A Little Night Music by Kathy Hitchens Read Free Book Online

into bed with the press as Jon tried to hold onto his crumbling marriage. Thankfully, he didn’t have to explain. Elli didn’t ask.
    Jon hadn’t yet summoned the courage to ask about the visions, so he opened up the conversation in Elli’s direction. “Tell me about him.”
    “My father?”
    Jon nodded.
    “He was New Orleans. From the time he was in diapers and watched his own father play swing for the G.I. dances to the day he took his last breath with a hymn on his lips. He had played that morning. From the front porch like Mama told him not to do because it disturbed the neighbors. She didn’t say anything that morning. She knew. Wasn’t a sad song though. Issa says it was a celebration.” Elli’s voice weakened a bit before she finished. “I wouldn’t know. I never got to hear it.”
    Jon’s throat tightened at the hurt in her tone. He knew now why she came to hear him play. She was searching for that last song that would never come. He couldn’t be sure this was the right time, maybe it would never be the right time, but he had to ask before he sweated his courage out through his hands.
    “There’s something about that trumpet—a feeling or movement. It takes over when I play.”
    She studied his expression, hers completely unreadable. He had come this far. He might as well dive in head first.
    “I see things,” he continued. “Visions of other times and people I’ve never seen before. It’s like I’m not in the moment anymore. I’m in a thousand moments, but none of them are mine.” When she still didn’t respond, he added, “I’m not making sense.”
    “You’re making perfect sense.” She picked up her drink and commenced a slow, seductive tug on the straw that contoured her cheekbones to the perfection of the park’s sculptures. “My father used to talk about the trumpet’s magic. I dismissed it as the sentimental musings of an old man who lived to play. Then Issa started in on the story when my father died. Swore it had the ability to heal the sick and cure the lame and dance a sinner to Heaven. Made for a good family story, anyway.”
    “You don’t believe it?”
    She licked a wayward droplet of iced mocha from her bottom lip. He nearly fell back in the shaded grass to cool himself.
    “No more or less than the Rougarou.”
    Jon tallied up yet another thing he didn’t know about New Orleans or its culture, but if it kept James from hunting him and dragging him back to his eighty story high-rise in Chicago, he wanted to know it all. Including how an unassuming beauty who works in a run down building on the wrong side of town to put instruments in the hands of children who might otherwise never have the chance to play could wriggle her way past his no woman policy so quickly.
    An hour passed, their drinks long empty. His thirst for her stories replaced anything a parched tongue could touch. Stories of childhood summers and music festivals and a first and rather persistent admirer her father had strong and humorous opinions about. Jon envied the park’s statues. He never wanted to leave this spot, this moment, but he sensed Elli had grown weary of talking.
    Maybe it was the fact that she didn’t dismiss what he said about the trumpet as crazy. Maybe it was the stone angels or the caffeinated sweetness in his veins or the way she tilted her head when she wasn’t pissed off at him, but he searched for an excuse to extend their time, if only for a few minutes.
    “I have someone I want you to meet,” said Jon.
    “Now?” She glanced at her wrist—where she must have usually worn a watch because he spotted its pale outline in her skin tone—then glanced up to study the sun’s position. “I really should get back. I have a million things to do to get ready for the fundraiser.”
    He used the one card Elli couldn’t refuse.
    “She’s a little girl who loves music. The right instrument could make all the difference.”
    Elli breathed in deeply. The tantalizing outline this