Songbird's Call Read online

  Contents

  Title Page

  FOR NETGALLEY

  Copyright

  Praise

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Chapter Forty-Six

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  About the Author

  The Songbird’s Call

  The Songbirds of Darling Bay, Book 2

  by

  Rachael Herron

  Uncorrected proof.

  Not for sale.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

  Publisher’s Note: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination. Locales and public names are sometimes used for atmospheric purposes. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, or to businesses, companies, events, institutions, or locales is completely coincidental.

  The Songbird’s Call / Rachael Herron. -- 1st ed.

  HGA Publishing

  Copyright © 2016, Rachael Herron

  All rights reserved.

  ISBN-13: 978-1-940785-28-8

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  Praise for

  Rachael Herron’s

  Work

  “A poignant, profound ode to the enduring and redemptive power of love.” – Library Journal

  "A celebration of the power of love to heal even the most broken of hearts." - NYT Bestselling Author Susan Wiggs

  “A heart-warming story of family, friendship and love in a town you’ll never want to leave.” – Barbara Freethy, USA Today Bestseller

  CHAPTER ONE

  At one time in her life, Molly had liked a good old-fashioned country dive bar as much as the next singer-songwriter. Every honky-tonk smelled a little different, but they shared the same notes of pine dust and good tequila, of cowboy aftershave made of bay rum and cloves mixed with the scent of bitters and quinine. Each bar sounded the same, too – bottle caps snapping off, Hank Williams wailing on the jukebox, balls clacking on the pool table, men trying to impress women who were laughing and pretending to pay no attention.

  Molly inhaled deeply and then wished she was back on the cruise ship. Even though she’d spent the last six years fighting mild seasickness, the ship had felt safe. She’d been anonymous there. The Golden Spike Saloon was packed with people, and all of them were smiling right at her. Faces. So many grinning faces. When had the world become so friendly? The floor pitched under her feet, a tiny swell that no one else seemed to notice.

  That morning, so early the early-bird passengers hadn’t yet made it to the breakfast buffet, Molly had hugged her friend Janette goodbye, bequeathing her two enormous bars of duty-free Toblerone from a grateful client. Molly had taken a plane that took off and landed uneventfully, then she’d taken a bus that had run fine and then one more bus that hadn’t run fine at all. With an impressive explosion, it had blown some very important part of its engine an hour south of Darling Bay. She’d had to text her sister Adele’s boyfriend, Nate – the one who’d helped her plot this surprise – to come get her, which wasn’t at all her original plan. She’d wanted to arrive mid-afternoon. She’d wanted to find Adele and hug her to pieces, and then they’d walk down to the water’s edge and watch the sun drip into the ocean.

  Instead, Molly had arrived at the bar at its most crowded, and the patrons, most of them at least two drinks in, were elated to have two of their Darling Songbirds back in one room. Molly hadn’t felt this famous in, well…it had been a little more than eleven years since the band had broken up and she hadn’t been famous in about ten and a half. Fame had a short memory.

  Nothing had changed about the old saloon, and yet everything had. The walls were still dark wood, the beams scarred overhead from being chopped and shaped by Molly’s great-grandfather in the late 1800s. When she and her sisters were little, they’d hide in the storeroom at night and peek out at the bands playing on the small stage. Everything Molly knew about flirtation she’d learned from watching cowboys dance with girls in the half-light of neon beer signs.

  But everything was different, too. Her sister Adele, instead of being at her elbow in the storeroom, was next to her – they were full-grown women, standing at the bar instead of peeping out at it. Adele was running the place. Adele, her accomplished song-writing sister – the one Molly had been sure would never leave Nashville – was not only in charge of the bar their uncle had left to the three Darling sisters, but she was in love with the man who’d been running it when she’d arrived back in town. Like the bar itself, there was something more deeply changed in Adele – the jitteriness that seemed to have sometimes defined her older sister was gone. Adele had always been a fidgeter, unable to stand still, always fixing something. Now she seemed more…rooted.

  Molly looked more closely at Adele. She followed her sister’s happy gaze across the bar room and caught sight of Nate talking to an older woman wearing an ill-fitting Santa suit and a rope of flashing colored lights. “Oh, man. You have it so bad.”

  Adele shrugged guiltily. “So bad.” Those honeyed locks waved gracefully around her face. Molly had always wished she had hair that looked like that. Instead, Molly had inherited their father’s dark, straight, completely obstinate hair, and she could feel it was sticking up, out of control from the day’s travel and there was nothing she could do about it.

  “You’re so adorable I kind of want to hurl.”

  “I’m twitterpated. What can I say?”

  Molly laughed even though it felt forced in her throat. “You’re not even the kind to say twitterpated.”

  Adele closed her eyes. At one point, Molly would have known, automatically, what Adele was thinking. Their mother had always said it was like the three girls shared a brain, and even though it had just been a mother’s gentle joke whenever they did something ill-advised (often involving an unbridled and “borrowed” horse), there was more to it than that. At one ti
me, it had felt as if they really were inside each other’s heads. Adele would know right before the younger Molly was about to cry and give her a peppermint purloined from the always full jar in Uncle Hugh’s upstairs parlor. Molly would know right before their baby sister Lana was about to lose her temper and start yelling. Molly would slip her hand into Lana’s and squeeze tight – Lana would grip her fingers so strongly that Molly would grimace, but sometimes the lightning wouldn’t flash, and Molly would know that she had absorbed some of her sister’s storminess. The three of them were stronger together. Better. When they’d shared a stage every night for those five years, their connection had been their magic. Even while playing to fifty thousand people – even while the rest of the brightly strobe-lit stage was full of other musicians and production crew and stage hands – in each other’s eyes, there was only ever the three of them in the whole wide world.

  Adele was the fixer.

  Molly was the voice.

  Lana was the artist.

  It was always just the three of them, together, until they were so broken that they couldn’t even bear being in the same state, let alone the same room.

  Impulsively, Molly set down her vodka tonic on the time-worn bar. She turned and took Adele’s face in her hands, one hand on either cheek. Adele had always been taller than she was, so Molly had to simultaneously pull down on Adele’s head and stretch up on her own tiptoes to do it, but she managed to kiss Adele’s forehead with a giant smack.

  Adele looked stunned, her eyes wide. “I forgot.”

  Their father had always done that. If their mother’s signature act of fondness was a soft hug and a light laugh, their father’s had been this: the cheek grab, the kiss so hard it came across as an order of sorts, a demand to love and love hard.

  “I know,” said Molly. “I almost did, too. Can’t forget this, though.” She used her fingers to ruffle Adele’s hair.

  “God.” Adele shook her hair forward and back. “I hated that part of it.”

  “What you should actually hate is the fact that you have pink ChapStick on your forehead.”

  “Oh, man.” But Adele didn’t seem to mind and only swiped at it haphazardly with a napkin.

  “You’re not getting it all.” Molly took another napkin and rubbed harder at Adele’s forehead. “There. That’s better.”

  The rest of Christmas night passed in a blur of rum and eggnog and hot mulled cider in the saloon. Someone had brought a ham, and there were trays full of bacon-wrapped appetizers. Molly had forgotten how busy the bar got during the holidays, everyone either celebrating with their families or desperately trying to get away from them. After an hour of the noise, Molly was exhausted but didn’t want to go anywhere. Close to her sister. That was what she needed.

  Adele seemed to be feeling it, too. “I’m so glad you’re here. Have I said that already?”

  Oh, no, it looked like tears were shimmering in Adele’s eyes, and while Molly prided herself on being stronger than ever, she wasn’t yet equipped to deal with her kryptonite. She smiled. “Maybe?”

  “You and Nate. You both did all this. You plotted. Behind my back!”

  Warmth rested in Molly’s stomach. “And you love it.”

  “Best Christmas gift ever. You have to stay. You will, right?”

  Molly did have to stay, but her sister didn’t know that yet. The cruise ship’s administration hadn’t been willing to give her time onshore for the busy holiday season, but Molly had found herself unable to spend another New Year’s Eve away from family. Lana was in Ontario for some unknown reason and, after the one single phone conversation Molly had had with her about the Golden Spike property, she was barely answering text messages. The only other place for Molly was here, with Adele, back in Darling Bay.

  She watched as Adele darted Nate a private look that reminded her so sharply of the way their mother used to look at their father that it made her chest ache. One year, their father had bought a big box of maple candy. The candies were carved into tiny scenes – a man on a sleigh, a boy tapping a tree for sap – and they were made of nothing but maple syrup. The flavor was pure and sweet and couldn’t be more mapley if it tried. They’d been the very essence of sugar, Molly had always thought.

  That was the way Adele and Nate were looking at each other over the bar-patrons” heads.

  It should be disgusting and sappy, as sickeningly sweet as the maple candy had been. Instead, the look warmed a place in Molly’s chest she hadn’t known had gone cold.

  “Oh, Molly, isn’t he great?” Adele didn’t seem to have noticed that Molly hadn’t answered whether or not she would stay.

  “He’s great.” Molly had already been pretty sure that was the case after talking to Nate on the phone. He’d been friendly without being overly so. He’d offered to help in planning but hadn’t assumed she’d needed it. He’d offered to pay for her flight but had attached no obligations to it. I know you and your sister haven’t seen each other in a long time. I’d love you to come to Darling Bay for the holidays. No problem if you can’t, if you’re already committed to doing something else. If you’re free though, it’d be great to finally meet you.

  Molly had been in her small onboard office when she’d taken his first call. She’d stared at the calendar. Two weeks till Christmas. Are you in love with my sister? Although she’d already known the answer, she’d wanted to hear what length hesitation would be in his voice, like counting the seconds after the flash before the boom in a thunderstorm.

  Completely. There had been no hesitation, not even half a second’s worth. She’d let him buy her a ticket that very night. She would worry about how to pay him back later.

  “He’s so much…” Adele started.

  “Yeah?”

  “He’s so much more than just great.”

  “Oh, Lord.”

  “It sounds clichéd to you.”

  “No.” Molly didn’t want to take away a single iota of Adele’s happiness. “It’s just that…”

  “It sounds silly.”

  “It doesn’t. It makes me wistful, that’s all.”

  “And you? What about that guy you mentioned, the one in the laundry, right?”

  “Oh, God. No. Jeremy didn’t work out. Well, he worked out. That’s about all he did.”

  “So you’re saying he was strong.”

  Molly grinned. That had, in fact, been one of his best qualities, the way he could lift Molly and fling her around on the bed as if she weighed less than a bag of sheets. The cruise ship had a huge laundry room the size of three veranda suites put together, and Molly had experienced her fair share of being pressed up against the heated dryer drums as they had added to the ambient thumping noises. “Yeah, well.” Jeremy had been fun – he’d been the one before Rick. And Rick was the one who’d left her broke and sad and angry, a terrible combination.

  “You okay?”

  Molly could almost feel the energy she’d conserved for this – the first meeting with her sister in three years – evaporate. “Yeah.”

  “You’re tired. Look at you. Let’s put you to bed. Come on.”

  “I thought you said we had to sing.” It had almost been the first thing Adele had said after hooting with delight at the sight of her standing in the doorway.

  Adele looked at her, her gaze soft. “There’ll be time for that. Right?”

  Maybe. If Molly didn’t freak out and jump a Greyhound bus tomorrow. “Sure.”

  Someone had put “O Come All Ye Faithful” on the jukebox and half the bar was singing along. The older woman Nate was talking to had turned on the Christmas lights that draped around her neck, and she looked for all the world like a short, squat Christmas tree dressed in red cloth.

  “Nate told me he put your bags in your room already.”

  Molly felt a wave of gratefulness sweep through her. “Upstairs? In Uncle Hugh’s apartment?” That was, after all, where the whole family had stayed whenever they were in town visiting their dad’s brother.

  �
�Oh.” Adele spread her fingers and looked down at them, as if she were holding something she wanted to show to Molly. “No. Not there. It’s not quite ready for…guests.”

  Molly was a guest now?

  “Do you mind very much? It’s just been me and Nate there for the last couple of months, and I haven’t fixed up the spare room, yet.”

  Molly straightened her spine. “I would never want to get in your way.” Lovebirds, locked in love jail. What could be more irritating to be around, really? It would be better if she didn’t have to avoid them and their inevitable kissy noises. Or worse.

  “Crap, I’m sorry. I thought I could put you in room one. You’ll like it.”

  Of course. Adele figured things out, and then Molly did what she was told. That’s the way it had always been. “That’s the only usable room, right?” She hadn’t seen the damage yet, but Molly was the one Adele had called when she’d first arrived in Darling Bay after Uncle Hugh had died. The whole place had been a wreck. According to Adele, the twelve-room hotel that sat nestled up in the hillside behind the saloon was a trashed and unusable disaster. There had been no locusts, but that was about the only biblical disaster that hadn’t befallen the rooms yet. From mold to fire damage, the rooms were uninhabitable except for one.

  Adele nodded. “It’s nice.”

  “You said the bed was hell on your back.”

  “I got used to it.”

  “You got used to being on your back?” Molly winked to take the sting out of her words. It would be fine. “Come on, show me.”

  “Okay…Oh, but wait till you see the courtyard.” Adele pushed open the door and led Molly outside. “Look.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  “Oh,” said Molly on a whisper. The space behind the bar used to hold one picnic table and one bench whose four feet never reached the ground at the same time. The only decoration had been a stockpile of old gas grills that Uncle Hugh had collected and never got around to fixing. It had been depressing, a place for the men to gather and smoke pipes while pulling on their beers, a place for the sisters to race through quickly on their way out to the beach or up to the oak trees in the hills beyond the hotel property.