The Daughter They Abandoned Twice novel · Chapter 12 of 24

Chapter 12: The Kite

"Hum it again," Levi said.

I did, quietly, the first six notes.

He shut his eyes.

We were sitting in the cab of his truck at the edge of the church lot, with the heater running and a state trooper's flashlight bobbing in the trees beyond the windshield.

The sky had started to go gray.

"There's a woman in Wichita," Levi said. "I met her at a conference for families of missing kids, six years ago in Kansas City. I was twenty-six and I didn't talk to anybody."

"Levi..."

"She sat next to me at lunch. She had a pin on her jacket, a little yellow kite." He opened his eyes. "They had a candlelight hour that night. People stood up and shared something about the one they lost. She stood up and sang."

My throat had closed.

"She sang that," he said. "That exact song. She said her daughter used to sing it in the grocery cart, until a man took her from a parking lot at four years old, and she still sang it every night in case it carried."

I could not speak.

"I've heard that tune once in my life," Levi said. "In a hotel ballroom, from a woman who cried so hard she had to sit down in the middle. I've been hearing it in my sleep for six years and I couldn't place it until you hummed it in a church yard."

"It's a lullaby," I said. "A lot of people know lullabies."

"Not with that bridge." He hummed it, low and bad, the last four notes going up where they should have gone down.

I stared at him.

I knew that bridge.

I had been taught that it was a mistake, that I always got the song wrong.

Marlene had slapped me for the song twice, and for the bridge once.

← Chapter 11 · All chapters · Chapter 13 →

Want to keep talking to characters like these? Chat with AI romance characters: AI Boyfriend · AI Girlfriend · Dark Romance · Fantasy Romance · BL (Boys’ Love) · Billionaire Boyfriend · Mafia Boyfriend · Possessive Boyfriend · Hockey Boyfriend · Older Boyfriend · K-Drama Boyfriend · Anime Boyfriend · Vampire Boyfriend · Werewolf Boyfriend · Demon Boyfriend · Fae Romance · GL (Girls’ Love) · Anime Girlfriend · Goth & Alt Girlfriend · Gamer Girlfriend · Tsundere Girlfriend · Fantasy Girlfriend