$1,400 x 4 months is $5,600 plus late fees…let’s say $10K total, to be realistic.
Worst-case scenario, if my mother didn’t get her shittogether—which, let’s be honest, seemed probable—we’d be in the hole for ten thousand dollars, and the bank would foreclose until I won and paid off the debt.
“IfI win,” I said, getting in my car.
But losing, I decided, wasn’t an option.
Because it couldn’t be.
Part IV
I will seize Fate by the throat; it will not bend me completely to its will.
—Ludwig van Beethoven
Chapter 29Orion
March
I stepped into the piano room and shut the door behind me. Ezra had left the light on at the baby grand and promised no one would bother me at six on a Friday night. I sat and set the box Harper had given me for Christmas beside me. I took out the metronome, snapped the pieces together, and placed it on the piano. Then I unfurled the Nocturne she’d written and set it on the rack.
Her handwriting was clear and sharp, and my chest ached that she’d taken the time to write it out instead of printing it. The notations were harder to read, but I’d played this before. I set the metronome to 4/4 and fixed the pages in my mind.
Music made patterns my brain could follow. More than that, something inside me understood them. I’d always kept my feelings locked away, but music pulled them out, with the familiar fear of going too far, of getting lost.
But Harper unlocked something in me. She broke the wall down.
I closed my eyes and let the sound carry me, and when I finished, I sat in the feeling it left behind—the same one that rose when Ithought of her. Love. I loved to play. Octavian had said I always did. I’d just been told too often that it was only a hobby, that I was meant for something more important.
The accommodations since December had helped a little. Callister was off my back, and my testing was more structured. But the real world wouldn’t be like this. Wouldn’tfeellike this. At my father’s company, I’d be protected. Beyond that? I pictured myself on a stage, an orchestra at my back and counting on me not to fail. I didn’t speak the language of music. I only felt it. How would that ever be enough?
I took my hands from the keys and shut off the light.
***
I picked Harper up at her house at seven p.m. She didn’t like me coming to the door anymore. She didn’t want me to see her mother, so I texted from the driveway that I was there. Dash came running out first.
I picked him up and swung him around. “There’s my little man.”
“Can I come too?”
“Not this time, Dash. Next time, for sure.”
“Okay,” he said, disappointed.
I’d taken the three of us to Applebee’s several times, or to parks, and once to a hideous pizza place where scary animatronic animals suddenly came to life and sang songs like possessed stuffed animals. But Dash loved it.
The light is going out in his eyes, Harper had told me, and that fucking killed me.
She came out looking stunning in a black dress. Simple but beautiful.
“All good?” I said.
“Yes. Mom’s okay right now, but I’m not taking any chances.” She ruffled Dash’s hair. “Mrs. Andolina is on her way. Be good for her, okay, buddy?”
“I will,” he said, and threw his arms around Harper’s waist. “I love you.”
“I love you too.”
