It was Ivan’s fault, really, that Zoe somehow ended up with his brother. Some months before, Zoe had fired her hairstylist. Ivan happened to mention that his older brother was a hairstylist. Next thing he knew, Quincy was jet-setting around the world with Zoe, her money tap flowing non-stop.
As for Ivan, he couldn’t imagine not being self-made. All his life he had worked hard. It had paid off with a full scholarship to Juilliard. For a season he was here in a small coastal orchestra instead of being in the Atlanta Symphony or Boston or Vienna, but only for a season. Ivan was proud that he’d worked hard and made a living and was taking care of his grandma. Grandpa Otto, now walking the streets of gold in heaven, would be happy to know he was keeping his promise.
Still, Ivan hoped it hadn’t been a mistake to introduce a fellow orchestra member to his brother who had dropped out of cosmetology school at least twice. Maybe it worked out after all in Ivan’s favor. It was Zoe’s twenty-fifth birthday today. And she had paid SISO generously to add this event to their December calendar. Conductor Hank Petrocelli hadn’t minced a word when he said they’d be able to keep renting their rehearsal studio for months to come. That much, huh?
Well, as long as the Brooks family paid SISO for this gig, that was all that mattered to Ivan’s financial well-being. Five concerts and soirées done since the Thanksgiving weekend, they had about seven more to go with the last SISO performance on New Year’s Eve at the City Hall in downtown Brunswick. After that he had five days off before the winter season began. A small town orchestra, SISO only paid its musicians for rehearsals and performances, so the more events they had, the more Ivan got paid.
Thank God for my music studio or we’d be out in the streets.
Still, his exposure as a member of SISO would go some ways to get him back on the world stage. For that, he had Petrocelli to thank for. The conductor had put a lot of faith in him to promote him to concertmaster.
“Vivaldi,” Petrocelli spat out at Ivan.
Nervously, Ivan lifted his borrowed 1850 Vuillaume to his left shoulder and placed his bow on the strings. The music sheets were in front of him on the music stand but all he saw was the face of a certain lady superimposed on Vivaldi’s Winter.
He blinked but her face was still there.
Focus, Ivan. Focus.
Chapter Four
Kobe steak flown in fresh from Hyogo Prefecture, Japan, notwithstanding, Brinley couldn’t eat a bite of it. She nibbled on a piece of roasted asparagus. Drank water with lime from a cobalt blue goblet. Stared into space, oblivious to the chatter around her. Her eyes were on Zoe and Quincy on the other side of the table, loving and cozy and rubbing foreheads together.
Was that what being in love looked like?
Brinley had nothing of that sort with Phinn. Or any of the guys before him.
This is all my fault.
When Brinley had been a teenager, she was fascinated by Grandpa Brooks’s vast collection of fifteenth- through nineteenth-century musical instruments. On her sixteenth birthday, Grandpa had made her an offer she almost refused. He would bequeath to her his entire music collection valued at millions of dollars at auction, including all the Stradivarius violins he had already owned and had continued to buy, if his favorite granddaughter would do one thing: take a vow of purity until her wedding night.
With an eye on the private collection and what a teenager could do with all that money, she’d said yes. And then spent the next ten years regretting it. Grandpa Brooks had suffered a brain aneurism and died suddenly. In memory of him, she couldn’t possibly break her vow. After all, she bought his religiosity—sort of.
And Brinley always kept the promises she made.
Because of that vow, she’d lost Phinn, Crispin, Xander, and that cute cross-country skier from college who’d all wanted more than what she could give them.
Didn’t they all understand that she was saving herself for her future husband? But Grandpa Brooks wasn’t here to give her support on her cause. What had she done, really, but only exchanged herself for a collection of violins and pianos and things?
Then again, Grandpa Brooks had said that personal purity and good works earned points with God. Even after he’d been gone a decade, Brinley still wanted him to be proud of her, to call her worthy of her special inheritance. Good works, she could do all day long. But what about personal purity? It had begun with that vow, didn’t it? It went from there to all the things that Grandpa Brooks had said would get her God’s approval for her life. Then she’d be fulfilled and would have peace in her heart. No one else had told her otherwise, so what Grandpa had said must be true.
For now, she knew she had done the right thing to let Phinn go. Finally.
“—the rest of that?”
Brinley turned toward Aunt Ella’s voice. She was spooning mashed potatoes from her dinner plate into a ziplock bag that she then carefully arranged into her oversized purse.
“What are you doing, Aunt Ella?” Sotto voce. And where did she get the ziplock bag?
Aunt Ella pointed to Brinley’s plate. “I like asparagus.”
Seriously? “They’ll bring you seconds if you like.”
“Hate to let that go to waste.” Aunt Ella’s knobby fingers were on the edge of Brinley’s dinner plate. All Brinley could think of were her fingerprints everywhere.
“Willard always said to eat up,” Aunt Ella said.
Willard. Grandpa Brooks.
Brinley remembered those holidays with Grandpa, how he had grilled the snapper and bass he had caught at sea. How he had always told his grandkids to “eat up” and “don’t let it go to waste.”
Across the table Quincy remarked to Mom something about Kobe. Next to him, Zoe’s seat was empty. Brinley didn’t wonder where Zoe had disappeared to because she could never sit still. Always up and about, doing something. As for Brinley, she could sit in the same spot for hours reading a book.
“Well, it would’ve cost us more if we’d flown everyone to Paris and put up everyone at the castle.” Mom’s voice carried across the table. She patted Dad’s arm. “This dinner party is cheaper than our new Burgatti Veyron.”
“Frugal is good.” Dad gave Mom a peck on her cheek.
Her parents sure had a different definition of frugal, Brinley thought. She had spent her twenty-sixth birthday at work in Zurich this summer. Dad knew she had been homesick. He had his then personal chef bake a homemade apple pie which he personally flew to Zurich. It was the most expensive pie Brinley had ever eaten. But it was her comfort food, and Dad knew it. Too bad Mom had fired the personal chef. Now they had Cara, their housekeeper for many years, cook for them, burning half the meals.
Brinley nudged her plate away from Aunt Ella’s prying fingers. She picked up her fork and knife, and dug into the steak. The steak was delicious. Lukewarm now, but still, the flavor was there. Whoever the caterers were, they did a great job.
Truly, she had always had good food here on coastal Georgia. She loved going out to eat by the ocean, walking about the shops, reading a book on the beach. She made a mental note to call up her sister-in-law for lunch before she had to go back to Atlanta again the first week in January.
Riley had turned into a hermit since her husband, Brinley’s oldest brother, Parker, had passed away suddenly some five years before. Brinley had made it a point to have lunch with Riley at least once whenever she was in town. Not that Riley had always shown up, but Brinley tried.
Oh, Brinley wished she didn’t have to go back to a big city with its traffic and smog. If she could have her way, she’d move to Sea Island or St. Simon’s Island and never leave.
With her own trust fund available to her since she had turned twenty-six, Brinley didn’t have to earn a salary a single day the rest of her life. She could do pet projects, like those historical preservation projects Dad had been neglecting since his stroke. She’d been helping him out in Brooks Renovations on and off the last several years. Maybe she could do more.
She wondered how she
could broach that subject with Dad, how he was going to take it, and what it would do to her brother, Dillon. Would it add more work to his already stressful load as CEO of Brooks Investments if she bailed out and worked for Brooks Renovations instead?
Would it have been easier had Parker been alive? Her two brothers had been very close and had managed the family businesses together. Now Dillon was alone, and as his sister, she must put in her fair share of work since they didn’t expect Zoe to have a mind for business though she’d often surprised them with her acuity.
Aunt Ella was now taking her own pulse and feeling her own forehead. On the other side of Aunt Ella, the other elderly lady looked concerned.
“Are you all right, Ella?” Her voice was soft-spoken.
They’d been briefly introduced. Yun McMillan had lived all her life on St. Simon’s Island, yet Brinley had never seen her in town. She thought it was nice of Zoe to invite Quincy’s family to her birthday party.
“Looks like I’m fine,” Aunt Ella declared.
“Glad to hear that,” Yun said. “Don’t want you to be sick and miss the Christmas luncheon on Saturday.”
“My grand-niece here is taking me to it.”
“Is she?” Yun dug into her vintage purse with intricate beadwork on it, fished out some sort of postcard, and passed it on to Brinley with a freckled hand protruding out of a frayed sleeve.
Couldn’t she have found a newer dress?
“It’s at Seaside Chapel.” Yun retracted her hand.
Brinley looked at the postcard. The date and time were printed on it together with a Bible verse. Does Aunt Ella know what she’s getting into?
“Do you know where the church is?” Yun asked. “By Massengale Park near East Beach.”
“Yes, I know. I’ve attended beach weddings there a couple of times.”
“Our church is known for that.”
How many of those marriages lasted? “In fact, my brother Parker married his wife there. And his funeral was also at Seaside.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.” Yun’s voice sounded genuine.
“Life and death.” Brinley sat back. “Part of what we have to deal with, right?”
Chapter Five
“Did you enjoy the orchestra, Grandma?” Ivan asked, hands on Grandma Yun’s shoulders.
“Yes, dear.” She reached back to tap one of his hands. “You always do such a marvelous job, Ivan. I enjoyed it tremendously and I’m sure Brinley here did too.”
Brinley.
Ivan was acutely aware that Brinley, sitting next to Grandma Yun, was not paying any attention to him as her fingers pecked away at her iPhone.
She gasped.
“Are you okay?” Ivan asked.
“I will be. Soon.” Brinley looked across the table. “Mom. Dad. Guess what?”
Ned and Rose Brooks stopped talking.
“Helen says an art thief told Interpol that he saw what looked like the Damaris in a private collection in Vienna.”
“Vienna. Of all places.” Ned shook his head. “How many times have we been there?”
“Interesting, isn’t it?” Brinley’s eyes brightened. Under the chandeliers, Ivan thought there were specks of gold in them. He was too close for comfort, but she was smiling and beautiful and—
“Have you ever played a Strad?” Brinley asked him.
“No. I’ve heard of your Damaris.”
“Then you know that one of my paternal ancestors, Jeremiah Brooks, bought that straight from Stradivari’s shop in Italy.”
Ivan nodded. “A wedding gift for Damaris Brooks in 1698. Wasn’t there another?”
“She reciprocated twenty years later with a Strad for him, a 1714 model. The two violins were passed on as a pair down the generations until 1893 when there was a bitter fallout among the brothers. The 1698 Strad was taken by one of the brothers and sold to an anonymous buyer. It was never seen again until now. See here.”
Brinley handed her iPhone to Ivan. He caught a breeze of light perfume, so light he wouldn’t have noticed had her wrist not been this close to him.
He stared at the Strad. Wow. It had some sort of intricate carvings on the side. And the initials DLSB.
“LS?” Ivan asked.
“La Salle. Damaris La Salle Brooks.” Brinley seemed excited. “The La Salles were indigo planters living next door to the Brooks, who planted rice. The two plantations merged after the marriage, but just so you know, they did marry for love.”
“That’s always good,” Yun said.
“So where’s the other Strad?” Ivan was interested now. All he had was someone else’s Vuillaume.
“It’s safe.” Brinley said no more and Ivan decided not to pry though he wanted to know where it was kept.
“And is it called the Jeremiah Brooks Strad?”
“No, actually it’s the Lord Sterling Strad because Damaris bought it from a Lord Sylvester Sterling. She was too frail to travel to Italy at that time.”
Ivan handed Brinley’s iPhone back to her. Their fingers touched. It was accidental. He tried not to read too much into it. “You know a lot about your family history.”
“She’s our family historian,” Ned said from across the table. “I often wondered why she’s in marketing instead.”
Brinley frowned. “Oh, am I sitting in your chair?”
“No, Miss Brooks. I’m not at this table.” He pointed to a table farther away marked SISO.
“Call me Brinley. Your brother is dating my sister. Let’s not use titles.”
“Okay. Brinley.” For a year they had not been on a first name basis. Did he have Quincy to thank for this?
“Your brother is tall,” Brinley said.
“Yeah. Well, he lords over all of us.” Ivan laughed.
“You’re pretty tall, so don’t sell yourself short.”
“Haha.”
“Thank you for Air. It was beautiful.” Brinley’s eyes were faraway all of a sudden. “I wonder how it’d sound on the—never mind.”
“Get it back and I’ll play it for you.” Ivan had no idea how those words formed themselves and tumbled out of his mouth.
“You will?”
“It’ll be our song—oops! I don’t mean—uh—”
“Our song,” Brinley said. That faraway look again. “Grandpa Brooks spent a lifetime looking for it. Now it shows up. A blip.”
“A blip of hope.”
“And you will play our song.”
Our song.
Ivan caught a movement at the corner of his eye. Conductor Petrocelli was waving to him. “Back to work. Good to talk with you.”
Ivan’s patent black leather shoes developed a bit of a bounce on his way back to the platform. Not sure what that meant. Must be the thick padding on the carpet.
Brinley was easy on his eyes, but they were in two different worlds with little in common between them. He’d always be the hired court musician, nothing more, and she, the noble lady, nothing less.
Sure, he’d just promised to play Air on the grand old Strad for her. If she ever recovered it. Some stolen Stradivarius violins were never found. He prayed she didn’t get her hopes up too high.
Still…
Our song.
It had a nice ring to it.
How sweet it was that the pair of violins had belonged to a married couple. He hoped they did get the Damaris Strad back. Ivan wondered how much the violins were worth. He had heard about the search but hadn’t bothered to dig up more information. Tonight he was more curious than ever, perhaps because Brinley was interested in it.
He made a mental note to google later. Well, here. His iPad was on the music stand in front of him. Every SISO member had an iPad so that they could play impromptu requests. He sat down and logged into his iPad. He googled both violins. There were people out there who had no life outside cataloging Strads.
His eyes widened when he saw that the stolen 1698 Damaris Brooks was listed at twenty-two million dollars.
Are they kidding? That had to be
the priciest violin in the world, more expensive than the 1721 Lady Blount auctioned off at sixteen big ones several years before. He wondered what the 1714 Lord Sterling would fetch.
A whopping seven point nine million dollars.
Didn’t Brinley say she had it still? Why wasn’t it played? Maybe it was on loan to a music museum? How sad. Violins were meant to be played, not kept somewhere “safe.” What was the point of music if it were never heard?
Is that what rich people do? Buy things that never get much use?
Ivan’s eyes scanned the room. Such opulence. From the chandelier to the plush carpet, from the painted walls to the big French doors. All felt foreign to him though he’d played in many concert halls and private parties before. Back in his Juilliard days, he had dreamed of touring the world as a concert violinist and playing in rich settings the rest of his life.
Unfortunately, after two years of trying, everything had ended abruptly. So much for earning enough income to own his own Strad. Maybe not the Damaris Brooks or the Lord Sterling, but something he could pay cash for.
Not gonna happen.
Nope. Not since Grandpa Otto had that massive heart attack when he was out shopping.
Grandpa Otto had been quite a historian himself, and Ivan imagined he would get along with Brinley as they talked history—
Brinley? How did she pop into my head?
His eyes came upon hers, twenty feet of space between them. She quickly looked away. How long had she been looking this way? What for?
Ivan felt self-conscious. But there was no time to ponder why she had been staring as Conductor Petrocelli tapped his baton. Ivan led the tuning but his mind was on a certain seat. She made him unable to focus. He struggled through the simple process.
The Sea Islands Symphony Orchestra rivaled that of other small orchestras. Maybe someday SISO might play with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra. Ivan had thought of auditioning for a position there, even if it was only second violin. Then again, he’d have to move Grandma Yun all the way to Atlanta and settle her into a new town, a new place, a new hassle. In the end he had given up on that and simply stayed on St. Simon’s Island.
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