Music City (5 page)

Trent slowed some, but not much. He hired more employees, but still continued to work nearly as hard as he ever had. Trent loved his job, and he loved nothing more than the thrill of finding an unknown and turning them into a star.

Trent handled as much business as he possibly could from their comfortable tour bus. When he needed to be with one of his clients, they would stop at the nearest airport, and he would fly to where his clients were, then fly back to his family. After Tracy and Vani were older, Trent would often take them with him on these spur of the moment trips. The children had loved watching their father work, watching him fix things that seemed hopelessly broken.

Looking back, Tracy wasn’t surprised that a heart attack had claimed his father at such a young age. One minute he was on the phone, giving directions to someone and the next minute he was lying on the floor, dead. His heart had simply exploded, that is what the doctors had said. Vani was seventeen and Tracy fifteen when Trent died.

Shelly nearly lost her mind. It was Vani and Tracy who held their mother together. Vani took over, she directed calls, she canceled shows
, she did everything a manager would have done even though she was only a teenager. Everything their father would have done, Vani did. Tracy stayed by Shelly’s side, and helped Vani as much as he could. He answered the phone, typed letters and answered mail from their legion of fans for his parents. They made it through together, and after some time, Shelly finally came through her mourning stronger than before.

She stopped touring as much and focused more on Trent’s side of the industry—she felt she owed that to her husband and the family name. Soon, Shelly only played concerts during the summer months to very select cities. As her focus had shifted to managing other stars and their careers, she found that she did that as well as Trent had. And surprisingly, it seemed her lack of touring only made her even more popular with her fans.

It was Vani who had the real head for the show business industry, she was a natural. She continued to work with her mother while doing her undergraduate studies in less than three years at Belmont University, where she earned a Music Business Degree. After finishing at Belmont, she went straight into Vanderbilt Law School, specializing in contracts and entertainment law, all the while still working. After finishing law school, her client list began to grow, she started to get calls from all over, and her client list now ranged from musicians to authors to professional athletes.

Tracy was the more nurturing of the two children, he had always liked helping his mother, keeping her organized, and just being the general go to person when either of them needed something.

Tracy was born organizing, according to Shelly. She often told him the story of finding him in his bedroom when he was barely five, categorizing his story books into alphabetical order. In a world where chaos often reigned, Shelly marveled at her son, methodical, precise and neat, always knowing where anything was in the house. Tracy didn't find it strange, it was simply how his mind worked. If something was out of place, he put it back where it belonged. If it didn't have a place, he created one for it. Everything made much more sense to him when there was structure and order.

The only area of Tracy’s life where structure and order flew out the window was when he wrote. He loved to write, short stories, poems, songs, anything—and hoped one day to be able to write bestselling novels, that was his dream.

Tracy felt if he were going to be a truly great writer, and not just a mediocre one, he needed to get away from the entertainment industry and experience people, places and things outside of it. When he saw the ad in the paper for a secretary for a new private investigative firm, he was intrigued. He knew that working for the firm would give him the opportunity to meet many different people from all walks of life. If he was fortunate, those colorful people would provide him with inspiration for plots and characters. When he told his mother and Vani what he planned to do, they teased him for wanting to be a secretary for a few minutes but then Shelly declared that of course, she fully supported his decision—and both were ecstatic for him when he came home and told them that he had gotten the job.

Tracy hoped that the invitation he had extended to Alex and Derek to attend his mother's barbeque tonight didn't scare them away. Most people were impressed when they came to their home; Tracy knew his father had intended it that way when he built the sprawling fifteen thousand square foot mansion for them, and those were people who were used to the excess and extravagance of the Nashville elite. Alex and Derek were new to the Nashville scene, and Tracy was afraid they would be intimidated when they saw their home.

The Mediterranean style gran loggia with its porte-cochère was built for entertaining the masses, just as Trent had planned. Trent had painstakingly went over every minute detail of the house, from the beginning planning phases with the architect, to the initial ground breaking, to the last drop of water being put in the swimming pool.

While planning it, Shelly and Trent could not come to a consensus on flooring; Shelly wanted wide walnut plank floors, Trent wanted Italian marble. And so, the estate boasted both, beautiful wide plank walnut floors linked with Italian marble. Surprisingly the combination worked. The Italian marble flowed out of the house and around the entire pool and spa area. The entire home had Venetian plaster walls and ceilings delicately, intricately created by artists, instead of plasterers it seemed, in subtle earth tones that served to enhance the home’s elegance.

A state of the art wine room shouldered the recording studio in the basement, and next to that was the den, a game room that boasted a screen as big as any movie theater. On the first floor, the foyer opened to the dining area and from there, led to the huge chef’s kitchen, every caterer’s dream. The kitchen as well as the entire back of the house spilled out to the Marble patio surrounding the pool. If the ten bedrooms with en suite baths weren’t enough, for good measure, a guest house sat at the back of the property. All of this, their dream home, sat on twenty acres
, which was actually considered small by Nashville expectations.

Tracy just hoped that Alex and Derek didn’t feel uncomfortable, it was important to him that they see what he saw when he looked at his mom, and that was that she was just a really nice lady who happened to be famous.

“Oh my,” Alex said as he drove up the long driveway that led to Tracy’s home.

Derek sat with his mouth open as he took in the mansion and the grounds surrounding it. “I was prepared for something… spectacular, but never in my wildest dreams could I have imagined anything like this.”

“I didn’t think people actually lived in houses like this.” Alex replied.

Derek shook his head, still amazed by the house standing before them, “But you know, Tracy is a good guy, if he grew up here, then someone is doing something right. They’re just people like everyone else in the world.”

Alex shook his head, “Not everyone in the world is a cazillionaire.”

Derek laughed as he rang the bell, “You’re right, but hey, not everyone is as good looking as I am either.”

Alex snorted and was about to come back with a witty remark when Tracy appeared at the door smiling at them. “I’m so glad y’all could make it,” he said giving them his best smile, “c’mon in, Momma and Vani are in the back.”

‘The back’ it turned out, was indeed the back of the house. It seemed like they walked an inordinate amount of time to get there. As they walked, Tracy was pointing out that this part of the house was only used when they were entertaining, they didn’t use it on a day to day basis. The architecture was amazing; the Mediterranean theme was carried throughout, at least of what they had seen so far.

White stone pillars stood sentry in the great room they had just come through, the arches led off to different areas of the room. The earth tones on both the walls and in the marble seemed to make the room feel like a more relaxed atmosphere than Derek had anticipated. Fresh floral arrangements graced the top of just about every conceivable surface; roses, mums, lilacs, lilies, chrysanthemums and many flowers that he did not recognize lent the air an intoxicating aroma.

When Alex spotted the massive wooden bar gleaming at one end of the room, he had to stop and admire it.  “My goodness, I think this is the most beautiful bar I have ever seen in my life, Tracy.” 

Tracy smiled, “Daddy built everything to impress…”

“Mission accomplished, my friend.”  Alex noticed that he could see his own reflection in the gleaming wood.  “Mission accomplished.” 

Tracy pointed to an arched doorway, “Let’s cut through the chef’s kitchen, it’s a little quicker that way.”

Derek couldn’t help it, “Chef’s kitchen?” he questioned.

Tracy laughed, hoping his anxiety about the home didn’t show. He did not want his new friends and employers to be uncomfortable in his home. “Yeah, whenever we have to host a massive celebration or get-together, the chefs use this kitchen to prepare all the food. It’s just a commercial kitchen, so they are able to put out the massive quantities of food that is needed when you have two or three hundred people here. My parents always preferred this to just hiring caterers to prepare somewhere else and transport here.”

As they walked through, Derek realized that indeed it looked like a kitchen just about any restaurant would be envious of. Nearly all stainless steel, with six wall ovens built in to one of the walls, several large sinks were scattered through the room, and a massive stove top with what looked like at least ten burners were under an enormous hood. More than one chef would be required to serve so many people and those chefs would need room to work. They definitely had room in here.

They left the kitchen and entered another large room, this one with windows dominating the wall space. On the long wall leading outside, six sets of wrought iron doors, set in arches, with what could only be hand-crafted arboreal motifs, as each set was a little bit different than the next, led out to a patio area. The marbled and partially walled-in patio circled an Olympic sized swimming pool, potted palms, banana trees, and other various tropical plants. As his feet shuffled closer in a daze, he noticed an in-ground spa on the far end next to a thatch hut with a wooden sign on the door displaying 'sauna' and chuckled nervously.

Tracy led them through to a partially enclosed area that held several very large built in barbeques, a massive stone fireplace, and another enormous bar, this one made of rectangular slabs of dark brown stone. The area was dotted with small seating arrangements for groups
of four to five people.

“We use this area a lot more than we do the front of the house.” Tracy smiled. “Momma loves to grill out when she has smaller groups of folks here or even when it’s just us.”

Neither Alex or Derek said a word, they just followed Tracy. What was there to say? Neither of them had ever been in any home that was this magnificent or grand. They were awestruck, even though the area they were in now was less formal than the area they had just left.

Tracy opened another set of doors and motioned them to walk through. When their eyes adjusted, they saw they were in another dining area, though still large, this area was much smaller than the area they had walked through to get here.

A massive round oak table was the focal point of this area. The table must have been twelve feet across and had what looked like a dozen chairs around it. Further back, there were bar stools sitting at a granite island that was at least fifteen feet long and it was beset with a small arrangement of hydrangeas, with a large layered pan rack hanging overhead. The copper bottoms of the pans gleamed, even in the soft evening light. This kitchen was infinitely smaller than the chef version; this one looked like it belonged in a regular, though still large, home.

Dark wooden cabinets gleamed, and a smaller stove top, this one with only six burners, sat sunken in the counter top along one wall. Two massive sub-zeros gleamed on another wall near a double set of built in double ovens. Along the ceiling, atop the cabinets, a dark wooden trellis-like wine rack ran across the whole expanse of one wall.

To the right of the kitchen-dining area, an almost normal living room expanded the space. The main thing that set the living room apart was its size. There they saw pictures of Tracy and the rest of his family lining the walls.

Tracy turned to them, “Please, come in and have a seat, make yourself at home. What can I get you to drink?”

Just then they heard laughter and two women entered the room from the arched cast-iron doors at the far end. Almost immediately, Shelly and Vani were at Tracy’s side. Derek and Alex were struck by how beautiful both women were.

Shelly, not what Derek had expected, was a sprite of a woman with beautiful dark hair like Tracy's, cut just beyond her shoulders. Her bright blue eyes seemed to sparkle and dance when she laughed. She wore a simple blue sundress that seemed made to bring out the color of her eyes.

Vani was a tall, beautiful blonde, quite the contrast to her mother in all ways, except for her eyes, she and her mother shared the same exact sparkling blue eyes. Tracy and Vani both stood head and shoulders above their mother and Derek assumed that they must have inherited their height from their father. Vani looked comfortable in a pair of blue shorts and a white tank top that showed off her beautiful skin tone.