The Heiress Strikes Back novel · Chapter 22 of 24

Chapter 22: The Choice

I turned around with my hand still on the knob.

"Where did you learn that?" I said.

He looked over his shoulder, with the spatula in his hand.

"Learn what?"

"The tune you're humming."

He listened to himself.

I watched him hear it, and the color go out of his face.

"I don't know," he said slowly.

"I've done it all my life."

"When I'm cooking, or driving to a call."

"My sister used to tell me to shut up."

"Four notes up. Three down."

"Miranda."

"You told Raymond she made a sound on the same few notes, and you made it back to her."

He put the spatula down and turned off the burner.

"She was five months old," he said. "She couldn't have been humming a song."

"She could if somebody sang it to her every night."

He took off his glasses with a hand that wasn't steady.

"It was the first thing I ever remember," I said.

"Before Dot's kitchen."

"I thought I made it up."

"I thought I was the only one who had it."

"You weren't," he said. "I had it too."

He had carried my mother's song in his mouth for twenty-four years, and never knew whose it was.

I put the duffel down on the floor.

"I am still angry," I said.

"I'm going to be angry at your name for the rest of my life."

"When I hear it on a mailbox, I'll want to put my fist through it."

"I know."

"I'm choosing this anyway."

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