“Jack?” Harmony asked.
April tore her thoughts from where they’d traveled.
“Yeah.” His Adam’s apple bobbed.
April bit her lower lip and pressed her hands together as though warming them. Really, she was holding herself together.
Then Jack read Harmony’s words out loud for them all.
“‘Everybody Has a Voice’ by Harmony Davis,” he read, then paused, skimming over the paper before diving back in with his toffee-coated tone.
“‘Everybody has a voice,
But you just have to find it,
It won’t be in the forest,
You have to find it deep down inside you,
You just have to let it free to be,
’Cause if you don’t let it out,
You’ll never have a voice,
And you need a voice to sing out,
Voices are the best things you’ll ever find,
Yeah, ’cause everybody has a voice to find!’”
April couldn’t pull her gaze from the graphite slashes Harmony had written on the paper. Erased. Then rewritten. All precisely within the wide-ruled lines.
April was a woman who had lost her voice. That’s what had happened. Her heart ached at the realization.
Kent hadn’t taken it with him. Kent hadn’t takenanythingwith him. She’d just tucked it away and thought it burned with the rest of her hopes, dreams, and wishes.
Maybe it hadn’t.
Her head spun. Rohan seemed to be well on his way to stopping his ribbiting and licking things. Harmony was writing songs more poignant than many professionals.
And April… April was fine.
Really and truly okay.
When had that happened? And why hadn’t she fully realized it?
“Harmony.” Jack scraped his hand over his face, kneeling to her level.
“Is it not good?” she asked, her face scrunching up just like April knew hers did when she got frustrated. Everyone pointed it out, from Kitty to Simone to her parents. Harmony was her mini-me if ever there was one.
“No.” His voice cracked a little and April’s heart seemed to grow.
April hopped right in to help him. “What Jack means is—”
“I want to hear it from Jack.” Harmony crossed her arms and firmed her chin. Clearly she was ready to take the hit if it came. April understood exactly how that felt.
“What I mean is,” he said, glancing back at the paper, “this isexcellent.”
