Flyin' Solo, page 1
Contents
Cover
Also by Peggy O’Neal Peden
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
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
Chapter Forty-Nine
Chapter Fifty
Chapter Fifty-One
Chapter Fifty-Two
Chapter Fifty-Three
Chapter Fifty-Four
Chapter Fifty-Five
Chapter Fifty-Six
Chapter Fifty-Seven
Chapter Fifty-Eight
Chapter Fifty-Nine
Chapter Sixty
Chapter Sixty-One
Chapter Sixty-Two
Chapter Sixty-Three
Chapter Sixty-Four
Chapter Sixty-Five
Chapter Sixty-Six
Acknowledgments
Also by Peggy O’Neal Peden
A Nashville mystery
YOUR KILLIN’ HEART
GONE MISSIN’ *
* available from Severn House
FLYIN’ SOLO
Peggy O’Neal Peden
This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.
First world edition published in Great Britain and the USA in 2022
by Severn House, an imprint of Canongate Books Ltd,
14 High Street, Edinburgh EH1 1TE.
Trade paperback edition first published in Great Britain and the USA in 2022
by Severn House, an imprint of Canongate Books Ltd.
This eBook edition first published in 2022 by Severn House,
an imprint of Canongate Books Ltd.
severnhouse.com
Copyright © Peggy O’Neal Peden, 2022
All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. The right of Peggy O’Neal Peden to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.
ISBN-13: 978-0-7278-5094-2 (cased)
ISBN-13: 978-1-4483-0693-0 (trade paper)
ISBN-13: 978-1-4483-0692-3 (e-book)
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Except where actual historical events and characters are being described for the storyline of this novel, all situations in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is purely coincidental.
This eBook produced by
Palimpsest Book Production Limited,
Falkirk, Stirlingshire, Scotland
To Frances
And to the nurses, doctors, hospital staff, pharmacists, grocery workers, truck drivers, maintenance workers, lab technicians, first responders, scientists and waiters who have worked to take care of us and keep us fed.
ONE
Do you remember …
The touch of my hand …
The feel of my lips …
Your head on my shoulder …
The surf on the sand …
Do you remember?
Do you remember …
The stars in the sky …
Our dreams for tomorrow …
A faith in forever …
The night’s last goodbye …
Do you remember?
Do you remember …
The look in my eyes …
Your body next to mine …
The future we dreamed …
The sound of a sigh …
Do you remember? Do you remember …
A soft, warm, summer night …
My fingers in your hair …
Moonlight on the water …
The stars above so bright …
Do you remember?
Stick Anderson
If Sam Davis had gone with me to my high school reunion, things might have turned out differently. But Sam, my friend and occasional date, maybe more than occasional, is a detective with the Metropolitan Nashville Police Department Homicide Division, and there was a murder that late June weekend.
‘I’m sorry, Campbell,’ he said, but he didn’t sound too sorry. ‘I can’t go. I don’t know when I’ll get loose.’ Some people will do anything to get out of dressing up and spending the best part of thirty or so hours with strangers. So I went alone.
‘You won’t be alone,’ my friend Barbara insisted. ‘You’ll be with us.’ Us. Us Five, a high school singing group of five with a little more musical talent than originality in choosing a name. Barbara went on to play guitar and sing in college coffee shops. Melinda and her husband were part of a band for the first few years after graduation, and Melinda still plays piano and organ at her church and for weddings. Pam and Betty sing in church choirs. I sing in the shower. I was the only one of Us Five without a husband, but I knew they’d do their best to see that I didn’t feel like a ninth wheel.
The reunion was in Adamson’s Fork, Tennessee, my hometown, just five miles or so from the county line that now marks the boundary of Metropolitan Nashville. When I was in high school in Adamson’s Fork, Nashville was the big city, far enough away that a date in Nashville was a big deal. Driving in Nashville was very different from driving in Adamson’s Fork, and teenagers weren’t allowed to drive there until we had some experience. A shopping trip to Nashville was a trip. Now, with the interstate highways feeding into the center of the city, Adamson’s Fork isn’t a small town anymore. It’s a bedroom community. Back then, it was a different world.
And this reunion couldn’t be worse than the last one. Ten years ago, at our tenth-year reunion, I had even then been the only single one of Us Five. Barbara and Melinda had decided to pair me up with Jeb, also in our class and newly single because his wife had died in a car accident a couple of years before. It didn’t seem like a completely bad idea to me.
I had always liked Jeb; he was a nice guy when we were in school; we’d been friends. This reunion didn’t have to be the romance of our lifetimes. I thought my expectations were low enough, but, like so many times before, I was wrong. Jeb was still a nice guy, and part of our reunion that year was at his place, a farm outside of town with a creek running through it, a swing in the shade of a tree, a barn cleaner than my kitchen and, of course, a dog. A friendly dog like one that might have followed Opie home for Aunt Bea to feed. The whole scene was perfect, idyllic, and my friends thought I belonged in that picture.
TWO
Just an ordinary small town boy
With dreams of a big, wide world
Just an ordinary small town boy
In love with a small town girl
Stick Anderson
We met at Jeb’s for breakfast on Saturday, and I helped set things up. Melinda had made sure I was on that committee. I was there early, and Jeb and I were both working hard at reconnecting. It just didn’t happen. I’m a travel agent. I manage a Hillsboro Village travel agency, in Nashville, in fact. All day, every day I make it easy for people to get out of town. Jeb hated to travel, thought it was overrated, pretentious and too expensive. Besides that, he was afraid to fly. Not that he blamed me for that, of course. Jeb hunted. A lot. And he was apparently good at it. His decorating theme was dead animals. Deer, turkeys, foxes. Everywhere I looked, dead animals looked back. And I get squeamish about picking my own lobster in a restaurant. It was that kind of weekend.
By the end of the dance at a nearby country club that evening, we had exhausted just about every potential commo
‘I really don’t think he’s attracted to me,’ I said to Barbara in the ladies’ room toward the end of the evening.
‘Don’t be so picky,’ she said. ‘He’s a very nice man. You need to date a nice man for a change.’
What could I say? Of course, he was a nice man. It had taken me some time, but I had finally realized that it was possible for a man to be nice, attractive, not a menace to society, even liked by children and dogs, and still not be attracted to me.
I heard two months later that Jeb was engaged to another girl from our class. When had that happened? The worst thing was that they hadn’t even called me to book their Mediterranean cruise honeymoon.
So I went to this reunion without a date, and there was an extra place at our table for ten at the barbecue Friday night. The barbecue was at Skunk’s parents’ house, the scene of too many parties in the old days that way too few of my classmates remembered clearly. Old-fashioned, outdoor, colored Christmas lights were strung from the back porch to the unattached garage, lighting up a long table of food and rows of picnic tables. There were coolers of soft drinks, sweating in the melting ice, and kegs of beer.
I happened to be at the end of the driveway reattaching a bunch of balloons to a sign tacked to the mailbox post when a county deputy sheriff pulled up, lights flashing. Busted, I thought. But none of us were underage this time. The deputy opened the trunk of his patrol car and handed over a large glass jug of moonshine to a waiting classmate. A city councilman. I swear. You’ve got to love a hometown where things like that can still happen once in a while.
I was back in the safety of lights and food, sitting with my friends just one table over from Jeb and his bride, and I had just taken a huge bite of a barbecue sandwich when Fly Young walked up. He was juggling a paper plate of food, a dessert plate, and a soft drink. ‘Anybody sitting here? Mind if I join you?’
I nodded while my friends begged him to sit. It was a good thing my mouth was full; otherwise, I’d have been speechless – without an excuse.
Fly Young, born Franklin Lawrence Young, III, had been Fly since the first time he threw a football and it took flight. Knowing adolescent boys, there may have been some zipper humor involved, too, but that never made it out of the locker room. Fly was my first love, and he had broken my heart.
I had been seventeen, and I have never hurt as much since as I did the night I found out that the boy I was in love with, the boy I’d been going steady with for two years, had been seeing someone else, too. A new girl I barely knew. For three weeks. I was clueless, hadn’t even known enough to feel threatened.
He was on the football field, and I had just finished a cheer, little bits of my giant chrysanthemum corsage raining gold on the ground around me, when his best friend walked by and told me Fly wouldn’t be taking me home after the game. And why. He said he’d give me a ride if I needed one, but I had too much pride for that. I’d have walked first. I cried until sometime after three in the morning.
I got over it, of course. I mean, I was only seventeen years old. But it was the first time my heart had been broken, and nothing hurts like the first time. Fly hadn’t been to any previous reunions, so this was the first time I had seen him since high school. I’d like to say his life had been a miserable failure, that dumping me had been the kind of life-defining choice that had foretold the tragic ruin his life would be. Instead he had become a software millionaire, known as Franklin now, not Fly. He’d spent a decade away from Middle Tennessee, then come back to Nashville to found a healthcare software company that dominated the industry. There is no justice.
‘Campbell, you look better than ever! Why was it you broke my heart?’
I managed not to choke on my barbecue. ‘Hey, Fly.’ There were hellos and you-haven’t-changed-a-bits with appropriate embarrassed laughter all around. Fly was introduced to the husbands who didn’t already know him. Occupations and children were reviewed with self-conscious modesty. These were nice guys, good friends. If I had to be a ninth wheel, this was the best truck to be on.
‘What about you, Fly? Your wife isn’t with you?’ Melinda asked. It was a question you had to be careful about these days, but Fly was a fairly public figure. He and his wife were in the Nashville paper often, sometimes in the business section, sometimes in Living, glittering at a charity benefit. I’m in pretty good shape, good hair, blonde. I don’t have to feel embarrassed at the beach, and men still notice when I walk into a room. But she was gorgeous. Long, blonde hair, thin, dramatic cheekbones. Not even my best friends could ask what he saw in her. And she was a rich businesswoman herself. She had started with a diet/exercise plan, which had become a book, Erika Young’s Lifestyle Balance, which had become a corporation, which had become a financial conglomerate. Her photo stared back from every bookstore window display, every airport book kiosk.
‘No, no. Erika couldn’t make it.’ He was silent a moment. ‘Well, hey, I’m among friends, aren’t I?’ he asked, suddenly solemn. ‘We’re separating.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Melinda began. ‘I …’ The rest of us joined in, but Fly shook off the sympathy.
‘No. Thanks, but it’s been coming for years. We just didn’t want to admit it, for the kids’ sake, you know.’ Fly and Erika had two children, a girl and a boy, both teenagers, both star athletes, both good-looking, both in expensive private schools. I didn’t even have a cat. ‘When it finally happens, you take a look at your life, you know’ – Fly looked at me, then back to the group – ‘think about the choices you’ve made, what’s really important. Take stock. It’ll be OK. I’m just concerned about the kids. How to make sure they’re not hurt by this.’ And how to protect the effect on stock price from negative press for Erika Young’s Lifestyle Balance? And with the ease he’d had even as a teenager, he changed the subject. ‘Did Skunk smoke this barbecue? It’s great.’
And the conversation went on with discussions on the varied schools of thought on barbecue. Wet sauce or dry rub. Memphis or Texas.
The Friday night barbecue was a casual event. Children could come if you wanted to bring them. Old yearbooks were spread across a table, and everyone wore a nametag with a photo from senior year, from days when the hairstyle mattered more than the percentage of gray – or whether or not you still had any hair. Some people really did still look almost the same. With others, gray hair, less hair, more weight, life had made a difference, and it was only when you saw the smile that you could see the sixteen-year-old who was still in there. Forms asked for updated addresses, phone numbers, family information, email addresses. Groups clustered and separated, circulating and reforming. You’d see some people heading back to the kegs again and again and think, some things never change. Then again, you’d see somebody who had been a serious partier in the old days nursing a Coke and realize some things did. It was catching up time, as if someone had hit the refresh button on the computer and all the information, all the pictures were instantly updated.
As things were breaking up, I heard Fly’s voice again. ‘So, you’re a travel agent now, Campbell? I wish I’d known that.’ I turned to find him behind me. ‘I travel all the time; we could use a good corporate agent. OK if I call you?’
‘Sure, of course.’ That was not an account I’d turn down. I still had some pride, but I wasn’t stupid about it. I dug in my purse for a card. Office, home, cell phone, address, Twitter, Instagram, website, email address. ‘Here.’
‘Hillsboro Village. I drive through there every day, and it never occurred to me that I was passing your door.’
I smiled. What was I to say to that? ‘Well. Now you know where we are.’
‘I’ll stop by next week.’ He smiled, too. ‘I’ll take you to lunch.’
THREE
Do you remember …
The stars in the sky …
Our dreams for tomorrow …
A faith in forever …
The night’s last goodbye …
Do you remember?
Stick Anderson
Saturday morning was the grown-up version of the start of a high school dance: boys on one side, girls on the other. The tension was gone, though, replaced with a kind of relief. The men played a golf tournament; the women had lunch at a tearoom and shopped at nearby outlet shops.
