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Rachmaninoff.
It was beautiful: the kind of song that made your heart and your stomach ache; the kind of thing that made you swim in nostalgia. It went on for several minutes. Dean’s fingers didn’t miss a beat.
When he finished, he allowed his hands to fall to his thighs.
The silence stretched between them.
“I know that song,” Elise finally said.
Dean turned his eyes toward hers. “You do?”
“Yes.”
“It’s not well known outside of the classical music world,” he told her. “But, I love it.”
“It was in a movie, wasn’t it?” Elise asked.
Dean’s eyes grew hard. Slowly, he stood up again from the piano bench and slipped his hands across his pants. “I suppose it was. A long time after it was written.”
Ah. So he wanted to evade the topic of the film.
“But what was that movie called?” Elise asked.
Maybe it was the red wine, giving her a jolt of confidence.
“I’m not sure,” he said.
“You know it. You must,” Elise said.
Dean stood in the center of the room, between the table and the piano. His eyes were shadowed, ominous.
“It’s just that everyone on this island knows about that film,” Elise affirmed. “Somewhere in Time. It must have been filmed around the time you moved here? If you said you moved here in the late seventies...”
Dean reached out to grip the edge of the dining chair. He looked on the verge of collapsing.
“Especially given the fact that you said you used to be a stagehand,” Elise said.
Dean’s lips parted.
Silence hung between them.
That moment, there were footsteps in the hallway.
An ominous voice rang out and echoed from window to window.
“Dad? What the heck.”
Elise turned to find Alex standing in the doorway. His dark eyes bore into her.
“What are you doing here?” he demanded.
Elise’s nostrils flared. “Your dad invited me.”
“She lost her room at the Willow Grove,” Dean said softly. “I thought it was the polite thing to do.”
“This is just what you wanted, isn’t it?” Alex said under his breath, speaking only to Elise.
“What was that, Alex?” Dean asked. He pressed his hand against his chest and coughed once.
