Page 87 of Behind the Bars

“I promised my wife I’d show her the world, and we saw it,” he told me, walking my way with a mug of hot tea in his hands. His eyes stared at the wall and a small smile found his lips. “But nothing was as special as coming home. Nothing felt asright.”

“Your wife was beautiful,” I told him, smiling at the pictures on the fireplace. There were dozens of photographs, memories captured in ink, exhibiting the life of Theodore James. It was a gorgeous life, and I felt lucky to even be allowed to peer inside of it. The picture on the edge of the fireplace made my heart jump to my throat. It was a little Elliott holding a saxophone that looked five times too big for his smallframe.

“That was the day he received his first baby,” TJ explained. “That was the moment he fell in love withjazz.”

Elliott’s face beamed with that love in the photograph. His smile was stretched far, and you could almost feel his excitement shooting through theframe.

“I miss that smile,” Iconfessed.

“We all do,” he agreed. “But we aren’t here to talk about him right now. Today, we focus onyou.”

I took off my jacket and placed it on the arm of his sofa before I sat down with my notebook in my hand. “I did some vocal warm-ups on the way over, if you want to skipthat.”

He narrowed his eyes and leaned against the fireplace. “We’re not going to sing today,” he told me. “We aren’t going to sing for awhile.”

“What?”

“You have a lot of work to do before you can dive into singing.” He nodded toward the notebook. “Write down the hardestparts.”

“The hardestparts?”

“The parts of you that scare you. Your deepest truths—write those down. Write down every demon that ever haunted you at night. Write down the shadows, the fears, the sharpestpains.”

“What does this have to do with mesinging?”

He sat down in a chair across the way and clasped his hands together. “How well do you knowyourself?”

“What do youmean?”

“What’s yourtruth?”

I snickered. “TJ, you know Idon’t—”

“What’s your truth?” he askedagain.

I tensed up. “My life isn’t a sad story,” I told him. “I’mhappy.”

“I know, but what’s yourtruth?”

Every time he said that, I cringed a little. I didn’t have a clue what he was getting at, or why he kept asking me that same question, though I did know he wasn’t doing it to be cruel. He had the gentlest look in his eyes, and that was what bothered me the most—how he looked at me and saw parts I pretended weren’tthere.

“I know you’re happy. You smile all the time, Jasmine, but sometimes I see it…that quiet storm that lives behind your eyes. I see the thunder that’s ripping you up inside as you try your best to pretend you’ve never even felt raindrops. Burying your hurts and your fears isn’t going to keep them from emerging. It’s only going to silence your real voice that’s begging toescape.”

“I…” My voice trembled, and I shook my head back and forth, looking down at my notebook. “I don’t think this is what I want to do, TJ. I don’t want to dig thatdeep.”

He studied me for a moment before giving me his soft smile. “One can’t truly heal if they pretend the cracks don’texist.”

I gave him a tight smile and nodded once but didn’t say aword.

He let out a defeated sigh and nodded. “Okay, then let’s do some vocal warm-ups.”

* * *

The following weeksbegan and ended the same. I rehearsed with TJ, I went to work, and listened to TJ perform, and I’d always end the night sitting behind the bars, reminding myself to breathe. TJ did his best to work with me, but it was hard. I made ithard.

There was a wall around me that I’d built up, and I hadn’t known it existed until he’d tried to push itdown.

I washappy.

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