Chapter Seven Boise, ID Present Day #2
Instead of the pang of sympathy this confession should have elicited, Chrissie found herself sinking into a red-hot quagmire of emotion.
At first, she wasn’t sure of the exact cause.
Because that bartender had definitely broken the law by dating River?
Because the girl should have been out celebrating her birthday instead of waiting tables?
Or because Chrissie understood the significance of that number—of what it meant to be thrust into sudden adulthood without any kind of safety net in place?
By the time she finished asking herself the questions, she’d reached her answer.
It was the last one for sure. Chrissie remembered all too well that feeling of being unmoored—of being eighteen and on her own, of knowing that the entire weight of her future rested on her shoulders and her shoulders alone.
In a word, it sucked.
“Happy birthday,” she said as she lifted her hand from the girl’s arm. River stared at her for a long, curious moment before nodding and slipping back into the kitchen.
A silence fell over the table as Chrissie tried to process what had just happened, but Scarlett broke it with a sigh so marked it practically had a pulse.
“Okay, fine,” she said. “You win. Get it out.”
“Get what out?”
Scarlett gestured at Chrissie’s purse. “The piece of paper from the motel. Go ahead and write it down—the thing you’re going to do. The thing you can’t help but do.”
Chrissie was tempted to pretend she didn’t understand what Scarlett meant, but the sharp edges of her anger were still there, poking and prodding her into action.
Most of the time, she was able to dull those edges with errands and to-do lists, the busy nothings that kept her day-to-day life on track, but Scarlett was right. She was already formulating a plan.
The folded piece of paper was in the front pocket of her purse where she’d left it. Underneath the first line, now reading I like to sit and read without interruption, she added another.
I want to help that girl out of her troubles, only you’re being mean. Sorry, Scarlett, but if you love me, you’ll let me. I have to do something. Don’t be extra about it.
Scarlett took the pen from her and frowned over the words. After a few cross-outs, she handed the paper back.
I want to help that girl out of her troubles, only you’re being mean. Sorry, Scarlett, but if you love me, you’ll let me. I have to do something. Don’t be extra about it.
Chrissie read the changes aloud. “Help only if I do something extra.” She frowned over the words. “What do you mean? What kind of extra? You think I should call the police and have them arrest that man for statutory rape?”
Scarlett released a soft laugh. “No, Chrissie. I mean that if you want to help that girl out, you need to do something for yourself first. Something extra. Something daring. Something you promised yourself you’d never do again.”
All of a sudden, the bar felt half its size. The piano, which had seemed fun and glamorous when they’d first walked in, grew to monumental proportions.
“Why are you doing this?” Chrissie asked as a sharp prick of anxiety started to tingle at the back of her throat. “With the haircut and the list and all this Walsh stuff, I mean? You haven’t been this emotionally invested in my life in a long time. Something’s up.”
Scarlett sat back in her seat and took a sip of her water, her head tilted as she studied Chrissie in the dim lights of the bar. “I just think it’s time, that’s all. You’re always so busy taking care of everyone else that you forget to consider your own needs.”
The anxiety, which had been growing steadily with each word Scarlett said, transformed into a lump.
“So I’m proposing a deal,” Scarlett continued, oblivious to how close Chrissie was to getting up and leaving the bar altogether. “You’re welcome to help that girl or any other random passerby we meet, and I’ll give you my full support while you do it, but only if you do something selfish first.”
Chrissie couldn’t pretend to misunderstand her. “Sitting down and playing that piano isn’t selfish.”
“You sure about that? You’ve been trying not to stare at it since the moment we walked in here. I’m guessing your fingers are itching to give those ivories a tickle.”
“They’re really not.”
She glanced down at her hands and flexed them again, but this time, the reaction was a conscious one—conscious and annoyed.
Did Scarlett honestly think that this was the first time Chrissie had been in the same room as a piano since before Kat was born? Or that she hadn’t toyed with—and discarded—the notion of taking up the instrument again on her own terms?
“You feel it, don’t you?” Scarlett asked gently. “You hear it?”
Once again, Chrissie’s anger was coming back full force. And once again, she found herself welcoming its warm glow.
“I haven’t touched a piano in over a decade for a reason,” she snapped. “And you know very well what that reason is. The last time I played was at your grandmother’s—”
But here she cut herself off.
“My grandmother’s funeral,” Scarlett finished for her.
She spoke in the flat, even tone of a woman who didn’t dare step off the path for fear of being unable to get back on it again.
“Grandma would’ve hated to think she had something to do with you quitting.
You should play her song. Or not. Tonight is supposed to be for you, so dealer’s choice. ”
Chrissie knew she was being emotionally manipulated.
It was one of the many things Scarlett excelled at—pulling strings to get people on her side, using charm and sentiment when reason had no chance of success.
At her most persuasive, Scarlett Sanderson could make driving a car off a cliff sound like a completely rational way to spend an afternoon, like taking afternoon tea with the queen or crashing a piano bar with all of six patrons inside.
And if she couldn’t, she’d just keep talking and rationalizing until you gave in anyway.
“You don’t think they’ll kick me out if I sit down and start blasting out show tunes?” Chrissie asked without bothering to hide her sarcasm.
“If they do, I’ll take a page from your book and tell that bartender I’m having him arrested for statutory rape.
” Scarlett crossed her arms over her newly buxom chest, confident now that she’d once again gotten her way.
“Besides, you heard for yourself that their piano player is out sick. They’ll probably jump at the chance to get free labor.
Especially since you look every inch the part with that hair.
People will think they’ve traveled back in time to a 1940s jazz club.
Either that or a Looney Tunes episode. It all depends on whether or not you can sell it. ”
Chrissie pushed back her chair and got to her feet, her shoulders as set as they were resigned. She’d never admit it to Scarlett, but that hint of a challenge was more persuasive than all the other emotional acrobatics she was attempting.
In this mood—with this anger—she felt capable of anything.
Chrissie would have liked to say that the first touch of her fingers on the keys was like coming home again—that all the corrosion of disuse sloughed away, the notes coming back to her in a flash of insight from somewhere deep inside.
In reality, she fumbled at least a dozen times, her opening of “Over the Rainbow” so disoriented that the song was unrecognizable until she reached the chorus.
But as she finished, a scattering of applause sounded and no one came forward to escort her off the premises, so that was something.
“Play us another!” a voice shouted—one that didn’t belong to Scarlett. It was impossible to see anything under the bright overhead lights, so Chrissie closed her eyes and touched her fingers to the keys once again.
All of a sudden, she was transported back in time to one of the hazy memories she’d spent a lifetime trying to suppress.
In it, Malcolm was dead, that much she knew for sure.
In the before times, when Malcolm’s wan face and labored breathing set the tone for her every waking hour, she’d almost never touched their family piano.
Those long white keys had belonged to her brother’s even longer, whiter fingers.
A prodigy, she remembered hearing him called.
A natural talent seen only once in a lifetime.
Chrissie could only take those people at their word.
For as long as she’d been alive—the parts of it she could remember, anyway—Malcolm had been kept in a separate wing of the enormous house they’d called home.
Away from the germs, away from the noise, away from the younger sister who woke up most mornings curled up at the foot of his bed like a stray cat.
The instrument had sat on a platform much like this one, dusted every day by the housekeeper hired to ensure Malcolm had a fighting chance against the cancer that seemed to return twice as much as it went.
Chrissie had only tried to plunk at the keys once before the fallboard had been shut against her as firmly as Malcolm’s bedroom door.
Your brother needs peace and quiet, Christina. We don’t ask much of you, but that much isn’t negotiable. Peace. And. Quiet.
She’d understood them perfectly. Her HLA markers didn’t match her brother’s, so she couldn’t give him her bone marrow. All she had to offer in its place was her silence.