Living Out Loud (Austen, #3)(3)
Meg smiled back, though her lips were together, her spirit muted.
We followed Aunt Susan through the massive house, through rooms that felt rich without being overbearing or stuffy. The living room with its tall windows and grand molding, framing views of Central Park below. The library with every wall packed to the ceiling, which was so high, a ladder on a rail was necessary to reach the top shelf. A large room that seemed to have no purpose other than to house the grand piano. My heart ba-dumped at the sight of it, my fingers itching to brush the cool ivory keys, my ears perking with imaginings of the rich sound they would make.
But Susan didn’t stop, just chattered on, sweeping us through the house. We met the cook and the maid, who both had friendly faces that wore warm smiles, though they said nothing. It was impossible to; Susan filled the air in her genial way, in the way you felt compelled to be silent and attend without frustration, as it seemed to come from her very heart.
The bedrooms were on the other side of the house, she explained as I tried to grasp how a home of this beauty and magnitude existed at the top of a towering building.
Our rooms lined a hallway that dead-ended, marking the end of the eternal space.
Susan had repurposed and redecorated all the rooms with each of us in mind. Her cheeks rosy and face alight, she told us of the details and watched our expressions for our approval. And approval there was.
Meg bounded into her room, her excitement found at last and bubbling out of her. A four-poster stood in the middle of the space with a beautiful old world map hanging over the head of the bed. One wall was lined with bookshelves, which seemed to be geared toward exploration, stacked with almanacs and National Geographic books, encyclopedias and atlases, books of discovery and adventure and mysteries of the world. Curios dotted the room—antique globes, ships in bottles, compasses, and more. In the corner near the window stood a small table topped with a huge Victorian goldfish bowl with fat, goggle-eyed fish swimming inside.
“Fish!” Meg gasped as she ran over to peer inside. “Have you named them?”
Susan laughed. “That honor is all yours, my dear.” She motioned us on.
Elle’s room was lovely—simple and practical and classic—with crisp white sheets and pillows and blankets in creams and grays of various textures—linen and velvet and silk—which gave the room a depth the inattentive eye might miss.
And my room…well, it was, for lack of a better word, perfect.
The ceilings in all the rooms were high—fourteen feet or more, if I had to guess—and in this room with its dove-gray walls against snowy white trim, they seemed even taller. The curtains pooled on the ground, the bedskirt made of chiffon whispered against the rug, and the bed itself was tall and piled high with decadent pillows. The quilt looked to be made of layers of lace, like a petticoat. A wardrobe against the wall was painted with a quiet branch, dotted with broad leaves and magnolia flowers with a little wren on one jutting crook.
But the best part was the antique piano.
I rushed over to the spinet, breathless as I opened it and laid my fingers on the keys, my heart thumping and hands tingling. It was too beautiful, too generous, too much. And I was overwhelmed with feeling—with my losses and pain and hope and gratitude. Tears fell, unashamed and unabashed, as I turned to my aunt.
“Thank you,” I said on a whisper, the two simple words not nearly enough.
“No thanks required,” she said, holding back tears of her own. “It will be nice to have music in our house again. And I know it seems silly to have two pianos in the house, but this way, you can play all you like without having to endure anyone’s company but your own.” She took a steadying breath and clasped her hands. “Come, Emily. Yours is last.”
They left me alone in my new room, and I made no motion to follow them, too entranced, too surprised to leave. Instead, I sat on the gray velvet piano bench facing into the room, my eyes roaming every corner, every detail. Over the shelves stacked with books of poetry, across the gilded mirrors and framed book illustrations of fairy tales.
She had very aptly looked into my heart and soul and fashioned a room that spoke directly to me. It was sorcery or magic, and as deeply as I felt right in that room, resistance slipped over me.
Because this wasn’t a fairy tale, and nothing in this room was mine.
I felt my losses so acutely in that moment that it set my heart galloping like a pony missing a leg, staggering and clumsy. Everything I had known was gone, and it would never be reclaimed. I was in a room I didn’t know in a home that wasn’t mine, relying solely on the kindness and generosity of strangers to care for those who meant the most to me in the world.
As perfect as the room and the welcome were, in that moment, it felt like a lie, like a faerie trick. A gilded cage. There was no way out and nowhere to go.
I heard my father, saw his face, felt the whisper of his breath against my ear when I closed my eyes.
Don’t look back, Annie. That’s a sure-fire way to end up tripping on what’s in front of you.
I swiped at my tears, spinning around on the piano bench when I heard Susan making her way back down the hallway, pushing Mama in her wheelchair. They didn’t stop, thankfully. I laid my fingers on the keys again, this time to play.
My heart opened up when the first resonating note struck, my sadness and loss slipping out of that thumping muscle and through my veins, into my fingers. Mendelssohn filled the room, the deep and slow melancholy leaving me with every note—notes that I knew by heart and memory—leaving me with every tear. And when my trembling fingers rested, the last note hanging in the air, I was lighter than before.