“I’ll find my own way. I’m sorry,” Braden says, to Phee or the dog or the ghost of the luthier, or maybe all of them. “I’m sorry.”
Chapter Seventeen
BRADEN
Braden takes a bus, gets off and transfers to another, letting the familiar reality of bodies and noise jolt him back to what is real. This. The hard, cramped seat. The dirty windows. His neighbor with the sharp elbow and the earbuds, exuding an aroma of pot into his environment like a skunky atomizer.
By the time he walks home from the last bus stop through darkness, a cold drizzle soaking through his clothing, he’s back to familiar, sharp-edged facts.
The cello is a thing of wood and strings with no emotions to be wounded. She does not carry the souls of musicians broken and murdered during the war.
His hands will not be magically healed. The disaster and tragedy in his life has not been caused by a curse. The disembodied music he keeps hearing must be stress-induced psychosis or some weird form of alcohol withdrawal.
Allie is his whole focus now. Maybe she’ll never love him, never forgive him, but that is not the point. He needs to see that her life doesn’t get sucked into the ruin that has claimed the rest of her family. Tomorrow he’ll get her set up for survivor benefits and counseling. He’ll tackle Trey’s room. He’ll call Lil’s attorney and go over the will.
If he can get inside the house. If he can find Allie.
Hoping against hope that maybe she’s made it home, he knocks. Rings the doorbell. Wonders if the neighbors are watching him, locked out of his own house. If they remember the last time he stood there, a supplicant at his own door, begging. The memory is vivid in his own mind.
His key won’t go into the lock. Because he’s drunk, maybe, so he tries again. And still it doesn’t fit. He sees the sawdust then, telltale on the porch, and knows what she’s done. Changed the locks. Not given him a key.
“Lili! Open up!”
He rings the doorbell. Knocks. Then rings again.
He fumbles with his cell phone, calling hers, and then the house phone, listening to it ring and hearing his own voice through the door as he leaves a message.
“For the love of God, Lilian, let me in. We need to talk.”
The killing silence continues, retribution. Braden stumbles around the back of the house, tosses a pebble at the bedroom window, calls her name softly, not so drunk that he can’t be humiliated by the thought of the neighbors knowing what she’s done.
Still no answer.
And then the back door swings open, and Allie stands there, eyes wide with sleep and confusion.
“Daddy? Did you lose your key?”
“That’s exactly it, little bird.”
He hugs her, tight, and picks her up to carry her to bed.
And the next morning . . .
The next morning he’d left without saying goodbye to either of the kids. He couldn’t face them, couldn’t bear to tell them he was leaving.
This time there’s no Allie inside to rescue him and let him in. Maybe there’s a hidden key. He looks under the doormat, the flowerpot, and when he doesn’t find one, he is half grateful that Lil was smart enough not to stash a key in the obvious places. She would have left a spare key somewhere, though, in case one of the kids got locked out.
Which leaves the neighbors. Damn it. He knows which one of them it will be. Steeling himself for the encounter, he knocks on Mrs. Jorgenson’s door.
She jerks it open midknock, covered from neck to ankles in a bathrobe, fuzzy slippers on her feet.
“Well, well. Come to borrow a cup of sugar, then?” Her gaze rakes over him, top to bottom.
He knows full well how he looks. Damp, disheveled, and drunken. It makes no difference that he’s actually sober.
“Mrs. J., I’ve lost my house key. Any chance you could help me out?”
She stares at him, reprovingly, through her half glasses, lips pressed in a tight line.
“Are you drunk?”
“Not yet.”
She sighs, as if he’s asked her to drive him to Canada or help him bury a body. “How is that poor child doing?”
“She’s managing.”
“I told them they could leave her here, after the accident. Until her aunt could show up. I told the social worker straight up, I said, ‘Are you going to let bureaucracy win over the needs of that poor child?’ They said she was staying with a friend, but surely—”