Chapter 15 #2
I shouldn’t look. I know I shouldn’t look.
His eyes are wide. And then, before he can stop it, before anything in him gets there in time, something soft at the corner of his mouth, gone almost before it arrives, and it is the most dangerous thing in this room because I know how to protect myself from men who want to take.
I don’t know how to protect myself from a man who looks at me like that.
I look back at the chandelier.
The bow stays true.
The last long note holds.
Then it ends.
I lower the violin.
I bow. My chin drops to my chest, the bow at my side, the way Madame Petrova drilled into me at eight years old. You give them the bow. That is how you tell them it was worth it.
It was worth it.
I straighten.
Nico is out of his chair before I finish straightening.
I don’t see him decide to move. I don’t think he decides.
He is just there — four steps and his arms are around me from behind, the violin still in my hands, the bow still in my grip, and his mouth is in my hair and I stop breathing entirely.
One second. Two. The whole table watching.
His lips against the top of my head and his arms tight and he is shaking, barely, just enough that I feel it through my shoulders.
Then he lets go.
The cold where his arms were is immediate, the fabric settling back around me, and I stand with the violin in my hands while he walks to his chair and puts his hands flat on the table, and I watch him rebuild the wall from the outside and I am the only one in this room who knows it just came down.
The room explodes.
Renzo says, “Cazzo,” under his breath, loud enough for the table, and Marco laughs, loud and surprised, and Cassia makes a sound that is half laugh half sob and Dante’s hand covers hers and the whole table is noise and I am standing in the middle of it with the violin in my hands and my heart slamming against my ribs and the place on the top of my head where his mouth was is still warm.
I walk back to my chair.
I sit.
The violin goes across my lap.
“Brava,” Cassia says, still crying, not trying to hide it.
Marco is already on his feet.
“Don.” Glass up, turning to Dante, grinning. “While we are all still breathing — happy birthday. You have terrible taste in everything except the people at this table.”
Laughter around the table. Dante’s mouth moves, not quite a smile.
“Cent’anni,” Renzo says. A hundred years. He lifts his glass at Dante, then at me, one gesture. Two things at once.
“Cent’anni,” the table answers.
Glasses go up. Glasses come down. Nonna appears from the doorway and puts her hand briefly on my shoulder as she passes, one firm press, and moves to the kitchen without looking back. Maria is behind her, her eyes bright, not looking at me either, which means she is looking very hard.
Giada reaches across the table and sets her hand over mine for one second. Her eyes are wet and she doesn’t wipe them and she doesn’t say anything and she doesn’t need to.
Izzy leans into Renzo’s shoulder. He doesn’t move away.
Sofia at the edge of the room has her water glass in both hands and she is watching me and her mouth is pressed together the way it goes when she is trying to hold something in. I look at her. She lifts her chin once. I nod back.
Luca is still. His glass is down. He is watching Giada’s hand on mine, and when she pulls it back he looks away.
Then Marco says gently, “Nonna. The dessert.”
And Nonna comes back through the kitchen door with the torta on a board and the room shifts again, noise and movement and Renzo making room on the table and Dante shaking his head at the candles Marco is already trying to light, and it is a birthday dinner, loud and alive, and I am in it.
Cassia stands when the torta is down.
She’s holding the wine she hasn’t drunk.
“To Mila.”
She doesn’t explain it. The glass goes up.
The table lifts their glasses. Marco. Giada, her eyes still wet, not wiped. Renzo. Izzy. Sofia at the edge of the room raises her water glass. Nonna in the doorway.
Luca is last. He lifts his glass. He doesn’t say anything. He looks at Dante. Dante nods once.
The glasses go down.
Nonna moves and the room moves with her.
Dante doesn’t move.
He looks at me across the table. His voice is low. Certain.
“Next year,” he says, “you play it from the beginning.”
Next year.
He said it like it is already decided. Like I am already here. Like a year from now I will be at this table in this house with the violin in my hands and the dress against my ribs and Nico’s arm beside mine.
Five years of keeping every want nailed shut, and this one gets loose before I can stop it.
I want it. I want it so badly my hands go tight on the violin and I am terrified of how badly I want it because wanting things has never been safe and this table is the most dangerous want I have ever had and Dante is looking at me like the answer is already yes.
I look at him.
I nod once.
Nico’s arm is beside mine. He hasn’t reached for his glass.
His breath is even beside me and the warmth of him comes through the space between us and I let myself feel it, just for this moment, just while the room is still moving and nobody is watching and the violin is in my lap and the dress is against my ribs and I am at this table.
My chair. My place. I have not had either of those words since I was fifteen years old. I don’t say that out loud. I put my hands in my lap and feel the violin against my thigh and let it be true.
It’s late.
The dress is on the chair. The violin is propped against the wall by the door. I carried it up with me. Cassia hasn’t asked for it back.
The cream tissue paper from Marguerite is folded on the dresser beside the paperback. The two folded notes are under the paperback.
I sit on the edge of the bed.
My hands are in my lap. I turn them over, palms up, and look at them. The calluses on my left fingertips are gone, five years without strings does that, but my hands remember. They remembered tonight before I did. The bow found the string. The wrist loosened. The shoulder dropped.
I am still here.
That is what the performance told me. Not the table, not the toast, not Dante’s next year landing in my chest like a stone thrown into still water. Those are outside things. This is inside. My hands remembered. The music came back.
The person who stood in a concert hall at fourteen with her heart pounding and her bow hand steady. She is still in here, under everything that happened, under five years of silence and survival and not-playing.
She did not leave.
I didn’t know I needed to find that out tonight. I didn’t know how much I had been grieving her.
I pick up the violin from where it leans against the wall.
I hold it in my lap. The wood is warm. The new strings catch the light from the lamp.
I put my chin to the rest. I don’t play. I just hold it, the shape of it against my jaw, the weight of it in my left hand, my right hand loose at my side.
Spi. Sleep.
To the violin. To the girl I used to be.
Ya zdes’. I am here.