Lydia gave me a small, tentative smile and then went over to Maddy and Kayleigh and immediately engaged them in a hand clapping game. I took a sip of my ice-cold coffee and felt marginally more capable.
Then I looked down at the sheet music and all feelings of competence fled. "Alright, listen up!" I called, my voice hoarse. "I want to run through the first number, just singing, no dancing, okay? Let me just hear how it goes. I'll play the melody one time, just so you remember it - " and I learn it, I didn't say, "then you'll sing it for me, sound good?"
"Thank you!" they chorused. Clearly Gid had taught them about how the theater world responded to directions. I wished he was here.
Blinking, I sat down. Smoothing my sweaty palms down the front my slacks, I sat there a second, staring at the music in front of me.
It was a sheet of staff paper. Gid had formed each note with a dull pencil. Hesitantly, I picked out the melody line and as I did, a smile stretched over my face.
It was simple. Beautiful. A lilting little minor key intro that made me instantly nostalgic for something I couldn't remember.
Was this what was hidden there in his tapes? This beauty?
My fingers were rusty and my sight reading was terrible, but I managed to stumble through the first verse of the song, blinking through my tears for Gid. I must have gotten the gist of it, because the kindergartners were humming along with my playing. That was promising. Maybe I'd be able to do Gid's music justice after all.
I played the final chord and then cleared my throat. "Okay great!" I called. "Now this time you join in with the words!"
I counted down and started to play and a gabble of voices joined in. Thirty-three kids sang at the top of their lungs, shouting in an off-key aural assault. I tried to struggle through the first verse, then gave up and held up my hand. "Okay cut!" I called peering at the music. I felt out of breath and ready to bolt from the room. "Ah, okay then," I said, trying to get myself back together again. "That was a little disorganized, right? Some of you weren't even singing the right melody."
"Um, it's called harmonizing?" a snotty fifth grader spoke up, with a pronounced eyeroll. That had to be Brayden.
"Mr. King had you singing harmonies?" I asked.
"I'm a soprano!" one of the third graders preened.
I narrowed my eyes. Was he insane? These were grade schoolers, not a professionals. Most of them couldn't even read music. Some of them couldn't even read.
I felt like I was clinging to the side of a cliff and losing my handhold fast. "Okay," I said, "we'll talk about that a little later." I leafed through the music trying to see if he'd written harmonies for all of the songs and -
Wait -
"What the fuck, Gid?" I breathed.
"Miss Riley swore!" a second grader shouted, clapping her hands over her mouth. There was an eruption of scandalized giggles, and I knew I needed to rein them in quickly or I'd never get the room back under control but I was too busy staring at the lyrics for the very last song.
I'd been so focused on being able to play the music last night that I hadn't paid any attention to the words Gid wanted these kids to sing.
Thirty three sweet voiced elementary school kids. Standing in front of their proud parents, singing about lonely love lost on the road out of hell? Gid had lost his mind.
"Okay we're done!" I shouted with my head buried in my hands. "Rehearsal's over! Time to go home!"
Chapter Eighteen
Jonah
Finn wandered through the kitchen, scratching his belly on his way to the coffee maker. "Mornin' sunshine," I said from the breakfast bar. "Haven't seen you in a while."
It was an exaggeration, but only a slight one. My youngest brother still technically lived here, but he was rarely around. He'd always needed more alone time than the rest of us. Too much time around people made him volatile.
"I've been here," Finn said as he poured coffee into a chipped, ancient mug. He leaned against the counter. "And you're here too."
"I'm here," I repeated.
Since Gabe's accident, things had slowly started feeling if not normal, then at least not terrible, with my brothers. Gabe must have said something to the twins, or maybe Beau had just figured it out with his scary mind-reading abilities, but I was feeling like they might actually be glad I was here.
It was weird. I was sort of glad to be here too.
"Is that Gabe out there?" Finn asked, glancing out the kitchen window towards the front of the house.
I chuckled. "Yeah, his new bike is getting dropped off today."
"And he's just...waiting for it?" Finn rolled his eyes. "That's pretty pathetic."
I shrugged. "Guess the cast is driving him nuts. He's bored out of his mind."
A wicked gleam shone in Finn's eyes. Out of the five King siblings, he was the only one who'd ended up with blue eyes. He was lean and wirey, with light brown hair that got easily bleached out in the summer time. Meanwhile his twin brother had dark hair, dark eyes, and a big bushy beard now to go with his big, burly frame. Now that we were out of the band and there was no one to make them dress alike anymore, they barely even looked like brothers, much less twins. "What are you thinking about?" I said, suddenly wary.
"Messing with him," Finn said, grabbing his coat from the hook by the door.
I shouldn't have even needed to ask.
The delivery wasn't supposed to arrive until eleven in the morning, but Gabe had been out in the driveway since 10:30am, pacing. His coat was slung over his shoulders to accommodate the cast the ran from his wrist to his elbow, but he shivered all the same. He was that excited about his new motorbike.
"Oh hey Gabe?" Finn called, all innocent helpfulness. "The delivery guy just called the house. Said there was a delay or something?"
Gabe turned so fast he might have given himself whiplash. "What?" he cried.
"Yeah." Finn took a slow sip of his coffee, torturing him. "Yeah, he said something about how the company doesn't want their bikes being ridden by giant doofuses? Messes with the branding."
Gabe's face turned red, and then crumpled in relief. "I'll never understand why Beau didn't just absorb you in the womb," he sighed as Finn cackled. "We'd all be so much better off."
There was a far off rumble. "There it is!" Gabe said excitedly, as the delivery truck appeared through the trees.
"And there it goes!" I laughed as the delivery truck missed our drive and continued down the road.
"See, I told you," Finn said, acting put-out. "They don't want giant doofuses screwing with their image."
"Oh, goddammit," Gabe sighed. He pulled out his cell phone and stalked away to yell at someone else besides his brother.
Finn was laughing even harder. "I couldn't have planned that if I tried,'" he wheezed. "It just drove right past him. That was beautiful."
"You're evil."
"I'm hilarious." He wiped his eyes and they drifted over to the turn-out at the end of the driveway where my rental car was still parked. "Hey, how much longer are you going to keep that?"