The Devouring Gray(9)
The door to the kitchen banged open, revealing Isaac once more. He’d fetched a new apron.
“If I have to work, so do you,” he said. “Stop complaining about me and go wash some dishes.”
Justin glanced back toward the front door of the restaurant as it swung open, revealing the start of the dinner rush.
“Actually, you can wash dishes,” he said. “I’ll take over server duty.”
The corner of Isaac’s mouth twitched. “I guess, if that makes it easier for you.”
He vanished back into the kitchen, but not before Justin caught the unspoken gratitude in Isaac’s eyes. As he walked to the front of the restaurant, he felt the burn of his calves, already stiff and sore from post-practice fatigue. A full shift of running around with plates in both hands would leave him curled up in a ball by the end of the evening.
But he made himself stand tall, walk normally, keep his smile straight. Because Isaac needed him, and Four Paths had expectations for him, and he’d be damned if he let anyone know how much he’d already disappointed them.
Dinner was uncomfortable. Instead of eating with Violet and Juniper, Daria spooned herself a bowl of some leftover stew and sequestered herself in her bedroom. Her cat, Orpheus, a haughty-looking thing with yellow eyes and a bit of red yarn tied around one ear, stayed and hissed at them until Violet caved and tossed him some chicken.
Violet wondered what it would be like to live alone for years, only to have your peaceful existence interrupted by people who claimed to be your family. It sounded frightening.
“Does it hurt you?” she asked her mother. “To see her like this?”
Juniper’s mouth twisted. “What do you think? She barely remembers me.” She rose from the table, gesturing at Violet’s scraps. “Here. I’ll throw that out.”
Violet suppressed the urge to remind her mother that at least she still had a sister. She handed over her plate in silence, remembering the two white boys in the restaurant as she swallowed her final mouthful of chicken Parmesan.
Justin, blond, pretty, predictably confident. And the reader, who had been so purposely aloof. There had been something expectant about the way they’d looked at her.
Well, whatever they wanted, she wasn’t going to give it to them. She’d never been much for boyfriends, or girlfriends, for that matter. There had been crushes; she’d even come out to Rosie as bisexual a few years ago, she just hadn’t felt ready to date anyone yet. Her sister and the piano were all she’d needed, and her few distant friends had faded away after Rosie died, unsure of how to handle her grief. Starting at a new high school next week would’ve bothered her more if she’d had anyone from Ossining to miss.
Violet realized with a quiet rush that it had been almost a full day since she’d played. Unloading the U-Haul had been a slow, laborious process, and by the time Violet left to grab dinner, she had barely managed to drag the relevant boxes to her new bedroom. The rest waited downstairs, flanking her like a row of cardboard sentinels as she strode through the foyer and into the room on the left, where she’d spotted the piano.
Violet did not share the Saunders family’s apparent fondness for taxidermy. She averted her eyes from the glassy gazes of three mounted deer heads as she unfolded the top of the piano. A perfect set of ivory keys gaped at her like a smiling mouth—at last, something familiar.
She stretched her hands across the keys, relief and exhilaration spreading through her. As long as she could play, she was home. It had been that way ever since her first piano lesson at age four, when she had to be dragged out of her piano teacher’s house, kicking and begging to plink away at the keys for just one second longer.
She played an experimental scale. To her great surprise, the instrument was in tune—perhaps Daria played. The acoustics in the room were lovely, and soon Violet was running through Bach’s Prelude & Fugue no. 6 in D Minor.
After Rosie’s funeral, her playing had become wildly inconsistent. Sometimes she had good days, but usually the music swam, unreachable, inside her head. She’d quit her piano lessons, but she practiced her audition program a few times a week anyway, trying to convince herself that things could still go back to normal. But it only took a few minutes of playing now for the sharp clarity that practicing her program had always brought her to fall away.
She wasn’t going to music school. Not anymore.
Her hands drifted across the keys, spiraling away from her program and improvising new phrases. Violet closed her eyes and let the melody go wherever it wanted.
After a time, Violet became dimly aware of a new noise penetrating her bubble of music. Distracted, she lifted her hands from the keys. It was strangely hard to tear her fingers away from the piano.
She opened her eyes.
The room was pitch-black.
Violet blinked, confused, as the noise rang out once more, a hollow, tinny sound. A pair of glowing eyes appeared in the darkness, and Violet scrabbled backward on the piano bench, grasping for her phone. She’d drawn in a breath to shriek when a familiar bit of red yarn emerged from beneath the bench.
“Oh.” She let out a tumble of pent-up air. “It’s just you.”
The cat gave his odd mewl again, which sounded like a miniature chain saw, and pressed himself against the piano bench. Then he bit her on the ankle.
Violet cursed at him and drew her legs onto the piano bench. She finally found her phone on the music stand. But as the screen flickered to life, she froze.