“You can sing?”
“I can.”
“Where should you be singing?” I straighten up and look at her while she brings the sheets up to her breasts to cover herself.
“On a stage at the theatre. I got a part in a show. I just… never got to… sing. I was taken the day I got the job. My dad um… well he fell off the rails after my mother died. He tried everything to save her and he couldn’t. She had heart problems and she died. She made me promise her I wouldn’t give up on my dream. I didn’t, but I couldn’t leave my father.”
Fuck…
That’s the most words she’s ever said to me, spoken with fervency from her heart.
I wonder what kind of shit her father must have gotten himself in to owe Lucca. How did he even know him?
Music has always been a part of my life. My parents used to play the piano and they taught me to play. They used to dance too and they taught me that too. Never had a singer though.
“Sing for me,” I say with a smile.
“Now?” she asks with a little laugh.
Fuck, I’m a goner if I can think her laugh is the best sound I’ve ever heard.
“Sing for me, Megan,” I say, wanting to hear her voice now more than ever.
She looks down at the sheet, thinking, then she hums. From the sweet sound of the melody just in the hum, I know now why I keep having that strong sense that she doesn’t belong here.
She doesn’t.
As the words start falling from her lips she unlocks something inside me that I never even knew existed.
Chapter Five
Megan
I’m singing.
It wasn’t hard to think of a song to sing. I’m singing the song I auditioned with for the show.
‘I Dream a Dream’ from Les Misérables.
Mom and I must have seen that over a hundred times. We went twice a year for years and loved the musical so much it became part of us. I played Fantine back in college and I remembered studying my lines and thinking how awful her life was.
The song has been in my head since my audition. It plays on repeat reminding me to never forget where I want to go.
As I sing now I feel exactly like her and I can hear my voice.
I hear it and I sound like the person I used to be.
Megan Carson.
That was me.
I don’t know who I am now and I can’t bring myself to look at Dante.
I finish the song and climb my gaze back up to his, slowly.
I can’t hold back the wayward tear that drifts down my eye and I’m taken aback by the way he’s looking at me. Shocked, amazed even.
I almost feel the same way I did when I had my first audition and I was so nervous. It was the first time I’d sang anything in front of anyone and I was waiting to hear what they thought of me. I was ten years old, but I still remember.