‘So they ambushed you.’ He hangs his head as if he were the one who did it, taking a collateral hit.
‘Your brother was just so ambitious, and he went in with the right intentions—’
‘Oh, I can imagine,’ Fraser says, darkly. ‘He would have gone in all heroic, guns blazing, then jettisoned you and his morals at the first whiff of a career break. What did Ridges offer him?’
The biggest opportunity of his life.
‘He recommended him for that position with the Vienna Philharmonic.’
He stares at me. ‘Fuck, Audrey. How are you not enraged?’
Not enraged?It’s nearly consumed me! ‘I’ve been furious with Josh since the day it happened. You saw that!’
‘When?’
‘At the concert!’
He stares at me, anger forced aside by confusion. ‘I thought—’
I watch as his mind seems to recalibrate the way that he’d always read this. He proceeds quietly. ‘I thought he loved you. We all thought that. He all but said it. After you left, he was a mess.’
A laugh bursts out of me. ‘You’d be a mess, too, if you were riddled with that much guilt.’
His brows knit, the way they do when he’s talking about rising sea levels or warming temperatures. ‘What was that in the wings at his concert? That …longing?’
‘Oh, that was definitely longing. For the career I’d given up. Look, Fraser, it’s true that I’ve never met someone as professionally compatible as Josh. Whenever I write something, even now, it kills me that I can’t show him—like when you forget for a second that someone is dead and you want to call them to share your news? All that bad behaviour can’t erase the infuriating fact that he’s just so fucking clever, musically. We were clevertogether. And he destroyed that. But what you saw at the concert was pure fury at him for letting me down. And fury at myself.’
‘Why at yourself?’
‘Because instead of getting up and moving on, instead of fighting back, I stayed where they left me. I used to listen to Ridges’ version of my piece on repeat. I couldn’t get it into my brain that he had taken it and made it a hit on the classical charts. He didn’t just steal it. He stripped the emotion,wildlyruining it. I was young and naive and a chronic people pleaser. I convinced myself I’d imagined the plagiarism. Maybe he’d come up with it after all? Perhaps, as he said, I just wasn’t talented enough to have written something like this. And my place wasn’t on the stage. It was in the audience …’
Fraser’s chair drags along the wooden floor as he pushes it back. I’ve watched this man wait on hold with an airline over lost luggage. I’ve seen him handle a meeting with the chief finance officer at the university when his research grant application fell through the cracks and cost him an important opportunity. I hear him on the phone with Maggie most weeks, working through disagreements in parenting style. His blood pressure never rises a blip.
But he is not like that now. This is a caged animal, muscles flexing, blood boiling as he rises and paces the room, processing all that Ridges and Joshua did to me.
‘Do we need to see a lawyer?’ he asks, taking a pragmatic turn. ‘Surely you weren’t the only one he did this to.’
‘When did this become your problem?’
He seems taken aback and stands still. ‘Sorry. I didn’t mean to barge into this. I just feel … partly responsible somehow.’
‘You’re not your brother, Fraser. You said so yourself. Lawyers are expensive. I’ve been tempted to confront Ridges again inperson, now that I’m older. See if the threat of legal action is enough? Demand to know why hebutcheredmy piece …’
He smiles for the first time tonight, swings the chair in front of me again, and sits on it. ‘Maybe don’t use the term “butchered” in your defence. Stick to the crime itself and not a creative critique? Focus on high-level strategy.’
‘Which would be what, hypothetically? A public apology? A redaction of the album? Payment of some kind?’
I’m back into the mind-blowing mess of imagining the way it would all implode, knowing the collapse would take me, too. I am a woman. I’d be the troublemaker. This is an adored teacher and revered composer. He got away with this because he could, and I let our power imbalance intimidate me right from the start.
‘I’m scared if I stir this up, it will push me even further from my path. You’ve only seen a fraction of what I can do, because this has been holding me back for years. You asked what I was afraid of?’
He nods.
‘I’m scared I’ll never find that creative part of myself that feels like fireworks. The part that Josh knew, before it all exploded. We’ve been living together for months, and you’ve barely met the real me, Fraser—’
We lock gazes for a long moment in the stillness. Then, without breaking eye contact, he reaches for the chair I’m sitting on, grabs the wooden seat between my legs, and in one strong, fluid motion, pulls it and me across the floor and between his thighs. Seconds tick in the shocked silence, hearts hammering as the time that seemed to push me away from my past starts pulling me towards him instead, an electric rush of sparks and yearning and hope.
‘What did you say?’ he half whispers, leaning forward, forehead touching mine while an alchemy of florals and cedar and sage and cinnamon swirls between us.
