AnnieLee fabricates a past for her Rolling Stone interviewer, saying she’s from a place in Tennessee “so small it didn’t even have a real name” and that her father played the banjo and her mother the guitar (224). She talks about how she grew up off the fat of the land, became orphaned, and saw music as her ticket to a better life. When Sarah asks about the inspiration for her songs, AnnieLee replies that “they come from my life […] so they’re true, but only up to a point” (226). She wants to tell stories that are universally relatable.

Afterward, AnnieLee tries to summon Ethan, who has been eavesdropping. However, he’s nowhere to be found and she sees him only on the plane ride home.

Ethan is surly and silent all the way home. He worries about handing AnnieLee the guitar he made for her because it would be like giving her his heart, and he has doubts about this because he knows so little about her. In the car from the airport, he finally confronts her about the fact that she never shared with him any of the things about her Tennessee past that she shared with the journalist in LA.