Chapter One
felicity
I watchthem lower the casket into the earth with dry eyes and a hollow heart. I’ve done all my crying already, last week when I first heard the news about Gran — the kind of crying that lasts so long and takes so much, when the tears finally stop you feel as though your soul has gone dry along with your swollen red eyes.
I take a step forward, pain sluicing through me from my pinched toes to my panging heart. The patent black pumps on my feet are a half-size too small, but they’re the only ones I had in my closet.
Black’s never really been my color.
I bend and grab a handful of dirt from the small pile by the side of the grave, forgoing the shovel. It feels gritty and cold against my palm as I stand at the edge of the perfectly cut hole, staring six feet down at the only member of my family who ever gave even half a damn about me.
“Goodbye, Gran,” I whisper, my voice cracking with grief.
I toss the dirt onto her casket, instantly marring the gleaming white lacquer surface. Though I thought my eyes had cried their last, a rogue tear slides down my right cheek and gathers at the corner of my mouth — which is currently slicked in bright scarlet. A bit ostentatious for a funeral, perhaps, but it was Gran’s signature shade. Somewhere up there, she’s smiling in approval.
Nothing ever seems quite as bad after a fresh coat of lipstick, honey.
Nodding my thanks to the undertaker, I turn and start walking back to the nondescript rental car I picked up at the airport this morning, eager to get out of here now that I’ve paid my respects. There are too many ghosts lurking in the shadows, pressing in on me — and I’m not talking about the dead Nashville residents resting beneath my feet.
Arms wrapped tight around myself as if it might somehow contain my sorrow, I trudge toward the dusty gravel path. Ragged gulps of warm June air are heavy in lungs. My high heels sink into the grass with each step, creating a trail of divots behind me. I don’t bother looking around — no one else is here. Not anymore.
I made sure to wait until the last stragglers cleared out before I left the sanctuary of the car. A crisp hundred dollar bill in the undertaker’s hand was enough to convince him to delay his work long enough for me say my goodbyes to Gran.
It felt cowardly and wrong — her own granddaughter hiding in the car while total strangers attended the ceremony — but I didn’t have any other choice. If I’d made my presence known, I have a feeling there would’ve been a full-scale riot amongst the eager paparazzi who staked out the front gates, desperate to snap a picture of Felicity Wilde in the wild after all this time. I can almost see the headlines.
MISSING SONGSTRESS SPOTTED AT LATE GRANDMOTHER’S MEMORIAL! WHERE HAS SHE BEEN ALL THIS TIME — AND WHY ON EARTH DID SHE GO BLONDE? WE’VE GOT THE SCOOP ON PAGE SIX!
I shake my head, sighing deeply at the thought of the media storm I’ve narrowly avoided. The slice of anonymity I’ve carved out for myself these past two years is precariously thin; it could’ve slipped completely through my fingers if anyone recognized me sitting behind the dark-tinted windows of my sedan or passing though the security checkpoints at the airport.
God bless the TSA agent who read the name on my license with wide eyes, but let me pass without fanfare. She could’ve easily created a mob scene; instead, she showed me compassion.
I was a big Bethany Hayes fan. I’m sorry for your loss, Miss Wilde. Go on ahead.
It’s been two years, but the story of my disappearance from the public eye periodically circulates, cropping up on conspiracy theory blogs and fan forums. It still catches me off guard to see my own face appear on the entertainment news programs that play on television screens at the local cafe where I grab my coffee in the morning, or on the tabloid covers I’ve trained myself not to look at too closely whenever I’m in the checkout line at the grocery store.
SPOTTED: FELICITY WILDE IN MELBOURNE… WITH NEW BABY AND HUSBAND!
FELICITY WILDE AND LINCOLN TRAVERS: THE AFFAIR THAT BROKE UP THE BAND
FELICITY WILDE AND RYDER WOODS REUNITE IN SECRET BALI GETAWAY… WE’VE GOT ALL THE STEAMY DETAILS ON PAGE 12
I wonder who comes up with these ideas — the ones they pull from thin air and spin into stories based on nothing resembling fact. They’re never remotely close to accurate. Then again, I doubt those gossip rag reporters would tell myrealstory, even if they knew it. What actually happened to me wouldn’t sell half so many papers as a secret love affair or a tawdry fling in the South Pacific.
But the facts are never quite as catchy or dramatic as the fiction they splash across their front pages over outdated photographs of me. And that girl on those covers, the one with the long, dark braid and those hopeful, haunted eyes turned up toward the man at her side as though he made her whole world turn…
She might as well be a stranger.
Now, as far as anyone knows, my name is Joy Winters.
That quiet, blonde girl who lives at the edge of town.
Keeps to herself, mostly. You’ll never see her smile.
It’s harder than you’d think to disappear, especially when everyone in the country knows your name and probably has a copy of your album in their iTunes library. When I left Los Angeles behind, I couldn’t just pick a spot on a map and start over somewhere new. I had to erase myself first. To become someone else. Someone unrecognizable.
Two years off the grid, out of the spotlight.
Two years of keeping my head down, my eyes averted.