For the first time in her life, she had a chance to put her own stamp on a place. It wouldn’t be a copy of anything she’d had before or anything that’d been given to her. It was hers, absolutely, and so were any mistakes she made here, any triumphs. There’d be no press to compare this isolated spot in western Maryland with her mother’s mansion in Beverly Hills or her father’s villa in the south of France. If she was lucky, very, very lucky, Maggie thought with a satisfied sigh, there’d be no press at all. She could make her music and live her life in peace and solitude.

If she stood very still, if she closed her eyes and didn’t move, she could hear the music all around her. Not birdsong but the ruffle of air through branches and tiny leaves. If she concentrated, she could hear the faint trickle of the narrow creek that ran along the other side of the lane. The quality of silence was rich, flowing over her like a symphony.

There was a place for glitz, she mused, and for glamour. She simply didn’t want that place any longer. The truth was she hadn’t wanted that place for a very long time but hadn’t known the way out. When your birth had been celebrated by the international press, your first step, your first words, cataloged for the public, it was natural to forget there was another way of life.

Her mother had been one of the greatest blues and ballad singers in America, her father a child actor turned successful film director. Their courtship and marriage had been followed religiously by fans around the world. The birth of their daughter had been an event treated like the birth of royalty. And Maggie had lived the life of a pampered princess. Gold carousels and white fur coats. She’d been lucky because her parents had adored her, and each other. That had compensated for the make-believe, often hard-edged world of show business, with all its demands and inconstancy. Her world had been cushioned by wealth and love, rippled continually with publicity.

The paparazzi haunted her on dates through her teenage years—to her amusement but often to the boys’ frustration. Maggie had accepted the fact that her life was public domain. It had never been otherwise.

And when her parents’ private plane had crashed into the Swiss Alps, the press had frozen her grief in glossies and newsprint. She hadn’t tried to stop it; she’d realized that the world had mourned with her. She’d been eighteen when the fabric of her world had torn.

Then there had been Jerry. First friend, then lover, then husband. With him, her life had drifted into more fantasy, and more tragedy.

She wouldn’t think of any of that now, Maggie told herself as she picked up her spade and began to fight the tough soil again. All that was really left of that portion of her life was her music. That she would never give up. She couldn’t have if she’d tried. It was part of her the way her eyes and ears were part of her. She composed words and music and twined them together, not effortlessly, as it sometimes seemed from the fluid finished result, but obsessively, wonderingly, constantly. Unlike her mother, she didn’t perform but fed other performers with her gift.