A Thousand Perfect Notes(52)

‘How bad is it? Honestly?’

‘Borderline hilarious, but we won’t dare laugh because somehow you make it cute.’

‘Lucky me.’

August’s smile is sad. ‘Lucky you.’



The Keverichs are the last to leave.

Joey’s collapsed in a food coma on the floor and Beck isn’t sure whether he’s starving or wants to puke. It’s near midnight and he doesn’t want to be alone with the Maestro.

Jan offers to carry Joey out to the waiting taxi. She has chocolate-smudged cheeks and greasy handprints over her dress and she fits in Jan’s arms perfectly.

The walk to the car is quiet. The Maestro seems to have nothing to say to her estranged brother and Beck is just enjoying his last minutes in safety. When Jan leaves …

Stop it. Don’t think like that. The Maestro’s not going to— ‘I’ll see you tomorrow, Beck,’ Jan says. ‘Bright and early, ja?’

‘Ja,’ Beck says, on automatic.

‘I am not in the country long,’ Jan says. ‘Mayhap I could take you and the children out, Ida? Dinner?’

The Maestro doesn’t slow. ‘I am sure you have much more important things to do.’

This confuses Beck. Sure, the Maestro is furious, but at Beck, not Jan. Doesn’t she want to butter him up so he’ll take Beck to Germany?

Apparently Jan is immune to her coldness. ‘Nothing more important than the family I have neglected to connect with for over a decade.’

They reach the taxi and the Maestro and Jan exchange a polite kiss-on-the-cheek farewell and then she takes Joey and settles her in the back seat. Beck is about to climb in after them, when Jan rests a hand on his shoulder.

‘You are a brilliant pianist,’ he says. ‘Nerves can be controlled.’

If only it was just nerves.

‘You do the Keverich name proud.’

Maybe it’s dark, maybe Beck’s deluded, but Jan’s smile looks real.

Beck swallows. He can’t ignore the poison, even if everyone else can. ‘The ending. I completely screwed it.’

Jan shrugs. ‘Mistakes do not cancel the worth of a performance. They encourage us to work harder, aim higher. Your mother and I had our fair share of catastrophes when we began performing, especially those particular études. Ask her someday.’

Um, no thanks.

Beck gets into the taxi and Jan grabs the door to close it. ‘Good night. I look forward to tomorrow, Beck.’ He shuts the taxi door.

And Beck is left waiting for his tragedy to begin.





Beck’s life is on pause, a broken string in the middle of a ferocious piece. She cannot touch him before he sees his uncle again, so the Maestro is wordless, motionless, like she’s been carved from ivory and stone. She sees him into a taxi. Her tightly curled fists whisper promises of later later later.

Technically, Beck could tell the taxi to take him anywhere.

He doesn’t.

He is too spineless. Or he wants to see Jan again?

Or maybe he’s still perched on that wrong note, clutching it desperately, because when the chord fades, the Maestro will strike. Her silence won’t last.

He walks the long driveway alone, feeling the restrictions of his new snug jeans. His backpack, stuffed with music and one of Joey’s awful sandwiches, is slung over his shoulder. If his hair wasn’t so crazy, if he didn’t have the scuffed backpack, if he knew how to smile – maybe he’d look like he belonged here?

It takes an enormous length of time for someone to answer the doorbell. It’s Audwin Denzel, his uncle’s friend. He waves Beck in. ‘Jan is upstairs. Come, Sohn.’

They bypass the ballroom and instead take the white-carpeted stairs to the second level. Then there’s a twist of hallways and Denzel leaves him in the mouth of a music room – an actual real music room. It’s flooded with light from floor-to-ceiling windows, and the walls are sky blue. And the piano? A white Steinway.

Just the thought of this guy having two grand pianos makes Beck weak.

Jan isn’t there and the room is quiet. There are several bookshelves, a coffee table shaped like a quaver note and a white sofa that Beck’s nearly too scared to sit on. But it’s not like he’s going to sit on the piano stool and tap a few notes while he waits. No thanks.

He rests his backpack on his lap – a shield? – and sits gingerly on the edge of the sofa. And waits.

Ten minutes?

Or a million years?

Finally Jan appears, a mug of steaming coffee in hand. He looks relaxed, casual, with jeans and a black pinstriped shirt, the impossible Keverich curls waxed down and an expensive watch on his wrist, loose and clinking against the mug.

He leans against the doorframe, sips his coffee and stares at Beck.

Are his eyes disappointed? Did Beck fail some sort of test? Great. He’s messed up and he’s been here all of ten minutes.

‘I had a feeling,’ Jan says. ‘Now I’m sure.’

What? That Beck is uncultured in rich man’s etiquette? Maybe he should’ve stood as his uncle entered? Maybe he shouldn’t have sat on the snowy sofa?

Maybe he should’ve told the taxi to take him to the edge of the world and let him fall off.

Jan strides into the room. ‘You hate it.’

‘What?’ Beck is failing this test, failing fast and hard.