Chapter 1
Sara Foster had explained her reasons for leaving Crooked Creek, but, of course, Kaye, her mother, hadn’t listened. James, her father, understood. Her mother nevertriedto understand. To Kaye, adventure was better left to the movies. Internet was for perverts and ax murderers.
Too old-fashioned, and set in her ways, Kaye expected Sara to marry a local boy and spend the rest of her life driving a dilapidated old pickup down dirt roads. Oh, and grandkids, mustn’t forget those. Had to preserve the Foster genes. Sara didn’t want that life. The world was too big and exciting to ignore. She wanted to make a name for herself and be remembered.
Lucy Ripley, Kaye’s younger sister, lived in Shreveport, a city a hundred miles north of Crooked Creek. When possible, Sara had spent summer breaks with her. It gave Lucy a chance to catch up, and Sara a chance to breathe. At least that had been the arrangement until three years ago, when Lucy joined a country-rock band called Raging Storm.
Kaye hated musicians as much as she hated Native Americans. Why she was so prejudiced remained a mystery to Sara, but she hated everything about them. When she learned Lucy was part of the band, Sara wasn’t allowed to communicate with her aunt, let alone visit during her breaks.
Sara’s mother saw her sister as a bad influence. She didn’t want Sara exposed to her promiscuous ways. Musicians traveled from town to town, living off the crumbs from someone else’s table or by selling their bodies. To Kaye, another name for a musician was a gigolo or in her sister’s case, a whore.
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Until Sara had turned eighteen and graduated high school, she’d followed her mother’s rigid small-town rules. If Kaye had known James had been mailing Sara’s letters to Lucy for three years, she would’ve thrown a fit. If she’d found out he’d given their daughter a cell phone, to stay in touch with Lucy, she would’ve thrown him out and divorced him. But James didn’t care. Sara was his world. He did whatever made her happy.
She was a singer and a songwriter, and she was good at it. Her only problem was singing in public. It petrified her. Regardless, he knew one day his daughter would be a star. It was her dream, and to make it happen, she needed to chase her rainbows. She had to break free from her mother, which meant breaking free from him, as well. To James, that was part of being a father, letting go and allowing his child to grow.
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On Sara’s sixteenth birthday, Lucy had told her when she finished school, she could come and live with her. She’d promised to show her life in the big city. With a population of around 300,000, Shreveport didn’t qualify as ‘the big city’, but it beat Sara’s little hick hometown. After all, how many famous musicians came from a place called Crooked Creek?
From experience, and reading her letters, Lucy knew Sara couldn’t withstand Kaye’s badgering. She was smothering her, and if it continued, she would destroy Sara’s dreams. One of the reasons Lucy had joined the band was to help her. She’d blown her chance at stardom, but for her niece, the door was wide open.
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Sara had packed her bags and was ready to go, a week before graduation. She didn’t have much, some clothes, a guitar, laptop and several boxes of music and memories.
The day after graduation, she loaded her things into the trunk of her c
