Andy’s heart flipped, but Andrew’s name was in black, which meant he didn’t have a page. Then again, you didn’t have to be Scooby-Doo to link him back to QuellCorp and its assassinated namesake.
She scrolled back up to Martin Queller and clicked his name. Apparently, there were a lot more famous Quellers out there that Andy didn’t know about. His wife, Annette Queller, née Logan, had a family line that would take hours to explore. Their eldest son, Jasper Queller, was hyperlinked, but Andy already knew the asshole billionaire who kept trying and failing to run for president.
The cursor drifted over the next name: Daughter, Jane “Jinx” Queller.
“Jane?” Clara asked, because she had Alzheimer’s and her mind was trapped in a time over thirty years ago when she knew a woman named Jane who looked just like Andy.
Just as Andy looked like the Daniela B. Cooper photo in the fake Canada driver’s license.
Her mother.
Andy started to cry. Not just cry, but sob. A wail came out of her mouth. Tears and snot rolled down her face. She leaned over, her forehead on the seat of the couch.
“Oh, sweetheart.” Clara was on her knees, her arms wrapped around Andy’s shoulders.
Andy shook with grief. Was Laura’s real name Jane Queller? Why did this one lie matter so much more than the others?
“Here, let me.” Clara slid the laptop over and started to type. “It’s okay, my darling. I cry when I watch mine sometimes, too, but look at this one. It’s perfect.”
Clara slid the laptop back to the center.
Andy tried to wipe her eyes. Clara put a tissue in her hand. Andy blew her nose, tried to stanch her tears. She looked at the laptop.
Clara had pulled up a YouTube video.
!!!RARE!!! JINX QUELLER 1983 CARNEGIE HALL!!!
What?
“That green dress!” Clara’s eyes glowed with excitement. She clicked the icon for full screen. “A fait accompli.”
Andy did not know what to do but watch the video as it autoplayed. The recording was fuzzy and weirdly colored, like everything else from the eighties. An orchestra was already on stage. A massive, black grand piano was front and center.
“Oh!” Clara unmuted the sound.
Andy heard soft murmurs from the crowd.
Clara said, “This was my favorite part. I always peeked out to feel their mood.”
For some reason, Andy held her breath.
The audience had gone silent.
A very thin woman in a dark green evening gown walked out of the wings.
“So elegant,” Clara murmured, but Andy barely registered the comment.
The woman crossing the stage was young-looking, maybe eighteen, and obviously uncomfortable walking in such dressy shoes. Her hair was bleached almost white, permed within an inch of its life. The camera swept to the audience. They were giving her a standing ovation before she even turned to look at them.
The camera zoomed in on the woman’s face.
Andy felt her stomach clench.
Laura.
In the video, her mother performed a slight bow. She looked so cool as she stared into the faces of thousands of people. Andy had seen that look before on other performers’ faces. Absolute certainty. She had always loved watching an actor’s transformation from the wings, had been in awe that they could walk out in front of all of those judgmental strangers and so believably pretend to be someone else.
Like her mother had pretended for all of Andy’s life.
The worst type of bullshit.
The cheering started to die down as Jinx Queller sat down in front of the piano.
She nodded to the conductor.
The conductor raised his hands.
The audience abruptly silenced.
Clara turned up the volume as loud as it would go.
Violins strummed. The low vibration tickled her eardrums. Then the tempo bounced, then calmed, then bounced again.
Andy didn’t know music, especially classical. Laura never listened to it at home. The Red Hot Chili Peppers. Heart. Nirvana. Those were the groups that Laura played on the radio when she was driving around town or doing chores or working on patient reports. She knew the words to “Mr. Brightside” before anyone else did. She had downloaded “Lemonade” the night it dropped. Her eclectic taste made her the cool mom, the mom that everyone could talk to because she wouldn’t judge you.
Because she had played Carnegie Hall and she knew what the fuck she was talking about.
In the video, Jinx Queller was still waiting at the piano, hands resting in her lap, eyes straight ahead. Other instruments had joined the violins. Andy didn’t know which ones because her mother had never taught her about music. She had discouraged Andy from joining the band, winced every time Andy picked up the cymbals.
Flutes. Andy could see the guys in front pursing their lips.
Bows moved. Oboe. Cello. Horns.
Jinx Queller still patiently awaited her turn at the grand piano.
Andy pressed her palm to her stomach as if to calm it. She was sick with tension for the woman in the video.
Her mother.
This stranger.
What was Jinx Queller thinking while she waited? Was she wondering how her life would turn out? Did she know that she would one day have a daughter? Did she know that she had only four years left before Andy came along and somehow took her away from this amazing life?
At 2:22, her mother finally raised her hands.
There was an appreciable tension before her fingers lightly touched the keys.
Soft at first, just a few notes, a slow, lazy progression.
The violins came back in, then her hands moved faster, floating up and down the keyboard, bringing out the most beautiful sound that Andy had ever heard.
Flowing. Lush. Rich. Exuberant.
There weren’t enough adjectives in the world to describe what Jinx Queller coaxed from the piano.
Swelling—that’s what Andy felt. A swelling in her heart.
Pride. Joy. Confusion. Euphoria.
Andy’s emotions matched the look on her mother’s face as the music went from solemn to dramatic to thrilling, then back again. Every note seemed to be reflected in Jane’s expression, her eyebrows lifting, her eyes closing, her lips curled up in pleasure. She was absolutely enraptured. Confidence radiated off the grainy video like rays from the sun. There was a smile on her mother’s lips, but it was a secret smile that Andy had never seen before. Jinx Queller, still so impossibly young, had the look of a woman who was exactly where she was meant to be.
Not in Belle Isle. Not at a parent–teacher conference or on the couch in her office working with a patient, but on stage, holding the world in the palm of her hand.
Andy wiped her eyes. She could not stop crying. She did not understand how her mother had not cried every day for the rest of her life.
How could anyone walk away from something so magical?
Andy sat completely transfixed for the entire length of the video. She could not take her eyes off the screen. Sometimes her mother’s hands flicked up and down the length of the piano, other times they seemed to be on top of each other, the fingers moving independently across the white and black keys in a way that reminded Andy of Laura kneading dough in the kitchen.
The smile never left her face right up until the ebullient last notes.
Then it was over.
Her hands floated to her lap.
The audience went crazy. They were on their feet. The clapping turned into a solid wall of sound, more like the constant shush of a summer rain.
Jinx Queller stayed seated, hands in her lap, looking down at the keys. Her breath was heavy from physical exertion. Her shoulders had rolled in. She started nodding. She seemed to be taking a moment with the piano, with herself, to absorb the sensation of absolute perfection.
She nodded once more. She stood up. She shook the conductor’s hand. She waved to the orchestra. They were already standing, saluting her with their bows, furiously clapping their hands.
She turned to the audience and the cheering swelled. She bowed stage left, then right, then center. She smiled—a different smile, not so confident, not so joyful—and walked off the stage.
That was it.
Andy closed the laptop before the next video could play.