Famous in a Small Town(62)

“Yours,” Kyle said.

“She didn’t actually grow up here, you know—her folks moved here when she was in seventh grade. But we became best friends. She always talked about singing, about becoming famous. I never … I can’t sing at all. But I liked to write. I mean, I think every kid has written some shitty lyrics or poems at some point. But to me … it was more than that, like I really genuinely liked it. So we would sit around her room and just … make stuff up.” She smiled a little, wistful, like she was transported back to that room with Megan.

“‘Gave You My Heartland’ started out as a joke … if you brought someone back to Acadia—like maybe you went away to school or wherever and met someone—how would you introduce them to the town … and then it just spun out from there.”

I shook my head. “But why …” Everything I had read. Singer-songwriter Megan Pleasant. The pen connected from her heart to the page. “Why didn’t you ever get credit?”

Heather looked away.

“It was … we were just kids, at first. I didn’t understand what it would become, so I didn’t try to make it into a thing.” A pause. “She didn’t end up finishing school with us. Recording and promo and all that, it became too much. She was traveling more and more. A few years later, after the second album … she came back. They were building that house … she was in the middle of a tour, but she was playing in Indianapolis, had a day off between shows. Early on, she would invite me out, any time she played close by, but I heard from her less and less … I knew how busy she was. But she showed up at Darby Court, where we were living at the time. Cadence was really little then.

“She seemed … distracted. She came and sat in the living room and she took out a checkbook. Said she’d pay me right then and there, for everything, so long as I never told another person that I had written those songs. Said she was turning over a new leaf or whatever … starting a new chapter in her career. That we wouldn’t write anything else together, and that was … fine, I guess, it wasn’t like … I wasn’t setting out to be some big songwriter, like she had become this big musician. But really, I think … she knew that things might change between us. That she was getting successful, so she thought I would come along asking for money, or—or blackmailing her or some shit.” She shook her head. “It was never about the money for me.”

“Even though she was getting famous? And rich?”

“We wrote those songs when we were kids. For fun. I never thought of it like that.”

“You’re a better person than most,” Kyle said. “Because she should’ve fucking paid you from the start, even if you didn’t care about credit.”

“She was my best friend,” Heather said simply. “I loved her. I would’ve done anything for her.”

“So she offered you money?”

“She did. And I was … I was insulted, I guess. Not at the money itself—God knows we could’ve used it—but at the thought that I would betray her like that. That I would … sell her out on the internet or whatever, just for some notoriety. And also, I guess … I was hurt that … it felt like she was cutting me out. It felt … final, like in terms of our friendship. She didn’t even ask about Cadence, you know. Didn’t even want to see her.” Heather shook her head. “So I got mad. We fought. She left, and … we never talked again. The third album came out, and it was …” A shrug. “She was doing what she wanted, finally. I guess. And it worked out for her.” There was something final in the way she said it—this was the end of the story. “I’m happy for her.”



* * *



I told August the whole thing on the phone that night. They never actually swore me to secrecy, but I didn’t think it would apply to August, even if they had.

I didn’t know what to think. How to feel. Megan wasn’t exactly who I thought she was. Neither was Heather. I had to renegotiate both of them in my mind.

At least it prepared me—slightly—for a few nights later, when there was a knock at the door when I was babysitting Harper and Cadence.

And there, on the doorstep, was Megan Pleasant.





fifty-two


I don’t know why—maybe TV and movies—but I thought famous people always had entourages. Like she should be standing there with a driver and a security guard and a manager and her makeup artist/stylist/best friend who would be holding a palette out, brushing a bit of highlighter onto her cheeks. There should be a reality-TV film crew—two cameras and a sound guy holding a boom or something.

But Megan Pleasant stood on the Conlins’ front steps all alone, in a pair of ripped jeans and a faded T-shirt, a leather bag slung over one shoulder. Her hair was as long and shiny as it had been the day I met her, and she was undeniably beautiful—dark lashes, Cupid’s bow lips. Alongside the initial shock, I was instantly seized with that feeling—I wanted to be her, but I also wanted her to be My Girl—and for a moment I just stood there, frozen.

Was it—could it be possible? The social media outreach had worked? Megan had gotten one or some or all of my messages, and now she was here somehow, she had found me here at the Conlins’ house to tell me that, yes, she would play at the fall festival—