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Brant rolled his eyes. Why was Averil contacting him so often? He was trying to help her out with her kid, but she seemed to call or text him for all kinds of reasons—and some were beginning to feel like excuses.
He told himself to ignore her message, too. But then she texted him a second time.
Brant?
He threw the first punch—again,he responded.
He must’ve had a good reason. You’re changing.
That’s not true,he wrote back. But there was something different going on with him. He cared enough about Talulah and her well-being that he wasn’t about to let anyone hurt her, and that included Charlie.
It was late when Jane’s younger sister, Kate, pulled up to Talulah’s aunt’s house. Fortunately by then, Talulah had had enough to drink that the incident she’d witnessed between Charlie and Brant seemed like nothing—or at least like an incident that’d happened so long ago it didn’t matter much anymore.
She got out as a drunken Jane sang the last song they’d heard at the bar at the top of her lungs, causing Kate to grimace.
“Thank you,” Talulah said, bending down to see inside the car. “Good night!”
She shut the door and they drove off as she waved. “Thank God for Jane,” she muttered as she turned to the house. “And Kate.”
She was unsteady enough on her feet that she had to use the handrail to climb the steps to the front porch. She also fumbled the key, dropping it twice before finally managing to open the door. Then she practically fell into the house because she’d been leaning against the panel while unlocking it.
Once she’d secured the dead bolt, she tossed her purse onto the closest chair and was crossing to the stairs to go up to her bedroom when her aunt’s grand piano caught her eye, and she decided to see how much she remembered from the lessons her mother had insisted she take as a child.
The music room wasn’t large, so the piano, two side chairs and a small accent table were all that could fit. After snapping on the light, Talulah navigated the furniture and other clutter, searched through the sheet music stored in the piano bench and found a book of music she recognized. It contained “Für Elise,” which represented the furthest she’d ever advanced in her piano studies.
When she started playing Beethoven’s popular classic, her fingers stumbled over the beginning, which was the easiest part. But she hadn’t even sat at a piano for four years, maybe longer. It’d been important to her mother that she learn, probably because of the influence of Phoebe, who felt a woman wasn’t properly educated until she could play an instrument. Talulah had never been particularly interested in music herself. Debbie had always been the better pianist—yet another area in which Talulah had fallen short.
After a few minutes, the piece she’d memorized so many years ago began to come back to her. She was actually playing it quite well when two beams of light caught her attention and she looked out the window to see headlights in the drive.
Was Brant coming over? she wondered, going to the window. She’d been missing him. The more she drank, the more she’d wanted to call him. But she couldn’t tell who it was. All she could see were the headlights shooting into the house like lasers.
It was so late it had to be Brant. If it was Charlie, he’d turn off his headlights and creep down the drive to see if Brant was here. He wouldn’t announce his presence like this.
She retrieved her phone from her purse and returned to the window, where she texted Brant.Is that you in the drive?
She was waiting for him to get out of the vehicle and come in when the window exploded.
She dropped to the floor as glass pelted her. But only after she lifted her head and saw taillights instead of headlights did she realize what’d happened. The window hadn’t exploded; someone had thrown a rock through it, which had hit the piano with a solidthunk.
Fortunately, she’d instinctively sheltered her head, so glass hadn’t gotten into her eyes or cut her face. But her arms stung from several small cuts, and there was a large shard sticking out of her left forearm.
The sight of it made her queasy. The fact that she’d drunk too much alcohol didn’t help the nausea rising in her stomach. Should she pull out the glass? Or had it severed an important artery?
Regardless, she was going to need stitches. She’d have to call Dr. Gregor. He’d come to her rescue once already.
She hurried into the kitchen and found his number, but he didn’t pick up. Probably because it was so late...
She stared at her arm in shock, trying to think clearly enough to solve the problem. She’d have to call an ambulance and pay an astronomical fee on top of whatever the hospital charged, she decided. But then her phone dinged with a text.
In your drive? No. Is someone there?
Brant. He was awake. Thank God!
She was beginning to shake, which made it difficult to hit the right buttons. After several tries, she managed to call him.
“Talulah?” she could hear him say. “Are you there? Hello?”
Taking a deep breath, she tried to speak over the pounding of her heart, but even she could hear the reedy quality of her voice when she said, “Brant?”
