Chapter 3 - What Chloe knew
I did not yell until we were in the taxi.
Not at Victor.
At Chloe.
“What were you thinking?”
She looked out the window.
“Mom.”
“You were supposed to stay upstairs.”
“I heard them playing his song.”
“That is not his song.”
She turned.
“Exactly.”
I closed my eyes.
Wrong phrasing.
She continued:
“You said Dad wrote it.”
“I said some of the music was similar.”
“No.”
Children remember exact adult failures.
“You said Victor took Dad’s music.”
I had.
Two months earlier.
I was tired.
A Blackwood Foundation commercial played on television.
Ashes Above the River under images of scholarship recipients.
Chloe recognized the melody.
“Dad’s song.”
I froze.
She asked:
“Why is Victor’s name there?”
I should have waited.
Talked to a lawyer.
Prepared.
Instead:
“Because your dad wrote parts before Victor used them.”
Not the whole story.
Enough.
Chloe searched.
Found Victor’s album credit.
Found Daniel’s old website through an archive.
Saw:
Orchestration and music preparation for Victor Blackwood.
Then she opened one of Daniel’s storage boxes.
Not locked.
Inside:
Scores.
A piano reduction.
CDs.
USB drives.
Letters.
She found The Lantern Sea.
She had been practicing the opening for six weeks.
“How did you know you’d be downstairs?”
“I didn’t.”
“Then why—”
“I heard piano.”
She started crying.
“I wanted him to stop lying.”
My anger disappeared.
Not because what she did was safe.
Because she was nine.
Adults had created the lie.
A child had walked into it.
I pulled her toward me.
“You are not responsible for fixing what happened to Dad.”
She said:
“But you didn’t.”
There.
The taxi continued toward Queens.
May you like
I had no answer.
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