The followingday is beautiful and enticing. I also have a lot of thinking to do, so I decide some fresh air will do Addy and me some good. I wrap my baby sling around me and stuff Addy in. She loves being pressed close to my chest.
I walk us over to the park, thinking out loud in Spanish so Addy can pick up my first language too.
Mostly, I worry about Bren’s reaction. He may want to take everything he said last night back when he realizes I’ve been keeping his daughter from him.
Then I will have lost out on both Bren and David.Como el perro de las dos tortas, I say to Addy in a funny voice, earning me a giggle.
When we round the corner on our street to get home, I frown. A white van is parked in my driveway, and I can make out two figures standing on the sidewalk by my house. I don’t recognize the car or who they are from a distance, but as we near the house, I see the camera and the microphone in the hands of a man in a suit.
“Sofia, hello. I’m with Channel Seven Evening News. Do you have a moment?”
“I’m sorry, no,” I say, pushing past him but not missing the camera following me—following us.
“Is it true that you’re the Sofia referenced inIndustrial November’s latest album?”
“No comment.” I fumble for my keys in my jeans pocket and can’t open the door fast enough.
“Is that your baby?” the man asks just before I shut the door behind me.
Once inside, I set Addy down in her baby swing and rush to grab my phone out of my purse. I have to call Bren. My heart is pounding out of my chest.
After several rings that last a lifetime, I get his automated answering message.
“Bren. We have to talk. It’s urgent. Can we move our meeting to today?”
As I wait for his call, I pace my living room, biting my thumbnail.Call me back, Bren. Come on.
He has to hear this from me.
THIRTY
Bren
Fritz looks over the binder I handed him. Over the last year, I’ve written enough decent songs for five albums—at least. We carefully curated the previous album from that binder, and now we’re starting to catalog the rest of the songs.
Fritz and Karl are critical to the process because the lyrics have to inspire music out of them, so they effectively choose the order in which we produce each song and album.
“You could have done this from home, you know. You didn’t have to come to KC with me,” I say to him as I hand him a beer. He is reading a lyric, deep in thought, then looks up.
“What?” he asks.
“I was just saying you could’ve done this from Germany—or Mexico.”
Fritz shakes his head and ignores the Mexico comment. “You know it’s better in person. Besides, with the album out now and the media frenzy back home...”
We both smirk because neither one of us is saying what we’re thinking. To Roger, Karl, and Adrian, we escaped the grueling press responsibilities, leaving them to take the brunt of it.
Glancing at the coffee table, Fritz already has a separate pile going.
“Which are those?” I ask, and he grabs the two pieces of paper, handing them to me.
“They are some of the stronger ones. The first one has Adrian all over it. We should make room for a hefty drum solo.”
“Yeah. I was thinking he’d like that too. I’m pulling the songs I think are strongest and dividing them up. We shouldn’t include all the best ones in the first few albums and start going downhill in the later ones.”
After a few hours of arguing about song lineups and music ideas, I throw my hands in the air. “I can’t keep looking at these songs anymore today. Wanna take a break? We can catch the game.”
“Yeah. We should step away. Come back when we can be more objective,” Fritz says.