Everything You Are(63)

The cello’s presence fills the room, a jarring counterpoint to Lilian, who is also very much present here. Probably he’s the one who is crazy, because he can hear Lil’s voice: “Would you take that thing back to the music room, Bray? Bad enough the way it devours your life, I don’t need a reminder in the middle of the living room.”

Most couples fight over finances, religion, and kids. That’s what the marriage counselor said the day they went in for a consult. Affairs are a symptom, not the cause, and there are all different kinds of affairs.

“Infidelity doesn’t have to involve sex,” he said, tenting his fingers together, elbows resting on a massive wooden desk that clearly separated him from the couple facing him. “If an individual is more invested in a relationship with another person than they are with their spouse, that’s an affair. In this case—”

“It’s the cello,” Lilian finished for him. “This is how I feel. This is how it is. Even when he’s with me, his heart is with her.”

“Lil,” Braden protested. “I love you with all my heart. I don’t understand—”

“Yesterday, when you hugged me, your fingers were moving on my back, like you were practicing chord progressions.”

“Lil—”

“You never come to bed at the same time I do. Every night, I fall asleep to the sound of you playing.”

She began to weep. The counselor fixed him with a professional gaze that still managed to say, You’re an asshole, Braden Healey. Now look what you’ve done.

So he tried to do better. Lilian switched to working nights and slept during the day. He took over responsibility for the kids, for the housework and the meals and the grocery shopping. Evenings were his only time to practice, and they always seemed too short, but still he tried to cut back.

For a few months, he made a point of stopping his practice at precisely eight p.m., spending the two hours before Lilian left for work discussing the kids, listening to her stories about patients she’d cared for at the hospital. All the while, the cello called him, and he often played music in his head, careful to keep his hands still so Lil wouldn’t see.

But then the recording contract came in, an opportunity for Braden to perform the Bach suites live at a Bach festival in Germany. This was a career marker, and he was both heady with the opportunity and terrified by the prospect of failure. He’d recorded the suites on CD, but playing live required a new level of mastery. He began practicing longer and longer hours.

And Lilian, at last, gave him an ultimatum.

“Choose me, or the cello.”

And now he has neither, and he can’t imagine how the words Allie heard him say have made her feel.

His feet as heavy as his heart, he makes his way up the stairs, past Trey’s room, to stand in front of Allie’s closed door.

He knocks softly, calling her name. “Allie?”

“Go away.”

“Allie, please. Can I come in? I just want to talk to you.”

“So talk.”

He leans his forehead against the door, draws a steadying breath. “What you heard me say, downstairs. It’s true, but not the whole truth. You . . . and Trey . . . I loved you both so much. It’s not that I loved the music more. What I meant is that music was a part of me in a way that I can’t ever explain. Without it, I’m just . . . empty, I guess.”

Silence from her fortress. He’s making a mess of this, as he makes a mess of everything. He can’t seem to say it any more clearly.

“Do you hear me, little bird? I love you. I’ve always loved you.”

“Please just go away.”

For a long moment, he stands there, then with a sigh he makes his way back downstairs, where the cello still waits for him.

“I don’t know what you want from me,” he says out loud.

He remembers Alfred, and the shocking scars on his face. The stiff way he walked. His hands the only part of him unscathed, smooth and supple and able to coax music from his violin like always.

“Oh hell,” he says, thinking of Allie upstairs in her room, of Trey and Lilian in their graves. If there’s any truth to this curse business, even the tiniest little bit, he can’t risk something happening to Allie.

“Come on, then,” he says to the cello. He picks her up and carries her into the music room. Settles her against his knee, positions his hands over the strings, visually checking that they are in the right position. Bracing himself for what he knows will follow, he picks up the bow and draws it across the strings.

He played better than this when he was a child.

“Is this what you want?” he demands of the cello. “Really? Isn’t this torture for you, too?”

She doesn’t answer, and he works a C major scale for fifteen minutes by the clock, one excruciating note after another. The longer he plays, the more his nerves crawl, the more he feels something trying to break loose from the dark, forbidden space at the center of him.

Anxiety escalates. His hands are shaking, slippery with sweat. His awkward fingers slip off the strings. Beaten, he leaves the cello on her stand and flees the room and the house, walking the streets for hours before finally returning home and falling into a sleep of pure exhaustion.





Chapter Twenty-Four

ALLIE

“The cello was everything. Without it, I’m nothing. Have nothing.”