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When she’d explained how she felt, she’d made him promise never to say anything about it. Now he was using it against her. “You don’t understand.”
“I understand.” He wrapped his arm around her shoulders. “Sorry, Rile. You’ll have to figure this out for yourself.”
“You wouldn’t have got up and sung when you were my age.”
“I can’t sing like you.”
“You sing pretty good.”
“Jack’s trying,” he said. “If you sing, it won’t change the way he feels about you.”
“You don’t know that.”
“Neither do you. Maybe it’s time to find out for sure.”
“I already know for sure.”
His smile looked a little fake, and she thought he might be sort of disappointed in her. “All right,” he said. “Let me see if I can get the old bat to leave you alone.”
As he headed over to talk to Mrs. Garrison, Riley started to feel dizzy. In the old days before she’d come to the farm, she’d always had to stick up for herself, but now Dean was sticking up for her, just like he had when her dad wanted to take her back to Nashville. And he wasn’t the only one. April and Blue stood up for her around Mrs. Garrison, even though she didn’t need them to. And her dad had stuck up for her the night he’d thought Dean was chasing her for real.
Mrs. Garrison was talking to the lead guitar player when Dean reached her side. Riley bit her fingernail. Her dad was standing by himself next to the fence, but she’d seen a couple of people look at him funny. April was helping clean up, and Blue had just wrapped some leftover birthday cake for Mrs. Garrison to take home. Mrs. Garrison said that if people kept their light under a bushel, the candle went out, and that Riley would shrivel up into a nobody if she didn’t start being true to herself.
Her armpits were wet, and she felt like throwing up. What if she started to sing and she totally sucked? She stared at her dad. Even worse, what if she didn’t suck at all?
Jack straightened as he saw his daughter walk toward the band’s microphone, a guitar in her arms. Even from the other side of the park, he could see how frightened she was. Was she really going to play?
“My name is Riley,” she whispered into the mike.
She looked small and defenseless. He didn’t know why she was doing this, only that he wouldn’t let her be hurt. He began to move, but she’d already started to play. No one had bothered to plug the acoustic into an amp, and, at first, the crowd ignored her. But Jack could hear, and even though the intro was barely audible, he recognized “Why Not Smile?” The pit of his stomach contracted as Riley began to sing.
“Do you remember when we were young,
And every dream we had felt like the first one?”
He didn’t care if he blew his cover. He had to get up there. This was no song for an eleven-year-old, and he wouldn’t let her be embarrassed.
“I don’t expect you to understand
With everything you’ve seen. I’m not asking for that.”
Her soft, lilting voice was such a marked contrast to the band’s off-key yowling that the crowd began to fall silent. She’d be crushed if they laughed. He quickened his steps only to have April appear at his side and reach out to stop him. “Listen, Jack. Listen to her.”
He did.
“I know that life is cruel.
You know that better than I do.”
Riley missed a chord change, but her voice never wavered.
“Baby, why not smile?
Baby, why not smile?
Baby, why not smile?”
The crowd had grown silent, and the band members’ adolescent sneers faded. Listening to a little girl sing those adult words should have been funny, but no one laughed. When Jack performed “Why Not Smile?” he turned it into an angry, confrontational assault. Riley was pure vocal heartbreak.
