I watch them 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 my real story, 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.

Two years of blonde hair dye and brown contact lenses.

Two years of being Joy, but feeling none.

I count the time like a prisoner on death row — all remaining appeals expired, all hopes of a lesser sentence extinguished. There will be no early release for good behavior, no glimpse of sunshine at the end of this tunnel. I am serving a life sentence. One I chose, perhaps, but that does little to lessen the blow.

Leaving Los Angeles was hard enough; staying gone has been far more difficult than I ever could’ve imagined. My new life, the one I built for myself as far from the lights of Hollywood as I could possibly get without crossing international borders or vast oceans, isn’t glamorous or star-studded. No one asks for my autograph or screams my name on the street. There are no paparazzi hiding in my bushes when I go for my sunrise walk on the beach every morning, my feet submerged in the cool waters of the Atlantic during the few warm months New England experiences.

No music in my heart. No lyrics in my head. No love to stir my soul.

I wake. I breathe. I sleep.

A ghost of a girl.

Not so much a life — merely an existence. And yet, being there, being no one, is still less terrifying than being back in Nashville. I’ve been hiding in the shadows so long, the world feels glaringly bright against my eyes. My pace quickens as I approach the line of towering oak trees where I left the car. I’m eager to get back to my little seaside cottage on Cape Cod where the memories don’t tug at me quite so viciously. I can’t be here, can’t be in this city, without thinking of…

Him.

I don’t let myself say his name, don’t let myself remember the rasp in his voice or the angles of his face or the feel of his hands on my skin. Regardless… he’s everywhere. Around every bend in the road, saturating the air that fills my aching lungs. Two years, and the pain in my chest has never lessened. Two years of cursing his name, shutting him out, locking my heart away along with my memories… and he’s still there, poised on my lips like the lyric of a song I can’t get out of my head.

He didn’t come to the funeral.

Not that I expected him to — he only met Gran once, and that was years ago. Long before everything fell apart. Long before we fell apart. Still, I found my eyes scanning the crowd rather too intently earlier, as I watched the parade of mourners making their way across the cemetery behind the dark-tinted windows of my rental car.

Stupid.

Why would he come? I don’t have any clue where he spends his days anymore. What his life looks like, now that I’m no longer a part of it. I closed off that part of myself the minute I crossed the border of Los Angeles County, heading east… driving till I literally ran out of land halfway up the hook of Cape Cod in a town so quiet, the seagrass blowing on the sand dunes is the loudest sound for miles.

It still wasn’t far enough to outrun my memories.

Earlier, all of Nashville came out to say their goodbyes to the great Bethany Hayes — all the ones who can carry a tune, anyway. Old friends, lifelong fans. Musicians and bar owners and industry icons. My heart clenched when I spotted Issac, my one-time boss and owner of The Nightingale, looking totally uncomfortable in a suit as he lingered on the sidelines, waiting for the priest to start the ceremony. Carly, my friend and former co-worker, looked grave and pale in her sleeveless charcoal dress as she took a place beside him.

Watching as the small section of folding chairs slowly filled with distant family members I met years ago, before Gran got sick and my parents burned all our bridges, I found myself holding my breath, waiting for two familiar, middle-aged figures to appear amongst the gathered mourners.

There’s my Aunt Kim and her new husband… there’s my cousin Devyn with her girlfriend… a few family friends whose names I can’t recall… Gran’s old housekeeper… her longtime attorney Jerry…

But not them.

Not the two people who raised me.

Maybe raised is too strong a word. They didn’t raise me. They forged me like fire does a steel blade, a hellish blaze that made me stronger in spite of their best efforts to burn me into ash and bone.

I was more surprised than I should’ve been that they didn’t show up. My parents have never thought much of family ties — evidenced by the way they sheared every one of theirs clean-through on a blind quest to control Gran’s assets when she was first diagnosed with dementia.

It’s for the best that they didn’t come. I haven’t seen them since I left Hawkins, two days after I turned eighteen, when I hopped on a bus bound for Nashville, bones still rattling from the wrath in that house. With the exception of a single phone call my father once made to The Nightingale — a goading threat that he’ll always track me down, no matter how far I run — we’ve had no contact at all.

That’s exactly how I’d like it to remain.

Finally at the car, my hand reaches for the door handle as my mind calculates the driving time back to the airport. Jerry Perry, Gran’s long-standing attorney, asked me to swing by his office on my way out of town. I’m hoping whatever he wants to discuss won’t take too long — my flight back to Boston is scheduled to depart in six hours. If I miss it, I’ll be stuck here until morning.

My fingers go still on the door handle when I hear the unmistakable sound of shoes crunching against the gravel path as someone steps out from behind the tree line and comes around the trunk of my car. A shadow falls across my back. Every hair on my body stands on end as my mind tumbles with all the possibilities of who might be standing there…

“Felicity?”

Heart in my throat, I whirl around. My fingers are already curled around my keys, preparing for a swift strike to the eyes or a metal-laced punch to the gut. I freeze when I see it’s not a paparazzo with a camera shoved in my face or an equally unpleasant alternative. There’s a stranger standing there in a navy blue suit — early thirties, slim build, wire-rimmed glasses. His eyes are laser-sharp as they scan my face, my hair, my eyes hidden behind the huge dark sunglasses.

“Felicity Wilde?”

I don’t respond — I’m frozen, feeling totally exposed. He takes my silence for some sort of unspoken confirmation because the next thing I know, a large white legal envelope is being whipped from his briefcase and shoved into my hands.

“You’ve been served,” he says bluntly, turning on a heel before the words are fully out of his mouth. He makes it a few steps before he stops, glances back, and scans me head to toe, taking in my little black dress and tear-stained cheeks.

“And… sorry for your loss,” he tacks on halfheartedly, as though it’s only just occurred to him that serving someone papers in a cemetery might be a tad off-color.

Lawyers. What a classy bunch.

Without another word of explanation, he disappears down the dusty stretch of road toward the wrought-iron gates, where a black town car is half-concealed in the lengthening late-afternoon shadows. Numb with disbelief, I look down at the envelope in my hands. I instantly recognize the logo embossed on the corner, as well as the name scribed on the return address label.

Francesca Foster

Senior Partner

Route 66 Records

I’m being sued by my record label.

And here I was, thinking this day couldn’t get any worse…