Out of Tune

Chapter Twenty

And I will sing with my soul that my song should echo in thy heart for eternity—Emilie Petersen

There was plenty of snow on the ground when Lennon passed through the gates to the Glenn Green Cemetery in Brooklyn.

Even though she hadn't been to the cemetery since mid-September – over six months earlier – Lennon still remembered the exact pathway she needed to take to reach her father's grave. She followed it, the twists and turns until she found a clump of evergreens. Ten feet to the left of the trees, there was a small, unremarkable grave marker.

Lennon knew what it said without reading. Knew because she'd been the one to tell the engraver what to write.

Elijah Henry McCormick. Beloved Father.

And beneath that, her father's favourite quote by Hans Christian Anderson: Where words fail, music speaks.

As she approached the gravesite, Lennon felt something in her throat start to clench. She had to fight for breath and tears began to prick her eyes.

Until she was standing in front of the grave, Lennon had not realized how badly she needed to cry. The last time she'd been there, she'd been dressed in all-black. Carrying a bouquet of yellow roses that she'd laid on the small box of her father's ashes as it had been buried in the ground.

All of her father's friends had been there – some of them so close that they were family. Some of her own friends had come as well, supporting Lennon through that ordeal. But because they had been there, because she had felt the need to hold herself together and be strong, Lennon had scarcely allowed herself to cry during that service.

Now, she had no such reservations. The sobs began shaking her shoulders while she was still walking and Lennon hunched in on herself, shoulders caving inwards.

Everything. The hell that had been her life over the last half-year came flooding back. From the time her father had died and left her alone to the months she'd spent with her mother.

Too much. It was all too much to deal with. She was seventeen. She wasn't meant to carry that much weight on her shoulders.

And yet she was.

What was worse was the fact that Lennon didn't see an end in sight. It had been two-and-a-half weeks since Lennon had left her mother's house in the dead of night. She hadn't gone back.

Her contact with her mother and step-father had been so minimal it was basically nothing. The morning after she'd left, she had woken up in the guest room to a dozen missed calls and over thirty unopened texts. All from her mother demanding to know where she was. Lennon had responded only to say that she was fine and that she was not coming back home.

They'd spoken only once – when her mother had shown up unannounced to Lennon's school on a Monday morning. Lennon had been ambushed in the parking lot by her mother. While there had been concern on Paige's face as she'd spoken to her daughter, it had not been enough for Lennon to warrant going back to that house where she was so clearly not wanted.

So Lennon had gone inside to school and they had not spoken since except for the brief one-lined message Lennon had sent her mother, minutes before stepping onto a plane, to let her know that she was heading for New York. Her mother hadn't deigned to reply.

The weeks that Lennon had been away from the Ackerman household had been some of the most relaxing times she'd had in a while.

It had been clear right from the start that she was wholly welcomed at the Lucena-Mathews' home. On the night she had left home, Rafa had brought her inside and deposited her in the kitchen with a steaming mug of tea as he'd gone to wake up his wife.