Chapter 10 A Rehearsed Routine #2
"The food is always excellent, as you know." Theodora's grin widened. "This is different. Better, actually. Consider it payback for the dinners."
Catherine's eyebrow rose.
"Fine. Not payback. A gift, then. A thank you." Theodora pulled her hands from behind her back to reveal a cassette tape in a clear plastic case, the label written in Theodora's signature handwriting. "I made you a mixtape."
Catherine stared at the object in Theodora’s hands.
An artifact from decades past, the kind of thing that took real effort in a way streaming playlists never did.
Every song chosen, put in a deliberate order, timed to fit, and recorded all the way through without mistakes. The gesture felt enormous.
"You made me a mixtape?" Catherine repeated, unable to keep the surprise from her voice.
“I did.” Theodora held it out, then immediately looked unsure.
“I know it’s kind of ridiculous in the era of streaming, but there was this guy at the market last weekend who had all the equipment set up, proper decks and everything, and he was making mixtapes for people.
I asked if I could try.” She gave a small shrug.
“He let me use his setup. I bought the tape and…made this.” She hesitated. “If it’s weird, you don’t have to—”
"It's not weird." Catherine took the tape, holding it like the precious thing it was. She read the label:
For Catherine, from Theodora x
The simplicity of it made her smile. "Thank you."
Theodora's relief was visible, tension dropping from her shoulders. "I put some classical on there, obviously, but also some other stuff I thought you might like."
Catherine turned the tape over in her hands. She’d grown up with cassettes, recording her own practice sessions on them, back when everything felt a little more tangible, before it all went digital and, somehow, less personal. She hadn't expected the nostalgia that came with holding one again.
“Give me a second,” she said, and went down the hall before Theodora could respond.
She knew it was in the closet somewhere. The boombox from her conservatory days, the one she'd never quite been able to throw out despite it being completely obsolete for the better part of two decades.
After a bit of shifting boxes and pushing past coats, she found it.
Standing on a chair, she reached up to the top shelf where it had been shoved out of sight.
It was heavier than she remembered as she lifted it down, blowing the dust from the top before turning it over in her hands.
The power cord was still wrapped neatly around the base, and when she pressed the eject button, the tape door opened without resistance, which felt like a small, unexpected victory.
She came back to find Theodora at the bookshelf, pretending to browse in a way that didn't really hide the fact that she'd been wondering where Catherine had gone. When she turned and saw what Catherine was holding, her mouth fell open.
"You have a boombox."
"I have a boombox." Catherine set it on the coffee table with more care than the old plastic probably deserved, and plugged it in. The power light glowed red. She felt quietly relieved about that.
"I genuinely thought I'd be giving you the tape as a symbolic gesture and then we'd listen on my phone like normal people."
“Where’s the romance in that?” The words slipped out before Catherine could catch them, and she busied herself with the tape instead, not quite looking at Theodora.
The cassette slid into place with a satisfying click, and her finger hovered over the play button.
She looked at Theodora, who'd moved closer, "Ready?"
"Are you kidding? I'm dying to see if this actually works." Theodora's excitement was contagious in ways Catherine rarely allowed herself to feel.
The tape started with a few seconds of silence, and then music filled her apartment. Tinny compared to her sound system, lacking the depth and clarity of modern speakers, but somehow more alive for its imperfection.
The first thing that came through the speaker was Glenn Gould playing The Goldberg Variations, and something shifted in Catherine's chest, quiet and unbidden.
Of course it was Bach. Of course it was Gould.
Of all the recordings she could have chosen, she went with the one that leaned into the humanity of it rather than the precision, the breathing and the humming audible underneath the notes.
Catherine wasn't sure Theodora even knew that was what she'd chosen, or what it said about her.
She sat down on the couch, and Theodora settled beside her, close enough that Catherine was aware of the warmth of her. Neither of them spoke. The music didn't need anything from them, and they both seemed to understand that.
The tape moved through its pieces at its own pace.
Arvo P?rt. Nils Frahm. Then Satie, and some Debussy that she hadn't heard in years and had forgotten she missed.
Theodora had put real thought into the order of it, the way one piece led into the next, the mood it built and sustained.
It wasn't a random collection. It was something closer to a letter.
But then the ninth track started, and Catherine went very still.
Chopin. Ballade No. 1. She knew it before the first phrase had finished, knew not just the piece but this exact recording, because it was hers.
Made a week before the Royal Albert Hall.
It was the last thing she'd recorded. Theodora must have found it online somewhere and pulled it without knowing what she was pulling.
The memory came back all at once.
She'd walked into the studio exhausted that day, the kind of tired that had long since stopped feeling worth mentioning, and Simon had pressed a large energy drink into her hand before she'd even taken her coat off.
Mango flavored, sickeningly sweet. He'd said they couldn't afford to slow down, not this close to the Hall, and she'd nodded and opened the can and sat down and played.
And now it was playing in her living room while Theodora sat beside her completely unaware, and Catherine could taste the artificial mango on the back of her tongue as clearly as if the can were still in her hand.
She could feel Theodora watching her, probably waiting for a comment on this particular track, but Catherine couldn't speak, couldn't trust her voice not to shake. So she just listened to herself playing, and kept every ounce of it locked behind walls she hoped Theodora couldn't see through.
“That was beautiful,” Theodora said when it finished. “I’m sorry if it’s weird to put a recording of you on there, but I heard it and I just…” She trailed off, shaking her head a little. “The way you play that piece…It’s fucking incredible, honestly.”
Catherine swallowed. “Thank you. The whole tape is lovely.”
Theodora glanced toward the boombox. “Your track’s on the B-side, by the way,” she added, almost like it had just occurred to her. “I didn’t plan it that way. It just ended up there. I think that’s where the best stuff is, though. The things people don’t lead with.”
Catherine didn't respond. She let it sit there, the way you let something sit when you don't yet trust yourself to touch it.
They settled back against the cushions as the next track started, listening to the rest of it, each piece chosen by someone who had been paying closer attention than Catherine had realized. It was wonderful and terrifying in equal measure.
When the tape had run through once, and Catherine had flipped it back to the beginning, they drifted into the kitchen the way they did now, easy and without discussion, Catherine pulling things from the fridge while Theodora cleared space on the counter without being asked.
The boombox carried through from the living room at just the right volume, present without being intrusive.
Catherine was glad Theodora had picked stir-fry tonight.
Noodles, vegetables, and teriyaki sauce were about all she could manage.
She didn't have the concentration for anything more.
Not with Theodora in her kitchen and that tape still playing and the Chopin sitting somewhere in her chest where she hadn't quite managed to put it down yet.
"What can I do?" Theodora asked, rolling up her sleeves with enthusiasm that would have been endearing if Catherine hadn't learned to be wary of Theodora's kitchen skills. Very wary.
Catherine assessed the ingredients arranged on her counter, "The vegetables need cutting. Bell pepper, carrots, mushrooms. Quarter-inch pieces and uniform." She pulled out her chef's knife and handed it to Theodora handle-first. "Think you can manage that?"
Theodora accepted the knife with confidence, but Catherine suspected it was misplaced. "How hard can it be?"
"Famous last words, Dr. Brennan," Catherine observed, but she moved to the stove to start heating olive oil, trusting, foolishly, that Theodora could handle basic prep work without supervision.
She was wrong. She was so very wrong.
Catherine heard it before she saw it, the irregular thwack of knife against cutting board, rhythm all flawed, force distributed incorrectly.
She glanced over her shoulder to find Theodora hunched over the pepper like she was trying to physically intimidate it into submission, the knife gripped too tightly in her fist, her other hand positioned exactly where it shouldn't be if she wanted to keep all her fingers.
"Theodora." Catherine turned fully, abandoning the stove. "What are you doing?"
"Cutting vegetables?" Theodora looked up, confused by Catherine's tone. "Like you asked?"
"That's not cutting. That's hacking." Catherine moved closer, assessing the damage.
The pepper had been reduced to uneven chunks ranging from appropriate size to nearly whole pieces, and Theodora was currently murdering a carrot with similar enthusiasm.
"Have you ever actually used a chef's knife before? "