finn inclined his head and searched her face for signs of tears. There were none. He smiled with relief, and she returned the smile, the flash of dimpled cheeks and white teeth framed in pink lips made his heart lurch in his chest. He immediately stopped smiling. She was too pretty. Especially now that her hair didn’t look like she’d survived the apocalypse. She was too pretty, he was a lonely man, and the combination scared him, for her sake and for his.