Page 8 of Late Nights & Love Lines
The little girl stops playing but doesn’t look at me. Her anger and sadness assault me like tiny electric shocks that shoot from her arm hair and into mine.
She’s hurting. It’s there in her hunched shoulders and arms tucked tightly against her ribs.
Without permission, I place my fingers on the keys—it’s a homecoming. “You almost had it. The tempo for the chorus isa little faster. Let every keystroke invoke anger for what’s been lost.”
Closing my eyes, I play the song as it was meant to be played, and suddenly, I’m a little girl again, playing to a forest full of campers who have yet to experience the pain that’s suffocating me.
Hope is the line between happiness and me.
The instilled fears,
They still cause tears.
’Cause I must confess,
You broke me like all the rest.
Stained glass shines,
But not for me.
Now ‘they’ speak and their whispers scream,
The pointed fingers of sinner’s sins.
Because you broke me just like stained glass,
Then left before I could shine.
Hope is the line between happiness and me.
My fingers rest on the last keys, my eyes remain closed, and my heart beats angrily, each thud stabbing at an old wound.
“How—how…” the little girl to my left stutters. “I only know three lines of the chorus.”
“It’s called ‘Lullaby to Loneliness,’” I tell her.
“But how do you know it? My dad could never remember the whole thing, only a few words, but he hums the chorus when he’s lost in thought. He said a little girl…he said.”
Dread settles into my bones. Only three people paid me any attention that day, and they’re all related. It’shim.
“Sebastian’s world fell apart.”Pappy’s words from our last conversation ring loudly in my ears.
There’s no way they’re here. I don’t believe in coincidence. There’s good luck and there’s bad, and it’s a toss-up which side you’ll end up on. Someone, maybe this little girl’s dad, just happened to be a random camper—the same as me. That’s the only reasonable explanation.
“I wrote this song when I was a teenager,” I finally say, dragging my gaze to hers. Our eyes meet and my stomach drops out. My soul understands the stories hiding behind her beautiful green orbs.
So, not a random stranger—I’ve never forgotten his eyes, and this little girl is the spitting image of her father.
Sweat pools in very uncomfortable places. Maybe there’s good luck, bad luck, and then Pappy.
Right. Time to get the hell out of dodge. Forget what I told Elijah, this can’t happen. I’ll never willingly put myself in the position of caring too much again, and this family, the one who once showed me kindness in the violence of my life, is the one thing left in this world that could break me.
“It’s so much better the way you sing it,” she says quietly. Too quietly, ghostly, as if the words are pulled from her soul without her permission. “I’ve been trying to figure it out on my own. My dad used to sing it to me when I was little, but he made up his own words and it changed all the time. His attempt was mid at best, so it never felt right—except the chorus.”
Well, shit. And also, what a strange choice to sing to a baby.
“What you were playing, you did that? On your own?” I scoot back a bit, trying to gauge her age. She’s probably only a few years younger than I was when I wrote it.
