Perfect Rhythm

by Jae

  “No. I’ve known that for years. I just wasn’t ready to tell you. I meant that I only now admitted to myself that I love her. But she does know that I’m asexual.”

  “So that was what your brother was hinting at?” her mother asked. “That she doesn’t mind you not wanting to sleep with her?”

  Holly nodded while her mind was busy repeating that last phrase. Not wanting to sleep with her… That wasn’t exactly what being asexual meant, although it did boil down to this for most aces. But it would probably overwhelm her mother if she tried to explain the finer nuances of sexual attraction right now.

  Her mother let out a deep sigh. “If you feel this is the way you are, then I’ll accept it. It just makes me a bit sad to think that you’re missing out on such a wonderful aspect of a relationship. Your father and I—”

  Holly slapped her hands over her ears. “Lalalalala. I really don’t want to hear about this.”

  Her mother laughed. “Okay, okay. No details. But it’s still something wonderful that I would have wanted for you.”

  “Wonderful by your standards,” Holly said. “Do you ever feel like you’re missing out by not eating broccoli?”

  Her mom wrinkled her nose and shook herself as if smelling something foul. “Why would I? You know I hate broccoli.”

  “See? It’s not that I hate sex, but I wouldn’t seek it out, and I certainly don’t feel like I’m missing out on anything.” She made eye contact. “Please don’t judge me by your standards or think my relationship is any less normal or important.”

  Her mother stared down at her folded hands on the table, then back up. Finally, she nodded once. “You’re right. I don’t understand it, but I accept it.”

  That was it? She had agonized for years over whether and how to tell her mother, fearing she might not understand, and now her mother just accepted it?

  Holly struggled to speak through the lump in her throat. “When was the last time I told you how much I love and appreciate you?”

  The laugh lines around her mother’s mouth deepened, and her eyes shone. “Earlier, when you came in and smelled the ham balls.”

  They laughed together.

  Then her mother sobered. “I just want you to be happy—by your standards, not mine.”

  With tears in her eyes, Holly got up and rounded the table for another hug. “I’m getting there,” she whispered into her mom’s shoulder.

  Leo sat in the front pew of the church, next to her mother.

  When the organist began to play Pachelbel’s “Canon in D,” her mother’s silent tears turned into all-out sobs.

  Leo wrapped one arm around her and bowed her head. If only she had picked another piece of music… But maybe it wasn’t the music that had made her mother cry. Maybe it was that her father had played the organ in this very church every Sunday for more than thirty years.

  Finally, the organ faded away, and the minister began his homily.

  The words rushed by Leo without her grasping their meaning. All she could do was stare at the casket at the end of the central aisle. The mahogany shone in the sunlight streaming through the stained-glass windows. Her father lay on the white satin in the starched shirt and tie he had always worn to church. Part of her still couldn’t believe that this was him, that she would never again be able to talk to him. Now, in death, he looked softer, more approachable than he had when he had been alive.

  Leo hoped that meant he had made peace with his life before he had died.

  The minister started to read from the Bible. When he was done, it would be her turn.

  She shifted on the pew. Why did they have to be so hard? She resisted the urge to bounce her knee up and down while she waited for her turn to speak. Her hand repeatedly slid to the folded piece of paper in the chest pocket of her blazer, just to make sure it was still there.

  Finally, the minister wrapped up his reading. “Leontyne, Gilbert’s daughter, has some words she would like to share with us.”

  Suddenly, Leo wanted nothing more than to keep sitting on the uncomfortable pew. She squeezed her mother’s arm, got up, and walked over to the lectern to the right of the altar.

  She took out her notes, slowly unfolded them, and smoothed out the pages before laying her speech on the lectern. The microphone was a little too low, so she reached out and adjusted it to her height. She must have stood in front of a microphone a few thousand times during her career, but never had her fingers been this unsteady.

  Slowly, she looked up and out over the casket at the crowd of black-clad people.

  The church was filled to capacity. A few people even stood at the back of the church because every seat was taken. Everyone in town had known her father, and now they were all staring at her, waiting for what she would have to say.

  She searched out Holly’s face in the sea of people. There she was, sitting with her family. Last night, during the visitation at the funeral home, Holly had been by her side, helping her through it all, and when Holly now gave her an encouraging nod, Leo nodded back. She could do this.

  Her gaze zeroed in on the slightly wrinkled notes. She had labored over them all day yesterday, but they hadn’t gotten any better. They sounded more like the introduction of a keynote speaker at a conference than a eulogy for her father.

  Holly made eye contact and mimed crumpling up her notes and tossing them aside. She mouthed something, and Leo could guess what it was. Speak from the heart, Holly had told her.

  She’s right. Anything was better than this impersonal speech. After she had finally found the courage to talk—to really talk—to her father that last night, this felt like a step back.

  She folded the pages and put them back into her pocket.

  Holly smiled at her, thawing that frozen feeling that had overcome Leo.

  She leaned in to the microphone and did what she had done with “Odd One Out”: she just let everything pour out. “I had a speech prepared, but a very wise woman told me to speak from the heart, so I think I’ll try that instead.”

  An approving murmur went through the audience. Well, they didn’t know yet what she was about to say.

  “First, thank you all for being here today. I think it would have made my father proud to see how many people came to honor him. For the last two days, I tried to find the right words to do the same—to honor him with this eulogy. After all, that’s what giving a eulogy is all about: talking about the traits of the deceased that you admired and sharing some happy memories, right?” She let her gaze sweep over the pews.

  Several people in the front rows nodded.

  “Right. And I wish I could stand here and do that, but I feel like I hardly knew him at all.”

  Someone in the back of the church cleared their throat.

  Leo clutched the sides of the lectern with both hands and continued. “You see, my father and I hadn’t talked in fourteen years. Even when I went home for my grandmother’s funeral, we sat next to each other in this very pew,” she nodded toward where her mother sat, “like we were complete strangers. In many ways, that’s what we were. We never understood each other, even before my father had the second stroke and could hardly talk anymore.”

  She kept her gaze on Holly while she spoke, without glancing toward her mother. If she saw a look of disapproval on her mother’s face, she wouldn’t be able to finish this—and she needed to.

  “Truth be told, I didn’t try very hard. I thought I already knew how every conversation with him would end: with us going our separate ways in anger. So while I’ve been home for four weeks, I didn’t spend much of that time with him, and he seemed to prefer it that way.”

  It felt strange to stand up here and say that, almost as if she were talking about someone else. Her face and mouth were so stiff that she could hardly form the words.

  “It wasn’t until the night before he died that we finally talked, and I starte
d to remember all the good things about him that I had forgotten. His integrity and strong work ethic. His sharp mind and his tenacity. If he made a promise, he always followed through, no matter what, and he expected the same of others. He taught me the value of hard work and to stand up for what I believe in…even if he didn’t always like my beliefs. I discovered that we had more in common than I had thought. Not just our passion for music, but the way we dealt with problems—by avoiding them.”

  She tried a smile, but her lips didn’t cooperate. “We avoided talking for fourteen years. We almost waited too long. I nearly missed my last chance to talk to him. I would have never known a lot of his attitudes toward me had changed over the years.”

  Her eyes burned, so she reached up to wipe across them with her thumb and forefinger. She stared at the tears on her fingertips. God, this was hard. “Don’t make the same mistake. Don’t leave too much unsaid. Tell the people in your life how much they mean to you before they’re gone.”

  More words wanted to come, but they all tangled up somewhere between her chest and her mouth, so she finally gave up and stepped down from the podium.

  On the way back to her seat, she touched her fingers to her father’s casket. The smooth mahogany beneath her fingertips grounded her a little. She took several deep breaths and slid back into the pew without glancing at anyone.

  What would her mother say? Airing their dirty family laundry in front of half the town certainly wasn’t what she’d had in mind when she had asked Leo to deliver the eulogy.

  A handkerchief appeared in her line of vision.

  Leo took it and blew her nose before reluctantly turning her head.

  Her mother was smiling at her, even with tears in her eyes.

  Smiling! Leo stared.

  “Thank you,” her mother whispered and took Leo’s hand.

  “But…but that wasn’t exactly what he would have wanted me to…”

  Her mother squeezed her hand, interrupting her. “Sometimes, it’s not about what you want; it’s about what you need. He needed to hear that years ago. All three of us did. And maybe some of them,” she tilted her head toward the people in the pews behind them, “did too.”

  The opening notes of the organ amplified around them, and everyone stood to sing a hymn.

  Leo didn’t let go of her mother’s hand as she rose too.

  The rest of the service passed in a blur. Before Leo knew it, they were following behind the hearse to the cemetery.

  Again, she barely heard a word of the minister’s prayer.

  The sun beat down from a cloudless, blue sky. Leo stood next to the open grave, which was surrounded by countless wreaths and flower arrangements. Ashley had picked lilies for the casket spray, she realized only now.

  The minister nodded at them to come forward.

  Her mother’s hand trembled as she placed a rose on the closed casket, but Leo’s was strangely steady. What she had said in the church had been her farewell to her father, not this flower.

  One of her father’s colleagues played a mournful melody on the violin as the casket was lowered into the ground.

  When the minister finished with “ashes to ashes, dust to dust” and dropped a handful of earth onto the top of the casket, her mother clutched Leo’s arm painfully tight, and Leo gently rubbed her hand.

  When the last notes faded away and the violinist lowered his instrument, a very familiar sound interrupted the sudden silence: the click of a camera shutter.

  Leo looked up.

  Two paparazzi stood at the edge of the cemetery, half hidden behind a stand of trees. Another had stalked closer, clad in black so he would fit in with the mourners. Several black SUVs with dark-tinted windows were parked along the gate.

  As the press vultures continued to snap picture after picture, Leo clenched her hands into fists. For the first time, she really understood how helpless her father must have felt after his stroke.

  God, she had been a fool to reject Saul’s offer to send PR people and security guards for the funeral. She hadn’t wanted the pack of babysitters that guided and guarded her career to intrude into her life in Fair Oaks, and she had assumed she wouldn’t need them. So far, the press either hadn’t found her, or they had something more interesting to report.

  She should have known they would want to cash in on pictures of a mourning Jenna Blake.

  “Oh my God!” Her mother gasped. “What are they doing? They’re taking photos—here?”

  Leo gritted her teeth. “Not much is sacred for them.”

  Instead of dispersing now that the funeral was over, the townspeople crowded around Leo and her mother, shielding her from the paparazzi.

  The rapid-fire click-click-click of cameras ended abruptly as a very determined Holly, followed by her brothers, Travis, Jenny, Ash, Chris, and several others, marched toward them.

  Leo’s eyes stung with tears. She had expected the people of Fair Oaks to rat her out to the press the day of her arrival in town, but not only had they not given her away, now they were closing ranks and standing up to protect her.

  Hidden behind her circle of human shields, she couldn’t see what was going on at the other side of the cemetery, but a minute later, the black SUVs pulled away and sped down the street as if the devil were chasing them.

  Holly pushed through the crowd to get to Leo. Her blue eyes were lit up with righteous fury but then gentled when they turned onto Leo. “You okay?”

  Leo could only nod.

  “Don’t worry.” Zack gave her a pat on the shoulder. “They won’t be back.”

  “I know.” Leo sighed. “Why would they? They’ve already got the shots they were after.”

  “No, they didn’t.” Grinning broadly, Zack held up an SD card.

  Next to him, Travis presented two more.

  Leo gaped at them. “How did you…?”

  “You don’t want to know.” Zack straightened his tie, which had become askew.

  “You didn’t hit them, did you?” Not that they didn’t deserve it, but she didn’t need headlines such as Violence at Superstar’s Dad’s Funeral.

  “No,” Holly said quickly. “It was Sasha who got them to hand over the SD cards.”

  “Sasha?” Leo blinked over at Holly’s friend.

  “Well,” Sasha said, “I told them I’m a police officer and that if they weren’t gone within three seconds—without the SD cards—they’d get to enjoy the hospitality of our local jail for a week while I came up with some creative charges and lost the paperwork a few times.”

  Leo stared at her. “You bake scones for a living.” Fantastic scones, but still…

  Sasha smiled and shrugged. “But they don’t know that.”

  With a shaking hand, Leo pocketed the three SD cards. Maybe without knowing it, Sasha had found the only thing that could stop the paparazzi: the threat of being stuck in some backwoods county jail while their deadlines were ticking away and other paparazzi were out there, making boatloads of money on celebrity photos.

  “Thank you,” she got out, her voice rough. It wouldn’t keep the paparazzi away for good; she knew that from experience. But it meant the world to her that the townspeople had stood up for her, and maybe it would make the press vultures more careful about where they took photos.

  Holly put a hand on her shoulder. “Come on. Let’s get back to the church. The lunch they prepared for us should be about ready.”

  Still surrounded by half the population of Fair Oaks, Leo and her mother made their way back to the car. Apparently, she hadn’t just misjudged her parents; she had also misjudged the entire town.

  Chapter 20

  “What is this?” Leo held up the world’s ugliest bow tie pinched between her thumb and index finger.

  Her mother looked up at the pile of things she was going through. A laugh exploded from her, a sound that had been rare si
nce her husband had died two weeks ago. “That’s the bow tie your father wore on our first date. I didn’t know he kept it.”

  Leo eyed the green-dotted thing. “It’s a miracle you went out with him a second time. Wow. To think that my very existence was almost thwarted by a bow tie.”

  “Thank God it wasn’t.” Holly leaned across the to-be-discarded box and gave Leo a gentle kiss.

  Leo hummed against her lips. The open affection Holly showed her was like a constant ray of sunshine that lit up her days.

  “So,” Leo said when Holly had turned back toward her stack, “where does it go?” She dangled the bow tie over the box of things to be thrown away.

  “Don’t you dare!” Her mother tapped the box to her right. “It’s a keeper.”

  Leo groaned playfully and reached into the drawer to continue going through her father’s things. Maybe because most of his possessions had to do with music, notes kept swirling through her mind, coming together to form snatches of a melody.

  Before she could decide whether she was ready to listen or should chase it away with a shake of her head, her cell phone rang, drowning out the melody in her mind. She pulled it out of her pocket and glanced at the display.

  It was her manager.

  She had wondered when he would call—and what she would say once he did.

  “Sorry.” She looked from her mother to Holly. “I have to take it. It’s Saul.”

  “Go ahead,” her mother said with a smile. “I’ll use the distraction to make sure the bow tie doesn’t end up in the wrong box.”

  Leo chuckled, handed over the bow tie, and accepted the call. “Hi, Saul.”

  “Hi, Jenna. How are you doing?”

  How strange. For a moment, she hadn’t realized he was talking to her. She hadn’t been Jenna in six weeks. “A little better every day,” she said, looking at her mother, who slid her fingers over the bow tie in a gentle caress before placing it in the box of things to keep.

  “That’s great. Um, listen, I don’t want to be indelicate, but…when are you flying back home?”