Clara shook her head. She reached out and, with a kind of solemnity, pressed a single white key, holding it until the sound faded. Then she did it again, and again, always the same note, each time watching him out of the corner of her blue, blue eyes.
He waited for her to tire, but she did not. She seemed perfectly content to play her one note, letting him fill the rest. So he shifted the melody, working her persistent tap into the rhythm of his own music. It became a kind of duet, and Clara’s smile, when she realized what he was doing, was quick and devastating.
She’s a natural,he thought.Or at least she’s not afraid of making noise. That’s half the battle.
He kept playing. Clara added her note at intervals, sometimes exactly in time, sometimes wildly off, but she never seemed discouraged. When she missed, she simply tried again. The stubbornness of her—so like Nancy, so like her father—made something twist in his chest.
The door creaked again, and Henry peeked in. He wore a robe over his pajamas, a comically large pair of slippers on his feet. He said nothing, but his eyes found Clara immediately.
He was about to scold her—Oscar could see the gears turning—but then he caught the sound of the music, the sight of her next to Oscar, and whatever he’d planned to say dissolved. He slipped in quietly, standing just behind the bench, watching.
Oscar met his gaze. “Would you like to join us?”
Henry considered, then shook his head. “No. I just… wanted to listen.”
Oscar nodded and returned to the keys. The three of them—Oscar, Clara, Henry—existed in a small, perfect world. For the first time in memory, Oscar did not feel haunted by the ghosts of Scarfield. He did not feel the weight of his father, or the expectations of his dead mother, or the judgment of Society. He felt, simply, present.
He let the last chord ring out, the final note lingering long after the keys were still. Clara looked up at him, mouth open in silent wonder.
“Again?” she asked.
Oscar smiled. “If you like.”
“Will you teach me?” She asked it quickly, as if the nerve might escape her if she waited even a second.
Oscar felt something inside him yield. “Yes, Clara. I will teach you anything you want to know.”
She beamed, then fixed her attention on the keys, waiting for him to start again.
Henry edged closer until he was seated at the other side of the bench, so that Oscar was sandwiched between two small, warm children. Henry did not play, but he watched with a fascination Oscar recognized—his own, once upon a time.
Oscar found himself explaining, as he played, the names of the keys, the simple patterns, the logic of scales and chords. Clara absorbed every word, eager and unashamed of her mistakes. Henry listened, eyes round, committing it all to memory.
“That is like the alphabet,” Clara said, when Oscar showed her the repeating letters.
He nodded. “Exactly so. You learn the letters, and then you put them together into words. And the words become music.”
Clara looked at him. “Can you write a song for us? For me and Henry?”
Oscar thought of Peter, of the letters never sent, of the music never played, and for once did not feel the urge to look away from the pain.
“Yes,” he said. “I think I can.”
He played a simple tune, and as soon as he struck the first chord, Henry squealed.
“Oooh, more music for my ears!”
CHAPTER 31
“Ithink I am fond of you now, Uncle Oscar!” Henry declared, sprawled across the pianoforte bench, his feet kicking the air as if composing a score of his own.
Oscar, hands resting on the keys, only gave a dignified sniff. “That’s generous. I do not find you as intolerable, Henry.”
“Rave review,” Clara murmured, not looking up from her relentless quest to play scales faster than her fingers allowed. She had the concentration of a chess master and the impatience of a thunderstorm.
Nancy stood in the hallway and watched the scene, so disoriented by the display of domestic peace that she had to check herself for fever.
Oscar, of all men, guiding small hands to the right octave, correcting posture, offering rare but real praise when Claranailed the run. Henry, more obstacle than student, had turned the lesson into a pageant of interruption, inserting random chords and “surprise” arpeggios with manic delight.
