Before We Were Yours(90)

He moves a few more steps into the room. “Well, you know what? On second thought, the pony won’t mind waiting. She’s a patient old sort.” Mr. Sevier whirls a hand toward the piano. “Do that again.”

The tears drain down my throat. I swallow what’s left of them as he walks across to the phonograph.

“Here. I’ll reset the needle. How much can you do?”

I shrug. “I dunno. Not much. I gotta listen at it real hard first.”

He lets the record go a little farther than I’ve already tried, but I think real quick and get it mostly right.

“Have you ever played before?” he asks.

“No, sir.” He puts the needle back even farther, and we do it all again. I only get a little bit wrong, just on the new part.

“Impressive,” he says.

It ain’t really, but it feels good to have him say it. At the same time, I wonder, What’s he want? He don’t need me to play the piano. He’s real good at it on his own. He’s better than the phonograph record even.

“Again.” He wheels a hand one more time. “Just from memory.”

I do it, but something’s off.

“Ooops,” he says. “Hear that?”

“Yessir.”

“It’s a sharp; that’s why.” He points to the piano. “I can show you, if you like.”

I nod and turn back to the piano and put my fingers on the keys.

“No, like this.” He bends over from behind me and shows me how to stretch out my hand. “Middle C for the thumb. You’ve got good, slim fingers too. Those are the hands of a piano player.”

They’re Briny’s hands, but Mr. Sevier doesn’t know that.

He touches my fingers, one by one. The keys play the tune. He shows me how to do the sharp I’ve been getting wrong.

“That’s the way,” he says. “Hear the difference?”

I nod. “I do! I hear it!”

“You know where the note goes now?” he asks. “In the melody, I mean.”

“Yessir.”

“All right then.” Before I have time to think about it, he’s sitting down beside me. “You play the melody, and I’ll play the chords. You’ll see the way they come together. That’s how a piece is created, like the one you heard on the record.”

I do what he says, and he plays the keys on his end, and we sound just like the record! I feel the music coming from the piano and slipping through my body. Now I know what it’s like for the birds when they sing.

“Can we play it again?” I ask when we get to the end. “More of it?” I want to do more, and more, and more.

He spins the record and helps me find the right keys, and then we play the music together. He’s laughing when we finish, and I am too.

“We should see about arranging some lessons for you,” he says. “You have a talent.”

I look at him real hard to see if he’s teasing. A talent? Me?

I push a hand over my smile and turn back to the keys, and my cheeks go hot. Does he mean it?

“I wouldn’t say that if it weren’t true, May. I might not know much about raising little girls, but I do know about music.” He leans close, trying to see my face. “I understand that it’s hard for you, coming here to a new home, at your age…but I think you and I can be friends.”

All of a sudden, I’m back in the hallway at Mrs. Murphy’s house, in the pitch dark, and Riggs has me pinned between his belly and the wall, and he’s pressing hard into me, blocking out the air, making my body go numb. The smell of whiskey and coal dust slides up my nose, and he whispers, Y-you and me can b-b-be friends. I can git ya p-peppermints and c-c-cookies. Anythin’ y-you want. We c-can b-b-be best friends….

I jump up from the piano bench, smashing the keys so that a handful play all at once. The noise mixes with the sound of my shoes clattering against the floor.

I don’t stop running until I’m upstairs curled in the bottom of my closet with my feet braced on the door so nobody else can get in.





CHAPTER 21


Avery

When the Stafford camp circles the wagons, we’re a formidable force. For almost three weeks now, we’ve been hunkered down behind the barricades fighting off the press, whose main goal is to paint us as criminally elitist because we’ve engaged premium nursing home care for my grandmother, who can afford it, by the way. It’s not as if we’re asking the public to pay her fees…which is what I really want to say to every reporter who accosts us with a microphone as we make our way to and from public events, meetings, social commitments…even church.

Driving into Drayden Hill after accompanying my parents to church and a Sunday brunch, I spot my sisters in one of the broodmare paddocks with Allison’s triplets. In the riding arena, Courtney has a sweet old gray gelding out for a canter. She’s riding bareback, and as I park, I imagine the rhythm of Doughboy’s strides, his muscles tightening and releasing, the rise and fall of his broad back.

“Hey, Aunt Aves! Want to go out on the trails with me?” Courtney calls hopefully as I walk to the fence. “You can take me home after.”

I’m about to say, Let me go grab a pair of jeans, but Courtney’s mom beats me to the punch. “Court, you have to get ready for camp!”