CHAPTER 2 – The Piece No One Thought Mattered
CHAPTER 2 – The Piece No One Thought Mattered
Lila cried herself to sleep before sunset.
I sat beside her bed, brushing damp curls away from her forehead.
"Mommy..." she whispered, her voice barely louder than the rain beginning outside.
"Yes, sweetheart?"
She looked at me with eyes that no six-year-old should ever have to wear.
"Did I do something wrong?"
The question split something inside me.
"No."
"But Grandpa got so mad."
"You didn't do anything wrong."
"Maybe I shouldn't have wanted to play music."
I pulled her into my lap despite her growing legs.
"Lila, listen to me carefully."
She nodded.
"People who hurt others often want you to believe your dreams are the problem."
She frowned.
"But they're not?"
"No."
"Then what is?"
"The problem is that some people are afraid of seeing joy they can't control."
She thought about that for a long moment before resting her head against my shoulder.
"I still hear the song in my head."
I kissed the top of her hair.
"Good."
"Even if the guitar's gone?"
"Especially then."
Downstairs, the house was quiet except for the ticking grandfather clock.
Colin stood alone in the kitchen nursing a glass of whiskey he hadn't touched.
He looked exhausted.
"I'm sorry," he said before I could speak.
I waited.
Nothing else came.
"You just stood there."
He closed his eyes.
"You know how he is."
The sentence landed between us like another shattered instrument.
"No," I answered softly. "I know how you are."
He looked up.
"I've spent eight years telling myself that one day you'd finally stand up to him."
"Natalie—"
"But today he didn't humiliate me."
I took a slow breath.
"He destroyed something your daughter loved."
Colin rubbed both hands across his face.
"If I challenge him publicly, he'll cut me off."
"I know."
"He owns sixty-two percent of the company."
"I know."
"He controls the family trust."
"I know."
"My mother depends on him."
"I know."
He looked relieved that I understood.
Instead, I quietly asked,
"So tell me what Lila depends on."
His mouth opened.
Nothing came out.
Long after midnight, sleep refused to find me.
The broken tuning peg rested on my bedside table.
Something about it kept pulling at my attention.
Not because it was valuable.
Because Everett had made certain every piece of that guitar disappeared.
Almost every piece.
I picked it up.
The tiny chrome peg felt heavier than it should.
Then I noticed something unusual.
There was something caught beneath the metal housing.
A folded corner of paper.
Very carefully, I loosened the tiny screw with one of Colin's eyeglass repair tools.
Inside, wrapped tighter than a rolled receipt, was a strip of paper no larger than my finger.
I unfolded it.
Three words appeared in Colin's handwriting.
For Lila. Always.
Below the words was a tiny music note.
Tears filled my eyes.
He had hidden it there before giving her the guitar.
A secret little promise that only she would someday discover while changing the strings.
Everett hadn't just broken wood.
He had destroyed a father's love letter to his daughter.
The next morning I drove back toward Charleston alone.
Not home.
Downtown.
I parked outside Bell & Hawthorne Music.
The elderly owner recognized the tuning peg immediately.
"Oh..." he sighed.
"The little blonde girl."
"You remember her?"
"Of course."
He smiled sadly.
"Your husband spent almost two hours here."
My heart tightened.
"He couldn't decide which guitar."
The old man chuckled.
"He kept asking which one would make a six-year-old believe she could become anything."
I looked away before the tears escaped.
"He finally chose that cedar model."
He disappeared into the workshop.
When he returned, he carried a folder.
"I almost forgot."
He handed it to me.
"Your husband asked us to keep these."
Inside were photographs.
Lila sitting on a stool, holding three different guitars.
Colin kneeling beside her, pretending to play along.
Both of them laughing.
On the last page was a handwritten receipt.
Paid in cash.
Underneath it, Colin had written another note.
"Dad can own the company.
He doesn't get to own my daughter's dreams."
I stared at the words.
The man I had married still existed.
He was simply buried beneath decades of fear.
As I thanked the shop owner, he hesitated.
"There was...something else."
"What do you mean?"
"The day your husband bought the guitar..."
He lowered his voice.
"...another woman came in after he left."
I frowned.
"She asked whether Mr. Mayfield had been here."
"Did she say why?"
"No."
He opened an old sales ledger.
"I remember because she seemed nervous."
He pointed toward a signature.
The name made my stomach tighten.
Vivian Mayfield.
Everett's wife.
"She bought replacement strings," the owner said.
"And she asked me something strange."
"What?"
He looked directly at me.
"She asked whether little girls ever stopped loving music after someone broke their first guitar."
A chill ran through me.
Vivian had expected Everett to destroy it...
before it had even happened.
Which meant she hadn't merely witnessed his cruelty.
She had known exactly what he intended.
May you like
And if she'd known that...
What else had she been silently living beside for all these years?
