Blue Notes (29 page)

“I bet Addie would have something to say about that—your reactions to her life.”

“She did, in fact. She and I had a long talk when we were waiting for you to call, or waiting to call the police—whatever we debated doing. And you were right. She confided in me. It felt amazing. I kept thinking . . . I held her hand and she finally came to me, just like Keeley said. So forgive me for being overprotective. I have a history that makes it a little hard not to be.” He scowls at me, when I should be stroking away the pain etched at the corners of his eyes, or celebrating the connection he’s made with Adelaide.

“And if you think you’re the only one walking around pretending,” he says, “then that cloud around you is pretty thick. I pretend every day I sit in my dead father’s chair. But somewhere between then and now, my faking it became real.” He shakes his head and looks away. “I can’t believe I trusted you with all that—the night you came to play piano. I told you everything. You didn’t think it was time to open up and give me something in return? Jesus, did you ever think you could hurt other people this much?”

Ow. Just . . .
fuck
.

He waits. I know he wants me to say something, but my words are all used up. I can’t think. All I know is that Jude and I are hurting—that I’ve hurt
him
—but I’m not in his arms and I’m not begging his forgiveness. Is that how it’s come to be between us? I’m supposed to snuggle deep in his embrace, happy and loved and safe.

Instead he’s got barbed wire and Do Not Cross signs all around him.

“Next time you need some distance,” he says so quietly, “a text or two would keep your nearest and dearest from tearing their hair out. But . . .” He looks at me with his intensely probing eyes. “You don’t believe that, do you? Not really. You try, but you don’t believe there are people in this world who give a shit what happens to you.”

“I know it so much that I don’t want anyone else tainted by my father. He’s poison. You seem to think I’m some sort of masochist for doing this, but I’m not. I need rid of him. For good. I’m . . . I’m sorry, Jude.” If I’m going to do this alone, I might as well start now. I step away from the wall on knees made of steam. “So . . . that’s it.”

“That’s it? Are you high? Do you think I’d be here if I didn’t love you?”

“You love me?” I about gag on the words. “It took my asshole of a father to bring you to say it?”

“It took a bunch of reporters to get
you
to say it?” he counters. “So, yeah, the timing is shit, but that doesn’t make it less real. It doesn’t mean I haven’t been thinking it and feeling it for weeks.”

He’s so tall, like a god above scared supplicants. He looks ravaged, with dark circles beneath his lids and his mouth set in a grim line. His suit has disintegrated down to a pair of slacks and a half done up shirt.

He’s even wearing running shoes.

Tears prick behind my eyelids. He put on comfy shoes to come look for me.

“But what will your company say about all this?”

“The company?” His voice booms. “
I’m
the company, sugar.”

“Then you should go.”

“What? Why?”

“Because you need to meet with your lawyers. Damage control. Isn’t that right?” My gut shrivels into a pebble when he looks away. “Come up with something that saves what you’ve worked for. You owe it to the people who depend on you.”

“That doesn’t get to include you?”

“It
can’t
include me. This is my horror show.” I touch his face. He presses my fingers against his skin, warming us both, but I pull away. “I have to . . . go.”

“You don’t just mean California, do you?”

“You’ll see,” I say, my soul shriveling into dust. “It was always going to end this way.”

“You know . . .” He punches his hands into his pants pockets with a curse. “I thought you were somebody different.”

“I told you who—”

“I heard what you’ve said, but I also know who I fell in love with.” He gives me a harsh look, up and down. “What’s that called in music when it sounds all wrong?”

“Dissonance.”

“That’s the word for it.”

My body vibrates from the effort of
not
grabbing hold of him and begging him to take me home. To his home. To the place that feels like it could be my home forever.

He calms some, then shakes his head. “You were so angry, asking why your mom didn’t try to rescue you.” He spreads his hands. “I’ve been right here, Keeley. And from what you’ve told me, Clair and John did a pretty damn good job of saving you too. I don’t think this is what they wanted for you. This . . . self-pity.”

“This is self-pity because I have to say goodbye to you. It’s the hardest thing I’ll ever have to do.”

For a moment he looks confused, maybe even sympathetic. “Face your father?”

“No, that’ll be number two.” The pain in my chest—it’s a screaming, flaming pain that refuses to end. I have to let it burn. For his sake. “I won’t ruin your life by clinging to a romance that never had a future. We might have imagined one, privately. I know I did. But how likely was that ever gonna be? Time for us to bow out before it gets any worse.”

I can’t look at him anymore. That’s when I leave my heart behind, with Jude still standing there, hands in his pockets, head bowed. I need to forget that he ever said he loves me, although I already know that’ll be impossible.

Nothing that happens between my father and me will ever be this hard.

 Thirty-Seven 

I
wish I could’ve taken the train.

I wish I could stop thinking like that, searching for Jude in everything as I fly west to some strange destiny I can’t escape.

The economy cabin is cramped, just like my stomach. I’m crunched into a ball of fear. Not all of it has to do with facing my father again. I’m afraid, so afraid that I’ve thrown away the best thing to come into my life since my foster parents. Jude Villars. I adore him. I hurt him because fear has been a part of me for longer than my deepest memories.

I was stronger with him than I’ve ever been. Now I’m alone and I still have to be strong.

I lock my seatback table as the plane begins to descend. It would be so easy to let him do it—just make it go away. Clair and John did that for me. They gave me a stable, safe place to come into my own, sheltering me from the worst as I struggled to find my feet. They even offered to fly out with me, to wait in a hotel while I made my statement, just like all those years ago. I ask them to understand why I need to go alone. I’ve grown up, and this is a fight I need to take on by myself.

This was supposed to be the year I set out on my own, for real this time. But who did I find within weeks on campus? Only one of the richest guys in Louisiana, maybe even the country.

And he fell in love with me.

Me.

He was right to think that he’s never met the real me. I don’t think I’ve met her yet. All those niches I’ve constructed to lock the bad, the really bad, and the unimaginable—they’re bursting open. What will be left of me when I’ve got Pandora’s open box slicing holes in my soul? Nothing Jude would want. I already feel like a husk filled with other people’s ideas of who I am. I go to Tulane. I play the piano. Is that enough to define a whole person? Is that enough to love?

The man next to me on the plane folds a copy of the
Times-Picayune
and shoves it into the accordion thingie on his seatback. I catch sight of “Villars.” My heart becomes a Thoroughbred jolting out of the gates.

“May I?” I ask, pointing to the paper.

He shrugs and hands it over. “Keep it. I’m finished.”

My ears are popping from the cabin pressure. I catch streaks of scenery out the window to my left, but the bulk of my attention is on the front page article.

“Jude Villars Convict Scandal.”

Could they have concocted a more ridiculous sham of a headline? But isn’t that how I’d framed it in my head—as if he was dating a real con, not the innocent daughter of one? There’s a photo of me fleeing in the taxi outside Dixon, my face contorted with the best sort of newsworthy angst.

Only then do I notice the photo credit. Brandon Dorne? Seriously? Did he tip off the press about my real name, maybe even let them have a copy of my schedule? I wouldn’t put it past him to keep track of my comings and goings. This must’ve been his personal lotto ticket—and some personal revenge, all in one.

I’m going to throw up. Maybe explode.

But I don’t. That doesn’t mean I torture myself with the article. I shove it in the passing stewardess’s bag as she collects the last of the trash.

There’s a man in a black suit and sunglasses waiting beside the baggage claim with “Chambers” on a sign. At least they’re using my real name.

I’m whisked away by a secret ops–style black cruiser to a prison facility. I’ve never seen it. I only ever saw the inside of the courtroom, and that was intimidating enough. Being admitted past the barbed wire and armed guards is enough to make my skin try to slough off. I want to be a puddle of leftover parts that’ll slink onto the floor of the anonymous car, waiting like gum to get stuck to the bottom of a shoe.

I’m met by DAs and lawyers whose names I forget as soon as we’re introduced. All I force myself to remember is that these are the good guys, like Ursula was a long time ago. I memorize their faces. There’s about six of them by the time we walk through a secure hallway and down a flight of stairs. Each possible throughway is locked, with a guard to permit us passage. The basement hall is austere and lined with a series of doors. In some weird way, it reminds me of the rehearsal rooms at Dixon. Plain spaces. Very different purposes.

I pinch and pull at my clothes. They fit just fine a few minutes ago. Now everything is two sizes too small. Black dress slacks. A raging purple dress shirt. A looped silver necklace Janey made me take. I remember her concern, her parting hug, and how heavily she collapsed onto her periodic chart quilt just before I closed the door. I remember Adelaide meeting me downstairs, telling off the cabbie when he honked. “Gimme a minute, asshole!”

More hugs.

“Come back to us, y’hear?” she’d said. “You don’t belong in California. We got work to do here, you and me.”

And I remember Clair’s and John’s worried voices when they talked on speakerphone earlier that morning. “You sure you don’t want us to come with you?” Clair had asked.

“No. Just me. I don’t want you to worry too much.”

“We have your back, Keeley. No matter what.” That from John. He wasn’t a man of many words, but I soaked up each one. Their love still felt so incredible, even after all this time.

But just before I stepped into the room to face my father, Jude’s was the love I craved the most. I don’t care anymore why he loves me or that it doesn’t seem possible. If he loves me, he’ll take me back when I’m through with this nightmare. Right? I’ll grovel. I’ll beg. I’ll hold out my hand and hope he takes it. I’ll hope he never lets go, because I won’t be able to walk away from him again.

I was a fool to do it at all.

“Miss Chambers? Take a seat.”

I’m flanked by the six lawyers or DAs or Martians. Whoever. The good guys. At the head of the wide oval conference table is a man in a black suit, with a stenographer beside him and a digital recorder by his pad of notepaper. My words are that important.

A door on the other side of the room opens. Greg Peter Nyman is ushered in. He’s flanked too, but by armed guards. He’s wearing prison orange and looks like hell warmed over—not at all like the spiffed-up version who once glared at me in court. Chains connect handcuffs to a pair of manacles around his ankles.

It’s been six years.

He looks like he’s aged twenty.

If anyone held up a picture and said,
This is your bio dad
, I’d have denied it. No way. My dad was tall, robust, intimidating. He had full jowls and dark blond hair. This man is slightly stooped, weighs twenty pounds less, and is half bald. What remains is going gray. He was young when I was born. Only seventeen. He’s no more than thirty-eight now. I’d have denied that too.

“Rosie girl. Been a while.”

I shiver. His voice is nearly the same—just rougher and fiercer, if that’s possible. And his eyes . . . His eyes haven’t changed a bit. He stares at me with contempt and so much anger. Snakes’ eyes look more human. His expression is as dangerous as venom. The manacles and armed guards are all that keep him from lunging across the table and twisting my neck until it snaps.

He killed one woman in our sick little family. Maybe he killed two other people. I don’t care right now. I only want to say my piece and get the fuck out of that room.

“Quite the woman now,” he says. Guards shove him by both shoulders onto a chair across the table from mine.

“That’ll be enough,” says the man at the head of the table. He introduces himself as something something, independent arbiter. There are lawyers on the other side of the table, but I class them as enemy combatants. I suppose it’s their job. That doesn’t mean I have to like them. There are shrinks on both sides—more independent parties, but from Social Services. That I might need a shrink to get through this seems laughable. Don’t they know counseling was as much a part of my youth as high school classes? The woman at my side, though, sitting next to me, takes my hand beneath the table and gives it a squeeze.

I’m not alone. Not here, not in Louisiana. No matter the people paid to represent him, the shriveled man in front of me is very much alone.

Speaking to me, the arbiter asks, “Would you please state for the record your name and occupation?”

“My name is Keeley Chambers. I’m a pianist and junior at Tulane University.”

“Your name is Rosie Nyman and you’re my daughter,” comes that goose bump–inducing growl.

“Mr. Nyman, you will refrain from comment or you will be removed from these proceedings. A judge would hold him in contempt,” he says. “My authority extends to confining him to a cell where he can watch and listen via video monitor. Keep him quiet, or that’s the next step.”

I like that he’s so blunt on my behalf, but I want to tell him that it isn’t necessary.
That man is a liar
, I want to say.
I’m not Rosie Nyman, and he gave up any right to call me his daughter a long time ago.
In fact, staring at him across that wide table, I feel the fear soak down through my new dress flats into the concrete floor.

This man is nothing. He has nothing. He’ll be nothing for the rest of his miserable life.

By contrast, I have an amazing life yet to lead. It’s waiting for me in New Orleans. And I have a man—a wonderful man—who dearly deserves my apology.

“Continue, please, Miss Chambers. How do you know the defendant?”

“He
was
my father,” I say with strength enough to make Greg Peter Nyman flinch. “And he was convicted of killing my mother.”