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Mom laughed and put a hand on my forearm. “You should have heard it! He could barely get his hands to play in sync. What are these piano teachers doing these days?” She shook her head. “If your father could have gotten his hands on him, he would’ve whipped him right into shape.”
I froze, smile dying on my face.
Mom noticed and frowned, tidily patting at her mouth with a napkin. “That’s enough, Mason Benjamin. Your father has been dead six years now. I won’t have you going around trying to tarnish his good name.”
I stared at the marble of the kitchen counter, where we were perched on stools with our empty coffee cups. My hands balled into fists below the table top.
“He was a monster,” I said low.
She waved her hand as if dispelling an unpleasant smell. “Nonsense. I don’t know what you saw that day, but I know it wasn’t what you thought you saw.”
“Stop it, Mom,” I barked. Wow. We barely made it fifteen minutes this time before she started up with this bullshit.
She startled, looking up at me with wide, hurt eyes. “Mason, honey. All I’m saying is that there’s no need—”
“There’s every need,” I said. “Just because he’s dead doesn’t make his victims any less hurt.”
“No one’s come out and said a single thing.” Her voice jumped an octave. “You’re the only one who’s ever caused a fuss.”
My head went back and forth, negating every word that came out of her mouth while I tried to keep the flood of angry retorts in my throat. Finally, I managed to get out through my teeth, “Monsters don’t deserve to get conservatories named after them.”
Mom leaned down and grabbed for her purse. “I can’t believe you’re dragging up all this unpleasantness,” she said. “I just wanted to come by for a nice visit with my son. I hardly ever see you and then you go and—and ruin a perfectly lovely day!” She stood up, eyes flashing with disappointment at me.
I’d never understand her. She preferred some fucking rose-colored delusion of what our life was than the reality.
Maybe that was part of why he was able to get away with it for so long. It was happening in our goddamned house the entire time. But Mrs. Martin Benjamin Rexford would never consider anything untoward entering the happy, rosy-visioned life she’d arranged for herself.
Meeting the handsome, talented Martin Rexford when they were both studying at the conservatory. Marrying him and moving into the three-story apartment on Nob Hill—a present from her parents, naturally. Grandma and Grandpa had been loaded, and they doted on their daughter. When they passed, they left her everything. So she was independently wealthy, and we’d never wanted for anything even though she was a stay-at-home mom. While Dad taught piano lessons in the basement.
I believed the world Mom painted for me. My whole growing up. I thought we were the Leave It to Beaver family. Dad was beloved in the community. Several of his students had gone on to Juilliard. Others to Stanford.
If he was harsh sometimes with my lessons, well, it was just because I wasn’t as good as his regular students. I was too slow, couldn’t sight read until high school, didn’t have a wide enough hand-span to do the intervals some classics called for. His critiques were endless. And I bore them and tried harder every time.
So I was excited when I’d written a new Concerto, and hurried home to play it for him. I didn’t hear the noise of piano sounds from downstairs, so I figured he was in between students. The Do Not Disturb, Lesson in Session sign was on the door, but I was so excited.
So I burst through the door, sheet paper in hand, giant smile on my face—
“He was a rapist,” I shouted at my mother. “He raped his students. I saw him.”
She jumped and clutched her purse to her chest, the color draining from her face. Her mouth was a tight line and it felt like my words were echoing back and forth in my giant tiled kitchen.
“That was uncalled for,” she finally whispered.
“It’s the truth.” My voice was choked up. It killed me that she either didn’t believe me, or couldn’t, acknowledge what I said. I was her son. And I was still alive. The fact that she remained loyal to that—
The image I could never scrub out of my mind flashed back, torturing me for what felt like the millionth time. Finding my father bent over that kid, who couldn’t have been older than junior high. His pained whimpers and my father’s sweaty grunts before I stormed in and threw the bastard off—those sounds would torture me forever.
“Well, I’m leaving. I hope next time you come into town we can all be more civil. There’s no need for all this”—she threw a manicured hand in the air—“drama.”
