Everything You Are: A Novel Read online

  “I was eighteen. What did I know?”

  “An oath is an oath. You were of age.”

  “You tricked me. And was Braden of age when he swore his?”

  “He knew his own mind.”

  “Are you okay?” Braden’s voice startles her back into the car, out of the nonexistent conversation with someone long deceased.

  “Fine,” she says, but she hasn’t been less fine in years.

  Braden’s expression says he knows full well she’s holding back. She waits for him to push her, to call her on her shit, remind her that “fine” stands for “fucked up, insecure, neurotic, and emotional.”

  But he doesn’t. “Fair enough,” he says. “Since you’re the fearless leader of this band of adventuring angels, tell me, what do I do next?”

  “I think the answer to that question is Chinese.”

  “I . . . you . . . what, exactly?”

  “Food. Do you like Chinese food?”

  He shifts in his seat, whether to read her better or be ready to leap out the door as soon as she stops at a light, she can’t tell.

  “Yes, I like Chinese food,” he admits, as if it’s a trick question.

  Right answer. Phee has already called in an order to her favorite place. Whatever the fallout of this day, there will always be the consolation of egg rolls and crab angels.

  “Awesome,” she says. “You asked what next, and Chinese food is the answer. Part of the old ‘don’t get too hungry, too lonely, too tired, blah, blah, blah’ from the original AA. Or in today’s lingo, don’t get hangry.”

  “I am all of those things. Definitely hangry.”

  He speaks lightly, but the shaking in his hands has spread to his whole body. There’s a glazed look on his face. Jean looks like that when she’s having panic attacks.

  “Flashback?” she asks, taking a guess.

  “Not quite.”

  Silence, broken only by his breathing, rapid and shallow, Celestine’s panting, the traffic noise. And music. The same, haunting cello melody she’d heard the day of the funeral, only barely audible, a soundtrack for her thoughts.

  “It’s not a proper flashback,” Braden says, as if he’s discovering words for the first time and is not sure how to piece them together. “There are memories, and there’s this . . . nothing . . . at the middle of them. Like, a black hole at the center of me that sucks in bits of information and won’t let them out again. When I bump up against that? Yeah. Panic. Plus, I’m worried about Allie. Her friend stopped by to tell me that, basically, I’m doing a shit job as a father and that my grieving daughter is out running around with a bad boy.”

  “No wonder you want a drink,” Phee says. “I’d want a drink. If it’s any consolation, very probably the worst thing that’s happening to Allie right this minute is sex.”

  “That’s not a consolation!”

  “Better than being kidnapped by some serial killer.”

  “Am I allowed to strangle a boy who has sex with my daughter? I’m new to this father-of-a-teenager thing.”

  “I think the law frowns on it.”

  “You know I can’t get into the house as long as she’s gone.”

  “She’ll come back.”

  “Where are you taking me? Should I be worried?”

  “I already told you. Chinese.”

  To Phee’s relief, he settles back into the seat, releasing a long, shaky sigh. She can feel the tension dissipating as he retreats from the dark chasm. Her whole being, it seems, is tuned to the key of Braden Healey. She wants to touch him, his hand, his knee, his shoulder. She wants to soothe his hands, trace the line of the scar on his cheek, help his lips remember the shape of a smile. The last thing in the world she wants to do is cause him further pain.

  Bits of teaching from the AA big book flash into her head. Codependency, they’d call this. They are probably right. Her heart is definitely getting in the way of a very clear MacPhee directive.

  Chapter Fifteen

  PHEE

  “Here we are.” Phee wedges her car between an oversize SUV and a smart car.

  “This may not be a parking space,” Braden says, and Phee can’t help laughing at the expression on his face.

  “Bonus of a tiny car. If it fits, it sits.”

  She loves the flicker of mischief in his eyes, is sad when it goes out.

  “Wait here. I’ll be right back.”

  “You promised me, Ophelia.”

  Her grandfather’s voice is so clear, she catches herself scanning the restaurant for a glimpse of him, as if he’s going to be sitting in a booth eating moo goo gai pan with a pair of chopsticks.

  “Hold on to your old bones, I’m just feeding him first.”

  She pays for the food and hurries back to the car, relieved to see that Braden hasn’t fled during her absence.

  “That smells amazing,” he says when she opens the door and hands him the bags.

  “Best food in town.”

  “Are we eating in the car, then?”

  “We have choices. The Angels are meeting . . . now. We’d already be late.”

  “Or?”

  “I could surprise you.”

  “I’m not so good with surprises.”

  He shoves at Celestine’s head as he strains to get at the bags of food. “Is dog slobber of any value? Because if it is, you’re sitting on a fortune here.”

  “Tourists would probably buy it. What would the marketing slogan be?”

  “Hmm. Man’s Best Friend in a Bottle?” He laughs as he says it but then goes serious. A silence grows, awkward and unwieldy.

  Phee shifts into gear and eases out into the street. “How about Discovery Park?”

  “Lovely day for a picnic.”

  Phee stares out at the heavy sky, the rain, remembers that Braden doesn’t have a jacket.

  “Sunny days are hugely overrated,” he says. “Far too cheerful. All of that bright light in your eyes, not to mention the heat.”

  “I do have an extra coat.”

  “It’s a date.” The word hangs between them. Just an expression, Phee admonishes her accelerating heart. He doesn’t mean it like a date date.

  “You know everything about me,” he says after a silence, “and all I know about you is that you repair instruments and are possibly crazy.”

  “Is there a problem with any of that?”

  “There’s an imbalance, I feel. Are you from Seattle? Married? Kids? Did you always plan to be a luthier?”

  “Ask me something easy. Like how gravity works or the theory behind jet propulsion.”

  “Seriously. Not every girl dreams of repairing instruments when she grows up.”

  “Any conversation that begins there ends with me showing up at your door and demanding that you play the cello before your hands have even healed. Ask something else.”

  Coward.

  Blurt it all out, get it over with. It’s not like he doesn’t know.

  “About that,” Braden says, and Phee feels the car grow smaller around her under the weight of promises that won’t allow themselves to be broken. “Is that why you’ve really interrupted me from my drinking? To give me a pep talk on getting back to playing the cello?”

  “I thought we’d eat dinner first. Take a walk. See a movie.”

  “But all roads lead there in the end? You’re like Coleridge’s ancient mariner, you know that? Minus the beard and the albatross, but equally obsessed.”

  “Oh, the albatross is there, all right, you just can’t see it.”

  The fragrance wafting out of the take-out boxes, once mouthwatering, now makes her feel ill. The conversation on the horizon is about as appetizing as a bowl full of maggots.

  Braden is the one who finally breaks an increasingly uncomfortable silence. “You showed up at my door like a visitation from fate or the furies. There was even this wild red sunset behind you, storm clouds piled up over the houses across the street.”

  “I remember.”

  “You stood there in
the doorway with the sky burning behind you, cold wind flowing in, and asked, ‘Are you playing? You need to be playing.’”

  “You slammed the door in my face.” The moment is etched in Phee’s memory. The ominous red shift to the light, dry leaves scuttling in the wind, the fresh scar on Braden’s face and the despair in his eyes.

  “It was the day the bandages came off for the last time. As long as my fingers were all wrapped up, out of sight, I’d told myself my hands would be fine; all of the weird sensation was from too-tight dressings. And then the bandages were off, and the skin was all healed, and still . . . Lilian always said the music was a curse. That was the day I knew she was right.”

  His ragged breathing tears at Phee’s heart.

  “It’s not the music that’s a curse, it’s the absence thereof,” she says. “Listen, I don’t blame you for thinking I’m evil—”

  “Not evil per se—”

  “Or insane. But we have this good food and we’re here at the park. Let’s call a truce. Let’s take a walk and eat Chinese food and pretend that we’ve never met and have no history.”

  “That is probably the craziest thing you have said yet.”

  “Humor me.”

  “Is this your idea of an adventure?”

  “Oh no. I wouldn’t take a total stranger on an adventure. And if I did, there would be a scavenger hunt or a murder mystery party or some such. Nothing so boring as a picnic in the rain.”

  “No plans to throw me into the bay or kill me with pneumonia?”

  “Are you prone to pneumonia?” Phee snaps the leash on the dog and digs out the spare windbreaker she keeps under the seat in case of emergency.

  It covers most of what it’s supposed to when Braden puts it on. His wrists stick out beyond the sleeves, and it’s a little narrow in the shoulders, but otherwise it works okay.

  They set off, side by side, Phee keeping Celestine between them as a physical barrier. The parking lot, crowded in the summer, is almost deserted now. They pass an elderly couple walking a small, nondescript dog. A couple of teenagers stare at them defiantly.

  Braden returns their stare, and Phee knows he’s thinking about his daughter.

  “Talk to me,” he says, after a moment. “Something, anything. How about the Adventure Angels. Are they your brain wave?”

  “Mine. And Oscar’s. I suck at following rules. AA just depressed me. Same old people doing the same old thing for the rest of their same old lives. Like driving through Kansas, only all of the fields are dust and you’re stuck in some sort of purgatory where that’s it and all it’s going to be. That’s how it felt. I kept going back to it, because it seems to work for everybody else. And I’d always get tripped up on the making-amends step, because I couldn’t really make amends, and I’d go back to drinking. It felt like playing a video game, only I could never level up.”

  “And then?”

  “And then I met Oscar. We met in a bar, actually. Both of us already wasted. We started talking about what sobriety should look like. I blacked out and didn’t even remember most of the conversation, except that I’d scrawled things on a napkin. So I woke up the next morning, took a morning drink to get me balanced, and there was this message to myself on the kitchen table. A list: make life fun; accountability; meaning; give back somehow. And then in handwriting I didn’t recognize—adventure’s the word. Beneath that a phone number.

  “I called the number, and this guy named Oscar answered. He only vaguely remembered the bar or me, and didn’t remember the napkin or giving me his number, but when I read the list to him, he was all excited. We made a pact to try an experiment of each taking somebody on an adventure and then meeting somewhere to talk about it. And that, as they say, is how it all began.”

  “And the others?”

  “We took them on an adventure. They wanted in.”

  The food is cold by the time they reach the water’s edge, and although the rain has stopped, it’s even colder with wind coming in over the water. Braden makes no complaint, just starts setting out the food while Phee ties Celestine to a convenient log and gives him his scraps.

  She watches Braden’s hands and realizes he is watching them, too, forehead creased in concentration as if he’s driving a robotic arm with a remote control.

  “I’m messy,” he warns as he fumbles a plastic fork.

  “Celestine likes messy people.”

  They each grab a carton and dig in.

  Braden makes an appreciative sound. “Mmmmm. This is good.”

  “The best.”

  But try as she may, Phee is not enjoying herself. Celestine’s eager sniffing, the rush of wind, the sound of waves on the shore—all fail to drown out the phantom music and her granddad’s voice.

  “Nothing good can come of this, Phee.”

  “Not hungry?” Braden’s voice brings her back.

  “I was thinking about my granddad.”

  “The man responsible for the deadlock you and I are pretending not to be in right now?”

  “He died twenty years ago.”

  “Funny how grief hits you out of the blue.”

  “Or outrage,” Phee counters. She sighs and munches her last egg roll. It’s cold, grease congealed in the wrapper.

  Braden checks his phone.

  “Anything?”

  “Just another message from my informant. She’s heard nothing.” He shivers.

  As an adventure, this one has fallen flat. They round up the cartons and set off back up the trail, damp and demoralized. Even Celestine is subdued. The walk seems to take forever, and by the time they get back to the car, Phee is cold to the very marrow of her bones.

  “Thank you.” Braden offers her a twisted smile. “You definitely got my mind off things for a while.”

  “Don’t thank me,” Phee says, grimly. “This adventure isn’t over yet.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  BRADEN

  The mood between them has shifted, darkened. Phee has gone remote, withdrawn. Braden is physically weary, unaccustomed to this level of activity. A blister throbs on his left heel.

  Phee drives with a doomsday intensity. There’s no joy in her now, no laughter. Her lips are tightly pressed together, hands locked to the steering wheel. A pervasive wet-dog smell mingles with the lingering odor of fried rice and egg rolls.

  He checks his phone again for word from Allie. Nothing. Steph also has heard nothing. Celestine’s head rests on his thigh, rainwater and drool further soaking his jeans. Another glance at Phee’s grim face, and the question about where they’re headed now dies on his lips. He guesses he’ll find out when they get there.

  If this were a fairy tale, this is the part where he’d get kidnapped by a blackhearted crone disguised as a beautiful woman, dragged away into the deep, dark forest as a sacrifice to some bloodthirsty being. The dog would transform into a preternatural beast with bloody teeth and slavering jaws.

  But it’s not a fairy tale. When Phee drives down a familiar street and pulls into a tiny private parking area back behind a storefront he knows well, he sighs his resignation.

  “Back to the scene of the crime, is it?”

  Her gaze meets his, and he reads equal parts grief and determination. The intensity of the phantom music he’s been hearing kicks up a notch. He can feel the vibrations, a ghostly sensation of strings beneath his fingers.

  If Phee is crazy, then so is he.

  He doesn’t move when she gets out of the car. Neither does Celestine, whose damp, heavy head still rests on his thigh. Braden strokes the soft ears and the dog sighs contentedly.

  “Celestine, come,” Phee commands.

  Thumps of the tail, eyes looking up at her pleadingly.

  “Celestine!”

  The dog yawns and stirs, drawing away from Braden, leaving him cold and unexpectedly vulnerable.

  A déjà vu feeling matches the volume of the music and a sense of inevitability. Might as well get this over with. He gets out of the car and follows Phee through a d
oor into the back room of the shop.

  A violin lies on a workbench, naked without strings or a soundboard. There’s a lathe, a row of tools laid out neatly, the smell of wood and varnish and rosin. The air feels warm and alive. He’s been here before, when he brought the cello in for small adjustments and repairs.

  “Come on.” Phee leads the way into the showroom. “Remember the first time you came here?”

  “A lifetime ago.”

  He feels dizzy, disoriented, caught between two realities. The room is dark, shadowy, mysterious. The instruments take on nearly human shapes, and he can hear their voices, a faraway music that would have words if he knew how to listen properly.

  When Phee takes his hand, he doesn’t resist, lets her lead him through the shop to the front door and turn him around to face the display as if he’d just walked in.

  “You came in here, with your mother. My grandfather was there . . .”

  Braden drops directly into the memory.

  An old man stands behind the counter, thin and bald, a long white beard growing down over his chest. A young girl sits on a high stool behind the counter, re-hairing a bow. She looks up from her work, staring at him with curious eyes.

  He fills himself with air that smells like music, his eyes caressing a row of violins hanging on display. He’s only played a few different violins in his life, but he knows that each of them has a different soul, a different voice.

  Once his teacher put her instrument in his hands. The violin, aged and beautiful, belonged to her and didn’t want him, and it was his teacher’s music that he played, not his own.

  Maybe one of these violins could be his, would play his music if he asks, but he knows he won’t get to choose. Mama will pick one for him. It will be about price, because money is tight, and although she thinks she knows all about Braden and his music, she really doesn’t understand at all.

  She bustles over to the counter where the old man seems to see everything with his dark, watchful eyes and begins chattering to him about violins, pointing at the one on the far right.

  Braden prays, Please, let it be a violin I can love.

  And it’s then, at that moment, that it happens.

  A phrase of music vibrates through his entire body, not high and bright like a violin but deep and sonorous. His mother doesn’t notice, but the old man does, and so does the girl. Braden sees their focus shift, away from his mother and the violins, away from Braden, to the far side of the store. And then he sees the cello, and understands that even though nobody is playing and the strings are not moving, the cello is the source of the music.