“Oatmeal?” Phillip said.
“Yes, Phillip.” Jessie tied his bib. “It’ll give you energy so you can run, run, run all morning.”
“I’m tired already,” muttered her mother.
They sat down at the table. “Any news about the accident?” asked Jessie.
“From what I hear, it might not be an accident.” Her mother handed Phillip a piece of toast.
Jessie poured milk into her oatmeal. “It could have been an accident. We don’t know yet.”
“You’re right, Jessie.” Her mother smoothed back Phillip’s hair. “It’s just…well happening on Willow Lane right in front of our house. It could have been you or Phillip.”
Phillip banged his spoon on the table.
“Stop, Phillip,” said his mom. “Your piano lesson is at two o’clock today, so be here by one-thirty. I’ll have to drive you there.”
Jessie finished her cereal. “What about a piano?”
“We’ll rent one for awhile, to see if you like playing.”
Jessie carried her bowl and spoon to the sink. “Don’t worry, Mom. I’m going to play whether I like it or not.”
Her mother smiled. “Bryce Peterson has an amazing effect on you, Jessie.”
Jessie hurried from the kitchen to hide her blushing face.
Honestly. What is Mom—a mind reader?
She called Tina from the hall phone. “Okay, we have to be back by one-thirty. I’ll be right over.”
When Jessie got to Tina’s, her friend was walking her bike through the front gate. “Thank goodness,” said Tina. “Let’s go.”
They headed down the street on their bicycles. “Is it really that bad at your house?”
Tina rolled her eyes and drooped her shoulders. “You have no idea. Multiply Phillip by two. I am
never
having kids.”
Jessie navigated her bike around a hole in the brick paving. “Sounds awful. Where should we go?”
Tina threw back her head in a gesture of freedom. “Let’s ride out to the old grain mill.”
Once they turned onto the graveled country road, the girls stopped talking and paid close attention to their steering. One false move and they could be skidding right into the ditch. They’d both learned that the hard way when they were little kids.
At the grain mill, they leaned their bikes against a big oak tree and walked around the mill. Tina shrugged off her sweater, tied the sleeves around her waist and said, “What are you thinking about the accident yesterday?”
Jessie yanked a blade of grass from the ground and ran it through her fingers. “I think I can figure this out. I saw the car and I have a feeling Sunny recognized the driver. I’m going to get to know Sunny when she comes home from the hospital.”
“Hmmm,” Tina said. “Would you be so eager to know her if she wasn’t Bryce’s sister?”
Jessie laughed and tossed the blade of grass into the breeze. “Probably not.”
Giggling, the girls ran through the field of blue and yellow wildflowers until exhaustion forced them to the ground. Sitting cross-legged, they caught their breath and turned their faces to the sun. “I’m so glad school’s out,” said Jessie. She looked at her watch. “We’d better go.”
A car was racing down the gravel road. Jessie shaded her eyes and stood up. As it came closer, it skidded from side to side on the loose stones. “Tina! Look! It’s the hit-and-run car!”
Tina leaped to her feet. “Get the license number!”
The car roared past them in a whirl of thick dust.
CHAPTER SIX
Jessie rubbed her eyes. “Could you see the license?”
“No way. It’s like a dust storm.” Tina wiped her mouth with her arm. “All I saw was something red on the antenna.
Jessie positioned her bike and got on. “I don’t get it. Why don’t we know that car? I thought I knew everyone’s car in Fairfield.” She took the lead back onto the gravel and held her breath.
Back on the paved street, Tina said, “Maybe it’s a barn car. My uncle Bob almost never uses his car. He saves it for special occasions. It’s really old but it looks like new. It just sits in the barn with a tarp over it. He uses his pickup truck instead.”
Jessie grinned. “So you’re saying there are all these cars in barns that no one sees except at weddings and funerals? This is beginning to make sense.”
Jessie waved goodbye to Tina at the Adams’ house and headed for home. A van with a long ramp slanted against the open back doors stood in her driveway.
Hooray! My piano!
Inside the house, two men carried a small piano into the living room. Her mom spotted Jessie. “Where shall we put it?”
Jessie already knew. “On the back wall by the window. Then I can see the trees and hear the birds.”
While her mom signed the paperwork, Jessie sat on the polished bench that matched the spinet piano and softly struck each key from the bottom to the top of the keyboard.
I promise I will practice every day.
“Jessie,” said her mom. “It’s time to go to your lesson.”
Great! We’re finally getting started.
She ran out the door.
With Phillip strapped in his child seat in back and her mother at the wheel, Jessie studied the countryside. She’d always wondered how the farmers plowed the fields in perfect rows ready for spring planting. But there they were, set to go. Giant trees edged the road to give the coming crops shelter from the winds. It looked beautiful to her and the sweet aroma of freshly turned soil filled the air and drifted through the open windows of the car.
They pulled into a farmyard. Weeds grew around a clearing and in the gravel of the driveway. Rusty farm equipment, long unused, lay in haphazard piles near the broken-down barn. Boards on the corral fence were splintered and warped. Here, no crops would be planted. Only wild grass filled the surrounding land. Jessie’s heart sunk.
“Are you sure we’re in the right place?” Jessie eyed the farmhouse. It didn’t look much better. Paint peeled on the sagging porch and some of the windows had torn or missing screens. “This place is scary!”
“Scary? Scary? Scary?” It was Phillip.
Her mother turned off the ignition. “Now you’ve got him going.” She unsnapped her seat belt and turned to release the catch on Phillip’s carrier.
“Polly Tyler recommended this teacher. Her name is Mrs. Livingston. I’ve met her a few times at church. She taught piano to Bryce Peterson’s dad when he was in high school.”
“No kidding.” Jessie couldn’t imagine Dr. Peterson anywhere near this mess. “It’s almost two o’clock. We’d better go in.”
A tiny, delicate-looking woman answered their knock. She must have been eighty years old, but stood straight with upswept white hair and eyes of sparkling blue. She wore a simple long-sleeved black dress with a cameo broach at the neck. “Come in! Come in! So this is Jessica. And you wish to learn to play the piano? Wonderful!” Her voice was soft and musical. Jessie loved her on the spot.
They followed Mrs. Livingston down a drab narrow hallway and into a bright and sunny studio. On a wine-colored Oriental carpet in the center of the room stood a shiny black grand piano. Three sides of the room were lined with polished wood shelves piled high with sheet music and piano books. The fourth side was a floor to ceiling window framing a field of grass rippling in the breeze. In one corner stood a glass case displaying a violin. Next to it was a music stand.
Violin? I wonder if she teaches violin too. Maybe she’s Bryce’s teacher.
“See the big piano, Phillip?’ said Jessie.
But Phillip wasn’t talking and kept a tight grip on his mother’s hand.
“Well,” said Jessie’s mom. “I guess we’ll leave you two. Or should we stay?”
“No, no. You run along,” said Mrs. Livingston. “Jessie and I have much to discuss. Come back in an hour. At three o’clock.”
Her mother and Phillip closed the door behind them and clattered down the hallway. “Scary. Scary. Scary.” Phillip’s voice trailed off as they left the house.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Mrs. Livingston walked to the piano and gestured for Jessie to join her. “Make yourself comfortable on the bench and we will get to know each other.” The teacher sat on a chair next to Jessie.
“Have you always wanted to play?” asked Mrs. Livingston. “I ask because usually there is one reason, one actual reason, that inspires a person to go through the work of learning a musical instrument.” She smiled reassuringly. “Do you think you could share that secret with me? I promise never to divulge it to anyone.”
Jessie considered the question. “I have a friend who plays the violin.” She could feel her face get hot. “I’ve been listening to him.” Now she was getting nervous. Could she trust this woman to not repeat what she said? “Anyway, it made me think maybe I could play music too. Not like him—he’s so good—but at lease try.” She flipped her braid over her shoulder and looked at the keyboard.
“But not the violin?” asked the teacher. “I also teach that instrument.”
“Oh no. I really love the sound of the piano,” Jessie said. All of a sudden, she realized that she really
did
love the sound of the piano, and always had.
“I think you have answered my question,” said Mrs. Livingston. “Very often a pupil becomes committed to playing because she loves the sound of a certain instrument and wants to create that for herself.” She rose smiling, retrieved a book from the shelf and returned to her chair. “So your friend’s playing put the idea into your head and now you are here! Let us begin.”
Whew, I don’t think she knows I was talking about Bryce
. Jessie could hardly believe it when the hour was up. By then she had learned the names of the keys and how the octaves repeated themselves up the keyboard. Mrs. Livingston supplied her with workbooks and asked her to practice what they had studied for a half-hour each day.
As they walked down the dark hallway, the teacher said, “Now, Jessica, you must practice every day. Not all at once before your lesson.” She switched on a light. “Practicing each day conditions your hands, as well as your brain, to the material. Do you understand?”
“I will. I’ll practice every day.” The determination in her voice even surprised Jessie. Just before they came to the front door, Jessie glanced into the living room on her right. It was a dismal space with shabby furniture and faded wallpaper. A woman sat on a straight-backed chair near a window. Her hair was gray and pulled into a bun at the back of her head. She wore old jeans and a black sweater. She didn’t seem to be doing anything except sitting and staring.
Jessie glanced up at Mrs. Livingston. “That’s my daughter, Rita. She lives here with me,” the teacher explained as she opened the door. “There’s your mother waiting for you. Better run along.” Before she closed the door she said, “I’ll see you next week at the same time.”
“So, how’d it go?” asked her mom as Jessie buckled her seat belt.
“Great! I like her a lot and I already can play a scale and read some notes.”
Her mother started the car. “Good. I wondered if the look of the place might spoil it for you.”
“Good, good, good,” chanted Phillip from the back seat.
“Well it
is
pretty bad, except for her studio,” said Jessie. “And her daughter lives there and seems very odd.”
Her mother drove down the gravel drive and signaled to turn onto the country road. “Did she introduce her to you?”
“No. In fact she seemed in a hurry to get me out of there once I spotted the woman—Rita. That’s her daughter’s name.”
“You didn’t say anything, did you?” Her mother turned to Jessie. “I should have mentioned this before you went there.”
“Why? asked Jessie. “What’s the deal?”
“Rita Livingston has been in and out of hospitals all her adult life. I’m not quite sure what is wrong with her, but I know her parents spent all the money they had on her illness.” Her mother turned onto the paved street. “Now it’s just Mrs. Livingston, because her husband died a few years ago.”
“I suppose that’s why the farm is so run down,” said Jessie. “Well anyway, she seems very strange.”
“Seems strange, seems strange, seems strange.” It was Phillip again.
“Uh-oh, there he goes,” muttered her mother. “We’d better change the subject.”
Back at home, Jessie went straight to the piano, opened her brand new lesson book and concentrated on reading the instructions.
Phillip raced into the room and crawled under the bench. In a moment he was on his back with his legs raised beating a tattoo on the seat with his feet.
Jessie stopped reading and looked underneath. “Quit it, Phillip.”
He laughed and continued to kick.
Jessie stood, grabbed his arms and pulled him out. “Go find something else to do.”
He jumped up, climbed onto the piano bench and pounded the keys.
“Don’t do that!” shouted Jessie. She lifted him down and set him on his feet.
“MA MA!” he wailed and ran from the room.
Both her father and mother appeared in the doorway. “What’s going on?” asked her dad.
“He’s kicking the bench while I’m trying to practice.”
Phillip was now leaning against his mother, great tears rolling down his cheeks. “You leave Jessie alone. Do you understand?” She picked him up. “And, Jessie, I’ve told you before. You are not to yell at him.”