Chapter 1 - The Note That Stopped the Ballroom
“GET YOUR HANDS OFF THAT PIANO!”
Celeste Whitcomb's scream cut through the music before ten-year-old Ivy Reed had even finished the first chord.
In the crowded ballroom, on a bench made for a concert pianist, sat a skinny girl in a faded cream dress and a burgundy sweater with one missing button.
“That instrument costs more than your mother will ever earn,” Celeste snapped. “Get down.”
Ivy flinched, but her fingers stayed on the keys.
“I was told not to stop,” she whispered.
“By whom?”
Ivy looked toward the service door. Her mother wasn't there.
Celeste seized the child's shoulder. Ivy hit one more note by accident, a soft, crooked B-flat.
A champagne glass shattered across the marble floor.
Gideon Whitcomb stood at the far end of the ballroom, staring at the little girl. He was seventy-six, the foundation's founder, and a man who hadn't cried in public for twenty years. Now his mouth worked without making a sound.
“Play that again,” he said.
Celeste released Ivy. “Gideon, it's a stunt. The caterer's kid wandered in—”
“Not the chord.” He moved toward the piano. “The phrase before it.”
Ivy swallowed. She placed her right hand carefully, then played six quiet notes. The last one hung in the air like a question.
Gideon caught the edge of the piano to steady himself.
His daughter Lydia had written that melody on a rainy Sunday when she was sixteen. They'd played it together for years. She had changed one note because, she'd laughed, perfect music was boring. No recording of their little duet had ever been released.
Lydia had died in a car crash ten years ago.
“Who taught you that?” Gideon asked.
Ivy's eyes shone. “My mom had a recording. She said it belonged to somebody who forgot how to listen.”
“What's your mother's name?”
“Nora Reed.”
Celeste's face lost its color.
The girl reached into her cardigan and pulled out a folded square of yellow paper.
“She told me to give this to you if the lady in pink tried to stop me.”
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Across the paper, in Lydia Whitcomb's unmistakable handwriting, were five words:
DAD, THEY LIED ABOUT MY BABY.
