Page 38 of Total Exposure

For example, you get a new used car so you don’t have to take the bus to work like most of your other co-workers. Bam. You find new friends based on your ability to give them a ride. Something they want and need. Yes. People use you like this. Almost all of them, in fact. People are assholes like that. They like you for what you have, not who you are.

I can imagine the scenarios her parents went through as they climbed the social ladder. She needed an agent, and after her first performance at age four, I’m sure they came crawling out of the woodwork. There was probably a little battle as her parents negotiated what they needed versus what they had. More appearances and money went up against a little girl with God-given talent.

Once the agent was secured they needed more access to even more influential people to keep what they just got. The cycle continued. The family rose on the shoulders of little Evangeline. The money poured in as her talent grew. Her face was everywhere, her talent undeniable, her youth intoxicating until the vultures who only wanted her for what she could give them became flocks circling overhead waiting for her to die. It was only a matter of time before what they saw down below was exhausted and they took their final meal.

And… she broke.

She was too young to know why. She was too innocent to understand how. She was too trusting to rebel until…

She wasn’t.

The court records for her emancipation are fascinating. Since she was petitioning for adult status, they were never sealed. It’s a simple public records search that gives me more insight into her psyche than should be allowed. I feel a little dirty just reading them.

But I can’t stop.

After that she sold her violin.

Ah…this is the defining moment in her life, I realize. Her amazing career rose to a crescendo and that breakdown in the library was the encore. A moment when something lost might’ve been found again, and wasn’t.

I do a search for the Stradivarius she sold at auction twelve years ago, but the buyer was anonymous.

It was a ridiculous dream of hers. An inevitable downfall. Because whoever bought that violin would not sell it without global fanfare. She’d have known if it was sold. It would’ve been in magazines and on the news as one of those general interest stories.

She had to know the violin in the library wasn’t her Stradivarius when she walked in there.

Still… she hoped, didn’t she?

And felt the loss all over again last night.

I sigh for her. So close… and yet not close at all.

Gazing up at the monitor, I ask the sleeping girl, “Do you want it back, Evangeline?”

Not the violin. It’s gone. She’s never getting that back. Certain things are just not for sale and that violin is one of them. Even money like mine can’t buy that back. Not that I would. (What a freak fucking thought.) She wants herself back.

I feel sorry for her. I see her vulnerability splayed out before me like a banner in the wind. I relate to it a little, I guess.

The loss, maybe. She lost herself much the way I lost myself all those years ago.

And the sadness. Though I’m not a sad guy. More indifferent than sad. But I can relate to her. The way she was used. The way she gave up what she loved to find her own way in the world. The courage it must’ve taken to drag herself over to this house and let a stranger watch her.

Why?

I press Jordan’s contact on my phone. He picks up on the first ring. “Yup,” he says.

“Why?” I ask.

“Why what?”

“Why is she here?”

“Why do you care?”

“I just do.”

There’s a prolonged silence after that. I let it hang there.

“She’s got issues, man. And she wants to get past them, that’s all.”