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Or perhaps I am simply missing you so profoundly I cannot think clearly.
Winifred
August 30th
Dearest Winifred,
I have surprising and wonderful news. Yan Li is expecting a baby! Yesterday afternoon she fainted in the kitchen as she was washing dishes, and when I examined her—Sam ran all the way to the hospital to get me—there it was: a tiny, very rapid little heartbeat. Sam is so stunned he cannot remember how to scramble eggs, but Yan Li is as unruffled as one of those chickens she has tamed. She should deliver next May.
She wants you to be here for the baby.
I want you to be here for any reason at all.
Winifred, when you left in July I swore to myself I would not beg you to return. I cannot in good conscience ask that you give up the professional career you have established, but, my darling, I cannot lie. I want you here with me. With Rosemarie.
I wish there were some way I could provide what you need for real happiness and fulfillment in your life, but in truth all I, or any man who loves a woman, can offer is himself, his love and his support.
You hold my heart now and forever. I have never loved to the depth and strength of what I feel for you now, not even with Celeste. God forgive me, but it is true.
At night I lie awake and write letters to you in my mind. And during the daylight hours you move always on the edge of my thoughts.
You are always with me. Always.
Zane
Chapter Eighteen
Winifred surreptitiously ran her thumb along the edge of the large square polished walnut table about which seventeen of her fellow conservatory faculty members gathered. The new term would start next week and during the next three hours the perennial matters of classes and practice rooms and who would first use ensemble rehearsal space would be hashed out.
The conservatory director, Professor Rolf Adamson, lightly tapped his wooden gavel, and conversation dwindled into silence. He began to outline the meeting agenda but Winifred found herself gazing out the tall windows, admiring the bright crimson and gold maple trees along the faculty house walkway. She loved the brilliant colors of fall, and when the leaves withered and left the bare branches shuddering in the winter winds, an inexplicable sadness fell over her spirits.
It was like life, she supposed. Eventually spring would come, bringing new green buds and bright golden jonquils poking up from the earth, but it always saddened her to see a lovely thing pass, even a show of scarlet leaves in the fall, which would soon blow away.
Today it seemed especially difficult to keep her mind on the perennial meeting controversies: Should the string department be awarded an extra rehearsal hall time or should the woodwinds have it? Could the piano teachers take on three advanced pipe organ students or could they wait until next term? And who would manage the recital schedule this year and iron out the continuing squabbles and professional rivalries?
Winifred caught her friend Millicent’s keen brown eyes and shared a look of exasperation. Streaks of gray peppered the neat bun at the older woman’s nape and the severe navy dress revealed an expanding girth. Millicent was aging, she realized suddenly. Her friend had taught piano at the conservatory for fourteen years.
Winifred caught herself in a sigh. Would she look like Millicent in another seven years? Even three years?
She pressed her lips closed. Did she care whether the oboe professor was now maneuvering the string players out of rehearsal space? Or whether two viola teachers complained about their teaching load?
No, she did not. Again she gazed at the shimmering maple trees outside the window; now backlit by the afternoon sun, they seemed to glow.
But she did care deeply about her piano students, their recitals, their progress toward proficiency. And she cared passionately about her own performances this season, with Pierre du Fulet conducting her two favorite Beethoven piano concertos; following that, Boston again wanted her for more Mozart recitals and a new Fauré work.
She watched a small brown sparrow hop onto the tree branch closest to the window and cock its head at her as if to say, Why do you watch me and dream of spring? Are you not content?
Of course she was content. She was fulfilling the acknowledged purpose of her entire life, what she had worked toward for ten long years.
The oboe professor made a rude remark and everyone laughed, even Rolf Adamson. Everyone except Winifred, who hadn’t been listening. A general stirring among those seated around the table alerted her to another simmering controversy, but she found she didn’t care until Millicent again caught her eye and raised her eyebrows.
