Chapter 2 - THE SONG NOBODY WAS SUPPOSED TO REMEMBER
“Miss Santos, if you're finished making us feel sorry for you, perhaps you could actually play something.”
The words came from the judge seated at the far right.
Richard Bellamy.
Fifty-two years old.
A successful music producer with a reputation for discovering young talent and destroying careers with equal enthusiasm.
A few people laughed.
Maya kept her eyes on the keyboard.
She had been homeless for almost three years, but nothing had prepared her for the humiliation of having her entire life reduced to an entertainment segment.
“I didn't ask anyone to feel sorry for me,” she said quietly.
Bellamy raised an eyebrow.
“Then what are you here for?”
“To play.”
Thomas Greene leaned forward.
“Then please, Maya. We're listening.”
She placed her hands on the keys.
And the moment her left hand touched the first chord, seven years of silence began to break.
The melody started softly.
Three descending notes.
A pause.
Then a delicate phrase that moved upward, almost hopefully, before returning to a minor chord.
It wasn't Chopin.
It wasn't Beethoven.
It was something her mother had written.
Something Elena Santos called The House With the Yellow Door.
Their old home had a yellow front door.
Her father had painted it himself one summer, spilling paint across the porch and accidentally leaving a yellow handprint on Maya's favorite sneakers.
Her mother wrote the melody afterward.
“For the place where we're always together,” she had said.
Maya had never found the sheet music after her parents died.
But she remembered every note.
At least, she believed she did.
The first passage came easily.
Then her fingers began trembling.
She remembered practicing beside her mother.
She remembered her grandmother humming in the kitchen.
She remembered her father saying the sad part sounded like rain.
And she remembered the final evening, when her mother had stopped playing halfway through the composition.
Elena had looked toward the front window.
Then she had closed the piano.
At twelve, Maya had assumed her mother was tired.
Now, seated beneath the television studio lights, she heard something in the unfinished melody she hadn't understood before.
The middle passage changed.
Not because Maya planned it.
Because memory was returning through her hands.
She played a sequence of six sharp notes.
A hesitation.
Then a phrase that sounded almost like a warning.
Thomas Greene sat forward.
His expression changed.
Maya didn't notice.
Her eyes were closed.
For the next four minutes, she wasn't thinking about the shelter, the borrowed dress, or the audience.
She was thinking about home.
Her mother had always said music could tell the truth without explaining it.
Maya finally understood.
She wasn't playing a song about losing her parents.
She was playing the sound of trying to find them again.
The final chord faded.
Nobody moved.
Then someone in the back row began clapping.
Within seconds, the theater erupted.
People stood.
A woman near the aisle wiped her cheeks.
One of the judges pressed a tissue against her face.
Maya lifted her hands from the keyboard.
She had expected criticism.
She hadn't expected tears.
Even Richard Bellamy remained silent.
Thomas Greene looked as though he had seen a ghost.
“Where did you learn that composition?” he asked.
“My mother wrote it.”
“What was her name?”
“Elena Santos.”
Greene's fingers tightened around his pen.
“Elena Maria Santos?”
Maya stared at him.
“Yes.”
The older man's face lost its color.
Bellamy leaned toward his microphone.
“Thomas, do you know something we don't?”
Greene ignored him.
“Maya, did your mother ever perform professionally?”
“She taught piano. She played at churches and sometimes at community events.”
“Did she study composition?”
“She couldn't afford conservatory.”
Thomas closed his eyes briefly.
Then he asked a question that made Maya's throat tighten.
“Did your mother keep a small silver metronome on top of your piano?”
Maya froze.
The memory was immediate.
A silver metronome.
Not a traditional wooden pyramid, but a narrow mechanical instrument with a tarnished metal case.
Her father had repaired it repeatedly.
Her mother claimed it kept terrible time.
But she never replaced it.
“Yes,” Maya whispered.
Thomas covered his mouth.
Richard Bellamy pushed back his chair.
“That's enough,” he said.
Maya looked toward him.
“Enough of what?”
“This is an audition, not a family-history interview.”
Thomas turned sharply.
“Richard, be quiet.”
The audience murmured.
The show's host stepped toward the judges' table.
“Professor Greene, is everything okay?”
“No,” Thomas said.
His voice shook.
“Not remotely.”
He stood.
Then, to everyone's astonishment, the respected professor walked onto the stage.
He stopped several feet from Maya.
“Your mother and I worked together twenty years ago.”
Maya stood so quickly the bench moved backward.
“You knew her?”
“Yes.”
“Then why didn't you say anything when she died?”
Thomas looked down.
“I didn't know.”
“That doesn't make sense.”
“We lost contact.”
Maya searched his face.
She had spent years wishing someone from her parents' old life would recognize her.
Now a stranger was standing in front of her claiming to know her mother.
“What did she play?” Maya asked.
“Excuse me?”
“If you really knew my mother, tell me what she played when she was nervous.”
Thomas answered immediately.
“Gershwin. Usually badly, on purpose.”
Maya's eyes filled.
Her mother had always played the opening of Rhapsody in Blue with exaggerated seriousness before laughing at herself.
It was something only someone close to her would know.
Thomas reached into his jacket.
He removed a worn leather wallet.
From behind his identification card, he carefully extracted a faded photograph.
Three young musicians stood beside a piano.
One was Thomas.
Another was Maya's mother.
The third man stood partially turned away from the camera.
Maya stared.
Her mother looked barely twenty-five.
Smiling.
Alive.
Thomas handed her the picture.
“She was the most gifted composer I ever worked with.”
Maya could barely speak.
“Why didn't she tell me?”
Thomas hesitated.
“Because something happened that changed all our lives.”
At the judges' table, Richard Bellamy suddenly stood.
“This audition is over.”
The show's producer appeared from the wings.
“Mr. Bellamy, we're still recording.”
“Turn the cameras off.”
Thomas looked at him.
“Why?”
Bellamy's expression hardened.
“Because this girl is performing copyrighted material.”
The applause died.
Maya looked between the men.
“What?”
Bellamy pointed toward the piano.
“That composition belongs to the Bellamy Music Archive.”
Maya shook her head.
“No. My mother wrote it.”
“Your mother may have taught you a version of it. That doesn't establish ownership.”
Thomas's voice became dangerously quiet.
“Richard, don't do this.”
Bellamy ignored him.
“If this performance airs, there will be legal complications.”
Maya's stomach dropped.
She had saved bus fare for three weeks to reach the audition.
She had spent nights practicing finger movements on a shelter dining table because she had no instrument.
And now someone was accusing her of stealing the only music she had left from her mother.
“You're lying,” she whispered.
Bellamy's jaw tightened.
“Be careful, young lady.”
Thomas stepped between them.
“Richard, that piece was written before your publishing company even existed.”
Bellamy looked directly at him.
“Are you prepared to prove that?”
Thomas didn't answer.
Bellamy turned toward the producer.
“Remove her from the competition.”
Maya clutched the photograph.
For one terrible moment, she was twelve again.
Adults deciding everything.
Her future.
Her belongings.
Where she could sleep.
What she was allowed to keep.
But this time, she wasn't twelve.
“No,” she said.
Bellamy stared.
“Excuse me?”
“You don't get to take my mother's music.”
Security approached the stage.
Thomas raised one hand.
“Don't touch her.”
Then he turned to Maya.
“There's something I need you to see.”
He pointed toward the photograph.
“Look at the man standing beside your mother.”
Maya lowered her eyes.
The third man's face was partly hidden.
But his right hand rested on the piano.
On his ring finger was a thick gold band with a black rectangular stone.
Maya looked up.
Richard Bellamy was standing beneath the stage lights.
And on his right hand was the same ring.
Thomas leaned closer.
“Your mother didn't just know Richard Bellamy, Maya.”
May you like
His next words made the entire theater go silent.
“She was the woman who wrote the music that made him famous.”
