Finally, she makes her way to the back of the stagewhere the cute security guard—the one who’d been smiling at her while he checked out her breasts—notices her and immediately rushes over to find out what’s wrong.
As calmly as possible (which isn’t very calm at all), Claudia tells him her baby is missing and that he was with Lisa Dwyer, Russell Dwyer’s daughter. “I’m afraid I don’t know Lisa well, and I’m worried she left him alone and someone maybe came in and…”
She doesn’t finish the thought because she is determined not to act like some new mom who can’t control herself.
The security guard tells her his name is William. He’s going to help her find her baby so she’s not to worry. He’s eager to take charge and Claudia is eager to let him. He suggests they go to the VIP area, as that’s probably the most likely place Lisa would have gone. She agrees and is overcome with relief that she’s decided to put her faith in William.
They start to wind their way through the equipment behind the stage, and he asks her how old her baby is. “Five months,” she says, her voice wobbling.
“About how big is that?” he asks her, using his hands as if measuring an imaginary baby’s height.
His guess would be more accurate if Elliott was a five-month-old chihuahua, but she doesn’t make fun of him in the flirty way she would if this were any other situation. Instead, she uses her own hands to indicate his height. “He’s fifteen and a half pounds.” She immediately feels silly for being too specific, and adds, “Not that the half matters.”
“No, it’s good, Claudia. Every detail is helpful. What color is his hair?”
“Blon—” She stops talking because Lisa has just come around the corner, arms linked with Trish, both stumblingand laughing, giddy with the thrill of being young. In an instant, the facade of the calm, collected woman gives way, and Claudia lunges at them. “Lisa! Where is Elliott?!”
William holds her back and calmly questions them. Their faces fall. They explain they only left a few minutes ago, but the baby is fine because Ivy and Poppy are watching him.
“Ivy and Poppy are gone too,” she snaps, then raises her voice to scream at them for being irresponsible. “They’re not in my trailer or theirs or yours! Why would you leave them? I was coming right back!”
A police officer strides over and asks what the problem is. William answers for her while she studies the police officer. He’s short and about her age with a crooked nose that looks like it’s been broken on multiple occasions.
While the men talk, she turns to Lisa. “I can’t believe you left. Youpromisedto watch him!”
The policeman snaps at Claudia to calm down. “Yelling at a teenager isn’t going to solve anything,” he says, as if snapping at a hysterical mother will.
Claudia suddenly understands why the man’s nose is crooked.
William explains that of course she’s upset. “Her baby is missing. And now it sounds like Zane McCreight’s daughters may have disappeared too.”
As soon as he mentions Zane’s name, the cop snaps to attention. It pisses Claudia off, but at the same time, she’s grateful because now it’ll be taken seriously.
William suggests they all carry on to the VIP area together to look for the kids. Lisa shakes her head. “That’s where we’re coming from. They’re not there.”
ELEVEN WEEKS BEFORE THE CONCERT
“No one likes to have less than they had before. That's the nature of the human animal.” ~ Joni Mitchell
JANUARY
CLAUDIA
“All right, Claudia, are you ready to try one?”
Claudia squinted to see into the control booth from the studio. She nodded at Jay Knox, her new producer, even though her heart was pounding so hard, she wasn’t sure she’d even be able to get out a single word. Jay was tough, but wildly talented, and he said they’d need to squeeze every ounce of raw emotion out of the song, the way a strongman would extract juice from a lemon.
They’d been working on the song together for weeks, but it was time to record it, which would be done in the presence of a film crew fromBehind the Music.The woman producing the episode, Quinn Jones, sat in the control room with Jay, while the cameraman, whose name Claudia had forgotten already, stood in the corner of the studio.
Quinn wanted to capture the raw emotion the first time Claudia recorded ‘Already Gone.’ She told her to ignore them both, and Claudia wished like hell it was possible. Shelet out a shaky breath and wiped her sweaty palms on the sides of her jeans. “I’m nervous.”
Jay’s voice came over the speaker. “Big deep breath, Claudia. Then sing it exactly how you did yesterday. You’ve already perfected it. My job is to capture the whole thing.”
“All right, let’s give it a whirl.”
It took close to two hours before Claudia managed to find that place she had gone to the day before. To what Jay referred to as Xanadu. But when she finally got there, she let her voice and her words fill the studio with every ounce of love and pain and sorrow in her heart. She barely felt her fingers as they moved over the guitar strings, and when the song ended, she didn’t need to wait for Jay to tell her she’d done it. Instead, she stood up, lifting her guitar up above her head with one hand.
“You nailed it.”
