Everything You Are(39)

As an adventure, this one has fallen flat. They round up the cartons and set off back up the trail, damp and demoralized. Even Celestine is subdued. The walk seems to take forever, and by the time they get back to the car, Phee is cold to the very marrow of her bones.

“Thank you.” Braden offers her a twisted smile. “You definitely got my mind off things for a while.”

“Don’t thank me,” Phee says, grimly. “This adventure isn’t over yet.”





Chapter Sixteen

BRADEN

The mood between them has shifted, darkened. Phee has gone remote, withdrawn. Braden is physically weary, unaccustomed to this level of activity. A blister throbs on his left heel.

Phee drives with a doomsday intensity. There’s no joy in her now, no laughter. Her lips are tightly pressed together, hands locked to the steering wheel. A pervasive wet-dog smell mingles with the lingering odor of fried rice and egg rolls.

He checks his phone again for word from Allie. Nothing. Steph also has heard nothing. Celestine’s head rests on his thigh, rainwater and drool further soaking his jeans. Another glance at Phee’s grim face, and the question about where they’re headed now dies on his lips. He guesses he’ll find out when they get there.

If this were a fairy tale, this is the part where he’d get kidnapped by a blackhearted crone disguised as a beautiful woman, dragged away into the deep, dark forest as a sacrifice to some bloodthirsty being. The dog would transform into a preternatural beast with bloody teeth and slavering jaws.

But it’s not a fairy tale. When Phee drives down a familiar street and pulls into a tiny private parking area back behind a storefront he knows well, he sighs his resignation.

“Back to the scene of the crime, is it?”

Her gaze meets his, and he reads equal parts grief and determination. The intensity of the phantom music he’s been hearing kicks up a notch. He can feel the vibrations, a ghostly sensation of strings beneath his fingers.

If Phee is crazy, then so is he.

He doesn’t move when she gets out of the car. Neither does Celestine, whose damp, heavy head still rests on his thigh. Braden strokes the soft ears and the dog sighs contentedly.

“Celestine, come,” Phee commands.

Thumps of the tail, eyes looking up at her pleadingly.

“Celestine!”

The dog yawns and stirs, drawing away from Braden, leaving him cold and unexpectedly vulnerable.

A déjà vu feeling matches the volume of the music and a sense of inevitability. Might as well get this over with. He gets out of the car and follows Phee through a door into the back room of the shop.

A violin lies on a workbench, naked without strings or a soundboard. There’s a lathe, a row of tools laid out neatly, the smell of wood and varnish and rosin. The air feels warm and alive. He’s been here before, when he brought the cello in for small adjustments and repairs.

“Come on.” Phee leads the way into the showroom. “Remember the first time you came here?”

“A lifetime ago.”

He feels dizzy, disoriented, caught between two realities. The room is dark, shadowy, mysterious. The instruments take on nearly human shapes, and he can hear their voices, a faraway music that would have words if he knew how to listen properly.

When Phee takes his hand, he doesn’t resist, lets her lead him through the shop to the front door and turn him around to face the display as if he’d just walked in.

“You came in here, with your mother. My grandfather was there . . .”

Braden drops directly into the memory.

An old man stands behind the counter, thin and bald, a long white beard growing down over his chest. A young girl sits on a high stool behind the counter, re-hairing a bow. She looks up from her work, staring at him with curious eyes.

He fills himself with air that smells like music, his eyes caressing a row of violins hanging on display. He’s only played a few different violins in his life, but he knows that each of them has a different soul, a different voice.

Once his teacher put her instrument in his hands. The violin, aged and beautiful, belonged to her and didn’t want him, and it was his teacher’s music that he played, not his own.

Maybe one of these violins could be his, would play his music if he asks, but he knows he won’t get to choose. Mama will pick one for him. It will be about price, because money is tight, and although she thinks she knows all about Braden and his music, she really doesn’t understand at all.

She bustles over to the counter where the old man seems to see everything with his dark, watchful eyes and begins chattering to him about violins, pointing at the one on the far right.

Braden prays, Please, let it be a violin I can love.

And it’s then, at that moment, that it happens.

A phrase of music vibrates through his entire body, not high and bright like a violin but deep and sonorous. His mother doesn’t notice, but the old man does, and so does the girl. Braden sees their focus shift, away from his mother and the violins, away from Braden, to the far side of the store. And then he sees the cello, and understands that even though nobody is playing and the strings are not moving, the cello is the source of the music.

His feet carry him closer.

The cello is beautiful. Her wood is luminous. His hand reaches out to touch, but then he snatches it back. An instrument like this must be expensive, is certainly not for the likes of him.