"Shouldn't you be talking to Ralph about this?"

As her road show producer, Ralph Thornleaf would have the final say. "I will, but I wanted your opinion, too. I just got the idea last night and I haven't had a chance to call him. So what do you think?"

"You know what I think. I trust your instincts, Tess. If I didn't I wouldn't be letting you coproduce your own albums. I like the girl's voice."

"'How do you think it would blend with Diane's?" Diane Abbington was one of Tess's other two backup singers.

"Her voice is actually a lot like Diane's. I think they might sound all right together."

"And Estelle?" Estelle Paglio was Tess's other harmony singer.

"Estelle can blend with anybody. Why don't I see if I can get those two in here tomorrow when you and Casey are coming in, and we can dream up some excuse to get the three of them singing together, then you'll know. If you want to, we could use them for a little additional backup vocal on "Old Souls." I've been thinking about it anyway, like maybe if we drop some three-part harmony into selected spots we could get a little deeper sound. What do you think?"

"I think it's a good idea. While we're at it, I'll see if Ralph can casually drop around, then we'll all know what the four of us sound like together. Be a good chance for him to meet Casey."

Tess returned to the lounge to join the others. The sax player went home and a fiddle player arrived to work on the next song- Everyone returned to the studio for the evening session. "Don't Leave Me High" was the last song, the spare one they'd record for the new album. The session followed the same pattern as the earlier one-charts, demo, working on parts, laying down tracks until finally, around nine o'clock, the last fixes were put on and Jack called the session over.

When they were driving home, Casey said, "That's the most fun I've ever had in my life."

Her adrenaline was still pumping, Tess could tell. Casey threw her head back and stretched herself out like a surf-board against the car seat. "I want to do this till I'm ninety."

Tess laughed. "You'll need some bionic parts if you do it till then. Like a larynx and lungs, for instance."

"I feel bionic right now! Like I could go all night! Tess, I love you!"

"Well, that's good. I love you, too." "What can I ever do to pay you back?" "The truth is you won't pay me back. Someday when you're forty years old and a superstar you'll give some other beginner a break and pass along the tradition. That's how all of us handle our paybacks."

"I'll remember that. I promise I will."

When they got home Casey called her dad immediately. She used the phone in the kitchen while Tess

leafed through the mail that Maria had left on the counter. "Jeez, Dad, it was so great! I mean, when I heard the sound coming through my earphones it was like, wow-I mean this really major rush, you know? And we recorded it again and again and again, and everybody was really nice to me. Dad, the studio musicians were guys who played with Ricky Nelson and Graham Nash and everybody you could think of! The best talent in town, and they treated me like..." Casey went on and on, filling her dad's ear while Tess moved in and out of the kitchen, to and from her office. After about ten minutes she heard Casey call, "Hey, Tess, Dad wants to talk to you!" Tess was sitting in her office so she answered there. "Hi." She grinned. "How's your ear?" He laughed, and said, "That's one excited girl." "Hey, I wish you could've been there. She did great. Our voices are really good together." "I know. She told me. And told me and told me." It was Tess's turn to laugh. In the living room Casey started a CD playing and the sound of Tess's voice spilled through the house at high volume. "Just a minute..." She swiveled around in her chair and turned it down on the wall speaker. "There, that's better. Your daughter likes her music loud, plus she's making herself right at home."

"Hey, if she's too-"

"No, don't worry," Tess interrupted. "Casey and I get along just fine."

"Well, thanks again for today, for everything you're doing for her."

"Kenny," she said, and tipped her chair forward, elbows to the desktop. "I'm going to try something

tomorrow. We have to go back into the studio to lay down another vocal track and I'm going to have Casey sing along with two of my backup singers-I mean the two who go out on concert tour with me. There's a third one, Carla, but she's got a thyroid condition that's taking her out of commission for maybe as long as two years. The long and the short of it is, if Casey's voice blends as well as I think it will, I may be asking her to go on concert tour with me, starting at the end of June."

The line went silent.

Finally Tess asked, "Do you have any objections, Kenny?"

"You're moving kind of fast with her, aren't you?"

"Yes," she admitted honestly, and waited for his response.

"This scares me, Tess."

"I imagine it does."

"Too much too soon."

"She knows every word of every song I've ever recorded, and not only that, she knows the backup

vocals to a T. The plain truth is, she'd be doing me a favor. I wouldn't have to go through all those tedious rehearsals to train a new girl. We could do it quite easily in a week or two." Silence passed again, and she wisely let it.

After a long time, he released a pent-up breath... then nothing. "We open the concert tour at Arrowhead Pond in Anaheim on June twenty-eighth. The first concert is already sold out, so we've agreed to do a second one on the twenty-ninth. Can you imagine your daughter singing in a place with eighteen thousand ticketholders filling the seats? I have this fantasy, Kenny," she went on, "it's of you, sitting in the front row of Arrowhead for Casey's first public performance, then coming backstage to hug her and congratulate her and drink champagne with us. What do you think?"

Again he let out a breath, then an uncertain laugh. "You've caught me so off guard here."

"Think about it. I'll send you tickets for the gold circle. Maybe you can bring Momma, too. She just

might be persuaded to come, if she could travel with you and Faith."

"Faith, too? You want Faith to come?"

"Well... no, not especially, but how could I send tickets to you and not to her?"

"Tess, listen, it's... I don't know what to say. Besides, you haven't even heard Casey sing with the

others."

"No, but I have an ear. I think I can tell what she'll sound like. Tell me yes, Kenny, so I can ask her with your blessing. It's important to me."

"All right, then, yes. Hell, what am I saying?"

Tess smiled. She knew when she'd see him again!

"All right, then!" she said with excitement in her voice. "Save June twenty-eighth and I'll see you in

Anaheim!"

"Tess, wait!"

"What?"

"Call me tomorrow night. Tell me how it went in the studio." "Of course. Do you want to talk to Casey again?" "No, just tell her good night. And one more thing..." "What's that?" "I think I love you. Last night I was sure. Tonight I'm not so sure... depending on what happens to my daughter's life because of you."

She laughed, and said, "I'm not going to let anything happen to her. I love that girl."

"Oh, you love her but not me?"

"I didn't say that."

"So you love me, too?"

"I didn't say that either. Good night, Kenny."

"Good night, Tess."

She was smiling as she hung up. And, actually, she was pretty sure she loved him.

CHAPTER NINETEEN.

The second day's session went the way Tess expected. Casey's voice blended with the others so well that there was never a question she was the right choice. When they all sang together it clicked. Tess could tell by catching the eyes of Diane and Estelle that they, too, liked what they heard. When the song ended Diane said with engaging sassiness, "Whoa, you cook, girl!"

With the approval of Jack and Ralph, Tess asked Casey right there in the studio if she wanted to go on tour, starting at the end of June, it was fun watching her face suffuse with shock.

"You're kidding," she said. "Me?" ."Yes, you."

"But... but why?"

"Because you know my music. Because your voice blends. And because you're easy to get along with."

Casey dropped onto a chair, and whispered, "Holy shit."

And so began one of the busiest months of Tess's life. June was traditionally a wild month in Nashville anyway, kicking off with the Summer Lights festival-a three-day street fair down by the capitol-and a celebrity Softball tournament at Greer Stadium. Then came the TNN Music City News Awards, followed by the most intense week of contact with fans to happen anywhere in the world, namely Fan Fair, when twenty-four thousand of them paid admission into the Tennessee State Fairgrounds to pay homage to their idols at close range, at booths set up in the cattle barns; to shake their hands, have snapshots taken with them, bring them homemade pies, tell them their babies were named after them, buy T-shirts, caps, coffee mugs, and albums, and have all these moneymakers signed, signed, signed!

There were times during Fan Fair when Tess did nine or ten radio interviews a day, plus a three-hour stint at her own booth and sometimes another at the label's booth. There were also newspaper and TV interviews, autograph-ings at record stores and, of course, some performing. She lost track of how many times a DJ with a tape recorder stuck a microphone in her face, and asked her to say "Hi everyone! This is Tess McPhail coming to you from KMPS, Seattle!" Or perhaps he was from Tulsa, or Albuquerque or Sweetwater, Oklahoma. Wherever the DJs were from, during Fan Fair, when they asked you to give them a recorded message to take back home to your fans, you did it. There were meetings with fan club leaders from all over America, even special awards for some of them, dinners with disk jockeys, and special get-togethers with managers of record shops.

It was a grueling week, but Casey stayed beside Tess through its entirety, and Tess was grateful to have her there. She ran errands, brought cold Cokes, sold T-shirts, made phone calls, took snapshots with the cameras the fans handed her so they could have their picture taken with Tess. But most importantly, she smiled through it all and brought along her boundless energy to lift Tess's spirits when, at the end of an eighteen-hour day, the overworked star wanted nothing so badly as to cry with weariness.

For Casey it was novel, exciting. Every new experience was reason for rejoicing: she was getting a firsthand look at the hard work of being a country music star, and deciding it was definitely what she wanted for herself.

When Fan Fair ended, concert rehearsals began.

Mac's stage show was an extravaganza of lights, costumes and equipment requiring a dozen semitrailers to haul it all, and fifty employees to make it work, as well as another twenty local hands in each concert venue. Everybody worked hard preparing for the tour, and Casey was no exception. Since time was tight and workdays long, she continued to live at Tess's house.

She called her father every night, or he called her, and at the end of each conversation he asked to speak to Tess. Often the two of them were on the line longer than he'd been with his own daughter, and it seemed they never lacked for things to talk about.

He told her about his business.

She told him about hers.

He talked about the church choir.

She talked about the concert rehearsals.

He kept his eye on Mary.

She kept her eye on Casey.

He said he'd ordered a new car.

She said she'd ordered her road manager to set aside three tickets in the gold circle for him and Faith and her momma, for the concert in Anaheim, even though Mary hadn't committed yet. Then she asked, "You're coming, aren't you?"

He paused a telltale beat before answering, "Yes... I'm coming."

Her breath seemed in short supply and the one thing she wanted to say was much too significant. She said it anyway.

"What about Faith?"

"I haven't asked Faith."

"You haven't?"

"No."

"Why?"

During the long pause before he spoke again, they felt the leap of awareness that signals change. At his end of the wire Kenny leaned back against the kitchen counter, staring down his legs. At her end she was lying on top of her bedspread, staring at her index finger lying motionless in a curl of the phone cord. Both of them were reliving the night of the wedding reception. His voice, when he finally answered, was slightly gruffer, slightly quieter.

"I think you know, Tess," he said.

A long silence passed, filled with the intimacy of the unspoken. It was the first moment they seemed to run out of things to say.