She’s disoriented by music, a haunting cello melody that twists her heart in her chest, weakens her knees.
Braden’s hair, always unruly, is wild. His hands shake visibly. The years have etched themselves deeply into his face. A fallen angel, Phee thinks, beautiful and ruined and in need of saving.
“I am not in the business of saving people,” she mutters under her breath. “Not even you.”
“Pardon?” he asks. And then his eyes narrow with recognition, and he finally asks the question she’s armored herself against. “What the hell are you doing here?”
Phee raises the flower arrangement she’s carrying, as if that makes her presence self-evident. “Would you mind if I bring these in?”
Taking advantage of his inclination to be polite, she brushes past him, across the threshold and into the living room. A battered old suitcase spills jeans and underwear and socks out onto the floor. A pill bottle lies on its side on the coffee table, open. Green-and-black capsules are scattered on a white carpet marred by a crimson stain.
Librium and a wine stain. Phee is an expert on both. She ignores the evidence, traipsing through the house as if she is a frequent visitor. She finds the dining room, also carpeted in white and decorated with a stark minimalist elegance.
The shining black lacquered table is nearly obscured by floral arrangements, all funereal and formal, unlike the profusion of color Phee has selected. The sadder the occasion, the brighter the flowers should be, she always thinks, and she’s brought a loose bouquet made up of sunflowers, dahlias in pinks and purples, blue cornflowers, and irises.
“Listen, this is a bad time,” Braden begins as Phee turns again to face him.
Her eyebrows go up at that bit of obviousness, but he plows on.
“Not that there will ever be a good time. I can’t believe you would come here now. Like this.”
Phee can’t quite believe it, either, and yet here she is. The contract—his contract, the one he is in violation of—is folded into her purse. That’s why she’s here, and he knows that’s why she’s here.
In her head, she hears her grandfather’s voice.
“Get it over with, Ophelia MacPhee. Open your bag, show him what he signed, hold him to his oath. Your emotions have nothing to do with this.”
But the truth is, her emotions have everything to do with it.
The moment that Phee fell in love with Braden Healey is lodged in her memory with the same pristine clarity as her first glass of Scotch. Both had a similar effect on her. The burn, the sense of melting away, the instant addiction. Both have been eradicated from her life, but she is now in the way of temptation. It’s almost eleven years since their last disastrous conversation, and yet every nerve in her body is tuned to his voice, to the movement of his hands.
She wants to gentle those hands between her own, to run a finger over that scar on his face, to kiss him. Hell, she wants to clean his house and make him dinner, and Phee is not a domestic creature.
But none of this is why she is here.
“I came to check on her,” she says.
“I assume by that you mean the cello and not my daughter.” His tone and his eyes are dangerous. “You’ll stay away from her, Phee. Oh hell. Too late.”
His gaze shifts and Phee’s follows.
Allie stands at the edge of the room, a personified question. “Who is staying away from whom?”
Even if Phee hadn’t been cyberstalking Allie for years, hadn’t seen her at the funeral, she’d have recognized the girl anywhere. Her face is modeled on the same plan as Braden’s, same cheekbones, same strong jaw and cleft chin, only more rounded, the cleft more of a dimple. Her hair is darker, and straight where his is wavy, but the resemblance is obvious.
“Allie—” Braden begins, but she cuts him off.
“Who are you?” she demands.
“This is the luthier who maintains the cello,” Braden cuts in before Phee can answer. “She brought flowers. She’s leaving.”
“I’m so terribly sorry about what happened.” Phee knows the words are useless, that Allie has heard them uttered so many times already she’s probably sick to death of them. She bites her tongue before she can add the usual “if there’s anything I can do” claptrap, because clearly there is nothing.
Allie’s gaze is unsettling, her eyes so like Braden’s, but the soul looking through them is entirely different.
The girl says nothing more, just swivels and stalks away. There’s the sound of footsteps running up the stairs, a distantly slammed door.
Braden follows her with his eyes. He looks stricken.
Phee’s knees have begun to quiver. She still hears the cello music, louder and clearer, if anything, and it’s not Allie playing. It has to be a recording, with a damned impressive sound system.
“I haven’t a clue how to do this. Do you? Have kids, I mean?” Braden asks.
Phee shakes her head. “A dog. And a family of instruments.”
“Easier to manage,” he mutters, evidence that he has never met Celestine and doesn’t understand the first thing about Phee’s relationship to the instruments under her care.
“May I see her? The cello?”
Allie has taken the fight out of him. He shrugs. “If you must.” He leads her down the hallway and stands aside to let her enter a large room that holds only a desk, a chair, and the cello. A window looks out onto a fenced backyard.
Whatever kind of speakers are wired into this house, Phee needs to get herself some. The music is as clear in this room as it was in the living room and in the dining room. An alarming suspicion grows inside her gut, the place where she sometimes knows unknowable things. It’s not a recording. It’s the cello.
Which is ridiculous, of course. The strings aren’t vibrating. Nobody is playing. No instrument, even one of her grandfather’s specials, can play itself. Whatever Phee is hearing is all in her own head, which is another problem to add to a rapidly growing list.
“How are your hands?” she blurts out, needing to say something, do something, and managing to get it exactly wrong.
“God. Not this again.”
“It’s been a long time. Healing happens.”
“Not for me.” He almost spits the words at her. “I can’t believe you are still on about this. Now, of all times. Yes, I still have nerve damage. No, I can’t play the cello. I can’t feel the strings or the bow. Can we be done with this?”
His hands are shaking again. More than anger or nerves, she thinks. There’s the wine stain on the living room carpet, still damp. The Librium. As usual, words pop out of her before she has the sense to keep them to herself.
“You look like a man who needs a drink.”
Braden flinches as if she’s struck him. His face goes dead white. “Now? I . . . can’t . . . ,” he stammers.
“Oh God. No. I wasn’t offering one. Just observing.”
“Good to know my sins are so clearly visible.”
“Been there, done that. Look. I know you think I’m an opportunistic bitch or some such, but consider this, anyway.” Phee scrabbles in her purse, not for the contract but for a scrap of paper and a pen. She scribbles an address and holds it out to him. “There’s a meeting here, tomorrow afternoon at four.”
“AA? I’ll think about it.”
“Oh, this is so not AA,” Phee protests. “All that powerlessness shit gets depressing after a while, don’t you think?”
His gaze scours her face. “What could you possibly know about AA?”
“Ten years in the trenches.”
“I don’t believe you. You don’t look like a longtimer.”
“I bounced in and out of AA like a rubber ball, always wondering what was wrong with me that it didn’t seem to take. I was drinking the last time we, um, talked.” It hadn’t been much of a conversation. She’s forgotten how much of a mess she was back then, and how horribly she’d bungled things after his accident.
“But you’re sober now?” he asks, with a tone that sa
ys this visit would be so much more understandable if she were totally soused.
“‘Sober’ is such a bleak word. Makes me think of Quakers. Or nuns. Amazed and alive, that’s what I am, five years now.”
“So what is this meeting, then, if it’s not AA?” He’s still skeptical, but also still talking. Maybe she can help him. If he trusts her, even a little, she’s likely to get further than she will beating him with the same old story she gave him the last time she saw him.
“Come and see.”
He shakes his head, takes a step back.
“I’ve sampled the church recovery groups, too. Not for me.”
Despite the sorrow in this house and the sad state her own heart is in, Phee laughs at the very idea.
“You thought I was about to turn evangelical on you? Sorry, but that’s funny right there.”
Her laughter sparks an answering emotion in Braden. A smile lights his eyes, activates an inner warmth that softens his face. “Enlighten me.”
“I’m an Adventure Angel.”
“A what?”
“An Adventure Angel.”
“And that means what, exactly?”
“Tomorrow. Four p.m. Come and see for yourself.”
He considers. “Tell you what. You stay away from Allie. No giving her any of the bullshit you laid on me about how this cello has a soul—”
Phee sighs. “It’s not Allie’s contract, Braden, it’s yours.”
“—and I’ll come to your meetings.”
This is easy to agree to, since Allie has only been the surrogate for her missing father, anyway. “Done.” She holds out her hand and Braden shakes it. Even though his is trembling, it’s warm and strong. The fingers curve as they are supposed to do.
Braden releases her and stuffs his hands in his pockets. “I see what you’re thinking. They look fine. They do what I need them to, for the most part. I just have to operate them like they’re . . . robotic. A handshake is a different skill set from, well, you know.”
Phee feels the tears gathering in her eyes, blinks them back as best she can. “I’m sorry for your loss,” she says. Impulsively, she hugs him. Before he has time to react, she turns and rushes down the hallway and out the door.
Braden doesn’t follow.
Chapter Nine
ALLIE
Allie used to love Mondays.
Today, her steps slow as she approaches the high school and she begins considering the alternatives. She’d thought about driving, had actually slid behind the wheel of her car and put the key in the ignition before a mental image hit her of her mother’s car, twisted and broken, and she’d bounced right back out again.
So she’s on foot, which is not unusual. She’s always liked the quiet time of walking to school, a chance to get her thoughts together and prepare for the day. Now her thoughts are to be avoided, and the whole idea of school, with its chaotic hallways and inquisitive teachers, is overwhelming.
But she can’t stay home, can’t be so close to her father all day. There’s the library, but the last time she went there, a tent was pitched, right there on the sidewalk, and a woman with two dirty little kids sat in front of it asking for a handout.
It made her cry to think about people living like that. She’d given the woman all of her allowance money, despite Steph’s vehement whispers that it was probably wasted and going to fund the drug trade. Allie didn’t care. She doesn’t think she can handle despairing faces today.
She could go to the zoo. Or the locks. Or Golden Gardens Park. Or she could just snag a table in a coffee shop and spend the day surfing the internet. But she seems to be utterly incapable of making a decision. When her phone chimes, she stops to look.
Steph: Are you coming to school? Please say yes. It’s a wasteland without you.
Allie sighs, letting Steph make the decision for her. There in a minute.
She starts walking again, but the closer she gets, the more she dreads what awaits her. The questions. The murmurs. She reminds herself of who she is and what she has done. School is part of her penance.
Besides, she can’t think of anywhere else to be. The house is a mausoleum. The cello mournfully calling her. Trey’s room, exactly the way he left it, with dirty clothes all over the floor, a cereal bowl full of souring milk in the middle of the bed. Even the TV is still on, set to the channel where he left it before he went to school that morning. Aunt Alexandra was going to turn it off, that first day home, but Allie had fought her, consenting only to put the thing on mute.
Her mother’s room is also unchanged. If Braden has slept there, there’s no sign of it. The bed is neatly made, the pillows undisturbed. This morning, when she slipped out the back door, he was asleep on the couch. She’s taken aback by a thrill of relief she feels at having him there, home, despite all of the reasons she has to hate him.
Now, as she enters the school and presses through the crush of bodies to get to her locker, she keeps her head down, avoiding the sympathy or pity or curiosity she’s sure to see on the faces of her classmates. She doesn’t want to answer questions or pretend to smile or have to talk to anybody.
Steph, waiting by her locker, is expected. Ethan, leaning against the locker next to hers, is not.
The old Allie wasn’t interested in dangerous. Playing the cello when she was supposed to be studying was as close as she ever came to breaking rules. Ethan is everything she is not. He manages to pull off grades just above the failure line without ever seeming to attend class or study. He’s heart-stoppingly gorgeous, with dreamy dark eyes and hair that falls in silky black curls onto his shoulders.
Allie has been aware of him in the same way she is aware of stars in the sky, beautiful but outside her reach. She hangs out with the music kids and takes AP classes. He dates the wild girls and is in the general track. Stars and boys like Ethan are great at a distance. Too close, and they’ll burn your wings and dump you into the sea, a lesson she learned both from the story of Icarus and watching the drama of other girls who have dared to fly too close to the sun.
But now here is Ethan, inexplicably hanging out beside her locker.
Steph catches her eye and shrugs, indicating that she is also clueless about the reason for this sudden visitation.
“Hey,” Ethan says.
“Hey.” Allie busies herself with her combination lock, hiding her face behind her hair and then behind the open locker door.
“Thought maybe you’d like to get out of here today,” Ethan says. “I could take you for a ride.”
The bell rings for class. Lockers slam. Kids start moving down the hall. Allie needs to go to class. She’s missed all last week. The teachers will cut her a little bit of slack, given the tragedy and the funeral, but they can’t extend that forever.
Her hand rests on her biology book. She envisions herself in her preferred desk, front and center, book and binder open, ready to take notes. Mr. Gerard looking down at her, his prize pupil, but instead of pride and joy in her mastery of the material, there is pity in his eyes. She feels sick thinking about it.
They are studying bones, and if she looks at the pictures, she knows she’ll see her mother’s body and all the ways it must have been broken. Trey’s skull, with the fracture lines running through it.
Ethan is offering an escape. She looks up at him. “For real?”
He shrugs one shoulder. “Too nice of a day to be stuck in class. I’m thinking of a ride to Mukilteo. Take the ferry to Whidbey Island, go hang out on the beach.”
“I’m in.”
Steph’s mouth drops open. “Can I talk to you for a minute?” She grabs Allie’s arm and tugs her away down the hall. “What are you thinking?”
“That I don’t want to stay cooped up in here all day.”
“What about your perfect GPA? Your full ride? There’s a concert next weekend and you haven’t practiced . . .”
Allie doesn’t plan on playing the cello ever again, so missing practice for the concert is a bonus, not the compelling clin
cher Steph thinks it is. As for school, what difference does one more day make in the grand scheme of things?
“I’m leaving,” Ethan calls, raising his voice to be heard over the clamor of the hallway. “Coming or not?”
“Allie!” Steph’s fingers dig into her arm.
Ethan saunters over. “Sorry there’s not room for two,” he says with a lazy grin at Steph, but he doesn’t look sorry.
Allie feels a twinge of guilt. She and Steph do everything together, and it’s weird to be going off on her own, especially with a boy like Ethan. But everything has changed, and she is not at all the same person she was last week. She gives Steph a quick hug.
“I’ll call when I get back. Promise.”
Ethan holds out his hand, and she takes it, his fingers warm around her cold ones. Walking with him in the hallway is different. Kids make room for them. The eyes on her are envious instead of pitying.
The bike is sleek and black, with dancing skeletons shadow-painted on the tank.
“Ever ride before?” Ethan asks, and she shakes her head.
“Here, I have an extra helmet. Climb on.”
The helmet is a little looser than Allie thinks it should be, but she buckles it on tight. Ethan starts the engine, and she immediately loves the fact that it drowns out the cello music that has been playing in her head ever since the accident. The rush of wind on her face, the dangerous free-fall sensation of riding in the middle of all of the cars, death never more than a couple of feet away, makes her feel alive again for the first time since the accident.
The I-5 is backed up like always, the 525 not so bad. Their timing for the ferry is perfect, with very little wait time before they drive on board and park the bike.
“Come on,” Ethan says, “let’s go up on deck and watch people.”
It’s only a short crossing, and the majority of the passengers stay in their cars. Allie is more interested in Ethan and the expanse of water than she is in the few people sharing the deck with them, but Ethan has different ideas.
“Let’s play a game.”
“Okay,” she says, cautious.
“Pick a person, any person, and I’ll make up a story about them. Who’s first?”
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