When I Look to the Sky by Barbara S Stewart Read Free Book Online Page B

reelin ’
    Can ’t be that this is wrong…
     
    “Sounds good, soulful,” he added. “Got the ear buds?”
    “ Mmm hmm,” she said nodding, and dug through her bag.
    He put them in his ear s, leaned back in the booth and closed his eyes as he listened to the entire piece. When he finally opened his eyes, Adaleigh was watching intently.
    “ Well?” she asked anxiously.
    “ I hear violins, piano, and soft snare drum with that, not the guitar,” he replied.
    “ And?”
    “ Let me have whatever you’ve got and take it to the studio and listen. How long are you in town?”
    “ As long as you want me,” she said, and as she said the words Andy heard a vulnerability that he’d never noticed with her. She wasn’t pushing herself like she had in the past.
    “ So, how’s things?” he asked changing the subject.
    “ It’s been busy! Exciting, hectic, crazy busy, but I love it, all of it,” she said with a grin.
    “ I never dreamed what it would be like, it’s very enriching and I’m not talking about my bank account,” she laughed. “People tell me a song reminded them of this or that, or that they could feel their story in my voice. I just never dreamed… it’s very rewarding.”
    “ Sometimes I miss that feeling, I miss the interaction with the crowds, and then I remember how good being home feels. I’m too old for all that travel, plus I like being home for Carlee. Her dad doesn’t give her much of his time, or self.”
    “ Why do you think that is?” she asked.
    “ He never got over Beth moving him out of her life, leaving him for me. I think in the back of his mind he thought their love was strong enough for me to be there. But there was too much history there, with Beth and me, I mean.” He looked up and added, “But we aren’t here to talk about all that.”
    “ Danny left me at a show in Tucson,” she said with a sad laugh.
    “ He what?”
    “Yeah, I’d been on the road non-stop for several weeks. He decided to go on the road with me, hang around if we were gonna make it as a couple. He didn’t like it, didn’t like the chaos, the hours, none of it. In the end, he was back in his suit at the office. After he left, he called a few times, but I think we’d both realized by then that our lives wouldn’t mesh. I stopped answering, he stopped calling,” she told him with a shrug of her shoulders. “Where’s Carlee,” she asked, turning the conversation to a different course.
    “She’s at camp, and I gotta tell ya, I can’t wait for her to get home. She’ll be with me for two weeks. The more I get her, the more I love this single-dad thing. Her dad’s on business out-of-town, again. He is missing out on so much,  Adaleigh.”
     
    Chef came to the table with the appetizer and refilled their glasses. Adaleigh looked around and saw it was a pretty light crowd and invited him to sit. “We’re just chit-chatting over some new ideas.” After he was sitting she took her phone and said, “Here’s a sample, have a listen,” she said.
    She played about a minute of it and stopped it. “That’s all,” she laughed. “Just a tease!”
    “ Witch,” Chef laughed. “I love the first one, I’ll be anxious for the next one!”
    After a while Andy decided to call it a night. “I’m whipped, bring some music to me at the studio and we’ll let Marco have a listen. I’ll be there by ten.”
    “ I’ll bring coffee and bagels,” she said.
    “ Got good coffee there, just bring the bagels. I’ll see you in the morning.”
     
    Later, as he lay in bed Andy thought about Adaleigh, ‘Addy’ , she had said. He guessed by their conversations that she was in her mid-thirties and an only child. He knew her parents lived somewhere close to Asheville, North Carolina. They were, in her words, ‘rejects from the 70s’, somewhat Bohemian, and they ‘landed’ in an artsy community near old downtown Asheville. She’d grown up with music and had played guitar since she was thirteen.