The Pages We Forget by Anthony Lamarr Page B

promise you he’d understand.”
    â€œBut can he fix it for me like he fixes everything else in my life?”
    â€œI don’t know, but at least—”
    â€œBut nothing!” June cut her off. She walked toward the door, intent on getting to the stage. “Alex isn’t God. He can’t simply wave his hand over my head and make everything okay.”
    â€œNo, he isn’t God. But he can still help you through this. He deserves to know, Junie. So does your mother. How can you do this to them? And to Trevor. What about Trevor?”
    â€œThis isn’t about Trevor!”
    â€œHow come it’s not about him? You’re his mother and you’re trying to die.” Leatrice covered her mouth because she didn’t mean to say what she had. She cut loose with the statement, letting it flow like the tears flooding her face. “I’m sorry.” Her voice trailed, trying to find her volume again. “I didn’t mean that.”
    June was out the door. She had heard enough. And besides, there was an audience of 5,000 adoring fans and legions of television viewers anxiously waiting to see and hear her perform the collection of songs that Rolling Stone called, “A classic for sure. One of music’s finest songbirds at her soaring best. Brilliantly conceived. Stylishly and heartbreakingly delivered.”
    â€œMesmerizing. You will never forget The Pages We Forget, ” proclaimed a USA Today review.
    â€œAstonishing from the first note to the last,” Vibe magazine’s reviewer wrote. “A masterpiece.”
    Still, despite the critical raves and the CD’s chart-topping debut, June walked down the spiral staircase to the center of the stage holding firmly to her plan. As the cameras and lights hovered around her, she strolled to the front of the stage and inconspicuously searched the mass of faces for someone she knew wasn’t in the audience.
    â€œBut now I see, someone staring back at me,” she sang. “Who has your smile, and that sparkle in your eyes.”
    Not far from the stage, sat a well-dressed black man with straight, black hair just like Keith’s. Their complexions were about the same, but their faces were different. Keith’s face was rounder, fuller. This guy’s was long and narrow. And he didn’t have those hard-to-look-into eyes like Keith. Keith’s smile was timid, while the man’s smile was one of befuddlement, especially when he realized June was looking at him. She smiled.
    â€œCould it be, finally, the one I gave my heart to?” her voice wafted through the theater. “Is it really you?”
    Ironically, on one of the rare days when she hadn’t been forced to replay one of her memories of Keith, she thought she saw him. It was four years ago, during a concert in Orlando. She was halfway through a song when she looked into the audience and there he was. He was standing a few rows from the stage. She stood paralyzed, unable to sing or talk when their eyes met. Before she could gather her senses, the face in the crowd disappeared. June continued searching the crowd, but he was nowhere to be found. She never said anything about seeing Keith’s face in the crowd to anyone, not even to Leatrice.
    â€œI know you…You know I know you,” she sang. “I don’t mean to stand here staring, but I know you from somewhere. I know it’s you. Boy, you know I know you. Because in your eyes I see him there. I know you from somewhere.”
    Alex and Trevor were sitting front and center. Dressed in matching pinstriped Armani suits, they were poised and ready for the television cameras to zoom in for the first of the obligatory close-ups. Trevor knew the routine as well as Alex: Sit up straight and look totally mesmerized, which didn’t take any acting. June’s four-octave powerhouse voice made sure of that.
    Kathryn sat next to Trevor and Lucy Kaye sat next to Kathryn.June,