Page 24 of Second Song

“You mean, not until later today?” I could wait for them after this meeting. Not that I’ll look forward to it, but I’ve lived with guilt for too many years to want to hold on to it for even a minute longer.

“No, they’re away for a few weeks.” She touches a pile of maps for this garden. “Will you still want one of these?”

I don’t know why I feel crushed. It should be a relief to avoid this confrontation. But I can’t keep on reliving that awful time over and over. Can’t keep rehashing what happened and hating myself for it. Lately, that vicious circle is a snake biting its own tail and I don’t know why, not when I’ve had years to put it all behind me.

I settle for nodding, and she hands a map over and makes an easy offer. “Here.” She pushes a pad of paper across the counter along with a pen. “Why not write them a note while you’re here? I’ll make sure to get it to them.”

A cowardly part of me cheers at getting to make excuses for being a dick on paper instead of face-to-face. The part of me who can almost still feel a brave-boy sticker on the back of a lanyard says, “I should really speak to them myself.” I still take the pen and notepad. At least clutching them gives me something to do with my hands while waiting for a man I last saw on the far side of a sandpit.

I’m reminded of Luke Lawson’s son as I explore the garden. It’s full of bridges—ornamental ones that lead to walled sections of garden that burst with colour. With sound too, from blackbirds. I whistle, echoing their own song back to them, then I say sorry to someone I’ve almost walked into.

I’m apologising to a statue.

I almost laugh at my mistake before registering who must have been this statue’s model, and I’m back in that loop of wishing I could get an apology over with once and for all because this is Pasha just as I remember from when I last saw him.

Someone skilled has caught the cheeky grin that won him more votes than his singing—a grin he used to toss my way at the start of the contest until I listened to the wrong orders. “Sorry,” I say again and mean it. “I’m really, really sorry.”

“What for?”

Luke Lawson has arrived without me hearing.

“Oh, uh…nothing.” Fantastic. Another great first impression. I clutch my borrowed pad and pen with one hand and offer another. “Thanks for seeing me, Mr. Lawson.”

He has to juggle his own handful of paperwork to shake with me. “Luke, please. And this is Jamila.” A toddler with the same dark eyes as her brother hides behind his legs. She’s only shy for a moment. I’m quieter for longer because of course this is a perfect time for my voice to die, right when I should launch my best pick-me sales pitch.

Or maybe I don’t have to.

It sounds as if someone else has already made that sales pitch for me.

Luke starts with a high point. “Charles said you were very good with his children. A natural.”

I’ve been called a lot of things in the past. I don’t expect these labels.

“He said you were on their wavelength. That you were intuitive and creative.” He sits on a bench near one of those little bridges and pulls the lanyard I’d left at the school from his pocket, cradling it while his little girl gets busy collecting fallen petals.

I already know what is on the lanyard’s underside, although it isn’t a sticker that he points out. It’s that third line I filled in. “Why music therapy, Rowan?”

This flows out easily. “Because I lost my music once and it was the worst.”

“When was that?”

If he’s spoken with Charles, I guess he must already know this answer, but I tell him everything. Or almost. “After I lost a TV singing contest. Until then, music was all I had left. My escape.”

“From?”

That’s harder to answer. I guess he must see my silent struggle. I know the right words exist, lyrics I should be able to string together to explain why my life turned silent. I still haven’t found them by the time he asks another question.

“You found a safer place where your music came back to you?”

This is easier to acknowledge. “Yes. Or at least, my stepdad found somewhere for me.” It’s still weird to link him to the one good outcome from that whole shit show. “After the contest was over, I tried going back to school but—” I almost choke before I try again. “He sent me home not long after.”

“Sent you? You weren’t at home already?”

Home used to be anywhere Mum was. A person, not a building. A van full of laughter. Campfires and so many mugs of hot chocolate. “No. I mean he sent me to where he grew up in Ireland. Near Tralee.” About as far west as it gets. “I stayed on his brother’s family farm.”

He frowns.

I’m making a real hash of this, so I clarify by winding the clock further back, even though that snake with its clenched jaw fights me until this finally tumbles out in a hurry. “My mother passed away only a few months after she married. It was very sudden.” I parrot what my stepdad promised. “She wouldn’t have felt a thing.”

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