43. The Pianist
The Pianist
When the sunlight comes, I am alone, and for the rest of the morning, it stays this way.
The fire has gone out, a chill settling into every corner of the room.
I don’t know where he’s disappeared off to.
I rush to my bedroom in the east wing to change and make myself presentable, though it is unnecessary, as the house is still quiet.
While I brush my teeth, I wonder if the night was all some fever dream.
I can’t stop thinking of his face—the half that I did get to see—and his lips on mine.
The Beauchenes spend the day together, supposedly, and Henri has these next few days off from practicing. And yet, I still find myself returning to the piano mid-morning.
The moment my fingers touch the keys and his song begins to fill the silent room, I know he’s here. I’ve become so attuned to the feel of his stare. I am never truly alone in this house.
This slow waltz he’s written, low resonant notes vibrating through my bones, a dance with death—we’ve been twirling around each other since the beginning, fingers brushing like cosmic dust coalescing, two stars orbiting ever closer, and eventually, we will collide.
My left hand progresses through the chords, one two three, one two three. The melody starts quiet, delicate and hidden, before it grows confrontational and cacophonous.
He listens to me play. I imagine us dancing from one side of the room to another, wondering when he will hum his approval, brush his finger against my neck, press his lips to my skin.
But when the song has its abrupt end and I turn around, he’s not there. The feeling vanishes.
Maybe I was imagining it. The disappointment still tears through me.
I’m alone.
I stand so suddenly the room spins for a second. My eyes scan every inch of the walls, as if to find where the sensation of being watched came from. I know that he can easily slip between this room and the darkness behind the walls. The entry point has to be visible. It has to.
I walk the perimeter of the room. Nothing looks different. There’s no switch, no hidden door. He never came. I truly am alone.
The stabbing pain returns right behind my eyes.
I’m alone.
Even when I played his song. Even after last night. What else could he possibly have to do today? He said he wanted to be tethered, and yet I played his song and he did not come.
My questions were too invasive last night. I asked too much of him. Pushed him too far.
I should have known. It’s always been volatile between us.
This push and pull has been too much. He woke in the middle of the night and left me there because he lost interest. Like a cat batting around a dead mouse, it’s no fun unless the prey is squealing.
That’s what he wants—he wants me afraid, he’s said I should be scared of him, and I was too easy, too willing to let him in.
He finally realized that I’m too much.
A high-pitched sound rings in my ears.
Stop.
I do this. Over and over again. I keep doing this.
Breathe, Mallary.
My lungs seize, but I force a breath to expand my ribs, filling them with more and more air until they burn. My chest aches. My heart is about to burst. My head pounds like I’ve taken a mallet to my skull. I only let the air out once stars dance across my vision.
Stop.
He must be somewhere.
My feet take me out to the hall. The quiet of the house only makes the ringing in my ears louder. It’s too quiet. There’s no music. He’s not taunting me, or whispering in my ear.
Breathe.
I force another breath in. Someone told me once to inhale and hold it, to let it out slowly. Breathe in, and out, and repeat. But my throat feels too tight. Fingers claw at my skin, my jaw, scoring red marks against my flesh.
There are hands around my throat. Squeezing.
So I strangled her.
The east wing is empty. He’s not in my room.
I can’t find him.
I watch the paneled halls pass me by, the chill of winter seeping in through every crack and crevice, until my hands are numb and there’s frost on my breath.
It could snow inside, I think. The windows are foggy with ice, and there’s the fleeting scent of something warm and sweet wafting from the staff hall.
I think about the phone screen lighting up with the name Britt and the picture of her, and I don’t think I can breathe anymore, I can’t even think, my legs wobbling underneath me.
Arms outstretched towards the front door—somehow I’m in the foyer.
The chandelier sparkles above me. A thousand little fires ready to rain down on me, shooting stars, fireflies.
The front doors are unlocked. The moment the outside air hits my skin I suck in a deep breath, almost stumbling.
The world spins. The earth is moving too quickly.
I feel flurries whipping across my skin, even when only a soft dusting falls from the clouds.
The ground shakes, threatening to force me to my knees.
I grasp the stone banister at the top of the stairs.
The drive is a white snake winding through the hills, disappearing into the dead forest surrounding the house on all sides. I know there’s a fence somewhere in that wood. Keeping us in. Keeping Baz in.
Another sharp pain shoots through my head.
Breathe.
I try. I really do.
I count to ten as I inhale.
One, two, three, one, two, three.
Panic is still weaving between my ribs, through sinew and cartilage, gripping my heart tight.
I always do this.
I squeeze my eyes shut and focus on counting through it. They’re not going to send me away, he said they wouldn’t, he said he wouldn’t let them, but maybe he is done with me, maybe in a week I’ll be back in New York and stuck with nothing again. I can’t go back, I can’t do this.
One, two, three.
My nails claw at the stone, chipping in the brittle air. Anchoring me, like I could float away, and part of me wishes I could, part of me wishes the ground would cleave in two and swallow me whole. The dead of this estate could take me as their sacrifice. Not Arnie. Not him.
Four, five.
It’s fine. I’m being overdramatic, as always. Too intense and too much, this is too much, I can’t keep doing this—
A sob wracks through my teeth.
“Breathe, Mallary.”
Another catches in my throat. “I can’t.” I’m talking to no one, speaking to the air, I’ve really lost it, I’ve finally lost my mind.
I want him to touch me. I need him to put his hands on me, I don’t care how, I just need his fingers on me, in me, gentle or rough, I don’t care—
“Breathe.”
He doesn’t touch me.
My skin is on fire. My brain pulses with every beat of my heart. I can’t move, afraid if I let go of the banister I’ll fall, and I don’t know if he’s there to catch me.
There’s an energy buzzing through me. I’m electrified. That’s why it hurts—there’s too much of this inside of me.
Too much, too much, it’s too much.
I’m tripping down the stairs without another thought. Somehow I make it to the bottom without my knees slamming into the gravel, and then I keep going, sending rocks scattering, gasping each breath, but the movement helps, gives my heart a reason to beat frantically in my chest.
“You feel like you need to run?” He’s still close. “You want to escape it all, don’t you?”
Another sob wrenches free from me.
“You want to escape me? You didn’t get very far the other day. Can you outrun me this time?”
No.
Maybe.
“I will always be there to catch you. I will be there on the other side. This is your last chance, Mallary.”
My legs begin pumping beneath me, my lungs burning for air, in and out, one, two, three.
There’s something rotten in that house.
The whole family is tainted by it. Cursed.
I don’t watch where I’m going, I don’t know if he’s following, I just know if I stop, I will collapse onto the ground, and the land, the house, will suck me in and never let go.
My legs move as quickly as they can, pushing me further, down a path paved with stones.
Thin layers of ice crunch beneath my feet.
I run through dormant trees and headstones.
I run until there is a wall looming over me, nearly the same color as the snowy ground and the weeping sky. Green veined marble, the family name above. The door is cracked open. Inside it is warmer, but not by much.
The sound of my boots slapping the ground echo in the small chamber. The stained glass throws shades of blue across the tomb.
I’m in his tomb.
I’ve done this before.
Not just with Henri. It freezes me in place, this overwhelming sense of deja vu that I’ve wandered here on my own, the past merging with this present moment.
I’m staring at his name, etched into stone—Bastien Arnaud Beauchene. Perfectly eye level, so it can’t be missed. A reminder.
A warning.
His palm slams next to mine, his warm body behind me. “Got you.”
It’s all so familiar. I blink. My body still thrums from sprinting, the panic fading into resignation. There’s no need to run any longer. “This has happened before.”
Saying it aloud, it sounds crazy. But he doesn’t question me, doesn’t tell me I’m wrong.
There’s a soft touch at my ear. “What do you remember?”
Scenes play out in my head, not from my imagination but from my memory: traipsing through the grounds in the small hours, nearly freezing to death.
My voice is my own but I don’t remember saying it, I don’t remember this.
But I know this happened. Gripping his hand tightly, refusing to ever let go, wading into the pond, trying to convince him to swim.
Letting the snow collect until it blankets my skin and I don’t know where I begin.
A whole other life in the moonlight that I don’t remember living.
“What did you do to me?” Blinking rapidly at the onslaught of memories, all of it coming back to me at once.
He’s silent.
Because what I’m remembering, what I’m imagining—
“I’ve done nothing but give in to the whims of your dreams.”
“My dreams…?” I repeat, almost not believing the words. Almost. But I remember.
A sharp, stabbing behind my eyes, like the visions before me, and the reality I’m seeing, are not supposed to coexist.