Tension sang in the air between us. I didn’t want her here, infecting my mom’s space with her scent. But I had to know why she knew my name and why’d she’d sought me out. I sighed. “Yeah?”
“Perhaps you do not recognize me. I am Madame Usher.”
That name pierced my heart like an arrow.
Of course. The perfume.How could I forget the way it made me choke during music classes, or how it clung to my father when he came home from his private lessons?
I hadn’t seen Madame Usher of Manderley Academy since my mother pulled me from her classes when I was nine years old. Alongside her husband on piano, she had been an accomplished violinist in her day but now ran an elite conservatory in the mountains offering expert tutelage for only the most exceptional musicians. She used to come to the city to teach a handful of super-rich students – children and adults, including me and my dad. But ever since Dad’s disappearance, her name had been poison in our house, never uttered.
“I see that you remember now. It has been, what, nine years?”
“Ten.” I would turn twenty this year.
“You were just a tiny wisp of a thing back then, but you mastered your Bach. The only person I heard play the Chaconne fromPartita No. 2better was Donovan.”
“Don’t talk to me about him,” I hissed.
“I see you’ve inherited your mother’s bitterness.”
“Get the fuck out.” I jabbed my finger at the door.
“Excuse me?”
“You don’t come intomymother’s hospital room and accuse her of being bitter. I’d be upset too if I found out the husband who I supported through an expensive music education was fucking his teacher.”
“Such foul language.” Instead of retreating, Madame Usher stepped into the room and closed the door behind her. “You should know that I loved him with a passion I only ever reserved for music. My husband was a convenience – for the sake of our international career, it made sense to marry Victor. But when Donovan and I played, it was as though we made love through our instruments.”
I balled my hands into fists, resisting the childish urge to jam my hands over my ears. “Read my lips – I. Don’t. Want. To. Hear. This.”
The smile on Madame Usher’s lips boiled my blood. “He planned to leave your mother, and I to leave Victor. We were to run away together. But then he disappeared, and I have never known such pain before or since.”
“Get out,” I growled, stepping toward the call button. “Or I’ll have you removed by security.”
Bitch.
Madame Usher continued as though I’d never spoken. “After your mother removed you from my classes, I kept my eye on you, Faye. You might think of me as a guardian angel, hovering in the background, waiting for Donovan’s talent to blossom within you. Your father always believed you would one day surpass him, but I admit, I had my doubts. I do not accept just anyone into my tutelage, and you were never serious about your studies, always running about with Dorien.”
Dorien Valencourt.I closed my eyes, remembering the little boy who’d been my only friend growing up. Dorien took piano lessons from Victor Usher, but we always paired up for ensembles and recitals. Dorien was rich in a way my family could never hope to be – we practically lived in poverty to fund Dad’s career and my tuition – but I was too young to understand the gulf between us or why the other rich kids shunned me so openly. I just knew Dorien’s slate-grey eyes gleamed with joy whenever I showed up in class. We’d been the twin terrors of Madame Usher’s junior city school. The day Dorien placed his pet iguana in the baby grand and it jumped out just as Victor Usher sat down—
No.I couldn’t think about Dorien now, not on top of everything else. That pain still cut too deep.
“Dorien was never serious either, and he’s done well for himself,” I shot back.
“Ah. So you have followed his career?”
Even if I’d never wanted to hear his name again (which I definitely didn’t), I couldn’t help but see Dorien everywhere. Every week there was a new article gushing over Broken Muse, the ensemble Dorien formed with two of his friends. The music press delighted in following the trio –who they’d dubbed the Bad Boys of Baroque – as they tore up the European scene with their antics. They were my age, but their flamboyant playing style, modernized Baroque costumes and strings of exotic lovers were giving the stuffy Classical world a playboy makeover. Early last year they stopped touring and dropped off the face of the earth – no one knew where they were, which only added to their mystique. But I wasn’t going to give Madame Usher the satisfaction of revealing I knew any of that. So I ignored her question. “Tell me what you want, and leave.”
“I’ve come into the city to speak with music teachers and private schools. For months I’ve despaired at finding a student to fill our last open place. Your school’s music teacher put your name forward, and although I initially dismissed it because of the usual dross she tries to send me, the memory of your father’s talent encouraged me to seek you out. I’ve had a devil of a time tracking you down, but eventually, the trail led me here. I’m delighted it did. There is no need for you to audition – I’ve heard enough to offer you a place at Manderley if you want it.”
If I wanted it? The fuck was she kidding? It didn’t matter that I hated her guts. Of course I wanted it. Saliva pooled on my tongue, as if the very thought of stepping inside that hallowed mansion made me hungry.
Beep beep.
The machines pulled me back to reality. Mom’s mysterious sickness. The mountains of medical bills. The two jobs I’d been working in an attempt to pay them off. I shook my head. “I can’t.”
“Faye, an offer like this is not extended lightly, and it will not be offered again.”
Don’t use my first name. We’re not, nor will we ever be, close.I gestured to the prone figure on the bed. “She needs me.”
