12. Millie
CHAPTER TWELVE
MILLIE
My ribs are almost healed. The pain is background noise now. Most days, I forget about it until I don't.
I've been living with Joseph for a while now, and somewhere along the way it stopped feeling temporary.
In the mornings I cook breakfast before his early shifts.
In the evenings he shoos me away from the stove because he's still worried about my ribs, even though I keep telling him I'm fine.
We negotiate over dishes and groceries and anything that involves reaching—I try to help, he tries to stop me, and we meet somewhere in the middle that satisfies neither of us.
It all feels so domestic. Like we've been doing this for years instead of weeks.
Maybe it was Tofu that sealed it. Tofu sleeps on his shoes now. She has an entire apartment of surfaces, and she chooses his shoes. The betrayal.
Joseph is at the hospital. Tofu is on the windowsill, monitoring the pigeon situation.
She takes this job very seriously. I've started narrating it in my head like a nature documentary.
The fat one made a move on the gray one's corner yesterday, and Tofu's whole body went rigid like she was witnessing a crime.
The apartment is quiet. It only happens when Joseph isn't here.
When he's here, there's always a sound around the corner.
Him humming in the kitchen. A cabinet opening.
The low murmur of him talking to Tofu like she understands every word.
When he's gone, it's just me and my thoughts and the fridge droning and Tofu's tail twitching at pigeons.
Quiet used to be the only thing I knew. Now it feels like something's missing from it.
My violin case has been sitting in the corner of the spare room since I moved in. Untouched. I look at it every morning when I get dressed and every night when I turn off the light. The dented latch catches the light, and I look away. Every day, I look away.
Except today.
I sit on the edge of the bed and pull the case onto my lap.
The dent in the latch is worse than I thought.
A deep groove where the metal buckled on impact.
I run my thumb over it. Then I undo the latch.
It sticks. I have to force it, and for a second I think it's not going to open, that the fall broke this too, but then it gives and the lid lifts and there she is.
The smell hits me first. Rosin and wood and something underneath that's just years of me.
Hours and hours of practice baked into the varnish.
Every audition. Every rehearsal. Every late night in my apartment, playing the same passage over and over until my fingers memorized it so deeply I could do it in my sleep.
I look her over. There's a scratch on the lower bout.
Small, barely visible unless you know where to look.
I trace it with my fingertip. It's cosmetic.
It doesn't affect the sound. But this instrument has been with me through my career, and every mark on it means something, and this one means the worst night of my life.
I check the bridge. It shifted from the impact, tilted maybe a millimeter to the right.
I push it back into place with my thumbs, gentle, the way my grandfather taught me when I was twelve.
Slow. Steady. Don't force it, just guide it.
He had huge hands for a violinist, thick fingers that could thread a needle on a bridge without looking.
He made it look easy. Everything he did with a violin looked easy.
I miss him so much sometimes that it catches me in the middle of ordinary things and I have to stop moving.
The strings are loose. The E string buzzes when I pluck it.
Everything needs tuning. I spend ten minutes getting her right.
Tuning each string by ear. Adjusting the fine tuners.
Plucking, listening, tightening, plucking again.
My fingers know this. This part is older than thought.
It lives in my hands the way breathing lives in my lungs.
When she's in tune, I hold her for a moment. The weight of her in my hands. The curve of the neck against my palm. I've missed this more than I let myself think.
I stand. I tuck the violin under my chin. My left hand finds the neck. My right hand lifts the bow.
My ribs answer immediately. Playing violin isn't just fingers and arms. It's posture. Core. Breath. You have to engage your whole torso to support the instrument, to control the bow, to produce a sound that isn't thin and shaky. And my torso spent the last few weeks reminding me it was broken.
I try a single open string. The sound fills the room, and it's everywhere. Just one note. One note, and I'm already losing it. Get it together, Millie.
I try a scale. Slow. Careful. Each note costs me.
My bow pressure is weak because my core can't do what it used to do.
The sound comes out thin, uncertain. I sound like a student.
I sound like a beginner. I know what I'm supposed to sound like, and this isn't it, and the gap between what my ears expect and what my body can deliver makes me want to throw something.
But I keep going. Because I've missed this.
Not just the music. The feeling of saying something.
For weeks, I've been voiceless in a new way.
No orchestra. No instrument. Just my phone, my hands, and the whiteboard in the kitchen.
I type, I sign, and I gesture, and people understand me, but it's not the same.
Music is where I say the things that don't have words in any language.
I play a passage from Barber's Adagio. Slow, mournful. Perfect for a body that can only give half of what it used to. My fingers remember everything. My ribs remember the fall.
I get through eight bars. Twelve. Sixteen. I'm rationing my breath, feeding the notes just enough air to keep them alive. My left side aches, but it's manageable. I can do this. I'm doing this.
On the next phrase, the music demands more. The passage swells, and my body responds before my brain can stop it. I dig into the strings, engage my core, and a sharp pain tears through my left side so fast and so white that my vision drops out.
If I had a voice, I would have screamed. The bow drops from my hand. I grab the violin with my other hand before it falls too, clutching it against me, doubled over, breathing in those tiny, shallow sips while the pain pulses and fades and pulses again.
I stand there. Eyes shut. Waiting for it to pass. My bow is on the floor. My ribs are on fire. And I'm so frustrated I could scream, which I can't do, which makes it worse.
Then he's beside me, his hand on my shoulder.
"Millie. Hey. Are you okay? What happened?"
I nod. I hold up a hand. I'm fine. The pain is already fading, but I'm shaking, face hot. My bow is on the floor, and I pushed too hard too soon.
He picks up the bow. He doesn't hand it back right away. He's looking at me, reading my face the way he does.
"I just got home," he says. "I heard you playing from the hallway. I was going to wait, but then I heard something drop."
I look at him. He was listening? From the hallway?
"I didn't want to interrupt." His voice is quieter now.
"Millie, you sounded... I don't even know the word.
I knew you played. I knew you were good.
But hearing it in person..." He stops and shakes his head.
"It was beautiful. And heartbreaking. It sounded like you were saying something you couldn't say any other way.
That's why I stayed in the hallway. It felt like something I wasn't supposed to hear. "
He heard me. Not the notes, not the technique. He heard me. The version of me that only exists when I play, the voice I've been missing for weeks. He stood in a hallway and listened and understood without me having to explain it.
Nobody has ever described my playing like that. He reads my face and his expression shifts. "Are you okay? If something's wrong, you can tell me."
I set the violin down carefully, then pick up my phone. I'm fine. My ribs just hurt. I missed playing. That's all.
He reads it and nods. He doesn't say anything for a moment, just stands there with me in the spare room, the violin case between us, and Tofu watching from the doorway like she's supervising.
"When you're ready," he says, "I want to hear you play the whole thing."
I type: That's the Barber's Adagio for strings. It's about 8 minutes long. You'd have to sit still for 8 minutes.
"I can sit still."
Jo. You cannot sit still.
"For you, I'll learn."
I look at him. He means it. His smile is different—not teasing, but warm. And that smile is the one I can't look at for too long.
I put my phone down.
He makes dinner that night. Something with noodles his mom taught him, and he warns me twice that it won't be as good as hers.
It's actually good. I give him a thumbs up. "Yeah?" He leans over the counter to check my face, like a thumbs up could be sarcastic. "You're not just being polite? Because I can take it."
I shake my head and take another bite, like that settles it.
"She'll never believe me." He does a small victory fist pump anyway. "My own mother. I'm going to tell her I beat her recipe and she's going to laugh in my face."
We eat at the counter. He tells me about his day. A patient who tried to leave the hospital in someone else's wheelchair. A nurse who accidentally paged the wrong surgeon and then had to pretend she meant to.
He tells stories like he's performing them, full commitment, voices, gestures.
I eat my noodles and watch him and think about how different my evenings used to be.
A quiet apartment, a microwave dinner, Tofu on the couch, the television on for noise—because silence without music, without anyone to sit inside it with you, gets heavy after a while.
This is better. I don't know when I started thinking that, but I can't unthink it now.
After dinner, he does the dishes. I try to help, and he blocks me from the sink with his hip.
"No. You played violin today and strained your ribs. You've done enough. Sit."
I grab the small whiteboard and write. I can wash a plate, Jo. I don't need to use my core to wash a plate.
"You'd be surprised. There's actually a lot of micro-movements involved in dish washing. Very strenuous. I read a study."
You did not read a study.
"I might have. You don't know my reading habits."
You're impossible to argue with.
He chuckles. "I am, and you should know that by now. So sit. I got this."
I sit. He does the dishes. I watch his back and think about how easy this has become—how quickly his apartment started feeling less like his and more like ours. Not that I'd ever say so out loud. Not that I could, but still.
We spend the rest of the evening on the couch. He watches something on TV. I read. Tofu is between us, as usual. It's quiet and easy, and I'm almost dozing off when my phone buzzes.
Mom.
I blink at the screen. She hasn't texted in weeks. My last message to her was about the First Chair audition. No reply. I'd stopped expecting one.
I open it.
Mom
Hi Millie, just wanted to let you know your cousin Betty is getting married next month. The whole family is invited. I'll send you the details. It would be so nice if you came home for it.
I should have known. Not the audition. Never the audition.
Betty and I aren't even close. Never have been. She used to hide my things when we were kids, and once told me at a family dinner that it was "creepy" that I moved my mouth without sound. I was eight. I remember looking at my plate and not eating for the rest of the meal.
And now I'm invited to her wedding.
Millie
Actually, Mom, I had a fall a few weeks ago and fractured some ribs. I'm fine. Healing. But I don't think I can travel for a bit.
I reply. For the first time, I'm grateful for my injury. She doesn't need to know that by next month I'll be close to fully healed.
The response is immediate. She was typing before I even locked my phone.
Mom
WHAT? Millie, why didn't you tell me sooner?? Are you okay? Are you seeing a doctor? You should come home for a few weeks; your father and I can take care of you. This is what happens when you insist on living alone in that city. You need people around you, Millie. You need your family.
There it is. The translation underneath every message she's ever sent. This is what happens when you don't listen to us. This is what happens when you reach for things we told you were too much.
I love her. I know she worries because she loves me. But her worry has never felt like a hug. It always felt like a net.
I type back:
Millie
I'm fine, Mom. Really. I'm healing well. I have someone helping me.
Mom
Who? Adeena?
Millie
A friend.
Mom
What friend? Do I know them?
I don't answer that one. I just type:
Millie
I'm being taken care of. Promise. I'll call you soon. Send Betty my congratulations.
My phone buzzes again, but I don't read it.
I put my phone down. Tofu jumps onto my lap, and I scratch behind her good ear and stare at the ceiling.
For a second, I actually consider telling her about the pregnancy.
But then I imagine the flood that would follow.
The questions. The panic. Who's the father?
How did this happen? Are you together? She'd probably drive here the next day to ask them in person.
And I don't have the answers yet. Not the kind she'd accept.
I'll tell her. Eventually. When I figure it out myself.