Best Kept Secrets (Complete Series)

by Kandi Steiner

  Maybe it was because I didn’t feel anything at all, anymore.

  “And this,” I said, pulling the door open that lead into our world-class fine arts and sciences facility, “this is where you’ll spend most of your time outside of the classroom, I imagine. The Jenkins Center for the Arts and Sciences.”

  Reese stood close to me as I rambled off all the features of the building, the various rooms and facilities evenly split between two seemingly opposite passions and skill sets. Westchester’s goal had always been to unite the two, science and art, to bring forth new, creative ways to imagine and see the world we live in. There were dance studios, digital music labs, as well as classical band rooms, an orchestra pit in the performing arts wing, various science labs with their own specific focus in each. It was massive, and I only had knowledge of about half of what it actually housed.

  “I can’t believe you went to school here,” Reese said from behind me. I turned toward the sound of his voice, finally allowing myself a moment to take him in as he marveled at the space.

  His emerald eyes were wide, one hand touching the wooden banister that led up a spiral staircase to the second floor where individual practice rooms were housed for students to reserve on their own. Those eyes brought memories of late nights at the piano, watching him play, listening to the music he heard before anyone else, the music he created.

  That laden part of me moved again, a yearning for something, but a simple blink buried it.

  I watched Reese absorbing it, the grand splendor of it all, the history, his gaze spanning the length of the hall before falling to the map in his hand as he pieced it all together.

  “It was an amazing experience,” I said after a moment. “Some of the best years of my life were spent here. I guess that’s why I couldn’t wait to come back.”

  “Yeah, I did not have that same desire to get back to my high school.”

  Reese smiled, eyes finding mine again as he tucked the map into his back pocket.

  “Some of the best years of your life, huh?” he mused, fingers still trailing the wood. “And where were the other years in that category spent?”

  I swallowed, eyes falling to my simple kitten heels.

  “Garrick,” I replied softly, recalling my years at university there. It was a small, private university not too far from home. It was also where I’d met Cameron. “And my first few years of teaching. Of being married.”

  I felt Reese’s gaze burning my skin, but I didn’t return it. I didn’t want to know what his eyes looked like, didn’t want him to search mine like the truth was hidden inside them.

  “You met your husband when you were at Garrick?”

  I nodded. I still didn’t look up.

  Reese was quiet, but then he stepped forward, his auburn oxfords sliding into view with my shoes. We were toe to toe, and I remembered another time when we stood this way, when I couldn’t look at him. Another time long ago.

  “And now?” he finally asked.

  I slowly lifted my gaze, eyes catching his.

  “Are you living the best years now, Tadpole?”

  The way he looked at me willed me to say something, to bare my soul that he was trying so desperately to see. I used to hand it to him in the palm of my hands, eyes wide and heart open, nothing to hide.

  But he didn’t understand. There was just nothing to see, now.

  It had been five years since I’d had anything to offer.

  The doors behind Reese flew open, students trickling in slower at first before that trickle became a stream.

  “We should head back,” I said, running a hand over my hair to smooth any flyaways back into place. “I told my aide that I might be a little late coming back from lunch, but we have a lot to cover today, so I shouldn’t be gone too long. And you’re with the fifth graders, yes?”

  Reese just watched me. He was still waiting for an answer.

  “Well, they’ll be heading back to class now, too. Best not to leave them alone too long. They’re old enough to cause more trouble than you think.”

  I wrapped my scarf around my neck again and pushed through the doors, not checking to see if he followed.

  CHAPTER THREE

  * * *

  Reese

  Later that evening, I dumped my leather messenger bag on an unpacked box near my front door, shaking off my coat and scarf and dropping them on the box beside it. My new house was covered with those boxes, most of them left untouched, a few of them ripped open and rustled through in my haste to find what I needed that morning.

  Everything had been moved out ahead of me, one suitcase being all I had back in New York up until the red eye flight into Pittsburgh the night before. The decision to move back to my hometown and teach for Westchester had been made on a whim, spawned by a drunken night online where I stumbled upon the job opening. They’d asked me to come out two weeks ahead of the start date, but with finishing up my commitments at the restaurants where I played and transferring the students I was working with at Juilliard, I hadn’t had the time.

  It was my first time seeing the house in person that morning when I’d dropped my suitcase off, changed clothes, and ran out the door to my first day on the job.

  I sighed as I unpacked the Chinese takeout I’d grabbed on the way home from Westchester, pulling out each container with my exhaustion wearing in more and more. It’d been a long day, one that took more of a toll on me than I’d imagined.

  I couldn’t believe I was back.

  Making the move back to Mount Lebanon was my last attempt to find sanity, to find home, to find some sort of comfort in a world that felt as unfamiliar as an undiscovered planet to me now. My new house was just a stone’s throw from the one I grew up in, and I’d hoped that would make me feel closer to the man I used to be.

  So far, it’d only made me feel lonelier.

  Mount Lebanon had been my home, it was where my parents started from nothing and built a family, as well as a fortune. It was where my sister, Mallory, and I played in a large backyard and argued over who had to do which chores. It was where I learned to play the piano, where I discovered music was what mattered most to me.

  It was where I fell in love with a doe-eyed girl who lived next door, and where I left her wondering if she ever meant anything to me at all.

  I cracked open one of the beers I’d picked up on my way home, tossing the rest of the six-pack into the fridge. The bitter carbonation comforted me, along with the lo mein, and I finally let myself think about her.

  About Charlie.

  It’d been impossible not to think about her all day — in the classroom, on my break, in the car on the way home. But I’d tried my best, tried to stay focused on learning about my new students and what they needed from me. Now that I was alone in my new house with nothing but fast food and the daunting task of unpacking to distract me, I couldn’t keep thoughts of her at bay any longer.

  She was still Charlie, still the girl I used to know, except she wasn’t the same girl I used to know. Her eyes were darker, more tired, marked at the corners with lines from the years. I knew she hated me for leaving her, I knew she hadn’t tried to reach out over the years, but the way she’d reacted to me was shocking.

  It wasn’t like she hated that I was there, or that she was still mad at me, and it definitely wasn’t that she was happy to see me, either.

  It was worse — because she didn’t seem to have any reaction at all.

  She used to be so full of life, and now she seemed almost hollow, the shell of the young woman I’d known over a decade ago. She couldn’t even answer my question about whether she was happy now, one I’d asked in a moment that belonged to just the two of us. I wanted her honesty. I begged her to let me see, to let me in.

  Now that I was alone, I realized how naïve I was to believe I’d earned that privilege after just an hour.

  She didn’t owe me anything, least of all trust, and I’d been stupid to ask her for it.

  I ate my chicken lo mein in sile
nce, sucking back my first beer too quickly before replacing it with another as I thought through my first day. I’d stayed late after class had ended to finish the tour on my own that Charlie and I had started, spending extra time getting familiar with the fine arts center where I’d teach the youth the magic of music.

  Me. Teaching kids.

  It was still so impossible to believe.

  I’d been reckless as a teenager, wasting my nights away partying when I wasn’t losing myself at the piano. Graham, my best friend and Charlie’s brother, had been my smarter counterpart. Though he tended to stay out longer than I did, he never seemed to find as much trouble as me. He’d end his nights in bed with a new girl, and there were too many nights where I ended mine waking up my parents with police officers in tow.

  It was never anything serious — no illegal drugs or stealing or anything like that. Mostly, I was just bored, so I’d prank anyone in my path just because it was something to do. It was the same reason I never did very well in school. It wasn’t that I wasn’t intelligent, but rather that I found the busy work they assigned me a complete waste of time. I never did homework, but I aced every test, which landed me somewhere around a B average, simply floating through school.

  Charlie was just the opposite. She always had straight A’s.

  I scrubbed a hand over my face as I abandoned my barely touched food in the fridge and opted for a third beer, instead. I pushed one of the kitchen bar stools over by the sliding glass door, pressing it open a crack and propping my feet up on an unpacked box before lighting up a cigarette. I lit it quickly and inhaled, a sigh of relief leaving my lungs in the form of smoke.

  Westchester was a strict no-smoking zone, even for teachers, and though I’d lit up as soon as I got in the car, I felt uneasy after being used to smoking nearly every hour on the hour back in New York. I suppose it was probably time I thought about quitting anyway, but I’d never actually tried.

  Charlie used to harp on me all the time for smoking when I was a teenager. I’d started at fourteen, and she’d never let me do it around her. Anytime I had lit up in her presence, she’d ripped the cigarette from my mouth and chastised me. Sometimes I’d do it just to get a rise out of her, just to see if she still cared.

  I let the cigarette settle between my lips, kicking back on the bar stool once more. The smoke filtered up slowly, the cool Pennsylvania wind sucking it through the small opening of the sliding glass door. I didn’t mind the cold, not here and not in New York City. But Mount Lebanon was night-and-day different from the city. I was back in the suburbs now, in a place where I’d build a future most likely very similar to the one Dad built here with Mom.

  I wished they were around to see me now, to see what I’d become.

  That same familiar ache penetrated my chest at the thought of them, and I winced against it, finishing my cigarette and taking my beer with me into the dining room. There should have been a table there, one where I could sit and enjoy meals with a family, but instead there was only my baby grand piano. I hadn’t played it in a week, not since the movers showed up at my apartment in New York to load it away.

  I sat my beer on the lid, settling on the bench as my fingers automatically moved for the keys. As the first notes filled the empty house, I found a little peace, but not the way I used to. It was almost like a fake assurance, a lie saying everything was okay when it was so far from it.

  Music used to save me, but it had died along with my family three years ago.

  A mass shooting. A man who might as well have shot me dead, too, for how he stole every bit of joy in my life.

  I closed my eyes, trying to feel the song I’d been working on for my family, trying to capture what they meant to me in the chords I played, trying to portray the pain and loss I felt now that they were gone. I frowned, reaching for the right sound, one that seemed so out of my grasp.

  The more I tried, the more frustrated I became, because no matter what my relationship with music was, it couldn’t bring my family back — and it couldn’t fill the hole they left behind.

  My phone lit up on the kitchen counter just feet away from me, the loud vibration of it jarring me from the song. I tried to push past it, but the moment was gone, the notes I’d been chasing vanishing like smoke as I ran my hands through my hair.

  I didn’t have to look to know it was my former roommate, Blake, who was responsible for the interruption. No doubt the text would be asking if I’d managed to unpack anything yet.

  But I didn’t move to answer it, nor did I unpack a single box that night. I just made my way back to the sliding glass door, lighting another cigarette and drinking the rest of my six-pack until it was time to go to bed. I sat wondering how the hell I’d been hired to teach at one of the top prep schools in the nation, how the hell I’d ended up back in the town I never thought I’d step foot in again.

  And how I’d managed to run back into Charlie Reid after so many years.

  ***

  That Friday, I stayed after the last bell had rung for my first tutoring session at Westchester.

  “Good. Now, when you’re practicing scales, I want you to take your time. Focus on your hand position instead of just slogging through. It may seem like it’s not a big deal, as long as you’re practicing them, but right now is the time to build good habits,” I told Matthew, watching as his face twisted in concentration.

  He was my first victim at Westchester, my first one-on-one experience with a child and not a college student. I didn’t have it in me to tell him I was just as nervous as he was. When I helped out at Juilliard, it was always with already-skilled musicians who were struggling more with growing pains than actual music-related issues. It’d been more of a therapy job, which was also a joke, since I didn’t have a single thing figured out myself.

  “Trust me, I wish I’d have put more time and effort into this kind of stuff when I was your age,” I told Matthew. “Would have saved me a lot of headaches retraining at Juilliard.”

  He nodded, his fingers finding the keys again as he played through the same set we’d just finished. I watched him move, his hands a little more arched this time, his fingers skating with more ease over the keys. He still needed a lot of practice before he could move on to the more advanced pieces some of his peers were playing, but he had potential. And he listened. That’s all I needed to be able to work with him.

  When he finished, I sat down at the piano next to him, gesturing for him to watch me play the same sheet of music. It was an easy piece, an old nursery rhyme set in E major. I played it easily, forcing myself to go slow so I could talk Matthew through some of the points I’d been making with him that afternoon. He nodded along, taking notes in a small notepad, and when I finished, he smiled toothily at me.

  “You make it look easy.”

  I chuckled. “You’ll do the same one day. Go ahead, run through it one more time.”

  As he played the first few notes, I noticed Charlie leaning against the door frame just behind us. I squeezed Matthew’s shoulder to let him know I was still listening before strolling up to her, returning her soft smile.

  “It’s nice to see you playing again,” she said first, careful not to talk too loudly over Matthew’s practicing. “I always loved to watch you play. Or rather, to hear you.”

  “Different tunes back then,” I pointed out.

  The corner of her mouth twitched at a grin, though it didn’t fully expand. “Yes. Much more angsty and sad, but you were a tortured soul back then.”

  “Still am,” I teased.

  “I’ll warn Mr. Henderson to keep the teenagers away from you, then.”

  Charlie’s hair was up in a bun again, wrapped tight and sitting high on her head. Her long, slender neck was exposed in the dainty light-yellow blouse she wore, and even though it was casual Friday, she still wore a navy skirt similar to the one I’d seen her wear the first day. She’d been in a skirt or dress every day that week, and though I’d only seen her briefly at lunch each day, we were beginni
ng to fall back into our old steps.

  At least, as much as we could.

  She still hadn’t opened up to me, hadn’t laughed, hadn’t told me much about what she’d been up to over the past fourteen years. But she sat with me each day at lunch, and she was finally starting to do some of the talking instead of leaving it all to me.

  I’d take what I could get.

  It was strange, how she brought out the young adult in me. Charlie brought me back to simpler times, just by existing. She reminded me of freedom and Pall Mall cigarettes, of dusty old books and stolen scotch. Hearing her talk about how she used to watch me play reminded me of those nights, of her carefully closing the lid on our piano so she could sit on top of it while I played. It always morphed the notes, but I never minded — it was never about the music when she was sitting there with me.

  I never knew which nights I’d come home and find her there in my old kitchen, one foot tucked under where she sat on the same bar stool reading late into the night. At first, it seemed like just a coincidence. She couldn’t sleep well at our house when she stayed the night with Mallory, and I always came home late, so we’d spend those early morning hours together at the piano.

  But after a while, I began to wonder if she waited up for me on purpose, if she hoped for me to stumble in and play for her.

  “Are you busy this evening?” she asked after a moment, standing up from where she’d been leaning against the frame.

  “Unpacking,” I said, but quickly followed it with the truth. “Well, attempting to, at least.”

  “Why am I not surprised to hear you’re not unpacked yet.”

  “Hey,” I defended. “This week has been busy. I’m a teacher now, you know.”

  “You’re also lazy.”

  “That, too.”

  I willed her to smile, but she only glanced at Matthew playing over my shoulder before her eyes found mine again.

  “My parents asked me to invite you over to dinner. They heard you were back in town. But I can tell them you’ve got other plans if you don’t want to come. I know how overbearing they can be sometimes.”