He couldn’t recall the last waking moment he’d felt truly helpless. He couldn’t remember the last time he wasn’t at least somewhat conscious of the full weight of who he was.
But all of it was borne up, and then away, on her voice.
He’d hurt her, and this glory was what she’d done with her pain.
Suffice it to say he felt things. Things for which he had no vocabulary, possibly because they could not be captured in mere words. Why one of them should be pride—pride like a sun in his chest—he didn’t know.
She hurled skyward a final glistening note, and held it aloft, elongating until its edges frayed with a sort of weary, bitter triumph. Then, like a handful of leaves tossed, down in half steps the notes drifted into a forever-altered silence.
Battlefields had that kind of silence, he thought, even when the smoke had cleared and the bodies buried. One always sensed something of consequence had happened there.
Perhaps one would call this room a beautyfield, instead.
And when that last note receded like floodwaters, hidden things were suddenly revealed to him: old wounds and terrible griefs and guilts. Dormant ecstasies and needs.
And painful, unpalatable truths.
Perhaps he’d done the right thing when he’d sent her away.
But it was also the fearful thing.
He’d done it because he was afraid. As afraid as a green lad.
Andthereinlay his crime. He could not see what lay on the other side of this.
Her shoulders moved swiftly as she caught her breath. She dropped her chin to her chest, briefly, then lifted her head.
And then she went still.
And she suddenly looked toward him.
Her features were indistinct in the twilight, but she seemed to glow more than the light warranted. Perhaps she simply had a diva’s instinct for finding whatever light there was, and standing in it. Perhaps there was a light in him that illuminated her.
In the blacks and grays of his evening clothes, he might have blended seamlessly into the shadows, apart from his posture. It had the profound stillness of the transfixed.
Her traitorous heart leaped higher than her highest C.
There was really no mistaking who it was. She fancied she’d still know he was standing there if her eyes were closed.
He showed no sign of moving.
But then she realized she was already moving toward him, as if the floor between them were a river bearing her along, inexorably, in one direction. Nooneshould possess such power. She wanted no one to have that kind of power over her again, not to hurt her, not to save her.
But she yearned to hear his voice again speaking only to her, alone in a room.
The heels of slippers gently ticking on the wood floor was the only sound.
He waited.
She’d meant to pause before him, and to formulate, and say, something clever, cutting.
But then she saw the raw need in his expression.
She paused only to get her bearings, then walked right into his already reaching arms as if he were a lifeboat.
They all but collided.
One of his hands fanned to cradle her head as it tipped back and his face came down.
