Chapter Nine Boise, ID Present Day #3
“Oh, for crying out loud. You saw the video?”
He didn’t seem to find anything odd in her reaction. “If you want my honest opinion, it was the shock of it that upset her the most. You don’t even have a piano in your house. How did you learn to play like that?”
Chrissie closed her eyes and sank onto the seat of a peeling green picnic table. For some strange reason, she was shaking even more now than she had during last night’s performance.
For an even stranger one, she found herself telling him the truth.
“A decade of private lessons. When I was little, I had an older brother who was amazing at the piano—a prodigy, really. He died when I was seven, so I sort of picked up where he left off.”
“Based on what I heard, I’d say you were a prodigy, too.”
Walsh’s ability to throw out a compliment like it was the easiest thing in the world always warmed her from the inside out. It was the one thing both she and Kat couldn’t seem to resist in him.
“That’s nice of you to say, but you never heard Malcolm. For the longest time, I thought that if I just practiced hard enough, threw myself into lessons and recitals and got as good as he was, it might make my parents feel like we were still a family.”
She couldn’t recall the last time she’d admitted this out loud—or even to herself—but something about this trip and the Cokeville air and Walsh’s ready sympathy compelled her to keep going.
“Unfortunately, it didn’t work. I’ve had almost no contact with my parents since Kat was born, and I haven’t had the heart to play any sort of music in the meantime.”
“That’s too bad,” he said, still with that devastating combination of ease and sincerity. “I hope you find the joy in it again someday. Take it from a man who’s seen his fair share of natural talent—it’s a shame to let it go to waste.”
As Chrissie struggled to hold back the emotions this remark elicited, Scarlett and River joined her at the table, each carrying an orange plastic tray loaded with food. Scarlett slid a particularly unappetizing basket of dried meat in front of her.
“Since you seemed so much in love with your meat sticks the other day, I got you the wild buffalo jerky,” she said. “Apparently, it’s a Wyoming delicacy. Here. You eat while I finish chatting with Kat.”
Without giving Chrissie a chance to correct her assumption, she plucked the phone from her grasp.
“Hey, love!” she called. Then, with a smile, “Oopsies. Sorry. I just assumed Chrissie was talking to Kat.” Then, smiling even bigger, “I know, right? It was even better watching them perform live. We’re actually bringing River along with us for a while.
She was in a spot of trouble, and Chrissie being Chrissie—”
Chrissie practically hissed as she tried to snatch the phone away from her friend. “Give that back.”
Scarlett was, as always, too quick for her. She made a motion for Chrissie to eat and swiveled around to continue her conversation in peace.
Or turmoil, in Chrissie’s case.
“Oh, don’t worry. I’m doing my best to ensure she has as much fun as possible. Have you ever noticed that getting her to do anything for herself is like pulling a tiger’s front teeth?”
River slid onto the bench next to her, busy unwrapping a grilled cheese sandwich that looked much more appetizing than Chrissie’s endangered animal meat. “Is your friend always like this?” she asked.
“Yes, unfortunately. Be sure to hold any private phone conversations as far away from her reach as possible.” Chrissie grimaced. “I really am sorry about this whole going-viral thing. I honestly didn’t know she was going to post that video until it was already up.”
“It’s fine,” River said through a mouthful of cheese and bread. “I never meant to stay in Boise for longer than a few months anyway.”
“And your great-aunt in Chicago… She’s a nice woman? You trust her? She’ll take good care of you?”
“I hope so.” River spoke in a doubtful way that did little to make Chrissie feel better about the girl’s situation.
She swallowed thickly and added, “Why are you being so nice to me? Scarlett’s right, you know.
I could be anyone. I might have a whole crew following behind us waiting to steal everything you have so we can run off with it in the night.
We could rob you and leave you for dead. ”
That sounded so much like something Kat would say—sarcastic, smart, chip-on-her-shoulder Kat—that Chrissie almost laughed.
“If everyone in the world only offered to help those who’d proven themselves worthy of it ahead of time, what would be the point? No one should have to earn kindness. It should come standard.”
Aware of how little she was taking her own advice, Chrissie plucked the phone from Scarlett—and right in time, too, since it sounded as though her questions were taking a drastically personal turn.
No one who asked a man about what, exactly, had caused his ex-wife to run off was doing it out of the kindness of her heart.
“In case I haven’t mentioned it enough yet, thank you for doing all this, Walsh.
” Chrissie spoke with only a trace of the embarrassment she might have felt a few minutes earlier.
“I know you keep saying it’s not a big deal—and to you, it probably isn’t—but it is to me.
I don’t have a lot of people I can count on.
Kat’s lucky to have you in her life, and so am I. ”
She could tell she’d taken him by surprise by the way he coughed and then remained silent for a full twenty seconds.
“Sorry to put you on the spot like this,” she said. “I won’t thank you again unless you manage to get Rufio to actually use that Astroturf or if you somehow pull a miracle and get Lily and Kat to sit in a room together without clawing each other’s eyes out.”
He sighed in a way that managed to combine sympathy, exhaustion, and something that made her heart squeeze.
“I don’t understand the two of them,” he said. “On paper, they should be best friends. They both love volleyball and anime, eat way more peanut butter than any human being should, and act like feelings are a four-letter word. You’d think we wouldn’t be able to keep them apart.”
“Unfortunately, that’s not how friendship works,” Chrissie said as Scarlett started making kissy faces at the phone—ones that quickly turned pornographic. “When it comes to teenage girls, I’ve always found that it’s the opposites who attract.”