“Then why are we having this conver—wait. You hired someone already?” There was no way—no way—Kristin could have hired someone that fast. Aside from April, she knew no one in the music scene, and a replacement that fast would have to be done on a favor. But who owed her a favor?
“Um . . . it was more like a chance encounter than anything else.” April watched while her sister reached up for a strand of hair and began twirling. Twirling, twirling, twirling. And more than the One More Things and fake smiles and all the other regular habits Kristin used to mask guilt, hair twirling was the biggest sign of wrongdoing. Always had been. She raised an eyebrow at her sister and repeated the question. “Kristin, who agreed to sing last minute? Because I can’t imagine that anyone around here would—”
Then she knew. Like a cat knows when someone is dying and a child senses stranger danger, she knew.
And just like that, prison found its way to the top of her bucket list, because this was totally and completely and entirely grounds for murdering her sister.
“Has anyone seen my brain? I can’t seem to locate it,” Jack said, raking his hands through his hair before burying his face in his palms. “What the heck possessed me to agree to sing in that wedding? I don’t even like that chick, but it was almost like my mouth opened up on its own and said yes before I could stop it. I’m a musician—I have a great career—so how in heaven’s name am I suddenly playing the part of Adam Sandler in that lame nineties movie?”
“The Wedding Singer?” His manager, Brian, peered at him over his laptop screen. They sat at Jack’s mother’s kitchen table drinking coffee. Jack always made a point of stopping in to see his mom when he rolled into town. With a rare weekend off and the new tour kicking off next weekend, neither he nor his manager were in a hurry to do much of anything else. “I think that movie came out in the early two-thousands.”
“Whatever. I’m still starring in it. Will probably be forced to wear some blue tuxedo with a puffy ruffle shirt and sing some cheesy ballad.” His head came up, eyes wide with horror. “If she makes me sing ‘Wind Beneath My Wings’—”
“She wouldn’t dare,” Brian said. “Besides, I saw that chick in her tight blue skirt. I’m not surprised you said yes. Not surprised at all.”
“Please,” Jack said, “You don’t know this girl. She could have been standing there in a fringe bikini and I still would have found her repulsive. I only said yes for one reason.” Guilt. Guilt and a fair amount of self-loathing. Pair those two attributes with a healthy dose of shame and a guy could be talked into just about anything. But he didn’t say that. In fact, he said nothing. It took Brian a minute, but eventually he caught on.
“And the reason is . . .?”
“I owe her sister something.” That was as close to the truth as he dared to admit. He couldn’t tell his manager his entire career was launched on a stolen song. It didn’t matter that he didn’t know it was stolen until exactly four weeks after it was released and playing on an hourly basis on the radio. It didn’t matter that over a month of television appearances had gone by before April began to flood his phone with text messages demanding an apology, a retraction, money. It didn’t matter that Jack spent the next two months panicking before he finally sucked it up and called her back, or that she had subsequently ignored all his calls—at that point likely too angry and hurt to bother acknowledging him. It didn’t matter that she’d written only four lines and Jack had built an entire song around them— he’d spent three years rationalizing that pathetic idea—but his conscience wouldn’t let him deny the hard truth that stealing a little was the same thing as stealing a lot. People went to jail for both.
Sometimes Jack suspected jail was where he belonged. Despite the poor conditions or the fact that he might be eye candy for the sexually frustrated, he wondered if landing his butt in solitary for a few days would make his guilt magically disappear.
It was a long shot, he knew, but he still couldn’t help consider the possibility.
“You owe who something?” His mother walked in, the picture of health and stability and normalcy—something he appreciated more and more as life got crazier. She wore her usual uniform of mom jeans and pullover sweater. No matter how many times Jack encouraged her to go shopping and treat herself to something more than JCPenney or Sears, she wouldn’t do it. There were definite benefits of having money, but other than this house that Jack purchased for her last year and a cleaning lady who came once a week in spite of his mother’s objections, she didn’t bother enjoying any of them.
“No one, Mom. I was just filling Brian in on the history of this town.” Not exactly a lie; just a few details left out to protect the less-than-innocent. Namely, him.