Sing You Home by Jodi Picoult Read Free Book Online Page A

is only silence, I can hear the tatter of my breath. I imagine explaining this to Max. Or my mother, showing up with a grocery bag and stumbling into this scene. “Okay,” I say to myself. “You can do this. You just have to pick up the pieces.”
    In the kitchen I find a black trash bag and a dustpan and broom. I take the remnants of the radio and clean them up. I sweep all the tiny fragments and the innards into the dustpan.
    Pick up the pieces.
    It’s that simple, really. For the first time in forty-eight hours I feel a shift, a purpose. I dial Dr. Gelman’s office for the second time in ten minutes. “This is Zoe Baxter again,” I say. “I’d like to schedule an appointment.”
    There are several reasons that I went home with Max the first night I met him:
1. He smelled like summer.
2. I was not the kind of girl who went home with guys she just met. Ever.
3. He was bleeding profusely.
     
    Even though it was Max’s brother’s wedding, he spent all his time waiting for me to have my next band break. While the other guys went out for a smoke or to grab a glass of water from the bar, I’d look down and find Max waiting for me with a soft drink. At the time, I assumed that he wasn’t drinking alcohol out of solidarity: I was working, and not allowed to, so neither would Max. I remember thinking that was awfully sweet. Something most guys would not have done.
    I didn’t know the happy couple, since I was a last-minute substitute singer, but it was hard to believe that Reid and Max were related. Not just in looks—Reid was tall and athletic in a golf-and-racquetball kind of way, whereas Max was sheer brute size and strength—but also in demeanor. Reid’s friends seemed all to be bankers and lawyers who liked to hear themselves talk; their girlfriends and wives had names like Muffy and Winks. Reid’s new wife, Liddy, came from Mississippi and seemed to thank Jesus a lot—for the weather, the wine, and the fact that her grammy Kate had lived long enough to see a ring on Liddy’s finger. Compared to the rest of the wedding party, Max was much more refreshing: what you saw was what you got. By midnight, when we were scheduled to stop playing, I knew that Max ran his own landscaping business, that he plowed snow in the winter, that his older brother was responsible for the silver scar on his cheek (line drive with a baseball), and that he was allergic to shellfish. He knew that I could sing the alphabet backward, that I could play ten instruments, and that I wanted a family. A big family.
    From my spot on the podium, I turned to the band. According to the playlist, our final song was supposed to be Donna Summer’s “Last Dance.” But this didn’t seem like a disco crowd, so I turned to the guys behind me. “You know Etta James?” I asked, and the keyboard player launched into the beginning strains of “At Last.”
    Sometimes when I sing, I close my eyes. There’s harmony in every breath I take; the drums become my pulse, the melody is the flow of my blood. This is what it means to lose yourself in music, to become a symphony of notes and rests and measures.
    When I finished singing, there was a thunder of applause. I could hear Reid clapping loudly: Brava! And Liddy’s twittering girlfriends: . . . best wedding band I’ve ever heard . . . must get their card from you.
    “Thank you very much,” I murmured, and when I finally opened my eyes, Max was staring into them.
    Suddenly, a man came crashing toward the stage, smacking his hand against the drum set as he stumbled forward. He was completely trashed and, from the sound of his Southern accent, one of Liddy’s relatives or family friends. “Hey, girlie,” he crowed, grabbing at the hem of my black dress. “You know what you are?”
    The bass player took a step forward, shielding me, but Max was already coming to my rescue. “Sir,” he said politely, “I think you should leave . . .”
    The drunk man shoved him and grabbed my hand. “You,” he