And probably better than he’d been sleeping at home, what with her waking him up in the middle of the night while she tried to grab exotic bananas that didn’t even exist. She wondered if that had been the last straw, but as soon as she’d thought it, she knew it wasn’t about her at all. That her parents’ problems had been building for years—she just never thought they’d actually get to this point.
Growling with frustration, Keira launched straight into the Allegretto movement of the Beethoven sonata she’d been working on. It was the hardest, most mind-consuming piece of music she knew. She flew through the first twenty bars without a hitch, but just as she was starting to relax into the music, the shower shut off. In the sudden silence, Keira heard something small break in the bathroom, and then her mother’s teary voice, swearing at whatever it had been. Keira’s fingers slipped and the music turned into a discordant mess.
Shaken, Keira rubbed the back of her neck and tried again, but the notes wouldn’t come. She remembered the wrong bars at the wrong time—her fingers hit the keys next to the ones they should have touched.
She never had trouble getting into her practice. It never sounded this bad. This amateur. In the bathroom, her mother’s hair dryer began to whir.
As Keira put her fingers back against the keys, the house phone started to ring. Grateful for the interruption, she hurried to pick it up, hoping it might be her dad.
Her stomach sank when the number on the caller ID wasn’t one Keira recognized.
Chapter Twelve
“HELLO?” SHE SNARLED INTO the phone.
“Are you always this cheerful in the morning?”
The accent was rich and smooth and foreign.
Walker.
“Uh, this is Keira, right?” He suddenly sounded uncertain.
“Yeah, it’s me. You caught me off-guard. I don’t remember giving you my number.”
“You didn’t.”
“So how did you get it?” Doubt flooded Keira. Maybe he was creepy—tracking down her number seemed kind of stalker-ish.
“There’s this remarkable thing called a phone book.” He half stifled a laugh. “I looked you up. There are only two Brannons in Sherwin. An old lady’s voice mail answered at the other number. I hoped this one would be you.”
Keira perched on the arm of the couch. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to snap at you. It’s been a weird morning.”
“Really? What happened?”
Immediately, Keira wished she could take back her admission. She didn’t want to talk to Walker about her parents. “It’s complicated.”
“Isn’t it always?”
Keira laughed. She picked at a loose thread on the couch. “Yeah. True. So, what’s up?”
“I wanted to hear what you sound like in the morning.”
Keira felt her blood begin to hum just beneath her skin. Her voice froze in her throat.
“You sound nice, you know. Your voice is rougher. I like that.”
Keira cleared her throat self-consciously. “Thanks, I guess. Uh, if that’s all you needed—”
“You also left your driver’s license in my car,” Walker cut in.
“I did?” Keira dove for the front pocket of her bag, where the contents of her wallet lay in chaos. “Oh, God, how could I have done that? I’m sorry,” she apologized.
“Don’t apologize. I wanted an excuse to see you again, anyway. It worked out perfectly. Are you busy this afternoon? I could bring it over.”
Keira let out a long, slow breath. She knew she should say no.
But she needed her license.
And she wanted to see him again too. Even if it was only for a minute.
“I really have to practice, but I could take a break. A short one. And—I’d appreciate it. I don’t want you to have to go out of your way.”
“It’s not out of my way. I’ll be there about three.”
“Sounds good,” Keira whispered.
“See you then.”
Keira tossed the phone onto the front hall table and went back to her abandoned tea. Three o’clock seemed much further away than it should have. If her stomach stayed this fluttery until then, it was going to be a very, very long day.
? ? ?
She spent the day drifting back and forth between the piano and homework. She couldn’t focus on either of them. It actually felt better to be staring uselessly at her homework—she was used to that. The crawling need to glance over her shoulder while she sat at the piano, to see if the creepy tree had reappeared in her living room—that was new. And terrifying. Even scarier than the thought of losing her mind was the idea that she might lose her music. She couldn’t handle that.
When she was ten, her dad had a minor heart attack and spent a couple of days in the hospital. To cope, she’d managed to lose herself in Clementi’s sonatas. The week before she’d started high school, she was nearly blinded by the anxiety of facing grades that “counted” and small-minded girls who’d judge her clothes instead of her music. She’d still managed to shrug it all off with Chopin.