by Vivian Lux
She was sitting in the front room, which was odd. Usually this was men's space, but when I looked again, I saw that my father was seated silently, with his head bowed in prayer. In the folding chair next to him sat a woman I vaguely recognized. She was short and squarely built and her light brown hair was streaked with gray. Her equally square husband was seated closest to me. In between them sat a reed-thin young man I didn’t remember at first, then wracked my brain. "Levi?" I asked.
He looked up at me with a flash of desperation in his eyes that he quickly masked before looking back down at his feet again. His father gave him a rough sort of nudge. "Hi Rachel," Levi said tonelessly.
"We should give glory on this blessed day," my mother trilled. She folded her hands. "Father we thank you for revealing your plan to us, your faithful servants."
I ducked my head and squeezed my hands together, miming piety even as my head was racing. What was going on? What was the plan she was referring to? And why was my own father allowing my mother to lead the prayer? That was usually a man's role. "We know you have chosen us to walk a narrow path, but we know it will lead only to glory."
Murmured amens didn't do anything to clarify what was happening. Levi's mother mouthed a few more silent words of blessing and then opened her eyes. "We believe it is a good match. Levi has assented and we have prayed on it."
"So have we," my mother nodded quickly.
I looked between them both. "What is going on?"
My mother looked at me with her hand clasped to her heart, her eyes half-lidded in rapture. "It's Providence. God's holy will." She gestured to the red-faced young man with the blue eyes. "Rachel! Levi has agreed to marry you!"
Chapter Forty-One
Rachel
"No!"
I leaped to my feet, shouting before I could stop myself. No. I couldn't marry Levi. I didn't love Levi. I loved....
"No," I repeated. I looked at Levi. "I can't marry you."
Tears swam in my eyes and in the watery haze, I swore I could see Beau's hazel eyes filled with pain. What had I done to him? I loved him, but I never even told him.
And now I never would.
"Rachel?" my mother hissed through her smile. "You're overwrought, I know. It's a surprise. You didn't mean to be so rude."
I blinked. Everyone in the room was watching me with varying degrees of horror on their face. I blinked again, remembering Rebecca's accusations. How my family had suffered because of me. "I'm sorry," I said, keeping my voice low so it wouldn't shake. I gripped my skirts in my hands. "I was just surprised because..." I seized on a glimmer of hope. "Mother, have you told Levi about how... how it's not possible for me to—"
"Providence has smiled upon us," she repeated with a wild gleam in her eye.
Baffled, I stood up and looked at the man who refused to even look at me in return.
"Levi?" He jerked when I said his name. I tried to smile. He must have been as freaked out as I was. "May I speak with you?" I looked around at the room. "If we are to be married and all."
"I will allow it," Levi's father said.
My own father glowered. "Ten minutes."
I nodded and ducked my head. Levi looked around as if he wanted someone to object, then glumly followed after me,
I rushed out of the sticky, humid house and into the marginally less sticky, humid outdoors, then tried to take a deep breath. Without meaning to, I looked again toward the place where the detective had turned around. Even from way over here, I could see the deep ruts his tires had carved into the mud as he left this place. If I followed his tire tracks, they would take me back to Beau.
And then I remembered that Beau wasn’t in Crown Creek anymore. He’d left to go record with Claire and his brothers… was it today? Time had swirled together so I could barely recall how many days it had been since I left. Was it today that he was going to New York City? Yes, it was.
Hope that I hadn’t even realized had flared in my chest like a candle lighting the gloom inside of me suddenly snuffed out. Beau was gone too, and I didn’t even know how long it would be until he came back. And what would I do when he finally did come? Explain that I had chosen obligation to my family over my love for him?
The family that was trying to marry me off to a man I had never met?
"Rachel?" Levi's voice was higher than I had expected. I turned to see that he was as tall as I was, with a noticeable stoop to his shoulders.
But none of that mattered right now. "You really want to marry me?" I demanded.
He looked taken aback at the direct question, but I didn't care. "Is this really what you want?" I pressed.
"It's God's plan."
I blinked at the desperation in his voice. "You really think so?"
"I've prayed on it," he said, even more desperately. Like he was trying to convince himself as much as he was trying to convince me.
"Right but..." Heat rose to my cheeks, but this was not the time to let shame get the best of me. "You know I'm barren, right?"
I expected him to rear back. Having children was the most important calling of a Chosen wife. But he only closed, then opened his eyes. "It does not matter to me."
"How?" I demanded.
"I was one of the fosters," he went on in that same dispassionate voice. "I feel a great calling to raise children like me."
"Oh." All the pieces clicked into place. If we raised fosters together, then my infertility wouldn't be an issue. In fact, we'd be greatly admired in the community. There would be a place for me. A future for me. This should have been a relief. "Then I guess it all makes sense then?"
"Yes, it does," Levi said firmly. He reached out his hand. "Shall we go for a walk?"
I looked down at his hand, stunned that he'd even consider it until he rolled his eyes.
"You are my intended. It is allowed."
"Right." I let his hand close around mine, feeling like I was committing a terrible betrayal. The simple slide of skin against skin made me ache for Beau, that hollow place that only he could fill opening wide inside of me again.
Levi led us on an aimless walk around the fronts and then the backs of the houses along the main row. I wondered what he was doing until I realized. He was making sure we were seen.
And we were. Up and down we walked in front of everyone, making it public. I looked and saw that my younger siblings were out now, playing with other kids and not being shunned. My parents were inside entertaining Levi's parents, and later Levi's mother would most likely help my mother prepare a meal while the men talked. When I returned, I restored my family's good name. Marrying Levi would cement it.
I had to do it.
The weight of it settled on my shoulders. Once our allotted ten minutes was up, we returned to my house. At the bottom of the front stairs, Levi let my hand fall. Without that touch, my hand felt cold and I grieved the loss of contact. Something to hold on to. "Levi?"
He turned. I thought he might kiss me. I wanted him to kiss me. I was lonely and heartbroken and I missed being kissed.
"We'd better go in," my future husband said. And he turned his back on me and walked away.
Chapter Forty-Two
Beau
Twenty-four hours ago, I was living in the country and in love with a girl I hoped would come back to me any minute.
Now I was in the middle of a noisy, clanging city - though I couldn't hear any of the noise because I'd been locked in a soundproof studio with my four siblings since early this morning - and the girl I loved was lost to me. It didn't seem possible that everything could have changed so completely and I could somehow still be the same person.
But I was. I was still Beau King, the keyboardist for the world-famous King Brothers, now just called The Kings because Claire was currently trying to fit her harmonies into our old songs.
It wasn't going well.
"Guys!" The tech flicked on the PA and then noticed Claire glaring at him. "And girls," he amended. "We're way behind schedule here. Should we take five?"
/> The soundproofed studio was cramped and small and smelled like coffee. Every inhale reminded me of Rachel and her love of the once-forbidden-to-her drink. For all of what we'd seen of the city that never sleeps, we may as well have stayed in the shed on my parents' property, in the studio we'd recorded in as kids. This was ridiculous and I opened my mouth to agree that yeah, we should take five, and maybe more.
But my brothers beat me. "No!" Jonah and Gabe barked in unison, then looked at each other. Jonah lifted his chin. "We're gonna get it, just..." He rubbed his hand from the back of his head to the front and then back again. "Just, give us a few more minutes to come up with something, okay?"
The tech looked skeptical but obliged by leaning back in his chair and resuming looking bored. I sighed and stared down at the white keys on my keyboard and wished it was a grand piano.
We'd asked for the rehearsals to be recorded, with the idea that we might get some footage for a possible DVD release in the future. But so far, all we'd gotten was footage of us bickering like a bunch of children.
"I don't know what the problem is," my sister sighed as she picked at her nail in that bad habit of hers she got when she was anxious.
"I know what it is. You're flat." Jonah sighed heavily.
"I am not!" Claire was immediately defensive. "This song is in the weirdest fucking key!"
"She's not wrong," Gabe pointed out, waving away her shouts of "See! See!" to go on, "We were all singing this shit back before our balls dropped. I can't hit these fucking notes anymore." He dragged his hand down his suntanned face. His jetlag was showing. He'd met up with us late last night - still on Vietnam time - and was now going on his thirtieth hour without sleep.
"But it's a fucking reunion show," Jonah said through gritted teeth.
"We're all older. We've all gone and done different things with our lives in the past two and a half years." Finn's temper was flaring. "I know I'm not the same fucking person I was two years ago and if these people show up expecting to see us staying exactly the same, they're fucking crazy. We're not going to be able to sound the same. We're just not." He glared at our oldest brother. "And no amount of you yelling at us is going to change that."
It was a testament to just how right he was about us changing that Jonah listened to all of this without getting defensive. "Look, I'm trying not to be a micromanager like before," Jonah said as he glanced at Gabe. It was a testament to how much Gabe had changed when he just nodded warily, acknowledging the bad old days between them without bringing them up again. "But the people that show up for this, they're going to expect to hear the old hits," Jonah went on.
"That’s true." Gabe rolled his eyes. "And you know how much it pains me to admit that." Jonah scratched his nose with his middle finger, which made Gabe tackle him. And that's how I knew things hadn't really changed that much at all.
The familiar sight of my two older brothers wrestling on the ground should have made me laugh like usual. But I sat there at my keyboard and watched them, and couldn't feel a damn thing. Not happiness, not gratitude for the second chance we'd been given, not even irritation that they were wasting the little time we had to rehearse together. The only thing I felt was lost.
Lost. Never to be found.
Gabe's flailing leg hit my stool right as the lyric sucker punched me in the gut. "Wait!" I shouted over the grunting din. "I have an idea!"
Finn looked at me, already sensing what was coming to me. "New song?"
Gabe slipped out of Jonah's headlock and sat up. "Whaddya got?" he asked.
The snatches of vocals flitted through my head. Amazing Grace, as sung by Rachel, her high, pure voice singing words of grace and healing. It hurt like nothing had ever hurt before to see her sweet face in my mind's eye as she turned her face toward that sunbeam in my living room as I played the piano for her that first day she sang for me. But that hurt was a feeling, unlike the numbness that had weighed me down ever since I'd hung up on Detective Jenkins. "Paper," I said, reaching out my hand.
"Is this how he gets?" Claire asked as Finn put a piece of paper and a stub of pencil in my hand.
"Sometimes." Finn sounded excited. "And whenever he gets this way, the shit that comes out is pure fucking gold."
Gabe leaned over my shoulder, watching as I scrawled a few couplets, then savagely erased them. He wrote the music, then handed it over to Jonah who added the hooky beats and soaring bridges. Jonah then handed it back to Finn who figured out the harmonies around the melody that Gabe had already worked out. This was the way it had always been, and Claire watched with wide eyes as the four of us became one brain. "Open with the chorus?" "Yeah and then the—" "Beat drop, right here." "Fuck, that's sick but wouldn't we—" "Shoot the load too quick, nah man, transpose the key in the last verse." "Doesn't that sound—" "Right, it's got that eighties power ballad feel and—" "Shit, yeah that's fucking gold, what's the hook?"
"Claire!" Jonah shouted way too loudly. He shoved a piece of paper at her and then plunked out a melody on his guitar. "Sing that. We need a solo female vocal right there." He raised a challenging eyebrow. "You can hit that note, right?"
She scanned the paper quickly and then scoffed. "Stand back, boys." And then my sister belted out an updated version of Rachel's hymn. "Lost and found / how sweet the sound." The sound tech leaned forward, flicking on the cameras as we fell into a rough take.
Claire glanced at me as she sang the words I'd written, understanding in her eyes. Sympathy too. I had to look away as I played the chords that my heart had chosen. Watching her sing those lyrics that seconds ago I'd barely allowed myself to acknowledge felt too private. I'd written it for Rachel, but it hurt to hear it sung aloud. Because what I'd written?
It sounded a lot like I was saying goodbye.
I didn’t want to say goodbye. I wasn’t ready to say goodbye.
When the song was over, I squeezed my eyes shut. My siblings were respectfully silent.
Then the PA clicked on again. "There it is," the tech declared.
I opened my eyes to see my siblings all nodding. The tech was right. As heartbreaking as it was to play that song, it was also perfect. It sounded like a continuation of the songs we used to sing. Like we'd grown up but were still the same people. It sounded like the Kings.
"Guys...and girl." This new voice belonged to a label rep. "Listen, I know you said you just wanted to record some new material for a special reunion download, but this is fucking gold. You make a whole album like this? And we're in business again."
He switched off the mic as the five of us looked at each other in amazement. A new album? Getting back together for real?
Then he switched the mic back on and said my name. "Beau?"
"Yeah?" I snapped out of my stupefied reverie. "What's up?"
"One thing. If we're gonna take you on again, you gotta ditch the lumberjack look."
My siblings burst out laughing.
That night in the hotel room, I shaved off my beard. As I watched the hair swirl in the drain, it felt like I was watching the past two years drain away. Like they had never happened. Seeing the naked face in the mirror, I could almost believe it.
But when I fell into bed, exhausted and sad but happy at the same time, my hand reached out to twine into a braid that wasn't there next to me. And I knew that, as much as I wanted to pretend, those years had happened. And that the song I'd written wasn't a goodbye song. It was a "come-back-to-me" song. As sleep overtook me, I could almost hear her sweet voice singing it in my ear.
Chapter Forty-Three
Rachel
The smell of rust hung heavy in the humid air inside the meeting house. I breathed shallowly, but the smell made me nauseous. As did the lack of windows and the way Levi's shoulder pressed into mine.
I was seated on the left side of the aisle with his family rather than with mine. Since the announcement of our betrothal, I'd felt myself being slowly absorbed into his family, forced to spend time in the kitchen with his mother, and awkward dinners wi
th his foster siblings who all ignored me and passed food over my head, forcing me to duck. Nights I still spent with my own family, but most of that was spent sleeping like the dead with exhaustion after Levi's mother ran me ragged all day doing chores for her, so I rarely saw them. I'd returned for their sake. But this wasn't how I'd envisioned it.
The silence of prayers spread out, seemingly forever. I closed my eyes and tried to find peace. I squeezed my eyes shut and begged whoever was listening to make this feel right. To show me that I had made the right choice. "Give me a sign," I soundlessly begged.
I opened my eyes again and stole a glance at the man who was to be my husband, opening my heart to the idea of him. He seemed decent, almost too polite with me. He had blue eyes that were watery first thing in the morning. I had told him an allergy pill would help him, and then remembered that those were forbidden.
I always seemed to make those mistakes around him. Laughing too loudly, trying too hard to talk. Levi seemed to prefer me silent...and in a different room. But I vowed I would keep trying, desperate to find something to cling on to - a stray compliment, an admiring glance - that would make me feel...
Feel good again.
Levi finished his prayers with a sigh and looked upward again. I smiled at him. A small flutter of hope that this was it, the moment where we connected. He looked back at me with his watery blue eyes, holding my gaze...
And then his gaze slid right past me and back up to the front of the meeting house once more.
My stomach sank like a rock. No. That couldn't be my sign. I'd just have to keep looking.
The Elder at the front called for hymns. I stood with the rest of the Chosen, and then my heart skipped when the first strains of “Amazing Grace” began. We had sung it my first day back. Was that really only a week ago? It felt like a lifetime. I closed my eyes against the tears that seemed like they were always close to falling and wondered if Beau felt the same way when he heard it. I hoped he wasn't too angry that he couldn't hear the beauty in the words. I hoped he'd found some kind of grace inside of himself that made my betrayal not sting so much.