Write My Name Across the Sky: A Novel by Barbara O'Neal

Author:Barbara O'Neal [O'Neal, Barbara]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Lake Union Publishing
Published: 2021-08-09T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twenty-Five

Willow

I’m still deep in the bowels of the internet, trying to track down definitions of crimes, going on my best guess of what might have happened here. What I discover makes it feel like anything could happen. If she carried contraband, she could go to prison for a long time. If she stole a painting, she’ll never see the light of day.

I just don’t have enough information to know for sure.

When the house phone rings, I realize it must be Josiah, and I leap up to let him in, opening the door so I can wait for the elevator. Anticipation zips around my body, restless pops of possibility. I’m half-worried that he won’t be anything like I remember.

And then the elevator opens, and he’s there, ducking under the low doorway to emerge into the corridor between apartments.

I noticed that he was quite tall before, with those beautiful long legs, but it’s startling to see him in the environment I know, in a doorway I’ve crossed a hundred times. He’s dressed in everyday clothes, jeans and a heathery sweater and a raincoat hanging from very broad shoulders. He’s wearing the same knitted hat as the other night.

I didn’t imagine anything. His cheekbones, his mouth, his sleepy tiger eyes. I take a breath. “Hi.”

“Hey,” he says, in that amazing voice.

“Hey. Come in.”

He brings himself and his bass into the room, looking up at the skylight as everyone does, lifting his eyebrows. “Wow, this is the real thing, isn’t it?”

No one comes into this apartment, especially anyone who lives in the city, and doesn’t say something like this. “It is.” I gesture. “The music room is this way.”

He follows easily, glancing at paintings, but mostly just loping behind me, his feet light on the wooden floor. In the music room, he looks around curiously, noting the album and magazine covers, the framed original music. “Damn,” he says, splaying his hand over his heart. “I wasn’t expecting to feel such awe.”

“Look around. I don’t mind.” I dip my head back to the piano, running another series, trying a minor slant. He rounds the room, looking at everything, his hands tucked behind his back as if he’s in a museum.

“Do you have a favorite song?” he asks.

“Of my mother’s?” I drop my hands into my lap. “Of course I love ‘Write My Name Across the Sky.’ I mean, it’s her signature. It made her wealthy, and it still earns royalties.”

He’s listening with his head tilted slightly. He has that gleam in his eye that people get, men and women, when they get close to the big, big fame story of my mother.

“But?” he prompts.

“She sang lullabies to us.” I run through the notes of one of them on the piano and sing along. “Those are the ones I most love. Sam, too, though it’s hard to get her to talk about my mom at all.”

He comes over, sits on the piano bench with me, and lifts his hands and plays a bass harmony to my notes.

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