Free Strings Attached by Judy Blundell Page A

glowed pink from excitement.
    Through the crowd I spotted Nate Benedict. It had been three years since I’d seen him last, but I couldn’t mistake his profile with the flattened nose. He stood with that same small woman in a tweed coat with a brooch of red stones. They weren’t talking to each other, the woman looking down at her program while he scanned the lobby. I would have taken him for one of the crowd from Manhattan if I hadn’t known him. His gaze moved past us, then snapped back.
    Delia touched her hair. “Well, he’s seen us. We have to say hello now.” She linked her arm with me and brought me forward, almost pushing me. “Hello, Mr. Benedict.”
    “Hello, Miss Corrigan. Angela, you remember MissCorrigan? My wife,” Nate said to us. “And this is Kitty, isn’t it? All grown up. Are you enjoying the play?”
    “It’s so sad,” I said. “I thought musicals would be cheerful. Especially one with a carousel in it.”
    “Yes, you’d think so, wouldn’t you?”
    I hummed the tune of “If I Loved You,” then sang a few lines. I couldn’t remember the dates of the Revolutionary War or one scrap of geography, but I could remember a song. “Isn’t it romantic how he sings that she’ll walk away in the mist, and she’ll never know how he feels?”
    “But she doesn’t walk away,” Delia said. “She stays. That’s her mistake.” She wasn’t under the same spell I was, that was clear.
    “I have a headache.” Mrs. Benedict hadn’t even looked at us. “I want to go home now.” Without waiting for a word from her husband, she pushed through the people in the lobby.
    “Ah,” Nate said. “It appears that there will be no second act. Here.” He handed me a box of mints. “But they’re yours.”
    He bent down then, right at my eye level. “I think the lesson of the play is that we can’t always have what we want. Maybe it’s good that you learned it now.”
    He moved off through the crowd, out toward the doors to the street.
    “What did he mean?” I asked. “And wasn’t she rude? She must have felt really sick. Do you think she had to throw up?”
    Delia turned abruptly. “Let’s get back to our seats. Hurry up now, you don’t want to miss the opening number.”
    I followed, tearing at the top of the box of mints. I felt the sharp taste of peppermint explode in my mouth. Wesettled back into our seats, not talking, just waiting in suspense for the first notes of the orchestra.
    The next act began, just as dark and sad as the first part. I cried again, sopping up my tears with the edge of my cardigan. We’d run out of tissues because Delia was crying, too.

     
    We stood on the train platform. The music from the play still vibrated in my body and I tapped out the rhythms of the songs, making my feet move to the ballet. The girl who played Louise Bigelow wasn’t that much older than I was. I could dance that part in a few years. I sucked on the last mint, feeling it crumble in my mouth in a satisfying way.
    “Is he rich, Mr. Benedict?” I asked. “He was wearing a camel hair coat, and I think that pin had rubies in it, the one his wife was wearing.”
    “Stop asking me questions about him. I hardly know him.” Delia looked at her watch. “Where is the train?”
    “This was the best day of my life. I’m going to be on Broadway someday. Do you think I could be, Delia?”
    Delia looked down the track for the train.
    I began to sing the lyrics of “What’s the Use of Wond’rin’?” piecing together the parts of the song I could remember. It was the saddest love song I could imagine — something about how love could be false or true, but you had to love him anyway, and that was that.
    Delia whirled and slapped me across the face. I was nearly sent to the ground, not so much by the ferocity of it but the surprise. Delia had never struck any of us. This wasn’t a slap on the rear to give us a little propulsion to setthe table. This was a slap, a grown-up slap of anger and