presses both hands over her ears, and lurches up the stairs toward her room. Braden follows. Helps her off with her shoes, covers her with the blankets. He’d tucked her in this way as a child, only that was so very different. Her arms around his neck, the kiss on his cheek.
“I love you, Daddy.”
She’d smelled then of soap and clean pajamas, not beer and smoke and sweat. Braden longs to smooth her forehead, to tuck her hair behind her ears, but she pulls the covers over her head and rolls onto her side, away from him.
Her breathing is fine, he reassures himself. She isn’t unconscious. This isn’t alcohol poisoning. Tomorrow he will talk to her about alcohol and genetics and why she must not go further down this path. For now, there’s nothing he can do but keep an eye on her, let her sleep it off.
But worry trails after him as he moves like a sleepwalker through the house that is his, but not his, cello music swirling around him, heavy with memories.
The bottle waits on the kitchen counter where he left it, half empty, after Alexandra’s call.
You might as well finish it. Your daughter hates you and you’ve already ruined her. What hope is there for either of you?
His hand closes around the bottle.
Just enough to get warm again. Just enough to take the edge off the guilt, off the tormenting sliver of the memory of violence.
He slams the bottle down onto the counter. Thud. And then slams it again. He hates the booze, loves it and hates it and is sick to death of it.
Allie needs him sober.
Holding his breath, he pours the rest of it down the sink and runs water to rinse it.
A hot shower, to warm him and stop this shaking. Sleep. He needs sleep. Things will be clearer in the morning.
The cello tries to draw him in as he passes the music room. “Leave me alone,” he mutters. “This is your fault.”
A hot shower warms his skin but not his insides and does nothing to stop either the music or his memories. He’s still half intoxicated, although he can feel the hard edges of sobriety. Bed. The bed he used to share with Lilian. In the dark, he’s not entirely sure she’s not lying there, pretending she’s asleep. He slides under the covers and into a memory.
A glance at the clock. God, it’s two a.m. He’s been playing the cello for hours.
Beside him, Lil’s breathing is quiet and even, but something about the quality of her stillness warns him that she’s awake.
She’s curled in on herself, faced away from him. Not that this is new. She’s been shutting him out this way for years now, waking or sleeping.
Braden goes along with her pretense. He’s too full of music to talk now. He’ll sleep. In the morning, he’ll make it up to her, somehow.
But then the stillness of her shifts into slow shudders, and he realizes she is weeping silently, right there beside him in the bed but so very much alone. The sound of it tears his heart open, and he lays a hand on her shoulder, whispers, “What is it, Lili? Talk to me.”
“You love her more,” she whispers brokenly. “No matter what I do, you will always love her more.”
“Who?” He runs through the faces of women he knows, searching for her meaning. Has he looked too long into someone’s eyes, hugged someone too sincerely, lingered over a hand offered him on introduction?
“It’s like you have a mistress. Only worse. She has no other commitments, no other life. Only you. Always there. Always wanting. How am I supposed to compete with that?”
Oh God. She means the cello.
A paralyzing bolt of fear hits him in the belly, and he says the first words that come to him. “You’re not meant to compete with the cello. You can’t.”
A harsh sob is her response, and he understands, too late, too late, how she will take what he has just said.
“Lil, listen.” He strokes her hair, tries to gather her into his arms, but she stiffens and pulls away from him.
“Don’t take it that way,” he pleads. “I meant it’s not a competition. I love you. But music is what I am, Lili. You know that. You knew it when you met me.”
“How could I know what that meant? I didn’t know you’d always put her first. Over me. Over your children, Braden. Over all of us. The cello gets the best of you,