Everything You Are(12)

Memories clamor for his attention.

They’d fallen in love with this house, he and Lilian both, when they were still in love with each other. Lilian, usually so self-contained, had lit up like a child the first time they saw it. He can almost feel her cool fingers laced with his, towing him from room to room with exclamations of delight.

“Look, Braden! The kitchen is perfect! See the pantry? And here’s a perfect place for a high chair—the baby can sit here while I cook. Oh, and this will be the baby’s room, and this can be a playroom . . .”

Reveling in her excitement, still amazed and slightly awed that she has married him, that they are building a life together, and buying a house, still he sees the glimmer of a problem.

“I was thinking this might be my music room, Lil. I’ll need a place to practice.”

Only the faintest hesitation, a cloud shadow on her happiness, before she concedes. “Of course, you’ll need a place for that. It’s not like the kids will need a playroom. I sure never had one. Did you?”

“The whole back forty,” he says, laughing. “Jo and I pretty much lived outside in the summer. Wait, did you say kids? As in plural?”

“Of course.” She kisses him. “Our very own family, Braden. At least three, don’t you think? Maybe four?”

The dream of a family took a beating after Allie was born. Postpartum depression hit Lilian hard. For weeks, she’d done little but feed the baby and cry. She’d wanted Braden, constantly, needing him to hold and soothe her, to take the baby, to give her a break.

He’d loved her so much, had fallen instantly in love with baby Allie, had tried hard to take over the care of both the baby and the house.

But his music suffered.

Do you have to practice right now? I’m sleeping. The baby is sleeping. You never spend any time with me. You don’t love me . . .

He’d been caught in the middle between her needs and the music, the cello calling him out of bed at night, no matter how exhausted and sleep deprived he might be. There hadn’t been enough of him to go around. And now, all this time later, there’s no Lilian, no music, and he’s deathly afraid there’s no Braden left, either.

He shakes his head to clear it, realizing he is still standing in the open doorway. Alexandra says something about changing clothes and vanishes down the hall, but before Braden has time to be properly grateful, Allie appears. She’s changed into jeans and a soft sweatshirt, her hair loose on her shoulders.

“Are you coming in, or what?” She glares at him, hands on hips, and she looks so much like her mother that he struggles with his breath.

“I don’t know,” he says.

“Don’t be stupid,” Allie says. “You’re here now. Aunt Alex has Mom’s room. You can have the couch. Or Trey’s room, if you want it.”

“I don’t think—”

“You’re not here to think, Braden.” She emphasizes his name, making it clear that he’s gum on the bottom of her shoe, not deserving of her respect, certainly not “Dad.”

“Oh good. Thinking make head hurt,” he says in his best caveman speech, angling for humor and falling pancake flat.

As he takes the monumental step across the threshold, a strain of music sounds like an alarm.

It almost stops his heart. He takes the next step, tentatively, and then the air is full of music and he looks around for the source even as he realizes it must be in his own head.

Oh God. The cello.

She’s here, in the house. He can feel her. He should have known, he should have been prepared for this.

Allie stiffens. Her eyes widen and meet his. For one insane moment, Braden thinks she hears the music, too, but then she turns her back on him and stalks into the kitchen.

Braden can hardly move. The music swirls all around him now, almost a physical sensation. Imagination. Hallucination. Maybe withdrawal DTs, but he’s been taking his Librium, should be well out of the danger zone of withdrawal, anyway.

He sets the suitcase down by the doorway and moves into the living room, trying to ignore the music while taking in the new furniture, modern and functional. The paint scheme is different, earth tones instead of the blues they’d gone with initially. A white carpet. New artwork. Framed photographs of the kids.

The pictures catalogue his absence. One, he had taken himself. Allie, gap toothed and precocious, Trey just moving out of toddlerhood, standing together on the front porch heading out for their first days of kindergarten and preschool. A day he remembers, unlike all of the others in which those two faces alter and mature, Allie’s into the young woman currently slamming cupboard doors in the kitchen.

“You want a drink?” she asks. The floor plan is open, one of the things Lilian loved about the house. Braden looks up to say yes, please, water would be welcome, only to see a bottle and three wineglasses set out on the counter.

“Allie—”

She doesn’t look at him, busy with the corkscrew, which she clearly has operated before. The sound of the cork popping out of the bottle is directly attached to a sick sensation in his belly. She splashes wine into three glasses.

Alexandra’s voice precedes her arrival from the hallway. “Shall we order in for dinner? Pizza maybe? Something simple. God knows I’m not up for cooking . . .”

She stops short at the edge of the living room, her gaze sweeping over the bottle, the glasses, and settling on Braden.