DECISION TIME.
Savannah Walters sat staring at the faded red stop sign at a crossroads—one would lead her into complete anonymity and the other back to a place where everyone knew who she was.
Anonymity beckoned, slick and sweet. A simple left-hand turn onto the southbound lane of a rural highway in southwestern Missouri. She would roll the windows down in her old Honda, smell the freshly mowed highway grass and maybe pass a tractor or twelve before she hit the next town, a town with a bigger road leading to an interstate that would lead her...anywhere.
She hit the turn signal even though there were no other cars on this stretch of blacktop and listened to the click-click-click of it for a long moment. All she had to do was make the turn. This was her chance. A bigger chance than the one she’d taken when she’d elected to go to Nashville. A bigger chance than the one she’d taken to get onto the reality talent show that had made the Nashville move possible. No one would ever have to know she was that Savannah Walters again.
Hell, if she wanted, she could change her name completely and maybe cut off the signature micro-braids she’d spent three days installing, then no one would even make a tiny connection between her and about-to-fall-from-grace, one-hit-wonder Savannah Walters. She could be anything and anyone she wanted. The thought made her giddy. If she could, she would choose to be smart, strong and capable, rather than the dumb, weak and dependent person she’d been since she’d landed in Slippery Rock, Missouri, at the age of seven.
Her second-chance self would have a name like Nancy Smith because there had to be a million Nancy Smiths in the world. Nancy Smith would only sing in the shower or in the car with her windows rolled up. She would work as a bank teller and wear normal clothes without a single rhinestone, and maybe once she was settled she’d go to dental hygienist school. She would eventually buy a small house in a quiet neighborhood, and maybe she would meet a nice guy—not in a bar—and have a real relationship for the first time in her twenty-seven years.
Savannah’s heart a beat a little faster. Nancy Smith wouldn’t care what people thought of her. She would be stronger than that. Stronger than Savannah Walters, who had been afraid of what people thought of her for...most of her life.
Nancy Smith would not be afraid, but she also wouldn’t be reckless. There would be no judgmental dinner conversations, no too-high expectations and no comparisons to a brother who always did the right thing. She would be the opposite of Savanna Walters of Slippery Rock.
There would also be no midnight walks along the lakeshore with that boy—man, now—who couldn’t help being practically perfect; it was simply his way. No whispered conversations through their bedroom windows on hot summer nights. No smell of Mama Hazel’s coffee cake on lazy Sunday mornings and no comforting hugs or encouraging words from the only father she had ever known.
No disappointed looks when the three people who had saved her so very long ago learned that she, once again, had made every possible wrong decision.
God, she wanted to turn left. Take the easy road. They wouldn’t really miss her. It might even be easier for them if she just kept driving out of their lives. Choosing to adopt her didn’t mean they had to be stuck with her screwed-up self for the rest of their lives.
The turn signal kept clicking. Savannah checked the rearview, but there were still no other vehicles on the narrow country road, and so she continued to weigh her options. This might be the last chance she had to make a right decision, and it needed to be right not only for her but also for the people around her.
She hadn’t had a choice about coming to Slippery Rock before, but it was her choice whether or not she returned now.
Maybe if she stopped running away from Savannah Walters she would finally stop mucking up this life she’d been given. Savannah clicked off the turn signal and rested her forehead against the steering wheel. Maybe it was time to stop being afraid of who she might have been, and time to start figuring out who she wanted to be now. She couldn’t do that by running away.
It was worth a shot.
Before she could talk herself out of it, Savannah turned right. She rolled the window down and caught the faint scent of new grass. Tall trees lined both sides of the road. Maybe oak; she’d never bothered to learn the names of trees or the grasses along the road, or the vegetables whose baby stems were just beginning to show through the pencil-straight rows of tilled soil. Naming everything from the crops to the trees seemed too personal. She’d been waiting for her new family to send her away, to decide they didn’t want her, either. Now she wished she’d paid at least a little attention to Bennett and Levi, her adoptive father and brother, while they’d talked at all those family dinners.
The city limits sign, with its welcome message from the local chapters of fraternal organizations, churches and veteran’s groups came into view just as the engine coughed once, twice, and the car rolled to a stop.
Savannah clicked the key to the off position and then back on. Pressed the gas a couple of times and tried again. Nothing. Not even the clicking sound of a dead battery. She glared at the illuminated red check-engine light that had been on since she’d bought the car with her tip money from the Slope, where she’d chosen to clean up and wait tables instead of take a scholarship at a nearby college. Because she convinced herself she wasn’t good enough for college. Of course, if she’d done the college thing, she’d have never tried the talent show and wouldn’t have had a song on country radio.
Wouldn’t be running from scandal now.
The blinking engine light she’d ignored for nearly four years mocked her. One more checkmark in the Savannah the Screwup column.
If she’d only turned left, the stupid car would have run without so much as a twinge, she was positive about that. Lord, sometimes doing the right thing just sucked.
Anyone else would arrive back in her hometown driving an Escalade and find a parade in her honor. Savannah had a broken-down Honda with more than two hundred thousand miles on it. And she’d have to call her parents just to make it into town.
She thunked her head against the steering wheel a few times, but that didn’t make the check-engine light flicker off or the car miraculously start back up. The last thing she wanted to do was to call her parents. Maybe some of that car talk—Bennett helped Levi build his first car from parts found at the local salvage yard—at the dinner table had sunk in by osmosis or something.
Heaving out a sigh, Savannah popped the hood of her car and then stepped onto the pavement. The light wind was brisk—she should have remembered early May in Missouri was touch-and-go weather-wise—so she grabbed her neon-yellow hoodie from the passenger seat and shoved her arms through the sleeves.
At the front of the car, she pulled on the cherry-red hood but it didn’t budge. She tugged on it again and then bent to see the hook still caught in the hood latch. She hit the hood, trying to jar the hook loose, but no matter what she did the hook remained safely in the latch. There must be a mechanism in there somewhere that released it. Savannah bent to look between the narrow spaces of the grille, but didn’t see anything that looked like it might release the latch.
Crap, crap, crap.
Turning, she crossed her arms over her chest and leaned against the hood.
There were two options: walk the five or so miles to her childhood home or call the house so someone could come pick her up.
A