Everything You Are(50)

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 music. The door to the music room is open.

Light from a streetlamp spills in through open blinds, pooling on the floor, illuminating her father and the cello. His eyes are closed. His face looks otherworldly and ethereal in the dim light, his lips parted. His body is fluid, graceful, he and the cello one soul, the music swirling around them, around Allie, real and true and not the product of a fevered imagination.

Time ceases to exist as the music draws her in. She stands there long enough for him to reach the third movement. Long enough for her bare feet to grow icy on the hardwood floor. Long enough for guilt and grief to escape from the spell that holds her entranced. She remembers what she has done and what he has done and why the music has to stop.

“Braden.” She whispers his name first. Then, louder: “Braden!”

His body jerks. His eyes fly open. The bow clatters to the floor.

He stares at her, at the cello, as if he’s never seen either of them before.

The music lingers, just for an instant, and then it slips off into the corners of the room and disappears into the shadows.

The loss of it stuns her. It’s hard to breathe. She’s aware of tears on her face, of the pain building in her chest, powerless to stop any of it.

“What are you doing?” Her rising voice breaks on a sob.

“I was dreaming,” her father says, as if he’s having to invent each word as he says it. “I was dreaming I could play, that my hands were healed, that—”

A choking sound in his throat. A great, shuddering breath, a single sob, torn up from the depths of him. His skin is ashen.

“You were playing like you used to.” Allie’s voice is accusing, sharp. “Flawless. I thought it was the recording.”

He shakes his head. His lips shape the word “no,” but no sound comes out.

“You lied!” All of the years of hurt and rage come tearing out of her at once. “Your hands are fine. You just needed an excuse so you could go be an alcoholic.”

An excuse to leave me, her heart cries.

“No,” he says. “My hands—”

“There’s nothing wrong with your hands.”

“They’re numb. I can’t—”

“Bullshit. Mom told me. It’s all in your head. The doctors said.”

“That’s not true!”

“Play,” she orders harshly. “Play it again.”

He shakes his head. “I can’t.”

“You can. You just did. Do it!” She picks up the bow and shoves it at him.

“Allie. Stop it!”

His hands are shaking. She can see the torment written on his face as clearly as if he stood in a ring of hellfire, but she stares him down, rage filling the emptiness in her belly.

She thrusts the bow at him again. “Play!”

He accepts the bow, draws it across the strings, tentative. Plays the first few notes of the Bach, and they are discordant and wrong.

“Stop it! Play it right!” She hurls the words at him, weapons, but his hands fall to his sides, useless.

“Maybe you could play something, Allie. I saw the music on the stand. I’ve always hoped—”

“No! I learned to play because of you. I wanted to be like you. I thought maybe you’d come home and be proud of me.”