Page 68 of The Voice We Find

And I was trying to get ahold of my only emergency contact in the area ... and he didn’t answer.

ThisI feel deep in my gut.

She’s right to be mad. I’m an idiot for putting my phone on DND when I’m somebody’s sole guardian. Such a rookie mistake for being two years in. I make the fix to my phone setting immediately, allowing two contacts the ability to break through my sacred focus mode: Gabby and Sophie.

I stare at the second name for longer than I should, considering the friend zone she put me in weeks ago.

I text my sister again.

Your brother says he’s VERY sorry for missing your texts and calls. He promises to do his best to never let that happen again and hopes you can forgive him?

An entire minute goes by before Gabby responds.

Gabby:

That depends. Do you promise to keep ALL the Christmas decorations I put up in your studio until your project with Sophie is finished?

I groan again. This time for a very different reason.

I glance around at the “festive surprise” Gabby created in my studio last night after I went to bed. Her little holiday prank consisted of Christmas throw pillows tossed on the sofa, a cotton ball–like substance adorning my shelves and windowsills, and every remaining available surface overwhelmed with miniature fir trees, snow globes, or something plaid and ridiculous. But the worst of it is—

Gabby:

And that means you’ll keep the mistletoe in the sound booth, too.

I grit my teeth. Before I got lost in my music time warp, I’d planned on taking it all down before Sophie arrived this afternoon—starting with the hideous plastic mistletoe sprig my parents used to hang above their bedroom door every holiday season since I was a boy.

I release a heavy sigh.

Fine. But you will be on clean-up duty as soon as my project is finished.

Gabby:

Gabby the Elf agrees to that.

So I’m forgiven?

Gabby:

If Christ can forgive you, then I guess I can, too.

Despite myself, I smile at her wit.

Gabby:

Also, will you show me the music you’ve been working on sometime?

I read the sentence over twice and have to swallow against the thickening in my throat. Outside from sharing the same parents, music was once the strongest bond we shared, a tie that kept us connected during the years we lived apart. I would send her early tracks of songs I’d yet to master, and she would provide feedback sure to make me laugh.

It’s been a long time since she’s asked to hear anything of mine—longer still since I wrote anything new, I suppose—and I want to give that to her. I want to give her so much more than that. Hopefully, after this project, that will be a reality.

Anytime.

Just then, the studio door bursts open with gusto, revealing a windblown, rain-speckled Sophie on the threshold looking like she just walked here from the winery. Anything not nailed down scatters from my desk and cyclones in the center of the studio. Sophie’s hair whips in every direction. By the time I pull her inside and shut the door behind her, her thin sweater has slipped off her shoulders, exposing a lace-trimmed tank I can’t blink away fast enough.

Without warning, she flips her head upside down and rakes her fingers through the tangled mass of chestnut locks.

“Itisinsaneoutside,” she says from behind the curtain of hair. “Pretty sure I could have brought Phantom with me under our natural disaster clause. I was almost tornadoed to Oz.”

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