Scandalous novel · Chapter 8 of 24

Chapter 8: The Recital

The elementary school gym smelled like floor polish and orange slices.

Forty folding chairs faced a stage the size of a pickup bed, and every parent in the room was holding up a phone.

I sat in the back row in my work dress, trying to look like an assistant.

Burke sat beside me in his charcoal suit, trying to look like a father.

He kept checking his watch, and he kept not leaving.

"You don't have to stay," he said under his breath.

"She asked for me."

"She asks for a lot of things. Last week it was a pony."

"Did you say yes?"

"I said we'd talk about it when she was twenty."

A second-grade boy hit a wrong note on the recorder, and the whole room winced and clapped.

Then Junie walked out in a green dress, with her braids looking neat for once, carrying a recorder.

She found me in the back row and held my eyes.

I gave her a thumbs-up.

Her chin lifted a quarter inch.

She played a song called "Hot Cross Buns" with total, furious concentration, and she did not miss a note.

When she finished, I stood and clapped before anyone else in the room.

Beside me, Burke had gone very quiet.

His hand had found the back of my chair, and it stayed there.

"Thank you," he said, without looking at me.

"For clapping?"

"For being the one who did it first."

Afterward the parents crowded into the hallway with paper cups of juice.

Junie hugged my legs and said, "Did you hear the part where I didn't breathe?"

"I heard the part where you were incredible."

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