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I know you sometimes get frustrated when the notes don’t come out the way you want them to, or when you think the song doesn’t sound quite right, but just keep going. Keep trying. Keep practising. Don’t ever get discouraged. Remember that the song already exists inside you. The instrument is just our way of letting it out. The violin simply gives voice to what already exists, and Noah, it doesn’t just exist in you, it shines. No matter who your teacher is, you have everything you’ll ever need to excel.
Thank you so much for being my student. Don’t ever forget how special your song is,
Love, Miss Dee
“That’s private.”
Deirdre’s voice makes me look up from the paper. I gesture the stack of letters towards the lack of door between her room and mine.
“Right,” she says, rolling her eyes. “Nothing’s private here.”
“You don’t have stamps. What is this, some writing exercise?” I fold Noah’s letter back up and slide it into the envelope.
She stares at me, and I stare back, because fuck she looks good after she comes. Her skin is flushed and glowing. Tiny baby hairs are escaping from her hairstyle, creating an electric orange halo of frizz. My beautiful hellfire angel.
“I was going to see if Valentina would put stamps on them and send them.”
“I’m in charge of what comes in and out of this house, not Valentina.”
Something unhappy crashes in the blue of her eyes.
“Fine, then,” she snaps. “May as well throw them in the fire now because I know you won’t let me send them.”
Her own reaction to what she just said is almost comical to watch. Like a cartoon character giving life to the phrase “biting my tongue.” She tenses, her mouth snapping shut so hard and fast that I think it’s probably a good thing I haven’t put my dick in there, because that’s a hell of a lot of jaw power. I wait without speaking, because I’ve never been one to find silence awkward, boring a hole into her head with my gaze while hers traces grooves along the wood floorboards.
“Sorry,” she finally says, so fucking softly. She uncrosses her arms and starts twining her fingers together in front of her. “That was the wrong choice of words.”
She knows.
Not just about the fire, because everybody knows about the fire. My fucking face tells people about the fire.
But she knows it was more than just a fire. She knows what I lost. She knows exactly how I failed.
Fucking Valentina.
The ticking in my head is back, an incessant, uneven thrum that sounds like flames crackling over wood. My hands start tensing, and I have to fight the urge to pulverize the stack of letters in my fist.
“Just throw them away already,” Deirdre says.
“I’m not going to throw them away,” I say evenly.
“What, going to read them all out loud and then rip them up in front of me?”
“Nope.”
She lets out an exasperated breath.
“What, then?”
“I’m going to reseal this one and add it back with the others. Then, I’m going to put stamps on them. And then I am going to send them.”
Her ginger eyebrows practically crawl all the way up to her hairline. It seems like she can’t stop the question of “Why?” from escaping her mouth. It comes out as a gasp, because what other reaction would an act of humanity in me elicit than pure fucking shock?
I don’t have an answer for her. At least not one I want to say out loud. It’s something to do with the fact that I know what it’s like to lose a woman you love and look up to with no closure and no goodbye when you’re a kid.
And it’s something to do with the way the image of Deirdre bent over the desk writing such kind, devoted letters makes my chest feel tight.
It isn’t just that she’s not from this world, like Valentina said. It’s that she’s too fucking good for it. And if I were a better man, she’d never have ended up here at all.
