Can't Look Away(102)

“All Jake,” Sabrina calls out, tipping her head in his direction.

He winks, and Molly feels a squeeze around her heart.

“I love it,” Stella chirps. “Thank you, Sabrina and Jake!” She turns to Molly. “Mommy, can I try it now?”

“Not now, baby. Later we can.”

“Just one song? Just ‘Let It Go’? Please?” Stella’s expression is desperate, borderline unhinged. Molly doesn’t typically indulge Stella’s tantrums, but she knows that the threat of a public meltdown is still very much present in her child’s exhausted, overstimulated state. Twenty more minutes until everyone goes home.

“You don’t even need a plug, Mrs. O’Neil,” Jade chimes brightly. “It’s battery operated, and it comes with the batteries.”

Molly’s mother appears, squatting beside her granddaughter. “I think the birthday girl is allowed to perform one song on her birthday.”

“Yay!” Stella claps her hands. “Mommy, Nana says I can.”

“Wait, Stell, the machine has to be attached to a TV so you can see the lyrics on the screen. There’s no TV up here. Later, okay?”

Stella scrunches her nose. “What are lyrics?”

“They’re the words to the song,” says Jade, the brightest six-year-old Molly has ever encountered. “But you already know them, Stella.”

“I already know them,” Stella repeats.

“Are you sure?” Molly studies her daughter’s face for signs of apprehension, but she just nods excitedly.

Molly’s mother unpacks the karaoke machine from its box and proceeds to set it up. “Moo.” She lowers her voice. “I’ve been trying to find a moment with you all afternoon. Is Jake Danner at this party, or am I officially losing it in my advanced age?”

Molly glances to where Jake stands by the pool—she’s been subconsciously tracking his whereabouts for the entire duration of the party—then back to her mother, whom she has yet to update on Jake’s reemergence in her life.

“It’s a long story, but yes. Jake lives in Flynn Cove now.”

“What?” Her mother sputters. “Since when? How does he live here?”

Stella, fiddling with the plastic microphone, observes them curiously.

“Shhh. I’ll explain later, Mom. Let’s just—” Molly gestures toward the karaoke machine. “Let’s get this show on the road.”

“All right!” Molly stands, clapping her palms together. The steady hum of conversation around the pool subsides as all eyes land on her. She feels Jake’s gaze most acutely, her stomach tensing into a familiar grinding knot. “Thank you all so much for coming to Stella’s party. Stella, little miss Elsa that she is, has a special song she’d like to perform with her new karaoke machine—a smash-hit present from the Danners.” There are a few laughs. The sun is strong overhead, and beads of sweat prick Molly’s chest. She looks at her daughter. “Stell, take it away.”

Jade hits Play on the music, and Stella steps forward in her blue ball gown and rhinestone tiara. At Stella’s age—or at any age, really—Molly would’ve been immobilized with stage fright in such a moment, and she half expects her daughter to drop the microphone and come running into her arms. But Stella’s expression is brazen, her little chin pointed forward as she waits for the lyrics to begin. Molly is filled with awe, and relief that her daughter seems to have evaded the self-consciousness that she herself has always battled. Though it doesn’t come as a total surprise. After all, an entire half of Stella’s genetic makeup has nothing to do with Molly.

“The snow glows white on the mountain tonight…” Stella’s voice is smooth and melodious, and so stunning it catches Molly off guard.

Molly has heard her daughter sing before, of course. Stella has belted out the words to “Let It Go” countless times, and her singing voice has always been solid and sweet. But this—this is different. It’s the microphone, perhaps, that reveals the exceptionality of her six-year-old’s voice, and that what she’s doing is so much more than singing. Stella is performing, captivating the crowd around her without an ounce of fear or hesitation in her being. She’s a star.

Molly is speechless. She looks around at her guests, each of them watching her daughter intently, thirty pairs of eyes filled with wonder. Even Meredith Duffy looks impressed, her Restylane-filled lips parted.

“Let it go, let it go, can’t hold it back anymore!”

Stella’s voice hits the high notes triumphantly, perfectly, and it’s too exquisite, and in Molly’s head all she can hear is the sound of his voice, the same air of graceful confidence with which he sang the opening lines to “Mona Lisas and Mad Hatters” that first night in East Williamsburg at the Broken Mule, a million years ago.

And now I know

Spanish Harlem are not just pretty words to say



Molly is crying then, and she doesn’t even try to stop because she knows it’s pointless; the tears are involuntary, the by-product of an emotion that is too powerful to be ruled by her own will. She hears someone wonder aloud, Where’d Stella learn to sing like that? and she feels more tears fall because she knows, in her heart, that that kind of talent—that kind of presence in front of an audience—can’t be taught. It’s something that’s in you, that’s in your blood.