Emancipated (26 page)

John-Michael snorted in derision. But Judy just continued to stare at him with all the righteous verve of a protestor on a march.

“Not according to his will.”

“That's because you used an old will,” she said, baring her teeth. “You thieving bastard.”

“The will was legal. Don't blame me if my dad hadn't updated it in ten years.”

“He made a new will when he was with me. I know, I saw it.”

“He did? Then where is this mysterious new will?”

“How the hell do I know? All I know is what I saw.”

“Who knows what he showed you? Did it ever cross your mind that he showed you something nice to keep you sweet? To keep you . . .”

But John-Michael couldn't bring himself to complete the vulgarity. Even the thought of his father and this woman together was disturbing. She'd looked better then, but even so she'd been a daily drain on his father's temper. The woman in front of him now looked about ten pounds lighter, which was okay for the way the clothes hung on her frame. But it had taken something from her face—the slight chubbiness, the surprisingly cherubic look that she'd sustained well into her late thirties. Now she looked angular and dilapidated, permanently sour.

“I saw a will, goddamnit. Fifty percent to you. More'n you deserve, lazy faggot. And fifty percent to me. To thank me for all the years I looked after him.”

His laughter was short and hollow. Even her insistence on using homophobic insults barely touched him now. “You didn't look after
nothing
. You made him miserable. Apart from that first year when you were sinking your claws in him, all he wanted to do was to get rid of you.”

“Is that what Chuck told you, mama's boy?”

He went quiet. A cold rage began to chill his bones. She caught the scent of his distress but mistook it for fear. Her sneering tone intensified. “Things looked pretty different from where I was looking up at your dad.”

John-Michael began to experience something he'd rarely felt: an itch at the base of his wrist, the impulse to ball his hand into a fist, to swing for the woman. The cigarette fell, forgotten, as he fumbled for his car keys. He had to get out of there before she said much more to enrage him.

Judy leaned against the driver's-side door. She put her face close to his and whispered.

“I know you've got the original will. But I've got a
draft
. My lawyer says it'll be enough to give you a motive. They've already placed you at the scene. You've got no alibi. He died with his veins turned white with heroin, and we all know what good buddies you are with the junkies. Face it, John-Michael. I take that draft of the will to the cops and you're looking at juvie until you turn eighteen and then—well.” She pretended to wipe away a tear. “Gee, I just don't know if you're gonna get along with those prison types. Maybe you can find yourself a big ol' sugar daddy to protect you?”

John-Michael put the keys in his jeans pocket. His back firmly against the door, he pressed both hands against her shoulders and lightly pushed. She sprung backward, obviously shocked. He followed through, gave her a second push.

“You believe I killed my own father?”

“Put your hands on me again,” she spat, “and I'll lay a lawsuit all over your goddamn face.”

He crossed his arms, stifling a glorious urge to punch her. “You think you got a hope of persuading anyone that my dad left a skank like you a single dime? Good luck with that.”

“Goddamn evil little . . .”

He turned, opened the door, dropped into the driver seat, and inserted the key. She was at his side, leaning over the door, two seconds later.

“Give me my fifty percent, John-Michael. And I'll pretend I didn't just hear you call me a skank.”

Very deliberately, he said, “I met some lousy people when I was living rough. But you, you're a real class act when it comes to lowlife. Never understood why Dad got mixed up with you. It's no wonder he killed himself, probably to get away from you.”

He revved the engine, watching Judy struggle to contain her fury. Her eyes became as narrow as a snake's before the kill. “Fifty percent. That's my offer. In a week, it's going up to sixty.” She stared pointedly at the car. “Enjoy yourself, twerp. It's later than you think.”

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

..................................................................

THIRD FLOOR, THURSDAY, MAY 21

Candace stood outside her room barefoot, her feet absorbing the sun's heat from the warm cedar decking. She was transfixed by the music within. Lucy's acoustic guitar had stood in the same place since she'd moved in, untouched, as far as Candace was aware, until today. Now this: the sound of an astonishing, virtuoso performance resonated throughout the house.

She noticed Maya and Paolo gathering at the base of the staircase to listen. One by one, they caught her eye and mouthed a silent, wide-eyed
wow
.

Lucy's playing continued for several minutes. It wasn't a short piece, but the mood switched every few minutes. As spellbinding arpeggios gave way to a more contemplative melody, Maya and Paolo edged back toward their own rooms. Candace's hand hovered over the doorknob. It seemed like sacrilege to burst in on Lucy, like interrupting a private moment between her and the guitar. Very quietly, she turned the handle and slipped into the room with an apologetic glance.

Lucy acknowledged her with a nod, thencontinued playing, her features stern with utter concentration. Candace perched on the edge of her bed and watched until the final chord. When it was over, she burst into heartfelt applause. Lucy smiled slightly, shifted a little uncomfortably on her chair.

“Sorry, didn't mean to keep you waiting.”

“Are you kidding? Lucy, you can really play!”

Lucy shot her a look of thinly veiled derision. “I know. I got picked to play lead guitar in an up-and-comin' band.”

“No, I mean, like, really, you know, like, classical.”

“I trained to play that. Only really started with the rock about three years ago.”

“Is that why your parents threw you out?”

Lucy's answer seemed guarded. “Had something to do with it, yeah.”

“Well, you know I love rock music, but seriously, Lucy, wow!”

Lucy shrugged. “You think so?” She didn't seem convinced. “That was going to be my audition piece for Juilliard.”

“You should still try out. You're amazing.”

“Not so much. I'm still playing too slow in the arpeggios.”

“You don't want to go to Juilliard . . . ?”

A beat passed. “No.”

“Why ever not?”

“It's . . . not what I want. You think I'm good but, truth is, I'm not good enough. Do you have any idea what kind of talent is coming out of China and the Far East these days? There are twelve-year-old kids that play that Bach Chaconne better'n me. The only way a guitarist can make it in that world is as a soloist. You don't see many guitars in orchestras. And I'm not good enough to cut it as a soloist.”

Candace hesitated. There seemed to be a degree of regret to Lucy's tone. Maybe rock music wasn't her first love after all. Candace shook her head. “Seems pretty screwed up to me, throwing your own kid out because they don't want to go to a particular school.”

“Wasn't only that. Wasn't that at all, matter of fact. Just that me deciding that I didn't want to try for Juilliard led to . . . a lot of stuff, actually. The rock music. And I fell back into some behaviors that . . . Ahhh. What's the point talking about it? What's done is done.”

“You seem sad. Are you?”

Lucy shook her head, staring into Candace's eyes. “No. I'm really not. Maybe once, but not now.” She leaned forward and picked up the soft instrument case, which lay discarded at her feet.

Candace wandered over to the music stand and stared at the sheet music. She'd taken piano lessons until she was eleven and never reached a high standard, even for that age. Lucy's music was covered with an impossible tattoo of black notes. Candace's own tiny experience playing an instrument made her realize that to play as well as Lucy did meant that at some point she must have been completely dedicated. To be able to perform as well as she just had, without having practiced the piece at least since they'd moved into the house, meant that Lucy's talent was prodigious. It was hard to believe that Lucy couldn't go just as far as she wanted with the guitar.

There had to be something Lucy wasn't admitting.

“You just love to rock, right?” Candace prodded.

Lucy allowed the beginnings of a grin. “I sure do.”

“How'd that happen, seeing as how you were this little goody-two-shoes classical player?”

“My big brother, Lloyd. He took me to see Green Day when I was fourteen. Told me there was a chance, if I could swear I could play, that Billie Joe would invite me on stage to play with him.”

“No kidding.”

“I looked online and he was right. Every big concert they did, some lil' kid would get hauled up on stage to play guitar.”

“Amazing. So did you, like, study the songs before the concert?”

“Please. It was like three chords.”

Candace's mouth stalled in mid
O
.

“Anyhow, we went to the concert. Lloyd made me get there real early so that we could dash for the front row when the doors opened.”

“And did . . . ?”

“Did he pick me? A black girl outta all those pasty white-boy faces? You bet your ass he picked me.”

“Damn! That's so awesome.”

“He picked out three of us. We played ‘Knowledge' by Operation Ivy. Not the most challenging thing in
my repertoire but . . ..” She gave a nostalgic sigh. “Looking out over that crowd. A sea of upturned faces, all expectant, waiting to be entertained. The energy of it. I can't explain. It was like the energy flowed from them to me and back again. In this incredible feedback loop.”

Candace grinned in appreciation. “I have some idea of what that's like. Our Shakespeare youth theater group used to play to fifteen hundred people sometimes. You're right, there's nothing like that feeling from a crowd.”

“Take that feeling and multiply it by at least ten—'cause there were, like, seventeen thousand people in the crowd that day. I was buzzing for weeks. Went to sleep with the bass lines pounding in my veins.”

“You got the bug.”

“That was me bought and sold. Never could feel the same way about classical music again. When I play a piece like the Chaconne, I'm lost inside myself. Which is good, too, don't get me wrong. It's just not how I wanted to connect with music. Being on that stage was like being a lightning rod, connecting all this energy up and transmitting it. I didn't tell my folks, didn't even tell Lloyd, but I knew it from the day of that concert. So that's how I started on my third attempt at a career at the age of fourteen.”

Candace frowned in contemplation. “Don't you mean your second?”

Lucy shook her head. Candace had a vague sense of some reluctance in Lucy's manner. She put the acoustic guitar back onto its stand near the door. Then Lucy flopped onto her bed, eyes fixed straight on the ceiling. She fumbled under her pillow for her cell phone and reached for some earplugs. It seemed that the conversation was over, but Candace wasn't ready to let it drop.

She had an idea and turned on her laptop. “Where was the Green Day concert?”

“In Oakland.”

She searched for a few minutes until she found the video online. She hit play and leaned back to watch. Sure enough, there was Lucy, young, slightly chubby and wearing blue jeans and a black
American Idiot
T-shirt, strumming the chords, eyes facing the audience, Billie Joe Armstrong singing along, his face wreathed with delight.

“Dear God, there's a video!”

“There's more'n one,” muttered Lucy.

Candace looked over at Lucy. “That
would
be a pretty tough experience to top.”

“My folks didn't agree.”

“So—how come it was your
third
career? You did something before the classical guitar?”

Lucy hesitated. She eyed Candace with what looked almost like suspicion.

“Since you ask, I used to want to act.”

“Honest to God?”

“Yeah.” Lucy paused again and then admitted, “TV, actually. Kinda like you.”

“You wanted to act on TV?”

There was a too-long pause. “I did it, for a while.”

“Are you being serious right now?”

She felt sure Lucy might have said more, but John-Michael poked his head around the door at that point and asked if Lucy wanted to go with him to get some burgers from In-N-Out. He didn't extend the invitation to Candace, which didn't surprise her. Every now and then those two seemed only too eager to fall back into their older friendship.

Candace watched them go. Then her eyes wandered back to the computer screen and fourteen-year-
old Lucy Long, strutting her stuff with Green Day.

Now
that
was inspiration.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

..................................................................

BALCONY, THURSDAY, MAY 21

“Come look, it's gorgeous out.”

From the balcony of the beach house, Grace announced her invitation to anyone within hearing distance, and then turned to watch a peach-and-flame sunset flare against the horizon. The beach was largely empty, just the occasional dog gamboling along, owner and pet stark silhouettes in the sand. Out in the water she could see the lights of a few boats being rocked in a light offshore breeze.

The evening bar crowd was just beginning to arrive. Slightly more than the normal weekday buzz, fairly standard for a Thursday. After a moment, Candace appeared on the threshold of her bedroom, laptop in hands.