the band members on a private yacht heading down the Mexican Riviera to Puerto Vallarta. The yacht was supposed to get them some attention in the emerging markets south of the border. No one had seen the sales reports from their last CD yet, but they were likely to be discouraging and Phil’s plan was to get the band solidly in front of the Latin market before the U.S. market started to shrink. The band members were supposed to look like the carefree successful young musicians everyone thought they were as they said “Hola” to their new fans in various ports.
After six straight weeks on the road in this bus, it was going to be hard for any of the guys to look carefree. But for Duane it would have been impossible. The doctor had given him some prescription lozenges for his throat, but he looked too sick to party anywhere except in an isolation ward. He’d taken one look at his face in the mirror on the bus and decided he couldn’t get on that yacht, not if he didn’t want people to start asking why he looked so bad. No one was going to pay any attention to a note from his doctor. The press would have him dead and buried at sea before he knew what happened. Or, worse, just too old to be in the teenage market.
The truth was Duane felt bad, too. He ached all over. He didn’t want to worry about sales figures and what the band should do next. He didn’t even know what the band should do next. All he wanted to do was to go home and crawl into his bed and stay there for a month.
The problem was he didn’t want to go home to his bed in Hollywood. His house there was all starkly modern with red adobe walls and black marble floors. He’d never felt that he belonged there. There wasn’t even any food in the house.
No, when Duane had thought of home, there rose up in his mind the comforting picture of his old bedroom in his great-aunt’s house in Dry Creek. He had come to that house kicking and screaming, but it had been the first home he’d ever really known. His mother, when she had been sober, had rented hotel rooms by the week. When she wasn’t sober, which was most of the time, they lived in her old car.
His great-aunt Cornelia had changed all that. Even though it had been only herself and Duane, she’d insisted on regular meals together, church on Sundays and hair that was combed for school. Even with his great-aunt gone, his old bedroom in that house drew Duane with its memories until he told everyone he was going to drive the tour bus up to Montana so he could spend some time in his old home.
He must have been delusional from the fever when he said that. He’d completely forgotten all of the reasons why it would be a very bad idea to go back to Dry Creek. The house in Dry Creek would be cold and empty. Great-Aunt Cornelia wouldn’t be there to greet him with her stiff little smile. The cupboards wouldn’t have any food, either. The people of Dry Creek still wouldn’t know what to do with him.
And then there was Linda Morgan. Even a cold, empty house would still give him a warmer welcome than Linda would. She was the only woman who had ever rejected him—actually, she was the only woman who’d had the chance to reject him. But a man had to be a fool to go wandering into her territory when any number of other women would be happy to marry him. Assuming, of course, that he had any time to get to know them, which he unfortunately didn’t.
No one had told him that being a rock star would ruin any life he’d planned to have. Although, the thought had been coming to him lately, that maybe he didn’t really want a life after all. That maybe the idea of having a real life scared him to death. That when he asked Linda to marry him someday, he’d never really expected someday to come. A man like him had no business getting married anyway. He’d never even seen a marriage up close. He wouldn’t even know how to fake being a good husband.
All of which made him wonder why he was back here in Dry Creek.
“Yeah, it was the fever,” Duane muttered to himself, which only set Phil off again.
Phil had refused to let Duane go off alone when he was sick and Duane didn’t have the energy to fight him on it. Phil had his career invested in Duane’s voice and Duane respected that. The rest of the band had started muttering about needing a new manager, but Duane held fast to Phil. The man had been with the band longer than the people who were now in the band. Phil had been the one constant when old band members left and new ones came in. He’d helped build their sales with his crazy promotional schemes; he deserved to be there more than any of the current band members. It was only fair.
“Forget about maybe having a medical clinic to preserve people’s lives,” Phil muttered quietly. “There’s nothing else in this place, either. It’s spooky. I thought when you said you were going home, there’d at least be—things.”
Duane took a moment to swallow. If he went slowly, he could manage a sentence. “I told you Dry Creek was small.”
Duane reminded himself that his decision to keep Phil was a good one. Although he might mention to the man that sometimes he talked a little too much. That conversation would have to wait until a time when Duane could also talk.
“Small is Boise. Or, at worst, Butte,” Phil continued. “I didn’t think a place could be this small and still be a town. There isn’t even a Starbucks here.”
“Coffee at café,” Duane rasped. Maybe he could write out a note to Phil about the talking thing. Yes, that’s what he’d do—when he had a pencil. And a piece of paper. And the heart to do it.
Phil peered out into the blackness. “I don’t see any café. What’s the name of the place? There should be a big neon sign on top of it.”
“No name.”
“Everything has a name.” Phil turned to Duane in astonishment. “How do they get any business if they don’t even have a name?”
Duane almost didn’t speak, but he had to defend the café. “Business good.”
He knew that for a fact because his old Sunday school teacher, Mrs. Hargrove, wrote him letters now and then and told him what was happening in Dry Creek. He had asked her to keep him informed about his great-aunt’s house and Boots, but the letters tended to ramble until they included the whole town. The older woman was sensitive enough not to write about Linda, but she always said how the café was doing. Apparently, the café served a homemade blackberry pie these days that rivaled the pies his great-aunt used to bake. He’d been homesick ever since he heard that, remembering his great-aunt and the blackberry pies she used to serve.
Maybe all he’d come back here for was a piece of pie.
Phil was leaning closer to the tinted windows on the right side of the bus. “I can’t see anything else, either. And there’s only one streetlight. How does anyone see anything in this place?”
Duane followed the direction of Phil’s eyes. “One light’s…enough.”
Duane didn’t have enough voice to explain that the residents of Dry Creek wanted to see the stars at night and too many streetlights would interfere with that. His great-aunt had carefully explained it to him. The town actually voted not to have the county put in more lights. He’d thought, at the time, that the town was voting itself back to the Dark Ages. In contrast, the Chicago he remembered had been lit up like a torch. He couldn’t believe the people in Dry Creek weren’t worried about crime.
Phil shook his head. “I’ve never seen this kind of darkness. And emptiness. What do people do with all this space? They should build a couple of skyscrapers. Or at least those big storage places. Even if people didn’t want to be here, they could ship their stuff up and store it here. I wonder if they know how much money they could make with storage. Maybe then they could afford to put up some streetlights.”
Duane cleared his throat so he could defend his town. “Good place.” Duane swallowed. It had taken him years to make his peace with his feelings about the town, but he had. “They have stars—and national park for Custer’s Last Stand.”
“And they have you,” Phil said with a touch of enthusiasm as he turned to look fully at Duane. “I don’t know why I didn’t think of it earlier. You grew up in Dry Creek. People always love it when their celebrities have humble roots. The one thing I’ll say for this place is that its roots couldn’t