No One Knows Us Here(99)

A small crowd of forty or fifty people had gathered in the pews. Wendy tugged my arm and led us to a spot in the middle. She was squirming in her seat next to me. “It’s almost time,” she said, pointing to the altar. Four empty chairs sat surrounded by more pillar candles on spindly stands.

At eight o’clock exactly, four musicians walked onstage, and at that moment, Wendy took my hand and squeezed it so tightly I thought she’d crush my bones. They bowed in unison and stood back up as the audience delivered a polite smattering of applause. Wendy let go and we clapped, too, but it was as if my body were acting of its own accord because my mind was having trouble catching up. I turned to Wendy, my mouth open.

Her eyes flickered in the candlelight. “Surprise!” she whispered.

I directed my attention back to the musicians. I knew them. Imogene Wu—I’d recognize her anywhere, with that jet-black hair down past her waist. Timothy Karr. Less recognizable than Imogene, perhaps, especially in those new glasses, but it was definitely him. Standing next to him was a short, stocky guy I’d never seen before. And on the far left, Sam. It was definitely Sam, exactly the way I’d last seen him, exactly the way I always pictured him. His hair was a little longer in the front, perhaps. That was the only thing that had changed. He brushed it aside with his free hand and bowed slightly to the audience.

Ferguson—that was what they were, after all, the old band, together again—took their seats and looked to Sam, who nodded and then counted them off. Their bows touched their strings all at once, sound filling the church. I sat through the entire performance without breathing, my heart thrumming in my chest. I felt like I was going to pass out from the sheer excitement of it. The air crackled. It was everything—the city, this city where no one knew us, no one knew who we were. Where no one rushed to snap pictures of us or hurl wet clods of moss at our coats. We were here and he was here at the same time. It seemed unbelievable.

The acoustics were odd, echoey, the notes bouncing all over the place, but it was perfect, somehow, plaintive and haunting.

Maybe I was imagining it, but the music told me a story and it was his story, about his brother, his sadness, his loneliness. I felt like I was following the story as clearly as if he’d written it all out in words, and I sat in my seat, spellbound, waiting for the next part, for the chapter of him and me to begin. I’d know it when I heard it.

The music picked up and there it was—the quick, frantic, ecstatic refrain of the two of us, of our meeting. Then heartbreak, a jangling interlude. There was the bird trapped in my apartment and then flying out the window. There was Sam again, rescuing me from my doom. The cabin. Heartbreak again.

The piece lasted an entire hour without intermission. It ended on one loud, resonant note they all played together and held. They lifted their bows from the strings, and still the note rang out. The audience waited until it faded completely, and so did the musicians. Everyone hovered there, suspended.

Someone started clapping, and then someone else, and then the church erupted into an uproarious applause. People stood, one after the other, for a standing ovation. They don’t give standing ovations easily here, in this city. It wasn’t like it was at home.

Wendy and I stood, too, clapping our hands together. After the applause died down, we sat back on the pew, waiting for the crowd to clear out.

“How did you know?” I asked Wendy then. “How did you find him?”

“Instagram,” she said.

“He’s not on Instagram anymore.” I should know. I checked constantly. Scoured the internet for any trace of him. He had disabled everything. Disappeared.

“It’s not like this concert was a big mystery.”

I wasn’t sure what to do. Something was holding me back, preventing me from rushing up to the stage, chasing after him and begging him to forgive me. Part of me wanted to leave things as they were. I knew he was still thinking about me. I knew he had loved me, once. Maybe I should leave it at that. Maybe that was enough.

Wendy was still talking, explaining how she’d planned this whole thing. She’d been planning it for months, actually, and she had kept it from me because she knew I wouldn’t agree to come here just for a concert—

I had to laugh, then, at my sister. “We moved here for one concert?”

Wendy laughed, too, as if it were all a delightful game. “Come on,” she said. “They’re leaving.”

We rushed back to the stage, and Wendy took my hand then, tugging me. I followed her—what choice did I have?—as she barged out a side door and into a backstage area. Imogene, Timothy, and the stocky violinist were all back there, talking over each other in loud, animated voices. Sam wasn’t there, and I wasn’t sure whether to feel relieved or devastated. He was gone. It seemed like the worst kind of luck, that he could disappear so quickly. That was a sign. I should pay attention to signs.

Wendy ran up to Imogene. “Where is he?” she asked.

Imogene stopped midsentence, surprised by the interruption. She looked from Wendy to me. She knew who I was. I could see that flash of recognition in her eyes, but she didn’t reintroduce herself to me or even say hi. She pointed and said, “Down the hall. Out the door. He just left.”

“Thank you!” Wendy cried, already running. I chased after her. It was all so surreal, like a dream. Like the ending of a movie.

The door opened up to a dimly lit street, a pedestrian walkway that in the daytime would be lit with little shops and bakeries filled with rows and rows of meticulous cubes of layer cakes. The cobblestone street wound around the corner. If he had gone left, we would see his retreating form. We ran, and as soon as we turned around the corner, we saw him, the silhouette of him, the dark outline of a man carrying a viola case.