If You Find Me(42)

I take my violin from its case and, positioning my bow, imitate the sound.

Fee-bee. Feeeeee-bee.

When Ness was younger, she loved to trace the dark, discolored mark under my chin where the violin continually pressed; a mark she called my “purple flower,” blooming from years of playing.

I close my eyes and slide into Vivaldi’s “Spring,” and even the phoebe stills to listen. I ride the notes back to the Hundred Acre Wood, to the sway and dazzle of sun-drizzled branches, the wanwood leafmeal a spicy carpet, the air crisp as a bite from a rare apple as the Obed River rushed off to bigger things.

Some days, the longing for the woods breaks the ache in two until I can’t breathe. I slip into Brahms’ sonata no. 1 in G Major, my lunch completely forgotten, along with the constant motion, the tittering girls, the awkward fit of this outsider’s world. My bow glides across the strings and I play by heart, from the heart, as Mama taught me, my lashes wet and then my cheeks, the strings vibrating the stars behind the daylight, the notes deliberate as switch strokes at times, a caress from Saint Joseph at others.

“Woo hoo! Bravo!”

I hit a clunker, almost dropping my violin. He leans in the doorway, his gloves smacking together, his eyes sparkling like Obed sun off freshly fallen snow.

“Wow. And to think they were calling you ‘Clumsy Carey’ just this morning.”

“Is that what they’re calling me?” I say, drying my face and hoping he doesn’t see. “Could be worse, I reckon.”

I put down my bow, rest the violin on my lap.

“You looked like you were in another world. In orbit.”

I blush, but I don’t look away. Ryan Shipley. My heart leaps, but I don’t understand why.

Say something.

“You look cold,” I say, my own teeth chattering.

“Hold that thought.”

He returns less than a minute later, a thick coat in his arms. I wait for him to pull it on. Instead, he walks over and drapes it across my shoulders.

My heart beats upside down when he plunks down next to me. So close. I think of what Pixie said about him, my cheeks burning. With cold, I tell myself. But even I don’t believe it.

“You can really play. I mean, wow.”

An icicle crashes to the ground behind us.

“What are you doing out here anyway?” he asks, as if he’s been looking for me.

Has he been looking for me?

“Playing the violin,” I say.

Our laughter echoes off the walls.

“Where did you learn to play?”

I feel myself smiling the way Jenessa does when Melissa praises her. I always knew I was good; I’ve practiced enough. But the fuss everyone makes continues to surprise me.

“My mother was a concert violinist. She taught me from the time I was four or so, and I loved it. She said it’s in our blood.”

“It must be, if you can play like that.”

The phoebe pokes its head out over the cornice.

Fee-bee. Feeeee-beeeee.

We look up at the bird, and I answer back with my violin.

Fee-bee. Feeeee-beeeee.

“You must play somewhere, right, where people can listen and there’s heat and stuff?”

We’re both grinning. I can’t stop. I think of what Mrs. Hadley said about Delaney, then push the thought aside.

“I’ve never played for anyone but my mother and my little sister. Not on purpose anyway.”

“You can’t be serious.”

I nod, my chest puffed up like the phoebe itself. And then I think of Mama. Mama, playing her meth’d-up clunkers, or nodding off over the violin, me darting forward to catch it as it fell from her hands. The music couldn’t save her. I think of Delaney’s twenty-dollar bill, and what fifty would get you, and I see Mama’s toothless face, laughing at me when I asked her why I couldn’t play for the men instead.

“That’s not the kind of playing they want,” she’d said, shaking her head at me.

He’d never understand, and I could never explain.

“Please don’t tell anyone,” I say, the words tumbling over each other. I’m shivering, and I can’t stop. “This here is private. Okay?”

His eyes fill with disappointment. “That may be one of the saddest things I’ve ever heard,” he says, shaking his head. “You’re a prodigy. Gifts like that are for sharing. Otherwise, what’s the point?”

[page]I think of a deer I cornered once, terror rising from its coat in steamy puffs. I’d lowered my shotgun, ashamed. Its face had been swallowed up by the same eyes Nessa wore the night she stopped talking.

If I hadn’t been lost in the violin, I might’ve heard sooner. Heard in time.

“Please don’t say anything. Please?” My eyes well. “Please?”

He looks like he’s been struck as the tears slip down my cheeks. Dang tears. I almost never cried in the woods.

“I’m so sorry, Carey. I didn’t mean to push. I was just saying—ah, hell.”

“No worries,” I say quickly, like he’d said to me this morning. I pull myself together, surprised by my reaction. “It’s just that I have so much to juggle right now, and everything’s so different—”

“You don’t have to explain. Your playing, you’re just so—I got carried away.” He leans in, giving my shoulder a bump. “Sorry.”