was going to take you to my audition,” Allie says in a small voice. “For the University of Washington School of Music.”
Pride and shame and a sense of wonder fill his heart to overflowing.
“I’ll never forgive myself for missing it. What did you play?”
“I was supposed to play the C Minor.”
“That’s incredibly impressive. Steph said you were brilliant, but I thought she might be a tiny bit biased.”
“Steph is over the top about everything.” She smiles as she says it, but then her eyes narrow. “When did you talk to Steph?”
“She was worried about you. Came over to the house a while back to check on you and threatened me with pepper spray.”
Allie actually laughs at that, the most beautiful sound Braden thinks he’s ever heard, but it ends far too quickly.
“I should let her know what happened.” Silence for a moment, and then: “C Minor is the piece you were working on. Before. The last one I remembered.”
“Oh, Allie.” He lets this all sink in. “You said you were going to play the C Minor. What happened?”
“I played the lullaby,” she says very softly. “The one you used to play for me. Do you remember?”
“Whatever possessed you to play that?”
“Because it was yours,” she says simply, as if this is the sort of obvious thing he should have known. Grass is green, the sun provides light, and his daughter played a song at an audition that he wrote for her when she was a baby. Something classical would surely have been expected, and yet she had played something new, a song that linked her to her father.
The awesome audacity of her rocks him, shifts his internal architecture in a way he feels but could never find words for.
“I wish I’d been there” is all he can say. “Maybe you could still play it for me. When you’re out of here. After we get home.”
“It got them killed.” Allie’s voice, quiet before, is now barely more than a whisper. “Mom had to take Trey to an appointment because I snuck off to my audition instead.”
Her words knock the breath out of him.
“Oh my God, Allie. You can’t be thinking this is your fault! It was an accident. Accidents happen.”
“There’s no other way to think about it. If I hadn’t gone, if I’d done what Mom asked, they’d both be alive. But I was playing the cello instead.”
“What happened to your mom, to Trey, was a horrible, terrible, tragic thing, but it’s not your fault! Do you have any idea how many other kids were playing hooky in Seattle that day? And none of them had their families wiped out like that.”
“Maybe it’s the curse, the one Phee was talking about. Because I was playing the cello. Mom always said music was a curse and—”
“No!” She startles at the vehemence in his voice, and he softens it. “If there were a curse, which there’s not, it’s from not playing. You did exactly right, Allie. It happened because your mother didn’t see all that you are, and tried to make you somebody else.”
Braden holds his breath. Allie might be listening. There’s a quality to the silence that feels different. A slight easing of the tension in her jaw.
“Your mother wouldn’t want you to ruin your life out of guilt.”
“No. She’d expect me to make her sacrifice worthwhile. Go to medical school. Be a doctor.”
“Is that what you want?”
“Does it matter what I want?”
“Of course it matters. It’s your life. You get to live it however you want. But if you’re a musician, Allie, then you have to play music. It’s part of who you are.”
“What about you? You’re not playing.”
“Don’t model your life on mine, for the love of God,” he says. “And I really can’t use my hands. I’m not faking.”
Before she can answer, the door opens and a man comes in. He has a nice face, a pleasant, open smile, but the name tag clipped to his shirt labels him a professional. “Mind if I come in?” he asks, but doesn’t wait for permission before drawing up a chair on the other side of Allie’s bed.
“How are you doing?” he asks.
She eyes him with mistrust and says nothing, using the remote on the bed to adjust herself to a sitting position while simultaneously drawing the blanket protectively up around her chin.
“Allie Healey, yes?” the man asks. “And are you her father?”
Allie nods. Braden reads the name tag. Tom Michaels, Crisis and Commitment Services. “You’re the mental-health guy.”