Earlier tonight, I’d gone deep into a panic that life had been too much for Parker. That the divorce and losing Audrey had caused irrevocable damage. That the big picture of it all had ruined her. Now it seems the resilience she was forced into has done the opposite. It has emboldened her.
‘Fraser, did you know about this?’ Mum asks. ‘Did you, Josh?’ ‘I had a suspicion,’ Dad confesses, red-faced, looking at my brother. ‘I remember you mumbling something when you rolled in from a night out with the music faculty years ago, back when everyone thought Audrey was the problem.’
‘And you never said anything?’ I ask him, freshly angered.No, of course he didn’t. Heaven forbid our father stand up for something.
‘Looking back, there’s a lot I should have said …’
Mum has tears in her eyes. ‘It felt like you left me out on a ledge with the boys,’ she explains to Dad. ‘I did the best I could on my own.’
Freshly terrified about the self-harm, I finally understand where she has been coming from all this time, and I pull her into my arms.
‘I was scared to death one of you would fall,’ she whispers into my ear, holding me tighter than she ever has. ‘If it had been you, I believed you would fly.’
‘Parker Miller,’ the announcer begins, restarting the concert over an hour later, after an unprogrammed, extensive intermission during which it was decided the kids should still have their chance to perform. ‘Welcome back to the stage.’
There’s more applause, wilder than anything I’ve ever heard for Josh.
‘I think you’ll agree, this talented young woman deserves another moment in the sun.’
The audience won’t stop.
‘Parker, on behalf of your fellow students and the parents, we would like to extend our deepest gratitude. You and your peers are some of this country’s most talented emerging composers, songwriters and performers. Also, clearly, some of the most vulnerable. What you did tonight took enormous courage. You’ve exposed someone in a position of power over you, knowing you risked your own path.’
Josh can’t look up.
‘I’m sure that all institutions with which Professor Ridges has had an association will be asked to provide full cooperation in the unfolding investigation. We will keep parents updated in due course. But for now, Parker, you can safely play whatever you’d like.’
The second her fingers strike the keyboard, three years of music avoidance simply evaporates. I’m entranced. She is soaliveonstage—so light and hopeful and liberated—it barely seems possible she’s wrestling such torment, or maybe that’s exactly why she’s expressing herself so beautifully.
And I have been blocking this at home, all this time. Not letting her play. Keeping her quiet. Protecting myself from reminders of Audrey. Pushing her to find other ways to let out her emotions.
Ironically, the way she’s playing now seeps into my veins like it has been me bleeding out, and this tune is a transfusion.Thisis the music I mentioned in the eulogy. The music I longed to be able to listen for again. It’s been the medicine, all along, and I’ve been avoiding it.
My thoughts are overrun by a second standing ovation. As I get to my feet with tears of pride streaming down my cheeks and she takes another bow, I can’t wait tolavishher in music. I want to race home with her and throw open the lid of Audrey’s piano—I want it to beherpiano and for her to play it as much and as late and as loudly as she dares.
62
AUDREY
‘So, my friends and I have already decided we’re writing a kickarse composition together about what happened tonight,’ Parker says as we gather in the foyer after the concert. I’m not sure she appreciates the family complexity here, or that her uncle had his chance and blew it. ‘Like, to stick it in his face even more, you know? We’re not going to let him get away with it. Full-blown social media takedown. It’s already trending!’
That’s what you get when you stage a public stunt in a room filled with clever teenagers. It’s probably too late to warn them about interfering with the carriage of justice, but either way the man is undone.
‘And you know what else?’ she asks, glowing. ‘You know how you see those farewell concerts where music teachers retire and all their former students come back and everyone cries? What if we got, like, every student this guy stole from, including you, and put on a huge concert together to reclaim our music from him? We could raise money for something, like schools that don’t have musical instruments …’
Maggie and I beam at the remarkable child we are collectively raising.
‘Five minutes after this was revealed, you’ve come up with this plan?’ I exclaim, throwing my arms around my stepdaughter.
She hugs me back, shrugs like it’s just another day, and runs off again, and we look at her go, amazed at her talent and spirit and confidence.
‘Audrey, she gets the music from you,’ Maggie says. It’s a bit awkward, as her maestro uncle is standing here with music in his genes. Maggie glances at him, having joined the dots using her understanding of human behaviour and tonight’s dramatic unveiling of evidence, and adds, in the pointed and some might say mildly cutting tone that I’ve come to know and appreciate, ‘She gets her courage from Audrey, too.’
My phone starts pinging. It’s April in the group chat. She’s linked one of the kids’ viral reels from tonight—this one taken from the side of the stage, focused on our row in the audience. It pans along as Parker makes her speech, my face alight with pride, Maggie’s too. Then it lands on Josh—who is shrivelled, stripped of every shred of self-importance.
‘I.M.P.O.T.E.N.T… .’
She types it as a caption.
