Again.
That time, Keira hadn’t even bothered with the sleeping bag. She’d just curled up on the worn carpet beneath the piano and put her hands over her ears. She’d fallen asleep to the sound of her parents arguing, as she huddled beneath the protective bulk of the piano.
Of course, once she’d actually started the lessons—once her parents realized that the white keys were practically extensions of her own fingers—no one had complained about the piano at all.
Talent, she heard them whispering, long after she was supposed to have gone to sleep. Scholarship. And then, eventually, career.
Shaking off the memory, Keira sat down on the bench. The edge of the wood cut into her thighs in a familiar way. There was a fingerprint on the music stand. Keira pulled the cuff of her shirt down over her hand, rubbing at it until the wood shone.
Keira cracked the spine of her new music so that it would stay open, and clicked on the ugly brass floor lamp beside her. The unfamiliar spatter of black notes on the page stared at her. With a quick squint at the first line, she positioned her hands and began to play.
It was every bit as challenging as she’d been expecting. The music crashed over her like a froth-tipped wave, surrounding her. Driving her. She worked the first movement over and over, not even allowing herself to touch the Largo until she could run through the Allegro without stopping. Finally, the fingering started to take shape, her hands moving with the music rather than against it.
The creak of the front door interrupted her concentration.
“Keira? Honey? Why is it so dark in here?” Her mother’s voice drooped with fatigue. It sounded discordant and alien after the rich notes of the piano.
Keira turned to face her mother, her back popping in protest as she twisted. Her eyes swept past the clock that hung over the TV stand. It was nine o’clock.
“I was practicing,” Keira said, her tongue thick in her mouth, her mind still chasing the last trill.
“Did you stop to eat, at least?” Her mother sounded exasperated. The thought of food made Keira’s stomach growl.
She’d meant to eat.
“I thought I’d wait until someone else got home,” she said. Her mother’s face collapsed beneath the guilt-trip. A tiny landscape of wrinkles formed around her eyes and mouth.
“Your father isn’t here?”
Keira shook her head. “He left a message—he’ll be late again.”
“Well”—her mother shrugged out of her coat and kicked off her scuffed pumps—“we might as well have dinner together. Will you set the table while I change?”
Keira glanced back at the music. The last page of the movement beckoned. It dared her to play what came next.
Instead, she forced herself to stand up.
Twenty minutes to eat, and a half hour on the stupid history project. Then I’ll come back. There’d be a little time left before her mother would go to bed—before she started to complain that the music was keeping her awake. With a last, promising touch to the keys, Keira headed into the kitchen.
? ? ?
She forced down the gummy chicken while her mother pretended she wasn’t scanning the driveway, ready to bolt at the first sign of her dad’s car.
“You know,” her mom said. “I don’t think I ever missed a meal when I was training.”
The chicken caught in Keira’s throat. Her mom almost never talked about her singing days. She’d sung opera. Well enough to get an offer to train with the Lyric Opera in Chicago. But after a month away from Sherwin, Keira’s dad had lured her back with an engagement ring.
There was no opera in Sherwin. The best Keira’s mom had been able to do was to join the local church choir. That’s where Pike had found her mother—singing solos on Sunday and the “Ave Maria” at weddings. He’d encouraged her to get serious about her music. But then Keira had come along, and her mother stalled her plans to care for Keira. When Keira was little, her mother had sung arias. She and Keira would meet Pike in the empty church, and Keira would sit on the scratched piano bench and listen while her mother’s voice bounced off the walls around her, stretching the Italian words.
She remembered Uncle Pike nudging her with a friendly elbow. “Do you think you’ll be a singer too?” he asked.
Keira had shaken her head.
Her uncle hadn’t looked disappointed exactly, but he had frowned the littlest bit. Pike never frowned. “But you would like to be a musician, wouldn’t you?”
Even though she couldn’t have been more than four, Keira knew that the answer was yes.
“So, what will you play? Guitar? Flute?”
Keira had looked around the church, her eyes drawn—as they always were—to the scuffed baby grand that squatted next to the dais. She’d pointed at it, the keys smiling back at her with their chipped-tooth grin.