Chapter 1
A starving little girl played one melody on a Beverly Hills terrace—and I nearly dropped my glass when she told me who taught it to her.
“PLEASE—I JUST NEED MONEY FOR FOOD!”
The girl’s scream cut across the hotel terrace, silencing every table around us.
I turned and saw a tiny girl standing beside our table, clutching an old flute against her chest.
Her clothes were worn, and her hands were shaking.
My brother Richard leaned back in his chair and looked her over with an amused smile.
“You want money?” he asked.
The girl nodded quickly.
“Then impress us.”
Two men at the next table laughed.
Someone raised a phone to record her.
I felt sick watching grown adults treat a hungry child like entertainment.
“Richard, stop,” I whispered.
But before I could reach for my purse, the girl lifted the flute.
Her first note was weak and uncertain.
Then she played the second.
My entire body went still.
I knew that melody.
It was a little song my younger sister Anna had written when we were teenagers in Boston.
She had never recorded it.
She had never performed it publicly.
She only played it for our family.
And Anna had been missing for almost eight years.
“Where did you learn that?” I asked.
The girl kept playing, tears slipping down her cheeks.
When the final note ended, nobody laughed anymore.
Richard’s smile had disappeared.
I stood so quickly my chair scraped across the marble.
“Sweetheart, who taught you that song?”
The girl lowered the flute.
“My mom.”
My heart started pounding.
“What’s your mother’s name?”
She hesitated and looked toward the hotel entrance like she was afraid someone might be watching.
“Anna.”
My glass slipped from my hand and shattered.
Richard suddenly grabbed my wrist beneath the table.
“Charlotte,” he whispered, “don’t ask her anything else.”
I stared at him.
There was fear on my brother’s face.
May you like
Then the little girl pointed directly at Richard.
“My mom said if I ever saw that man, I should run.”
