AUDREY
The further into Fraser’s song that I play, the closer to him I feel. When I try very hard to imagine it, it’s as though he’s just outside this rehearsal room, listening to me play the way that he used to. As long as I keep the music going, I sense him there. Worried that if I stop, I’ll break our bond, he’ll be gone again, and it will be my fault. It’s always my fault when I lose him.
The old voicemail message taunts me.Audrey, it’s Faith Jones from the front office at school. We’ve got Parker in sick bay. She said you’re on pick-up today, but never mind. I’ll try her dad …
My fingers slip onto the wrong keys.
Never mind?
I could write an entire piece based on that crushing voicemail alone. It’s tattooed in my brain, the number of times I’ve played it, obsessively, wishing I could reverse time, hear the message, call, and say,No, don’t phone Fraser! He’s at work. I’ll be there in five!
And then we wouldn’t be here.
The final tone reverberates off the acoustics of the rehearsal room, and it falls silent and empty. I’ve lost him now. I can’t keep even his spirit close, even when he tries.
Then, in this silence—that empty space between the end of one piece and the start of another—I realise part of me islistening for the latch on the door, imagining Beau pushing it open, entering the room with the coffee he’s gone to fetch.
Once I picture that, my body and my music ignite at the idea of impressing him. Perhaps because of the flashy industry he works in, or maybe because, so far, he’s the only one who knows I’m composing again, and he’s someone who intimately understands what an enormous deal it is to share a first draft. So he is safe.
I touch the keyboard, fingers depressing the keys so softly the sound is barely audible, just a whisper of what’s possible. This next step, the idea of improvising right in front of him—nothing formed or developed or polished—is more intimate again, as if the muse itself is stripped bare, mind exposed, distance closed.
And now I am all over the keyboard, exploring some sort of mashup of Fraser’s piece and a new one—melodies at counterpoint, harmonies mingling in a way that shouldn’t even work …
Just as I reach the climax, I hear the door open behind me, my heart pounding at the idea of him hearing this moment of a piece so precious and personal as it expands into something new, every part of me alight with the promise of this unfamiliar connection.
‘Did you hear that?’ I ask, on fire with the sense of possibility, a sparkle in my voice that I haven’t heard in years.
‘I did,’ someone says from the doorway, silencing that sparkle instantly. ‘And you’re still extraordinary, Sully.’
I spin around, my eyes smarting with tears. For an exhilarating moment—because the mind plays tricks and they’re so similar in looks and because, just seconds ago, I’d convinced myself Fraser was listening outside this door—my entire being seems to lurch forward, relief washing through me that it was all some terrible mistake. Seconds later, that same heart has to scream to a halt, brakes to the floor, as I aquaplane towards Josh.
I cannot have him in this room, saying nice things about my music. Can’t bear the thrill of Josh Miller’s compliments. Not after all this time. This man’s professional opinion was, after all, my first addiction.
‘I thought you were in New York.’
The Manhattan chic is evident. Charcoal shirt. Dark suit pants. Flash of excitement and opportunity in his eye.
‘Back for a couple of weeks for work,’ he explains. ‘And to see Parker. She’s here at the music school, as you’d know. I assume that’s why you’re here?’
My stomach sinks again.Parker is here?I can’t be near her—orher uncle, for that matter. Maggie doesn’t allow it unless she’s present, too, despite the long stretch of time that has elapsed, sober, since that woeful episode at my place.
‘How’s everything going with her?’ Josh asks. ‘Maggie tries to keep me updated.’
There was a time when I could have told Joshua anything. How do I explain that I don’t really know how Parker is doing? That the relationship we so desperately wanted disintegrated. That I haven’t been teaching her piano and that our contact is so heartbreakingly infrequent that, in reality, I lost them both?
‘Sully, are you okay?’ Dark eyes roam across my face, scanning for fractures. Ironic, when some of my fractures are his.
I am not remotely okay when it comes to his niece. And he has lost the right to ask.
He steps towards the piano, and I’m served an inconvenient mental carousel filled with all the times we spent sitting together at one just like it. I’m ninety-nine per cent convinced I need him out of here. But that one per cent—the part of me he’ll always have a hold over, creatively—just wants to play him something first. Beau will be back any second. Josh is the one part of my universitystory that I haven’t shared. And the whole point of being here is aboutreclaimingmy music—something that’s difficult to do around a person who was intimately involved in its disappearance.
‘How long are you going to punish me?’ he asks, reading my body language and stopping several feet away.
‘Punishyou? That’s rich.’
His posture sinks. ‘You know you’re my biggest regret.’
If this man takes one step closer, he’ll tramp on the fragile flame that I’ve finally coaxed to life from the ashes of the career he torched. And I will befurious.
