His Sweetest Song

by Victoria H. Smith

  Turning in her combat boots, she bounced her curls, the nicest grin on her face.

  “Wasn’t sure if you heard me so I was going to go to the back like the note said,” she exclaimed, swiveling around. She lifted the beer. “You didn’t go to the bonfire before so I was going to bring the party to you.”

  That was very sweet of her. I was coming to associate her in that way regularly.

  “And what is with the sign?” she questioned, angling her head a little toward it. “I mean, did I do it right? The knock and—”

  I waved her off, not even having the energy to explain it to her. Stepping inside, I grabbed my tennis shoes from inside the door.

  “You said something about a party right?” I asked, tipping my chin toward the beer. “Because if so, let’s go. I’d love a break.”

  Ava took me deep into the woods later that day, behind my aunt’s property and away from the working men and women who operated on my aunt’s house. Case of beer in hand, Ava asked about that during our strides to which I could only say, “progress.” We’d been getting there and I wanted to surprise both her and the rest of the town with what I had planned.

  Among working over the passing weeks, I’d been speaking to some developers and potential buyers of my aunt’s property. If it went to the right person, some serious money could be flowing in and right into the pockets of the people who lived here. If my aunt’s land ended up being transformed into a potential attraction for tourists that could only be good for Mayfield and its small businesses.

  And would they have a site to see.

  My sneakers scraping the sand, I took it all in, a scenic landscape of a crystal-clear lake and the expansive display of trees surrounding it. Winding, the lake weaved along the bank and behind the trees, its soft run rushing over smooth rock and algae.

  “Beautiful,” I said, my hands bracing my hips. I wasn’t much of a nature girl, but this, yes, this was amazing.

  Flanking me, Ava came up on my side in her shorts and tank. Setting the beer down, she popped a squat and began taking off her boots.

  I joined her, wanting to feel the sand under my feet as well.

  “It’s your aunt’s you know,” she said to me, stacking her boots beside her. She opened up a beer with a device on her keychain, then handed it to me before opening one for herself.

  Sipping the cold brew, I was well aware this was all Josephine’s. I just hadn’t experienced it.

  Ava smiled, taking another swig. “Do you remember all this?” she asked, tilting her head. “She took us here before as kids and didn’t mind us coming out here before she passed. Like I said, we have our bonfires out here all the time.”

  Waving her off, I told her of course I didn’t mind too, but I wished I could tell her what she wanted to hear about the former.

  I dragged my finger across the sand, trying to feel something.

  “I don’t,” I told her, looking up. “I don’t remember. I want to remember.”

  The brain was selective. While I had faint memories of her and of course some of my aunt, this place seemed to have been a casualty of my mind.

  Ava’s smile wavered a little by what I said. Nursing her beer in her hand, she shook it toward the lake.

  “Well, that’s okay,” she said. “It’s been a long time.”

  It didn’t seem like it was okay, but I guess I had to take her word for it.

  I took another drink, not a beer drinker, but seeming always to find one in my hand around her. I guess I just found comfort in her. We had a history. She was really my only link here besides my aunt’s actual house.

  “So how long will you be here?” she asked after a while.

  I shrugged.

  “A little bit,” I said, then bumped her arm. “So you’re going to have to show me more of this place.”

  Laughing, her curls rocked back.

  “I think you saw about all of it when I showed you before, but I’m happy to show you whatever you want to see.”

  I appreciated that, clinking my bottle against hers. We watched the babble of the lake for a little while before I heard her voice again.

  “You got something for Gray?” she asked, then hit her default shyness when she lowered her head. She bit her lip. “I mean, with me taking you over to his place and all.”

  She was referring to my visit with him obviously, something she didn’t ask me about after I returned to her car. Then, with my questions about him in the bar, the man seemed to have always been on my lips. I wasn’t surprised by her assumption.

  “Oh, no,” I told her, emphasizing the fact. “Anyway, I have a boyfriend.”

  Kinda… well. I still wasn’t sure and when I went silent Ava definitely noticed. Choosing not to say anything, she looked ahead.

  I sloshed the beer in the bottle. “He’s just helping me with a project. He knows my aunt’s house pretty well and he’s fixing it up for me.”

  She lifted and lowered her head.

  “That one’s definitely different,” she said. “And his daughter…”

  “What about her?” I asked, my attention definitely hers. I didn’t ask Gray about Laura, not my place.

  But if she knew something…

  Shrugging, Ava leaned back, elbows in the sand.

  “Nothing really,” she said. “Like I said, I don’t really know anything about him or her, but this is a small town and people talk, is all. I don’t make it my business but yeah people talk when you choose not to associate with anyone. I guess people assume he thinks he’s better. He’s only ever spent extended time at Jo’s house and no one knows anything about his little girl.”

  That’s because she didn’t talk, not to her daddy, me, or even herself as kids sometimes do. She spoke to no one and I definitely noticed.

  Deciding to join Ava in the sand, I put my bottle down and leaned back.

  “Did Jo ever say anything about either of them?” I asked. “You said he spent a lot of time over there.”

  The smile went full over Ava’s lips with her laugh.

  “Don’t get me wrong, Josephine Bradley could gossip just like the rest of them and was particularly bad at church on Sundays. But the thing is, despite all that she’d never talk about Gray and his kid. Very tight-lipped and I know she was asked. Like I said, I try to stay out of all that, but yeah. She’d never talked about Gray. Almost as if he and his were out of bounds. Eventually, people stopped asking and then with her passing…”

  I’d heard she’d died in her sleep, old age.

  I watched Ava, the beam on her face leaving.

  “Anyway, I sound like my mama and I’m not trying to be a gossip hen with the rest of them.”

  We laughed together at that and I was happy to see her smile returning. Drinking our beers, we lay back, watching as the sun lowered below the trees. I guessed I wouldn’t get anything out of her. When it came to Gray and his secrets, I supposed my aunt decided to take all that with her in the end.

  Chapter Eleven

  Gray

  The sun was high when Alicia made her way outside. She hadn’t come out often over the past month or so we’d been working on her property, but when she did, she garnered a lot of attention.

  I thought her chosen attire had something to do with that.

  As per usual, she sported the highest shorts imaginable, her navel showing with the sway and swish of a canary-yellow top that left her shoulders exposed due to the tiny straps. Hair bundled behind her head, she brought a tray of lemonade and cookies I knew she spent the morning making. The smell had wafted into the backyard through the kitchen window and caused my mouth to water most of the morning.

  Taking a definitely unscheduled break, both the men and women left their stations and sprinted up to Alicia with her baked goods and cool beverages. They devoured the tray, bantering with her and making her laugh, and I could only shake my head as I rammed a nail into the roof from my position on the garage.

  Pulling another from my teeth, I slammed the nail into
a shingle, the sweat beading down my arms and to my knuckles.

  Alicia’s… generosity was very nice. I didn’t particularly believe she enjoyed being outside, but she did come out to make sure the workers were cared for. Though nice, it was very much a distraction and messed with everyone’s pacing.

  Especially mine.

  I had to make sure everyone got back to work when all they wanted to do was laugh and talk after their work pace had been messed up.

  I passed a glance in that direction, Alicia’s tray more than empty but my workers still talking to her. Some had gotten back to work, but a few remained. Eventually, our distracting guest went inside, but that didn’t keep a couple of the guys from lingering on—talking—and I was well aware what their gazes did after Alicia left from the backyard and back inside.

  Borderline leering, their more than observant gazes travelled up the full extent of Alicia’s shapely bronzed legs and it took a couple howls of “back to work” before I could even get them to go back to their stations.

  We can’t be doing this.

  Not if she wanted us to finish that was, not if I wanted to finish.

  Knowing it wasn’t possible for my kid to be here any more extended time than we were, I got down from the roof.

  Many workers watched my back as I strode from the garage to the house. I didn’t say a word, but a look told them to mind their own business. They went back to their task and I pushed the screen door open, going inside. Alicia was at the kitchen sink, washing the empty tray of cookies she brought out and a few cups my people had siphoned down in front of her.

  I cut the air into her space, her rose scent travelling around me within seconds of setting foot into the kitchen. She could fill the room with whatever perfume she wore. She often did with the soft scent. Sometimes I’d catch it outside, always on the wind.

  “Hey,” she said to me, watching as I made my way over to her. She smiled. “Sorry I didn’t make it over to you. Everyone cleaned me out before I could get to the garage.”

  I had no idea what she was talking about at first.

  Right, her cookies.

  Precisely the reason I came into the kitchen, to tell her about that and the distraction of them.

  “It’s all right,” I said to her, not wanting to come off as an asshole, but we really needed to get our work done out there. I bunched my hair in my hand. “Can I talk to you about that? The cookies?”

  “Did you want me to make more? I can.”

  God, no.

  I raised a hand. “Actually, I’d like it if the cookies, at least their frequency, stop for a while. It’s getting distracting and it’s hard to get everyone back to work after you leave.”

  There, I said it. I put it out there and it all sounded reasonable enough.

  So why did her expression sock me like a mallet to the chest?

  It was like I told her Santa wasn’t real or something with the way her expression fell and I nearly wanted to take back what I said.

  Her gaze severed from me.

  “I wasn’t aware of that,” she said, plucking a cup out of the sink before washing and rinsing it. “I’m sorry. I won’t do that so much.”

  I should be grateful for what she said.

  So why did I suddenly feel like an asshole?

  She made me feel that way a lot when I was around her, but of no fault of hers. I just didn’t know how to talk to her, act around her. She threw me off when we were in the same room and my reaction was always clipped and abrasive because of it.

  Silently, I stood there while she rinsed the rest of her dishes. I thought I should probably apologize for the way I came off, but I noticed her attention passed both me and the situation.

  Drying, she stood in the middle of the kitchen with a glass and rag in her hand. From her position, she could see right into the living room.

  We both could see my daughter.

  Laura had taken to the piano again, her hands hovering over the keys this time, but not in front of herself. She stretched them to where Jo usually played.

  “Gray?”

  I barely heard Alicia’s voice I was so focused on my kid, and had I not been, I might have been able to anticipate what she asked me next.

  One of my worst nightmares.

  “Where is her mom?” she asked.

  Where. Is. Her. Mom.

  “Laura’s,” she pushed when I didn’t answer her quick enough I imagined. She lowered her drying towel and her dish, her finger playing along the top of the glass.

  “She’s irrelevant,” I stated, the best I could do by a first response. She’d caught me off guard.

  Alicia, though in our short weeks of knowing each other, had never once asked anything personal about myself or my kid. She had many opportunities to, but she never did.

  Really, she should have let it all go after that, the topic of Laura’s mom. The information wasn’t her business and I didn’t feel comfortable discussing the matter with her—essentially a stranger.

  But then I guess that would have made it all easier, wouldn’t it?

  Grabbing the glass, she looked at me before placing it into the cabinet above the counter.

  “Irrelevant,” she stated, as if testing the word. She grabbed another dish, drying before looking up at me. “Irrelevant?”

  I wished to escape those eyes at the moment. She shouldn’t mess with this, especially with my daughter right in the next room.

  We didn’t talk about her mom, Laura and me. We didn’t need to and that was understood, but Alicia didn’t know this, the can of worms she was attempting to open here.

  Moving away from her, toward the door, I opened it to the backyard.

  “The topic of Laura’s mom is a moot point because the woman is irrelevant,” I told her, the snip in my voice readily known to me. I moved my jaw. “She’s not in our lives and hasn’t been for a long time—”

  “Does that mean she’s alive or…” Alicia’s voice came down as she made the journey to me by the screen door. “I don’t mean to butt in or step where I shouldn’t here.”

  But she was. She was and quite frankly, the place in which she was speaking out of turn did nothing but unsettle me—as well as piss me off.

  The words flew form my lips before I could stop them and because they had I couldn’t take them back.

  “She was abandoned,” I said, nostrils flaring. “If you must know, the mother of my kid didn’t want her child. She left her, tossed her away like she was trash.”

  I spoke too much, but I couldn’t quit.

  Why couldn’t I stop?

  “That’s what makes her irrelevant,” I went on, more emotion in my voice than I liked. I pushed my hand across my lips. “And I need to go back to work.”

  I pushed the door open so quickly Alicia’s hair breezed back. I’d never forget the expression on her face when I left her standing there by the screen door. The shock was evident.

  But the sadness trumped it ten times over.

  I had no idea if it had been sadness for Laura, me, or just the situation we were both currently in. In a different reality, I might have accepted that sadness for me. I might have had our situation not been my fault, which it was. Laura’s mom had definitely abandoned us both.

  But it had only been to take a shot at me.

  My thoughts, wild and angry at no one but myself, I tossed around tools and hammered at the structure too long before I finally came out of it, finally understood what I said and who I said it to. Alicia had only asked questions, honest ones because she was human. I never spoke about anything in regards to my family and she was naturally curious.

  And she definitely didn’t deserve what she’d gotten.

  Shaking my mallet, I took an unsteady breath. I’d gone off on her/reprimanded her literally twice today, each of which had been uncalled for. Knowing that, I got off the roof of the garage again, hoping to find her in the kitchen though not surprised when I didn’t find her there. Too much time had passed.

&nbs
p; A glance into the living room, I spotted Laura still steadfast in her position at the piano. I left her there, then backpedaled through the kitchen and into the hallway, my intent to take the stairs and find Alicia on the second level. I planned to apologize to her amongst other things.

  I didn’t make it past the first step.

  Something about that hallway, a change in the air or something made me look. I needed to look in the direction of my kid, feeling the necessity of that.

  Letting go of the banister, I found something I’d never seen, not just my daughter in there but Alicia too.

  She wasn’t two feet away from my kid.

  Laura’s head angled in Alicia’s direction, she watched the woman, Laura’s hand sliding away from Jo’s area of the piano and I left the staircase, not knowing what Alicia was trying to do but definitely feeling the need to put a stop to it. She knew the situation at hand. She knew she couldn’t approach Laura or talk to her but something about the moment had the woman ignoring the warning. She stepped lightly toward Laura, softly, then suddenly her hand was on the piano.

  She was playing the piano beside her.

  My breath, all wind seemly knocked out of me, left me dry, a sucker punch to the gut literally leaving me with more air. I knew I needed to move, but I couldn’t.

  I watched, watched my little girl’s shoulders tense as someone was clearly getting in her personal space. Shifting, Laura looked as if she suddenly might flee.

  But then she didn’t. She stopped. She listened like I was currently doing.

  I couldn’t help it, the notes, the playing, so beautiful. It’d been like that day I first heard the notes after Josephine had passed. I thought I’d been losing my mind and it’d been Jo playing, my head tossing tricks at me.

  It hadn’t been Jo. It’d been this woman, her niece playing an older woman’s piano like an angel.

  Struck silent by it all, I watched, my daughter in awe as I was. Her shoulder’s relaxing, she moved not an inch as Alicia got closer to her, her gaze on the keys and not Alicia. She let Alicia come near her, her notes sounding through the room like a gift from the heavens. That’s when I realized they were a gift.