A Song for the Season

Falling Apart

Dad wakes Tenney at 6:30 AM, flipping on the lamp beside her bed, with the promise that she can collapse into her own bed once they get home tonight. She showers and dresses fast, and by the time she and Dad haul their suitcases down to check out, the sky has turned a bitter, swirling gray.

They grab doughnuts at a coffee shop and head south toward Sevierville, a little under ninety miles away and their last stop before Christmas. Zane declares it the last day of the tour: two shows left, and then they can finally drive home.

Tenney daydreams about sleeping in her own bed with Waylon curled at her feet, but the excitement fades when she remembers how much rides on tonight. Slouched with his headphones on, Logan looks glum, like he’d rather be anywhere else. If she and Logan fall apart onstage again, Zane won’t want to sign them to make an album. She taps Logan’s shoulder and tells him these last shows need to count. He answers with a flat grunt and turns back to the window. Still stinging from their fight the day before, Tenney swallows her hurt rather than let Dad and Zane see them arguing again.

Sevierville turns out to be a small town near where Dolly Parton grew up, its storefronts strung with thousands of twinkle lights for its Winterfest. They pull into the lot at Sevier Middle School, already filling with families, and a round man in a Santa hat calls a couple of stagehands over his walkie-talkie, then leads Logan and Tenney down cement hallways to a classroom to warm up.

Once the door shuts, Logan asks what’s going on with Tenney. She snaps that he’s the one who’s been impossible to reach, and he reminds her that yesterday she yelled at him mid-show, and now she’s acting like it never happened. Tenney insists she was only trying to be nice, that they have to be awesome because if they bomb this show, Zane will… Then she stops, unable to finish.

Logan looks at Tenney expectantly. She admits she overheard Zane telling Dad that the last two shows have been rocky enough that he’s no longer sure he wants to sign them. Logan is stunned, then hurt, demanding to know why she kept it from him. She explains she tried, but he always had his headphones on or his eyes on his phone. He tells her that instead, she just kept crucial information about their future to herself. Tenney realizes too late how wrong that was; it wasn’t fair for her to decide alone what he did or didn’t get to know.

Before either of them can say more, Dad declares it’s showtime. Logan grabs his drumsticks and follows Dad down the hall, Tenney trailing in silence. Behind the closed curtain, kids’ voices bubble with excitement. Logan settles behind his kit while Tenney slings on her guitar and steps up to the double microphone stand, both making their final adjustments without a word. She glances at Logan, who refuses to meet her eyes, and takes a steadying breath, bracing herself to perform as though nothing is wrong between them, because there’s no more time to fix it before the curtain opens.