The Deck of Omens (The Devouring Gray #2) - Christine Lynn Herman Page 0,82
her head, her red hair falling across her face. And Isaac realized what he was feeling: Like this, his memories were an acknowledgment instead of an assault. A part of a bigger story instead of the entire book.
Isaac knew Violet played piano, that she was pretty good at it. But he hadn’t known that she could do this?—take feelings he’d never been able to articulate, ones she could not possibly understand, and give them shape and form. The melody had reached into his chest and turned him inside out, and when the final chord faded away, Isaac realized he was dangerously close to tears.
He cleared his throat, his arm brushing against the doorway, and that noise must have been enough to rouse her from her trance.
Her eyes flew open?—and immediately widened with horror.
“You.” She gasped. “How long have you been standing there?”
Isaac felt a rush of guilt. Now that the music was gone, he realized how strange this truly was. But it had felt wrong to stop her, and he hadn’t known how to walk away.
“Not long,” he said quickly, and then, in a weak attempt to change the subject: “What piece is that?”
Violet hesitated, a hand curling protectively around the side of the sheet music. “It’s… mine. I’m working on it.”
No wonder she had played with such passion, such fervor. No wonder she’d been angry with him for walking in on her.
“You wrote that?” He stepped forward hesitantly. “Holy shit.”
“Yeah,” she said. “I’ve been composing. I just have the first movement right now, and it’s pretty rough.…”
“It didn’t sound rough to me.”
She snorted. “Well, that just tells me you know nothing about classical piano.”
Isaac hesitated. Behind her, the forest stretched down the hill and into the distance, disappearing into the faint, smudgy horizon.
“It feels like… that,” he said, gesturing to the window. “Like the woods, like the corruption, like the rituals. Like you put this whole town into music.”
Violet froze on the piano bench, her dark eyes locked on his. He could not read the look in them at all. “I call it the Gray Sonata.”
“That’s perfect.” The words were soft, too soft, but she smiled at them, and that made him feel like he had gotten one tiny part of this whole interaction right.
“It’s how I deal with everything,” she said. “Rosie, Daria, this horrible cult town…”
“I wish I had a coping mechanism that good.”
“I’m not sure it’s very good,” Violet said dryly. “I’m still extremely sad.”
Isaac choked back a laugh. “Well, so am I. So it’s not as if I’ve got anywhere to go but up.”
Violet tipped her head to the side. “Do you ever worry that maybe you’re sad because it’s easy? Because you’re good at it?”
“Are you saying that I want to feel like this?” Isaac felt a sudden swell of hurt. “Why would I ever?—”
“I wasn’t talking about you.” Violet’s voice had the same bite to it he’d heard the first time she’d spoken, when he’d seen the fire in her and thought that it was only a matter of time until Justin burned himself with it. “I was talking about me.”
He swallowed. “Oh. Sorry.” He’d been wrong about why Justin had tried so hard with her, when she’d first come to town. He’d been wrong about everything. He didn’t want to get this wrong, too; whatever this was.
“I don’t think either of us is sad because it’s easy,” he said slowly. “I think we’re sad because life has been kind of shitty to us, and people we love keep dying, and it would be more messed up if we weren’t sad sometimes.”
“I guess. But I’ve started feeling guilty when I’m happy. Like it isn’t allowed, after all of this.”
“I feel guilty when I’m happy, too,” he said. “And then I feel guilty about feeling guilty.”
Violet snorted and lowered her gaze, her eyelashes casting dark, feathery shadows across her cheeks. “I wish I could turn it all off. Feel it all a little less.”
“I don’t,” Isaac said, and realized to his own surprise that he meant it. “It happened, and I can’t change that. The remembering doesn’t have to break me. Forgetting would be worse.”
She lifted her head. “I guess I feel that way about Rosie, too. Like… thinking about her isn’t always painful. Sometimes it’s actually really nice.”
“I mean, of course it’s nice sometimes,” Isaac said, meeting her eyes. “You love her.”
“I do.” Violet paused. “I mean, grief is just another kind of love, right?”
Isaac nodded. “I think that’s how your music felt.