the matter, I can tell.” He came toward me, and in that instant, I wanted to melt into his arms and never leave that safe and warm place. I wanted him to make everything okay. I wanted to forget that the girl on my computer screen had ever existed.
A tear winked at the corner of my eye. I blinked rapidly. Greg touched my face. “What is it? A bad e-mail? Something from school?”
I shook my head. “No.” That wasn’t a lie. It wasn’t from school. It was definitely not something from school.
He took my hand, led me back to his desk. “Come here, babe. Let me show you something that’ll cheer you up. I almost forgot. You have to look at this before you go.”
I followed him to the desk like a puppy dog. What else could I do? He opened his laptop, clicked through a few links and then said, “Ta da!” He turned the screen to face me.
For one horrid moment I thought he was going to show me the photo of the girl. He didn’t. It was our church’s brand-new Web site and there was a picture of me, front and center.
“The world’s most beautiful singer. In all her splendor,” he said.
I blinked. There I was, holding a microphone in one hand, raising my other hand toward the congregation. The lights had picked up the glints in my strawberry-blond hair. My skin was so pale, I looked like a ghost.
I said, “Is this new? I didn’t know I was on the Web.”
Greg nodded. “Stuart’s done an amazing job. You remember that sorry-looking old thing we called a Web site? It’s gone now. This is our new, professional Web site—it even has pictures of the youth group. You’ll get a kick out of this one.” For the next few minutes we clicked through the various links. “Stuart’s even arranged it so that there’s a blog. It’s mostly for the youth group, but anyone can post if they want to.”
“Stuart did this?”
“Yep.”
I always felt a bit unnerved around Stuart—the church’s projectionist-slash-soundman-slash-resident sci-fi expert, and now apparently, slash-webmaster. He works in the projectionist booth here in the church and is always in black: black T-shirts, black jeans, black boots.
A few years ago, before Greg moved here, Stuart and I went out. Once. We went to a movie, some classic sci-fi film that he kept raving over. The whole thing bored me to pieces with its continual chase scenes, and aliens oozing green and killing people by breathing on them.
Later over coffee, he had seemed almost angry when I said it wasn’t really my thing.
“But it’s a classic!”
Since then, our relationship has been cordial, but that’s it. There are times, though, when I find him gazing at me with those intense, dark eyes and I have to look away. So, he put me on the Web site, did he?
“A blog. Cool,” I said, without enthusiasm, attempting a cheerfulness I didn’t feel. “Well,” I said, “time for me to get going.”
Greg walked me down the back stairs, through the basement with its cobwebby rooms and out the front door of the church, holding my hand the whole time. Even though we were in front of the church, and it was the middle of the day, and there were construction workers all around, he kissed me for a long time. Then he said quietly, “I know things have been hard for you, Lilly. I know the things you’ve gone through, but I just want you to know that everything is going to be different now. You’re with me. And with God. I love you, Lilly.”
When he left, I caught my reflection in the window of the front door of the church. My face looked pale and watery in the glass, like it would melt.
I knew that girl in the picture. I knew her all too well.
TWO
I somehow managed to get through my work at the music store and my guitar lesson with my student Irma who, like she did every week, arrived early with foil-wrapped treats from her kitchen. Today, almond brownies. When she handed them to me she said, “You’re not as happy as I’d thought you’d be. Isn’t tonight a special night for you?”
I blinked. Had I told positively everyone?
“I’m fine,” I said. “Let’s have a listen to that chord progression you’re working on.”
“I practiced every day,” she said.
I’m convinced Irma spends whole days practicing the guitar her late husband used to play in a country band. It’s a beat-up Martin with a fantastic sound.
After the lesson, I put my head inside a cheerful bubble and finished the day. I attended my afternoon music-history class and made myself smile a lot. But later in the practice room, I couldn’t get my fingers to obey my brain’s commands on the piano. And as the clock moved steadily toward evening, I was slowly coming undone. I gave up on Beethoven and pulled out the notebook where I’d jotted down the lyrics to my unfinished worship song. I took my classical guitar out of the case and began. But as I went through the now-familiar melody, I paused midphrase. What did I think I was doing? How could I possibly think I could write worship songs to God? I tried to resolve the chords, but my fingers refused to find the final notes in the sequence.
For several minutes, I forced myself to work on it. I hit wrong strings and played chords that sounded like my life today—jarring, off key and dissonant.
I jutted out my bottom lip, blew my bangs out of my eyes and tried again, but no matter how much I pursued that piece, I could not finish it. I looked down at my trembling hands as if they belonged to someone else.
Why was someone sending me a picture of that girl? Why, when everything was just beginning to get good again? I sighed loudly. I can’t go out with him tonight. I can’t see Greg.
I had the feeling that Greg was going to ask me to marry him tonight. All the signs were there. Even Bridget, my roommate and best friend, had heard things. A few weeks ago, he’d taken both my hands, looked me in the eyes and said, “Two weeks. The night of our anniversary, we’ll go out. I’ve got it all planned. Don’t let anything interfere.”
I had looked into the depths of his blue eyes and said, “I don’t intend to.”
And why would I? Greg and I been going out pretty much exclusively for six months. I was twenty-nine, he was thirty. We were madly in love. So what were we waiting for?
I had already started picking out wedding colors. If he asked me tonight, we could be married in the spring. I’d even bought a Brides magazine—one—which I’d shoved into my top dresser drawer. I brought it out every once in a while to flip through it and dream, but it always made me feel a little like an impostor. I just couldn’t believe that could be mine. And now I knew it wouldn’t be.
I placed my guitar back in the case and closed it. I couldn’t marry Greg Whitten. I couldn’t be with him. We would have to break up. I sat there. I listened. Through the muffled walls, I could hear the other students practicing. Somebody was playing something darkly discordant, another was working on a classic Beatles tune, and still another was playing a blues number. I smiled. That was probably my new classmate Neil Stoner. A pale complected, serious young man, he plays both piano and cello—he transferred this year from a school out west. Neil and I—plus two bright-eyed sophomores named Tiff and Lora—were working on a music-history project. Sometimes I felt like a big sister to all of them.
Since I’d seen that picture on my computer screen, I’d thought about it a million times. It occurred to me that I could ask Stuart—he might have an idea how to find out where the e-mail had come from. I knew there were ways to do that but I didn’t know how. If anyone would know, Stuart would.
I dismissed that idea as soon as it came to me. I didn’t need Stuart nosing around in my business. Earlier, I’d Googled the e-mail address, but came up with nothing. I knew enough to realize that anybody in the whole world, good guy or bad guy, could sign up for a Hotmail account. And then get rid of it just