Another tremble of her phone.
Three times. She’d ignored it long it enough. She tugged her phone from its holster. Not a call: it was a text. From Michael O’Neil.
She read it, noting that it was in all caps.
Well. Hmm.
‘What’s wrong, Mom?’
‘Just a second, honey.’
She hit speed-dial button number one.
Click.
‘Kathryn! You saw my text?’
‘I—’
‘The unsub went through your Pathfinder. At the Bay View Center. We’ve got to assume he knows about Maggie’s concert. I have a team on the way. We don’t know what he has planned but you have to evacuate the school. Only keep it quiet. Check all the exits – they’re probably wired shut or something.’ This was more than Michael O’Neil usually said in half an hour. ‘So, you’ve got to see if Maintenance has wire cutters. But it’s got to be subtle. If you can start getting people out—’
‘Michael.’
‘It’s seven twenty, so following his profile, he could attack at any time. He waits for the show to start and—’
‘It’s outside.’
‘I … What?’
‘The show? Maggie’s concert? We’re on the soccer field behind the school. We’re not in the gym or the assembly hall.’
‘Oh. Outside.’
‘No risk of confinement. Stampede.’
‘No.’
‘Even the green room – it’s just a curtained-off area outside.’
‘You’re outside,’ he repeated.
‘Right. But thanks.’
‘Well … Good.’ After a pause he said, ‘And tell Maggie good luck. I wish I could be there.’
‘Night, Michael.’
They disconnected.
Outside …
The relief in his voice had been so dramatic, it was nearly comical.
Then she turned her attention back to her daughter.
‘Honey, Mags … Listen. I need you to tell me something. Whatever it is, it’s fine.’
‘Huh?’
‘I know why you’re upset.’
‘I’m not upset.’ Maggie looked down at her crisp, shiny dress and smoothed it. One of her better kinesic tells.
‘I think you are. You’re not happy about performing.’
‘Yes, I am.’
‘There’s something else. Tell me.’
‘I don’t want to talk about it.’
‘Listen to me. We love each other and sometimes it’s not good enough for people who love each other to say that. They have to talk. Tell me the truth. Why don’t you want to sing?’
Maybe, Dance wondered, the Secrets Club and queen bitch Bethany were forcing her daughter to throw a pie at the teacher or a water balloon. Even worse? She thought of Stephen King’s Carrie, drenching the girl in blood onstage.
‘Honey?’ Dance said softly.
Maggie looked at her, then away and gasped, ‘It’s terrible.’
She burst into racking tears.
CHAPTER 72
Kathryn Dance sat next to Jon Boling and her son in the third row, her parents nearby, watching the procession of performers in Mrs Bendix’s Sixth Grade Class’s Got Talent!.
‘How you doing there?’ Dance whispered to Boling. It was astonishing how many forgotten lines, missed dance steps and off-tone notes could be crammed into one hour.
‘Better than any reality show on TV,’ Boling responded.
True, Dance conceded. He’d managed, yet again, to bring a new perspective.
There’d been several scenes from plays, featuring three or four students together (the class numbered thirty-six), which cut the show’s running time down considerably. And solo performances were hardly full-length Rachmaninoff piano concerti. They tended to be Suzuki pieces or abbreviated Katy Perry hits.
‘The Cup Song’ had been performed six times.
It was close to eight thirty before Maggie’s turn came. Mrs Bendix announced her and, in her shimmering dress, she walked confidently from the wings.
Dance took a deep breath. She found her hand gripping Boling’s, the bandaged one. Hard. He adjusted it.
‘Sorry,’ she whispered.
He kissed her hair.
At the microphone, she looked over the audience. ‘I’m Maggie and I’m going to sing “Let It Go” from Frozen, which is a super movie, in my opinion better than The Lego Movie and most of the Barbie ones. And if anybody here hasn’t seen it I think you should. Like, right away. I mean, right away.’
A glance at Mom, acknowledging the slip of lazy preposition.
Dance smiled and nodded.
Then Maggie grew quiet and lowered her head. She remembered: ‘Oh, and I want to thank Mrs Gallard for accompanying me.’
She nodded to her music teacher.
The piano began, the haunting minor-key intro to the beautiful song. Then the piano went quiet, a pause … and right on the beat, Maggie filled the silence with the first words of the lyrics. She sang slow and soft at first, just as in the movie, then growing in volume, her timbre firm, singing from her chest. Dance snuck a peek. Most of the audience was captivated, heads bobbing in time to the tune. And nearly every child was mouthing, if not singing, along.
When it came to the bridge, bordering on operatic recitative, Maggie nailed it perfectly. Then back to the final verse and the brilliant offhand dismissal about the cold never bothering her anyway.
The applause began, loud and genuine. Dance knew the audience was considering a standing ovation, but since there’d been none earlier, there could be none now. Not that it mattered, Dance could see that Maggie was ecstatic. She beamed and curtseyed, a maneuver she’d practiced almost as much as the song.
Dance blew her daughter a kiss. She set her head against Boling as he hugged her.
Wes said, ‘Wow. Jackie Evancho.’
Not quite. But Dance decided definitely to add voice to the violin lessons this year. She exhaled a laugh.
‘What?’ Edie Dance asked her daughter.
‘Just she did a good job.’
‘She did.’
Dance didn’t tell her mother that the laugh wasn’t prompted by Maggie’s performance but from the discussion in the green room a half-hour earlier.
‘Honey?’
‘It’s terrible.’
When the tears had stopped, Dance had told Maggie, ‘I know what’s going on, Mags. About the club.’