Helene’s eyes widened as if I’d missed the point of anything she’d been thinking or saying. “Why?”
“Because you’re right, Austen favors youth. But she has those two wonderful older couples, who love each other. Austen is very complimentary to them.” I watched Herman join the group in the center. “They are what all we ‘promising young people’ hope to become.”
“Thank you. That’s a lovely compliment, and suggestion.” Helene squeezed my hand. “You might want to take your own advice and change characters as well.”
Before I could ask what she meant, she pointed to the central group. “Look at them.” Nathan was now waltzing with Clara. “They are so eager, but Gertrude said the music won’t begin for at least another half hour.”
Isabel caught us staring and waved me to her. As I crossed the floor, she headed to the piano. I met her midway. “Will you come play for us? I heard the man practicing during lunch, and you are much more accomplished.”
“Until he arrives.” I dropped onto the bench and sorted the music. Someone had been practicing. New sheet music was stacked over what I had played the night before.
Isabel leaned over me. “I told Gertrude not to bother with that man. You are by far the superior pianist and you like playing.” She bit her lip. “That was okay, right? You don’t dance. You never do. I thought you’d enjoy playing tonight.”
I don’t dance? I never do?
“Why would you think I don’t dance?”
Isabel’s fingers fluttered at her neck. “But last night . . . I thought . . .”
“Don’t worry about it. I’m happy to play.” I looked to Nathan, who was dancing with Clara. The little girl kept stumbling over his feet every time he pulled her in.
I ran my hands over the piano—a B?sendorfer with curlicue decorations and detailing that signaled it was old, rare, and, by its condition, well loved, in the best sense. As much as I wanted to test the theory that dancing was a certain step to falling in love, playing this instrument was an honor.
I positioned my hands when another thought grabbed me. “Isabel, with whom are you going to dance?” Emma had taught me the significance of the first dance and partner. Mrs. Jennings had reminded me. Nathan had lined up Grant for her, but again . . . What was she thinking? Where would her instincts lead her?
“I had hoped Grant.” She looked back to him just as his gaze met hers. “I thought he was going to ask me, but he didn’t.”
She walked toward him as if pulled.
And I began one of Mozart’s Contradances.
“Another surprise.” Nathan appeared beside me.
I kept my eyes on the music. “When I say ‘now,’ will you flip the page for me?”
“Of course.” He dropped beside me. “I had no idea you played the piano, and certainly not like this.”
“Now.” I tossed him a thank-you smile and played on.
I glanced up and noted that Aaron and Sylvia had joined Grant and Isabel. Clara, too, as she danced between her parents. Isabel called directions, and the couples ducked under each other and stepped their circles. They laughed more when the steps worked than when they missed and muddled in the middle.
Herman and Helene joined for the first few, then, glancing up during my fourth piece, I saw them retreat to the love seat. They sat with tilted heads as if sharing unspoken opinions and secrets, a silent communication born of sixty years of marriage. The Crofts.
It was during my sixth piece, a waltz, that I noticed the couples dancing in more complete union. Isabel didn’t call a single instruction. Her partner absorbed her attention. She was more than radiant—she glowed.
At the waltz’s end, the Lottes called good night and gently pulled Clara off to bed. I shifted my fingers on the keyboard to begin “Brahms’ Lullaby.” It was the perfect denouement to the evening. It was the first song my mom ever asked me to learn, and eighteen years later it never failed to take me back to that feeling of awe and love.
A note of sadness swept through me. Something had been missing and its absence only felt with its return. Nature abhors a vacuum and will fill it—but you must create an opening. Music was that opening. It felt as if the universe was expanding right before me, in a ballroom in Bath, England.
And I was diminishing—as one should before the size and unending grandeur of the universe. It wasn’t that I was smaller or less significant; it simply felt like I didn’t need to fight for a place within it or for my own protection. I simply was, and that was enough.
I glanced up. Isabel and Grant were the last in the ballroom. Even the staff had disappeared. Isabel sent me a smile and a wave, then returned her attention to Grant, who held her arm on a rigid ninety-degree angle within his own, a perfect Regency gentleman or a modern military officer. The only flutter in his stiff facade came as he laid his other hand over hers. She tucked closer as he led her out of the room.
Where was Nathan? I’d felt him step away during the final waltz, but I’d thought he was in the room somewhere. I scanned corner to corner and felt my body wilt with the song’s last notes.
“When I was really little, like two, I had a glow-in-the-dark mobile with animals that played that tune. Elephants. Giraffes. Lions. All twirling.”
I twisted on the bench. “Where did you go?”
“I wanted to make myself scarce for a minute or two.” A smile played on his lips. It tilted up at one corner as he dropped once more onto the bench next to me. “I didn’t want to sit around talking to those two all night, and I doubt it would interest them either. I’d rather be with you, alone.”
My delight came out in a burst of song.
He laughed aloud. “‘Home on the Range’?”
“Happiest song ever, and every time I played it my dad crooned the vocals off key and at about ninety decibels—lawn mower loud.”
“Sing me some?”
“No way.” The lyrics filled my head, but I pressed my lips tight against their escape. Where seldom is heard a discouraging word, and the skies are not cloudy all day . . .
I switched songs in case he asked again, segueing into Scott Joplin’s “The Entertainer.”
“I haven’t heard that in years.”
I played on. “My mom and dad used to two-step in the living room to it . . . Or how about . . .” I switched again.
“‘Somewhere over the Rainbow’ . . . That one always made me sad, especially the Israel Kamakawiwo’ole version.”
“Me too . . . Here.” I shifted to that interpretation. At the last note I could remember, which landed us somewhere in the middle of the song, I dropped my hands into my lap. I wondered if he understood what I was trying to share. I barely did.
He took a deep breath and let it out slowly, eyes locked on mine. “I had no idea . . . Is there anything you don’t do?” His question came out on a whisper.
“Cook.”