He comes in and lets the screen close. “Don’t worry. You’re not going to hurt the piano. But Victoria was determined we should take the pony cart out while she’s gone. I asked Hoy to hitch it up. I have some people coming to build a little cottage along by the lake—a quiet place for my work when the house is too chaotic. We’ll drive the pony cart down and take a look and then rattle around the property a bit. When we come back, I’ll show you how to…”
He moves a few more steps into the room. “Well, you know what? On second thought, the pony won’t mind waiting. She’s a patient old sort.” Mr. Sevier whirls a hand toward the piano. “Do that again.”
The tears drain down my throat. I swallow what’s left of them as he walks across to the phonograph.
“Here. I’ll reset the needle. How much can you do?”
I shrug. “I dunno. Not much. I gotta listen at it real hard first.”
He lets the record go a little farther than I’ve already tried, but I think real quick and get it mostly right.
“Have you ever played before?” he asks.
“No, sir.” He puts the needle back even farther, and we do it all again. I only get a little bit wrong, just on the new part.
“Impressive,” he says.
It ain’t really, but it feels good to have him say it. At the same time, I wonder, What’s he want? He don’t need me to play the piano. He’s real good at it on his own. He’s better than the phonograph record even.
“Again.” He wheels a hand one more time. “Just from memory.”
I do it, but something’s off.
“Ooops,” he says. “Hear that?”
“Yessir.”
“It’s a sharp; that’s why.” He points to the piano. “I can show you, if you like.”
I nod and turn back to the piano and put my fingers on the keys.
“No, like this.” He bends over from behind me and shows me how to stretch out my hand. “Middle C for the thumb. You’ve got good, slim fingers too. Those are the hands of a piano player.”
They’re Briny’s hands, but Mr. Sevier doesn’t know that.
He touches my fingers, one by one. The keys play the tune. He shows me how to do the sharp I’ve been getting wrong.
“That’s the way,” he says. “Hear the difference?”
I nod. “I do! I hear it!”
“You know where the note goes now?” he asks. “In the melody, I mean.”
“Yessir.”
“All right then.” Before I have time to think about it, he’s sitting down beside me. “You play the melody, and I’ll play the chords. You’ll see the way they come together. That’s how a piece is created, like the one you heard on the record.”
I do what he says, and he plays the keys on his end, and we sound just like the record! I feel the music coming from the piano and slipping through my body. Now I know what it’s like for the birds when they sing.
“Can we play it again?” I ask when we get to the end. “More of it?” I want to do more, and more, and more.
He spins the record and helps me find the right keys, and then we play the music together. He’s laughing when we finish, and I am too.
“We should see about arranging some lessons for you,” he says. “You have a talent.”
I look at him real hard to see if he’s teasing. A talent? Me?
I push a hand over my smile and turn back to the keys, and my cheeks go hot. Does he mean it?
“I wouldn’t say that if it weren’t true, May. I might not know much about raising little girls, but I do know about music.” He leans close, trying to see my face. “I understand that it’s hard for you, coming here to a new home, at your age…but I think you and I can be friends.”
All of a sudden, I’m back in the hallway at Mrs. Murphy’s house, in the pitch dark, and Riggs has me pinned between his belly and the wall, and he’s pressing hard into me, blocking out the air, making my body go numb. The smell of whiskey and coal dust slides up my nose, and he whispers, Y-you and me can b-b-be friends. I can git ya p-peppermints and c-c-cookies. Anythin’ y-you want. We c-can b-b-be best friends….
I jump up from the piano bench, smashing the keys so that a handful play all at once. The noise mixes with the sound of my shoes clattering against the floor.
I don’t stop running until I’m upstairs curled in the bottom of my closet with my feet braced on the door so nobody else can get in.
CHAPTER 21
Avery
When the Stafford camp circles the wagons, we’re a formidable force. For almost three weeks now, we’ve been hunkered down behind the barricades fighting off the press, whose main goal is to paint us as criminally elitist because we’ve engaged premium nursing home care for my grandmother, who can afford it, by the way. It’s not as if we’re asking the public to pay her fees…which is what I really want to say to every reporter who accosts us with a microphone as we make our way to and from public events, meetings, social commitments…even church.
Driving into Drayden Hill after accompanying my parents to church and a Sunday brunch, I spot my sisters in one of the broodmare paddocks with Allison’s triplets. In the riding arena, Courtney has a sweet old gray gelding out for a canter. She’s riding bareback, and as I park, I imagine the rhythm of Doughboy’s strides, his muscles tightening and releasing, the rise and fall of his broad back.
“Hey, Aunt Aves! Want to go out on the trails with me?” Courtney calls hopefully as I walk to the fence. “You can take me home after.”
I’m about to say, Let me go grab a pair of jeans, but Courtney’s mom beats me to the punch. “Court, you have to get ready for camp!”
“Awww, man,” my niece whines, then canters off on Doughboy.
I slip through the paddock gate and totter across the broodmare pasture in my high heels. Along the far fence, the boys are delighting themselves by poking flowers and spears of grass between the slats for this year’s foals to nuzzle. Allison and Missy snap rapid-fire photos with their iPhones. The boys’ little seersucker shorts and bow ties don’t look quite as pristine as they did in church.
Missy squats down and snuggles one of the boys while helping him pull a wildflower. “Awww…I miss these days,” she says wistfully. Her teenagers are away at the Asheville summer camp we attended throughout our childhood. Court leaves tomorrow for a shorter stay.
“These three hooligans are up for rent anytime you want.” Allison’s eyes widen hopefully as she tucks her thick auburn hair behind her ear. “I mean anytime. You don’t even have to take all three. Just one or two.”
We laugh together. It’s a nice moment of stress relief. The last few weeks have tied everyone in knots.
“How was Daddy at the brunch?” As usual, Missy steers back to practical matters.
“Okay, I think. They stayed after, chatting with some friends. Hopefully Mama will make him go kick up his feet once they’re home. We have a dinner to go to later.” My father is determined to keep up the pace, yet the controversy over Grandma Judy is wearing him down. The fact that his mother has become a target in this latest political scuffle is hard for him to bear. Senator Stafford can handle the shots across his own bow, but when his family is caught in the cross fire, his blood pressure skyrockets.
On days when he has to wear the chemo pump strapped to his leg, he looks as though he might collapse under the additional weight.
“We’ll go ahead and scoot out of here before they show up then.” Allison glances toward the driveway. “I just wanted to get a few pictures of the foals and the boys while we still had the church clothes on. Leslie thought some baby-animal-baby-Stafford pics would be a good distraction on the social media pages. Something innocuous and cute.”
“Well, they’d distract me.” I kiss one of my nephews on the head, and he reaches up and sweetly pats my face with his grassy little palms.
“Hey, Aunt Aves, check this out!” Courtney takes Doughboy over a tiny jump.
“Courtney! Not without a saddle and a helmet!” Allison yells.
“She’s a girl after my own heart,” I say.
“She’s way too much like you.” Missy shoulder nudges me.
“I can’t imagine what you’re talking about.”
Allison’s ski-slope nose scrunches. “Oh, yes you can.”
“Come on, Al. Let her stay and ride.” I can’t help intervening on Court’s behalf. Besides, I have some free time, and a ride sounds nice. “I’ll bring her home in an hour…or two. She can pack for camp then.”