Between every song, LJ stopped to wave and tease other musicians he knew, joke with the tourists and tell them crazy stories, getting more outrageous every time he won a smile from her. He introduced Andra as his muse, his trophy wife, a mermaid he’d hauled out of the Mississippi and washed off with a garden hose. She told them he was secretly her bodyguard, a vampire, a famous musician whose name she was sworn not to tell.

When anyone started to dance, LJ’s song changed. It swooped to fit the beat of their feet, the shake of their hips, and then it urged them faster, more upbeat, until they always ended up laughing and more out of breath than he was. He thanked everyone who came by, but never glanced at his saxophone case, even when the tens and twenties started to outnumber the ones and fives. Whenever the wind blew a bill away, she chased it down, but he never budged, seemingly happy to let the world give and take away at will.

When he finally stopped to take a break and a sip of water, the shadows slung long and low between the buildings and she was more relaxed than she’d been in days. She stretched her legs out in front of her, leaning her head against the bricks at her back, and smiled. “I always thought the saxophone was supposed to sound sad. The blues and all that.”

“You want sad?” He arched his eyebrows at her, then swept his arm out at their current audience: three teenagers and a pair of tattooed girls with their hands locked so closely together that it looked like they were made as a set. “Let the record show the lady asked for sad.”

The girl with the scorpion tattoo on her neck laughed. “Don’t do it, LJ! Have mercy!”

Andra shook her head. She hadn’t even realized he knew these girls, too, but of course he did. Every time they left the house, people would stop to hug him and ask, “How’s your mama and them?” Since he was an only child, she wasn’t sure what “them” they were asking about, but they all asked it just the same. He was so popular, she wouldn’t have been surprised if the statue in the square was of him, too.

She could picture how it would look: him curled forward into his saxophone so every muscle stood out, his eyes closed as he poured his heart into the music. Watching him play made her miss her horses so bad it ached all the way into her teeth. With reins in her hands and a thousand-pound animal between her knees, she was poised and confident, focused and utterly free. She knew what needed to be done, and she knew she was the best person to do it.