Blue Notes (28 page)

“I requested them too late,” he goes on, still watching me with that enigmatic smile. “Instead we have this here.” He lifts his arms to encompass our room. “Hotel Burnham, which just happens to look out on State Street.”

I exhale with a tentative bubble of happiness. “Over the parade route?”

“Exactly. So if you want to head down and mingle with the commoners for an hour or two, fine. I’ll have this fluffy blue monstrosity cleaned overnight and we’ll brave the cold.” He makes a face before laughing. “Again.”

“And if not?”

“The parade starts at eight. I can’t remember the last time we slept together when we got up in time for an eight o’clock anything.”

My shadows are gone. How can they stay for long when he’s looking at me with such boyish, unbelievably sexy playfulness? I slip my hand under his coat. He hisses when my chilly fingers meet the bare skin of his stomach. He tries to fight me off, but not too hard. I love the feel of his muscles bunching beneath my hand. I love the feel of him.

“What would we do instead?”

“I’m very strong,” he says, still laughing as I grab more of his flexing muscles.

“I know.”

“With some help, we could probably shove that bed against the window and order Thanksgiving brunch.” He leans back, not fighting me now as I pet and grasp beneath his stained jacket. “So how would you like to watch the Chicago Thanksgiving parade naked in bed with me?”

 Thirty-Six 

T
hat was the happiest weekend of my life.

This week is karma biting a chunk out of my ass.

I’m sitting in sociology class. I got an A on that paper on tattooed subcultures. The professor was impressed how I took an approach unlike my fellow students. I used Jude’s tattoo as inspiration to look at body modification as a form of mourning and commemoration. Goodie for me. . . .

Until two men enter the classroom and ask for me.

Me.

They’re detectives. Or maybe lawyers. I don’t
know
 . . . but I know. I remember how men like that carry themselves. Not like Jude, with all his confidence and ambition. No, they stand with legs braced and arms at their sides, as if the world is a place full of people who strike first. Why would they believe any different?

I sure as hell don’t stand that way when I manage to make my legs work. “I’m Keeley Chambers,” I reply. My voice sounds like I’ve just shouted across the Grand Canyon. Might as well have. The entire class of sixty students and my professor can see and hear everything.

No one realizes yet what a fool I’ve made of myself. Keeley Chambers is a joke. Being in love with Jude Villars is a joke. Because these men are real, and they’re here to rip my life back into pieces.

I blindly shove my textbook and my A paper in my purple messenger bag and stand. I walk slowly, deliberately, until I reach the top of the shallow amphitheater-style classroom.

“Do you have any weapons on you, ma’am?”

“No, sir,” I reply, feeling fourteen all over again. The paramedics asked me that when they found me in the kitchen, leaning against the counter and staring at my mother’s lifeless eyes. “But you can carry my bag.”

I hand it to him and lead them out of the classroom. I lead by floating. I don’t have feet anymore. I’m not even sure I have nerves.

The early December chill in New Orleans isn’t anything like Chicago, but I still shiver when I step outside. The two men face me. “Miss Chambers, we’re from the local DA’s office. We’ve been contacted by law enforcement agents in California. We’d like you to come with us. Completely voluntary, of course.”

“Of course,” I say woodenly. Only then do I realize they were already subtly herding me toward an unmarked car.

I manage to convince myself that the next three hours are the toughest I’ve faced since I was fifteen. With my limbs numb, my insides a completely liquefied mess, the DAs lay everything out for me like a dingy carpet. What my father did in prison . . . and the choice I face. By the time they’re finished, I’m a wrung-out rag. I shakily step out of the car, but even Dixon Hall doesn’t offer me the peace of mind I need. It’s only a place to come in from the cold.

An hour later, I hear banging on the rehearsal room door. “Keeley! I know you’re here!”

Jude.

Jude finds me.

He slams into the room like a Viking in an Armani suit, there to save me from beasts and pirates. His expression, however, is just for me. It shifts from relief to frustration to anger in the span of two heartbeats.

“Christ, Keeley.” He shuts the door with a fierce bang, then strides to kneel before me.

I can hear him through a long, echoing distance. My mouth tastes like mushrooms. Everything about me hurts.

“What the hell is happening?”

I curl into a tighter ball. My head is pounding. I notice piano pedals for the first time. I’ve taken refuge beneath the rehearsal piano, like I did as a little girl, hiding under anything that might shelter me.

“I was about to call the police.” Unyielding hands haul me out from under the piano. I’m on his lap, where I love to be. “Do you know how worried we’ve been?”

I come to rest with my head against his chest. “We?” I croak.

“Yes.
We
. Didn’t you get our texts?”

With cold, numb fingers, I find my phone in my sweater pocket. It’s a litany of worry that twists my stomach.

From Janey:
Thot we were on 4 lunch? U OK?

From Clair:
Janey says it’s all blown to hell. I’m on shift. Call John pronto?

From Adelaide:
Reporters ambushed me at the union. WTF? Call me!

From Jude:
We need to talk.

Oh God.

Jude strokes my hair back from my face, although his voice is still tight and brittle. “I got home as soon as I could after Addie got worried and found a half dozen reporters around the house. So start talking. What the hell is going on?”

“Nothing.”

“Bull.” He pushes me away, although not hard enough to bounce me off the floor. “When did you become such a coward? You, of all people?”

“I’m always afraid!”

“You had me fooled,” he says bitterly. “About a lot of things, apparently.”

“I didn’t want to . . .”

“To what? Lie to me? Because it seems you’ve done a lot of that. Do you want me to know the reporters’ version of things, or do you wanna weigh in? Act like a goddamn grown-up and
trust me
,
Keeley.”

“See, that’s just it.”

I scamper up from the floor and find no refuge. The best I can do is find a wall. Just a wall.
Prop me up while I let him go.
I tuck my hands behind my back. My head feels so heavy.

“I’m not Keeley Chambers. I’m Rosie Nyman. Or, I was. When I was born in a slummy part of Chicago.”

Jude is sitting with his knees up, his fists resting on either one. He’s only a few feet away, but by his expression, it might as well be miles. His frown deepens—not with anger. With sadness. “You lied to me? I tried to do something wonderful for us and you were, what, revisiting old times?”

“It wasn’t like that. I only lived there for seven years. Then I was Sara Dawson and Lila Reuther . . . all because of my birth parents.”

“Birth parents?”

“Clair and John Chambers were my foster parents until they adopted me. But for most of my childhood, I lived on the run.”

“When did you choose to be Keeley? When they made you pick a new alias?”

“They never let me choose a damn thing,” I say, my throat burning. “
I
picked it when I was placed with Clair and John. We moved to Baton Rouge just after my father was sentenced. They got me out of the state and nearer her family. Keeley Chambers is fiction.”

“Go back.” His voice is quiet, but there’s steel beneath the easy drawl. “When your dad was sentenced. Sentenced for what?”

“Second degree murder. He killed my mom.”

He jerks. I’m so calm it’s scary, like I can take refuge from the present by telling the bare facts of the past.

“I found her body in our kitchen in some backwater trailer park in San Joaquin. He’d stabbed her.” There’s a scuff mark on the floor, so I fix my eyes on that and don’t look away. “A woman has roughly eight pints of blood running through her veins. That’s a whole gallon. Imagine a gallon of milk busting on the kitchen floor. Then imagine that gush completely red with a body in the middle of it all. That was her. The cops had already caught Dad, staked out in a nearby vineyard. I’d just gotten off the school bus before they cordoned off the crime scene. They took me away in a different ambulance from hers.”

There’s craziness in me. I don’t realize just how much until I start laughing. I’m hysterical. Jude’s joined me against the wall, and I’m smacking his chest and thrashing my head. “She was going to give it up, go to the police. Turn state’s evidence. She’d threatened it before, but maybe he really thought she meant it that time. I don’t believe it. She was dead on the ground holding her open switchblade. She could’ve just gotten away. She could’ve just
rescued me
.”

Jude holds me. I don’t know how long I cry, but there’s not much left inside me when I finally quiet. My eyes sting. My chest aches. I’ve worn raw crescents in my palms—my fingernails clenched too tight.

“Then what is all this? The reporters?”

“He’s been accused of killing two inmates.” I hiccup in some air. “The case is pretty solid, but they still need to prove it to a jury. That means physical evidence, but also establishing character stuff. They want me to go to California and make a statement.”

“Will he be there?”

“They didn’t know policy out there.” I shiver. “He could be.”

“Christ, sugar. No way. The police will have enough evidence or they won’t. The prosecution won’t be able to submit a character statement unless the defense brings up the issue first.”

“They could,” I say. “What if he’s been a model prisoner all this time? No history of violence? Lots of people could come forward and say that, even guards and cops. What if there’s no one to say he’s a murdering bastard? I have to be that person! Again!”

He frames my face in his hands, which are—I’m really surprised—shaking as badly as I am. “You will
not
sit in the same room as that man.”

“You just don’t want me to leave.”

“Because you’ve suffered enough! You’re actually considering this? Your recital is in less than two weeks. Leave that monster in the past, where he belongs.”

“If he’s done two more murders, he’ll rot in prison forever.” I speak with more certainty. Each passing word is stronger and clearer. My brain is stitching together again. Too bad about the rest of my life. “He was only convicted of second degree murder because Mom fought back. I didn’t realize when I testified back then how short twenty-five years can be, in the scheme of things.”

He goes still. “You testified against him? How old were you?”

“Fifteen.” I shrug stiffly. “See? I’ve faced him down before.”

“And you’ve hidden this? That’s one of the bravest things I’ve ever heard.”

“I had to! No stranger has known who I am since then. Now what if he learns my new name and where I live? Jude, I plan on playing piano for a living, and the press will eat it up about us. He’ll find out eventually! I have to make sure he never gets out!”

He grabs my wrists in one of his big hands, then catches my chin with his other. “Sugar, the company I run just edged to a net worth of over two billion dollars. Do you think I’d ever
let anything happen to you?
Ever?
”

“Are you saying you can protect me forever? One day, I’ll be forty. I’ll have a family and a life well earned, and that motherfucker could be released. I can keep that from happening. I can help make sure he’s three strikes and out, that he’ll never be able to come after me. I won’t need to look over my shoulder ever again. I won’t have to
keep hiding
.”

He shoves me away. “What’s to say you’ll stop hiding? You have one incredible fucktard of a dad, but talent, support, and
very
worried friends. Friends you let down tonight.” He huffs air out of his nose. “You were the one to help Adelaide through the bullshit with that professor. What would you think if she’d gone quiet rather than come to you?”

I swallow a roll of nausea. “Be disappointed.”

“Back at’cha, sugar.”

“I needed to get away from what I knew was coming. The stares. Questions. Pity.”

“Not pity.” He jabs a finger at me. “
Not
pity. Sympathy—and there’s a big difference. Do you think I wanted pity after my parents died? Did Adelaide? Did everyone in this city whose life was smashed to dust by Katrina? We didn’t want pity. We wanted help to get through it. You haven’t even given us a chance to help. You haven’t given
me
a chance.”

“I love you,” I whisper. “I’d give you anything . . . if I could.”

His eyes are unfathomable—so dark and hostile, and still layered with that hurt I caused. “Anything? Define that.”

“I’d have been perfect for you. Like you said. You and perfect go together. I’m not. I tried not to live in fear, but there was always that chance. Someday I’d get found out and everyone would judge me for it.”

“They didn’t need to,” he says harshly. “You’ve already judged yourself. Since you’re so big on making choices for yourself, is this the punishment you chose?”

“I didn’t—”

“You chose your name and your hometown. You chose to be with me—although apparently with conditions. You chose to be a friend to my sister. You helped Janissa choose that quilt she loves. But you don’t get to choose how other people respond to things. That’s not your right. I get a say in this too.”