1. Geo #2
Harrison sits at the piano, his back to the door.
He’s still wearing the shirt I ironed this morning, the one with the French cuffs, the one he said he needed for a meeting, though he’s rolled the sleeves to his elbows now and his hair is disheveled the way it gets when he’s been running his hands through it.
His posture is relaxed, loose, happy in a way I haven’t seen in months.
Across from him, perched on the leather couch that cost more than my first car, is Vivian Nguyen.
My stepsister. My mother’s husband’s daughter from his first marriage.
The girl who used to braid my hair at family reunions and stay up too late with me watching terrible movies.
We’d drifted in the way adult siblings do, busy lives, different cities, but she still texted me memes sometimes, still commented heart emojis on Val’s photos.
I haven’t seen her in person in almost two years.
She looks up first. Her face breaks into a wide, genuine smile, and she’s on her feet in an instant, crossing the room with her arms already open.
“Geo!”
She sounds delighted, actually delighted, like my appearance is the best thing that’s happened to her all day. “Oh my God, hi! Get over here.”
The hug is warm, familiar, smelling like the same vanilla perfume Vivian has worn since she was nineteen. I return it automatically, my free arm wrapping around her while Val sleeps against my shoulder, and I try to reconcile the joy on her face with the cold weight settling in my stomach.
“Look at you,” Vivian says, pulling back to study me with eyes that are bright and uncomplicated. “Still gorgeous. And is that Val? She’s gotten so big. Last time I saw her she was a toddler with a diaper and an attitude.”
Despite everything, I almost laugh. “She’s five now.”
“Five?”
Vivian shakes her head in disbelief. “God, time is a scam. I’ve been the worst about visiting. You know how it is, gigs, sessions, trying to make rent.”
She waves a hand vaguely, encompassing the chaos of a musician’s life. “But I’m in town for a few weeks and I thought I’d stop by and say hi, and then Harrison and I started messing around on some stuff, and the clock did what clocks do.”
She gestures at the scattered sheet music, the two wine glasses on the side table, the evidence of hours spent in creative communion while I was sitting in an auditorium watching our daughter’s heart break.
“Time got away from us. You know how it goes when the music’s flowing.”
I do know. I used to know, back when I was a singer myself, back before Val, back before I gave it all up to become primarily a mother and secondarily everything else. Time disappears when you’re deep in the work, hours feel like minutes, the rest of the world fades to static.
I also know that there’s a difference between losing track of time and choosing not to keep track of it.
Harrison stands and looks guilty, but only in the mild, inconvenienced way of someone caught being embarrassing rather than caught being wrong.
“Geo. Hey. We lost track of time.”
“I can see that.”
“Vivian stopped by to say hi and we started messing around and the whole night got away from us.”
He gestures at the piano like it’s a co-conspirator. “It’s that old one. The one I could never finish. She’s got a crazy ear. Always has.”
“He’s been sitting on this bridge for years,” Vivian says, and there’s pride in her voice, the satisfied glow of someone who’s solved a puzzle everyone else gave up on. “I fixed it in about forty minutes, which I’ll be bringing up at every holiday for the rest of our lives.”
I know which song it is. The one he started the night he proposed, when he couldn’t sleep and sat up writing until dawn while I dozed in his bed, wrapped in his sheets, thinking I was the luckiest woman in the world.
He’s been stuck on that bridge forever. And Vivian fixed it in forty minutes.
“You still owe me for the Fourth of July thing too,” Vivian adds, her voice light and teasing. “I’m keeping a list. I’m reading it at Dad and Linda’s anniversary party.”
It’s an easy exchange. Familial. Two people who’ve logged enough holiday dinners to have a bit. There’s nothing suspicious about it. There’s no reason for my stomach to feel like I’ve swallowed stones.
So why does the cold settle in my chest and refuse to leave?
“Harrison.”
I keep my voice quiet, because Val is still asleep against my shoulder, because I’ve learned that the quieter I speak the more he has to lean in to hear me. “Val’s recital was tonight.”
The laughter dies. Harrison’s face cycles through surprise, guilt, and a flicker of irritation before it settles into a smile that doesn’t reach his eyes.
“Shit. That was tonight?”
“I texted you. I called you. Your seat was empty.”
“My phone was, I had it on silent because we were working and…” He stands, runs his hand through his hair again, and I hate that I know this gesture so well, hate that I can chart the exact trajectory of his guilt by the number of times his fingers rake through his curls.
“Shit. I’ll make it up to her. Tomorrow.
We’ll do something special, just the two of us. ”
Val stirs against my shoulder, makes a soft sound. I feel the warm exhale of her breath against my neck, and everything in me goes very still.
“She cried backstage,” I say quietly. “She looked for you in the audience and you weren’t there, and she cried, and when I asked her what was wrong she said, ‘Daddy forgot me.’”
Harrison’s face changes. Real shame, the kind that makes his jaw tighten and his eyes slide away from mine. But it passes too quickly, replaced by a defensive edge that I’ve learned to recognize as the warning sign of a fight he doesn’t want to have.
“I didn’t forget. I lost track of time. There’s a difference.”
“Is there?”
The silence stretches between us, thick enough to lean on. Vivian looks from Harrison to me and back again, her earlier warmth fading into obvious discomfort. She’s not stupid. She can feel the tension in the room, can see the way we’re standing on opposite sides of an invisible line.
“I should probably head out,” she says, already gathering her bag from beside the couch. “Geo, it was so good to see you. We should grab coffee this week, just us. Catch up properly.”
She squeezes my arm as she passes, and her touch is warm and familiar and somehow makes everything worse. “I mean it. Text me.”
“I will.”
Vivian hugs me again, waves at Harrison, and slips out the door. Her footsteps fade down the stairs, and then there’s just the sound of the house settling around us and the soft, steady rhythm of Val’s breathing against my shoulder.
“I should go put her to bed,” I say finally.
I turn to leave. Behind me, I hear Harrison say, “I’ll be right there.”
But I’m halfway down the stairs when I hear him sit back down at the piano. When I hear him start to play again, alone now but still chasing whatever magic he and Vivian had been building together.
The music follows me all the way to Val’s room, a ghost I can’t escape.
Val wakes just enough to change into pajamas, her body loose and cooperative the way it only gets when she’s truly exhausted. I help her into the bathroom, hold her steady while she mumbles through teeth brushing, carry her to bed when her legs refuse to support her weight.
“Did Daddy come home?” she asks as I pull the covers up to her chin.
“He’s home, sweetheart. He’s just busy with work.”
“Can he come say goodnight?”
I think about going back to the studio, about interrupting whatever Harrison is working on, about asking him to take five minutes, just five minutes, to kiss his daughter goodnight.
And I picture the way he looked when he was playing with Vivian, alive in a way he hasn’t looked in months, and I know with a terrible certainty that if I interrupt him now, he’ll come, but he’ll resent it.
He’ll go through the motions with his mind still on the music, and Val will feel it, because children always feel it.
“He’ll come check on you later, baby. I promise.”
“Okay, Mommy.”
Her eyes are already closing, her hand curled around the stuffed rabbit she’s had since she was born. “I love you.”
“I love you too, sweetheart. So much.”
I kiss her forehead and turn on the nightlight shaped like a crescent moon. I leave the door cracked exactly two inches, the way Val likes it, enough that she can see the hallway light if she wakes up scared.
From the studio above, I hear music start again. Harrison’s voice, warm and confident, working through a phrase that could be beautiful. I stand in the dark hallway and listen to my husband make music without me, and Val’s voice echoes in my head like a verdict I can’t appeal.
Daddy forgot me.
I go to bed alone.
I don’t sleep.