He rolls over onto his back and stares up at the ceiling, which is dimly visible in the dark room, beginning to panic. He doesn’t know how to explain, to make her see. “I love all of you. You can’t compare—it’s like apples and oranges.”
“And which am I, then, Braden? An apple or an orange?”
“Lil—”
“I’m not a thing. I’m a human being. The cello is a thing. You spend more time with it—it, Braden, not her—than you do with me or the kids.”
A defensive anger flares. “Music is my job, too, don’t forget. It helps pay for your house and your clothes and the visits to your sister—”
“So get a different job.”
The words have the effect of a bucket of ice water. He sits up, gasping, all of the oxygen in the room in sudden short supply. “You can’t mean that. What else would I possibly do?”
“I don’t care. Something that doesn’t steal your soul away from me. Because I can’t go on like this.”
“What is that supposed to mean?”
“It’s not secret code.”
“I’ll do better. I’ll play less. I’ll—”
“You’ve tried that. It takes all of you. Even when you’re with me, you’re really with the cello. I can’t deal with that anymore. I want you to give it up.”
“That’s insane! I’m a musician.”
“Fine. Be a musician, just be one elsewhere.”
“You can’t mean that. It’s late. Things will look different in the morning.” He sits up, stares at the defensive line of her back, wants to shake her.
“I’m done,” she says. “I’ve put up with this since we got married. You have a week to think about it.”
“Lil!”
“You heard me.”
“Please,” Braden says now, aloud into the darkness. It’s a prayer, a plea, to God, to his dead wife, to his memories, to the cello, to Allie. He doesn’t expect an answer. He’s trapped now, just as he was trapped then.
This bed, Lilian’s bed, feels hostile. Exhausted as he is, he’ll never be able to sleep here. Scooping up a pillow and a blanket, he heads for the less comfortable anonymity of the couch. On the way, he pauses in Allie’s doorway. She lies on her belly, arms and legs flung wide, snoring softly, and he passes her by. Passes the call of the cello.
He settles himself on the couch and finally, finally, feels sleep coming to meet him.
He’s backstage in a concert hall, waiting for a solo performance. The familiar nerves of anticipation thrum through him, but the cello answers with a deep and grounding note.
“The two of us, together,” she reminds him. “You and me, forever.”
And then it’s time, and as he carries her on stage, he pauses, aware that this is a dream. He can wake now, if he chooses. But the lure of music, the sensation of his fingers flexible and completely sensate, the desire of the cello, the rustling expectation of the crowd, are too powerful.
And so he sits at center stage in a soft circle of light, and begins to play. The cello responds as she always does, and the two of them become one, a new thing that is more than either man or cello, channeling music into the range of hearing of the listening crowd he can sense in the darkness but never see.
At the center of the music, he is whole. All of his confusion—his anger, his grief, his guilt—turns to gold, a process of alchemy. He hears the audience sigh and weep as the music washes over them, feels their hearts lighten through the release, knows that this is what he was called into the world to do.
Chapter Eighteen
ALLIE
Allie wakes to music, Bach’s cello Suite in C Minor, the Braden Healey version. No two cellists play it alike, no two cellos sound alike, and she knows the voice of this cello under the touch of her father’s hands.
Her head throbs, dully, as she pushes herself up to sitting.
She’s still fully dressed. For a moment she’s disoriented, and then the memories come back in bits and pieces. The party. The cops. Her father and the Uber and Ethan.
Ethan. Where is Ethan? Did he get arrested? Did she?
The music is an affront to her aching head and to her heart. What the hell, anyway? Braden must be playing the recording to punish her for getting drunk. Or maybe he’s drunk himself. Either way, she needs to make it stop.
Shivering with the transition from warm bed to the nighttime chill, she pads out of her room and follows the