The Song Was Called “The Falling Star”
The musicians had stopped playing, but the last notes still seemed to hang in the air. I looked down at Lucia — six years old, wrinkled borrowed dress, worn little shoes — standing with a confidence I’d never seen in her before, like she belonged among the very people who’d spent the evening looking down on her.
“Your daughter dances exactly like my aunt,” Adrian said.
My heart stopped. “Your aunt?”
“My grandmother wrote that choreography for her daughters. Every movement, every turn, every pause. She only ever taught it to one person outside the family.” His eyes met mine. “Rose.”
The silence that followed wasn’t the silence of people waiting for entertainment. It was the silence before something breaks.
I thought of my mother in her tiny studio, coffee and lavender in the air, the way her face always changed when that melody played. Why do you always look sad when this song plays, Mom? I’d asked once. She only smiled and brushed the hair from my face. “Because some songs remember things people try to forget.”
I’d thought she meant a lost love. I never imagined she meant an entire buried life.
“Where is Rose now?” Eleanor whispered.
“She passed away four years ago.”
Eleanor closed her eyes, a tear sliding down her cheek. “After all this time…”
“My grandmother spent thirty-two years believing her youngest daughter was dead,” Adrian said. “She disappeared at nineteen. And her disappearance was covered up.”
A chill moved through me. “By who?”
He didn’t answer right away — and that silence scared me more than an answer would have.
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