“More!”
I searched my mind. I was running out of animals. And songs. I took a deep breath. “I’m being eaten by a boa constrictor...”
My stomach gurgled. I ignored it, catching Robbie’s snub-toed shoe in my fingers, pretending to swallow him up one delicious baby bite at a time. He squirmed and giggled as I grabbed his knee and ankle. I gobbled his head, and he dissolved in shrieks of delighted laughter.
He was the best audience ever.
“Thank you. You’re a lifesaver,” Jo said when she came at four o’clock.
“Anytime,” I said.
“How’s your writing coming along? The new songs?”
I shrugged.
“Writer’s block?” she asked sympathetically.
“What? No. Not really.”
“Eric always tells me to tell my story.”
My throat closed. “I don’t know what my story is.”
Jo studied me thoughtfully. “Do you still write in that song notebook I gave you?”
“Every day.” It wasn’t a lie, exactly.
Jo pursed her lips. “My editor says everybody struggles when writing goes from being a dream to being a job. It helps if you remember why you started in the first place.”
I smiled. “Like falling in love.”
“Exactly. You can’t do it to please other people. You have to want it for yourself.”
“Like you and Eric.”
“Speaking of Eric, do you want to come for dinner tonight?”
The crackers sat uneasily in my stomach. I’d eaten the entire pack. Would Jo notice? “Oh, I can’t... I don’t want to be a bother. You guys are so busy.”
“Are you kidding? Eric lives to feed people.” Jo grinned. “He thinks you need fattening up.”
I managed not to cringe. “It’s just... You all must have so much to do, with the restaurant opening soon. And Colt’s recording a new album in the fall. He wants me to focus on that.”
“Mm.” Another searching look. “Bethie... Is everything all right?”
I’d always been able to talk to Jo about everything. Except this. She was a newly married mother of three with a new house and a deadline of her own to manage. Even if she had the time, she couldn’t fix whatever was wrong with me.
And maybe... I didn’t want to be fixed. I didn’t need anybody else telling me what to do right now.
I told myself I was protecting her. But even then I knew I was protecting my secret. Myself.
“I thought I’d work on my music tonight,” I said.
And I tried. I really did.
Before I toured with Colt, before I’d ever touched a guitar, I had loved music. The songs from Momma’s radio that spoke with the voices of friends, the hymns in Daddy’s church that rang with the tongues of angels, the melodies that whispered to me sometimes like my most secret self.
The thing that made me truly me.
