“We’ll need someone to handle his affairs,” Bernice continues, and I can hear the gears already turning in her head, the meetings she’s setting up, the fires she’s planning to put out.Everything with my help.“You’re the only one who knows music, who can convince these artists that whatever they’re doing is good, but it’d be better if they do it your way.”
And there it is.The catch.The hook behind the call.The favor within the crisis.Because I’ve always known music.I’ve always been the one who could bridge the language of emotion and business, the one who could sell passion like a product.I’ve always been the one he prepared—whether I wanted to be or not.
This isn’t about the news that my father is in the hospital or that he might be dying.Nope.It’s about his business.If she didn’t need me, I doubt she would’ve called me today.
I close my eyes and try to swallow the heat crawling up my throat, that old, familiar sting of being needed but never chosen.I know what I should say.I should tell them I have too much going on, too many obligations, and too many unfinished pieces of my life stacked in the corners, waiting to be dealt with.
It’s as simple as telling them I can’t be the person they want me to be.
I won’t.
It’s impossible when I am the one who needs his love, his approval, and believes we can still be a family.Plus, he raised me with concertos and contracts.He built me from his ambition and my mother’s discipline, as if I were some composition he expected to play flawlessly.
And maybe I resented that.Maybe I still do.But when things start to crack—when the tempo changes without warning—they all look at me like I’m the one who knows how to keep it from falling apart.Like I’m the only one holding everything together while pretending the seams were never stressed in the first place.
Even if that’s true, this isn’t the time to talk about the future of his company.This is the time to get to him.Now.Before something else is taken.Before the silence grows louder.Before I lose the only parent I have left.
At least this is different from the time I lost Mom.She’d been sick for months, but no one really explained what that meant.They told me it would get worse before it got better.They said she was resting—she was getting better.
I believed them right up until the morning I found my father sitting at the kitchen table, staring into a coffee mug that had gone cold.He didn’t cry.He didn’t speak.He just sat there, shoulders stiff, hands still, and I knew what he was feeling before he said a word.He didn’t say her name.
He never has.
But he was there.He showed up while I sobbed after he told me Mom would never come back.And now it’s my turn.
“I’ll be there as soon as I can,” I say, wondering if I should finally buy one of those cell phones Cleo and Dad insist I should carry around.“It’s for emergencies.What happens if I can’t find you?”They both say something similar every time.
Usually, I don’t care because there’s no reason to wait, but now ...I see why I need it.
As I place the phone back in the cradle, Nina Simone’s voice fills the silence like smoke curling around everything I can’t hold.She doesn’t want us to misunderstand her, and I feel that deep in my soul, but I also know it’s too late.
ChapterSeventeen
Kit
May 2nd, 1997
Everyone forgets that hospitals all smell like resignation—disinfectant, metal, and bad decisions hanging in the air like a song stuck in the wrong key—until we step back into one of them.It’s as if we delete the scent the moment we leave the building, but when we enter again with another emergency, the scent hits harder.
Every hospital I visit feels almost the same.The sterile stench, the whiteness, and the hum from the fluorescent lights.My shoe squeaks, and there’s the occasional cough that sounds like a warning.I’m not ready for this, but I keep walking, heels tapping out a nervous tempo against the linoleum floor.Four-four time.The rhythm of someone pretending to be composed.
I’m a woman in control, but I’m not.In fact, I’m actually losing my sanity.Focus on the outside,Kit.You can’t have a panic attack in the middle of a crisis.Everyone is counting on you—including Connor Dempsey.
Find five things that start with L.That’s grounding, right?That’s something.
Linoleum.Fake shine, real grit.It’s probably older than I am.There are the lights.Fucking fluorescent and aggressive, buzzing like swarming bees that might sting you if you’re not careful.There’s a lab coat.And ...I can’t find anything else, maybe my lipstick.And there are lies.The ones I tell anyone if they ask, “Are you okay?”
I pass a vending machine filled with stale peanut butter crackers and a row of blue plastic.
Bernice meets me just outside the ICU, notebook in hand, lips pressed into a line so thin it could slice.She’s never been warm—more efficient than empathetic, she’s one of those people who files grief under “G” and schedules mourning between budget reviews.
“Kit, sweetheart.I’m glad you’re here,” she says with a nod that doubles as a summons.“I hope you brought a notebook.”
I want to ask if she ever just starts with a simple, “Hello, how are you?”
Instead, I follow her down the hallway anyway, past half-wilted plants and fluorescent lights.It seems like a private conference room has been temporarily converted into a staging area for Dad’s business affairs.It smells like coffee left too long in the pot and sadness.
Papers are scattered across a long table beneath flickering bulbs that make everything appear harsher than it should.I stand next to the seat across from Bernice, and for a second, it feels like I’ve been summoned to the principal’s office.
