Everything You Are: A Novel Read online

  “She has to know. She’s part of this.”

  “Do not drag my daughter into your delusions!”

  “What are you even talking about?” Allie demands, looking from one to the other.

  “There’s nothing to tell.”

  “Oh puh-leese. I hate being lied to, and I am not a child.”

  “Braden. You have to listen to me. I know you think I’m crazy. But you have to get the cello back. You have to do it now!”

  “Not possible.”

  “Fine, tell me what you’ve done, who you sold her to, and I’ll go get her back myself.”

  “I didn’t sell her.”

  Phee’s hand goes to her heart, her vision darkening around the edges. “Tell me you didn’t—”

  “Break her and burn her?”

  Celestine’s barking resonates through the house, followed by the doorbell. All of them ignore it.

  “I don’t know where she is,” Braden says.

  “You don’t know what you’re saying! You don’t know what you’ve done!”

  The doorbell chimes again. The barking intensifies. “Are we expecting company?” Braden levels the question at Allie, a challenge. “Because if that Ethan character dares to show his face . . .” He hears his own words and strides back toward the door, Allie at his heels.

  “Dad! It wasn’t his fault about the party. It was my idea.”

  Braden yanks the door open.

  The young man standing on the porch is a stranger; the cello case he carries is not. All three of them stand frozen, staring.

  “So sorry,” the man says. “I couldn’t find time to bring it to you before now. I know you must have been crazy with worry.”

  Before Braden can say something stupid, Phee claims the cello. “Thank you so much. You’re right. We were desperate. I don’t know what we would have done if we’d lost it.”

  “Saw the address label on the case and looked you up. Glad I grabbed it when I did; there were a couple sketchy-looking dudes eyeing it. Well, I guess I’ll be going, then.”

  “For your trouble,” Phee says, producing a wad of bills from her pocket, but he holds up his hand.

  “No, please. I play guitar. Can’t imagine how I’d feel if I left it somewhere and lost it. And a cello? Wow. Have a good night.”

  Phee closes the door and carries the case to the middle of the room. Opens it and strokes the cello soothingly. “It’s okay, beautiful. You’re home now.”

  She’s rewarded by a melancholy strain of music. A surge of protective anger wells up. “What did you do? Abandon her at a bus stop?”

  “This isn’t happening,” Allie says. “I mean, this is all so totally weird, I can’t even.”

  “What happened,” Phee says, “is that your father swore an oath that he would love and play the cello for always. Only now that he can’t play—”

  “Oh, he can play all right.” Allie’s outrage is equivalent to Phee’s.

  “Allie. Phee.” Braden sputters, caught between the two accusations.

  “Does one of you want to explain?”

  “I can’t—” Braden starts, but Allie cuts him off.

  “He says he can’t play. Just like he says he’s not drinking anymore. But he played the C Minor last night.”

  Phee just looks at Braden.

  “I was dreaming,” he protests. “I can’t explain what happened. My fingers are numb, I can’t feel the strings, the pressure on the bow, any of it.”

  “Mom said it was all in your head. She said a doctor even told you that.”

  “Doctors said all kinds of things. They aren’t the ones who are living with this!”

  “I have to tell you something,” Phee says. “Something I should have told you before.”

  “I don’t want to hear it.”

  “I do,” Allie says.

  “Does the name Alfred Garner mean anything to you?” Phee asks.

  Braden’s body jerks with the shock of the name, his eyes widen.

  “You knew him,” Phee says. “You would have played with him. You saw what happened.”

  “I . . . played with him. But what happened to him was an accident.” There is horror written plain as print on his face, though, and he adds as an afterthought, “Surely.”

  “What are you talking about?” Allie looks from Phee to her father and back again.

  “Nothing!” Braden actually shouts it this time. “Our charming and oh-so-helpful friend Phee is a lunatic. She believes that your mother’s car crashed because I stopped playing the cello—eleven fucking years ago, Phee! And if I read it right, she believes further disaster will strike if I don’t start playing again. And if I sell or give the cello away, then God will strike us down dead where we stand. Is that about right?”

  “Not God, exactly,” Phee murmurs.

  Allie’s face has gone so white that Phee takes a small step forward, tensed to catch her in case she falls. But the girl seems to be operating on a formidable reserve of willpower and defiance. “You can both go to the loony bin for all I care,” she hurls at them. “Take the cello with you.”

  She stalks out of the room, head high. Celestine whines, then follows her. A few seconds later, there is a small thunder of feet on the stairs, dog and human.

  Phee sucks in a breath and fortifies her own resolve. She needs every bit of it.

  “A week before Alfred was horribly burned—except for his hands and arms, so miraculously spared—he sold his violin to a very sweet old man. You know what Alfred said? He said he was tired of the violin, he was bored and wanted variety. He’d bought some new thing with an electric pickup. Sold her for less than she was worth.”

  “It’s not like he traded in his wife and children.”

  “That’s what I said. I was nineteen and stupid and felt trapped by an oath I swore to my grandfather—oh yes, Braden, I’m every bit as bound as you are! I’d been doing a half-assed job of monitoring the MacPhee instruments. I only heard about the transaction from a friend of a friend. And I did nothing! I didn’t go talk to Alfred. Never tried to warn him. Never tracked down the old man and told him what he’d gotten caught up in. His name was Evan George. He had five grandchildren and three shelter dogs. He helped out at soup kitchens three days a week.” She feels the familiar thickness in her throat, grief and guilt and responsibility, waits for it to settle before she goes on speaking.

  “Oh dear God.” Braden’s voice is softer now, a conflicted sympathy on his face. “You can’t think what happened to Alfred was your fault! The gas exploded on his stove. He was drunk.”

  “And somehow, miraculously, his hands are fine.”

  “He was wearing oven mitts. For the love of God, Phee. This can’t be because of a curse! We are not living in the Middle Ages. Curses don’t exist, not real curses.”

  “I said that, too,” Phee goes on. “Recited it to myself like a mantra all day long. Denial is an interesting thing.”

  “It’s not denial!” Braden interjects. “It’s logic. Reality.”

  “The day after Alfred’s injury, that sweet old Evan George dropped dead from a heart attack. They found him with the violin still in his hands.”

  “Coincidence.” But Braden’s voice sounds increasingly desperate. “You said he was old. He could have had a heart attack at any time.”

  “Could have,” Phee agrees. “But that’s a lot of coincidence, don’t you think? He was healthy. Active. His death made Alfred a believer. I took the violin to him as soon as he was able to have visitors. He didn’t argue. He’s still playing it.”

  “But that’s horrible,” Braden says. “Coercion. He’s not allowed to play anything else? Like, ever?”

  “Of course he can. He can play whatever he wants, as long as he plays the violin occasionally . . . Oh hell,” she says. “I agree. It is horrible. Do you think I like this, walking into your house like some cursed old witch? I have to, don’t you see? Because what if it is all true? I can’t take that chance. You have to play her, Braden. And fo
r the love of all things holy, please promise me you won’t try to give her away to some innocent bystander again.”

  Braden sinks down onto the sofa and buries his head in his hands. A harsh laugh emerges from between his fingers. “And yet, I can’t play. What do you want me to do?”

  Phee kneels in front of him, draws his hands away from his face and holds them in hers. His head comes up and he looks into her eyes, so close she can see the mosaic of green and brown in his irises.

  “Did you really play the C Minor?”

  “Allie says I did.”

  “Do you believe her?”

  “I want to believe we were both dreaming.”

  “But?”

  “The cello was tuned to scordatura. So somebody tuned it for the C Minor. It could have been Allie—the music is out on the stand—but she swears she didn’t touch it.”

  “What if you could play again?” she asks him, holding him with her eyes and her hands. “If you played last night, then maybe—”

  “I was dreaming. Somehow—I don’t know—it’s like, people can do things under hypnosis that they couldn’t normally do, right? The subconscious taking over. So it must have been like that.”

  “So maybe a hypnotherapist, then—”

  Braden wrenches his hands away from her. “Let me show you. I have sensation here.” He runs fingers across the backs of both hands.

  “And here, from the crease of the wrist to where the thumb joins my palm. The rest feels like—you know that thing where you sleep on your hand and when you wake up it feels like it’s not yours? Dead and heavy and useless. Sometimes—on a good day, I get pins and needles. I did months of occupational therapy to learn to do basic things like hold a mug, zip and unzip my fucking pants so I didn’t have to live in sweats. Every action requires that I watch what my hands are doing, navigate like I’m operating a remote control. And you think that somehow, magically, I’m going to be able to play!”

  “You played the C Minor. With your eyes closed.”

  “Oh my God. You are incorrigible!”

  “So I’ve been told. What happened? The night of the . . . accident.” Her eyes search his, begging him to answer.

  “I don’t remember.”

  She can hear his breathing, rapid and shallow. The room is cool, but there’s a sheen of sweat on his forehead.

  Phee goes to the kitchen and brings him a glass of water.

  “Drink.”

  He doesn’t answer, staring off into the corner.

  “Braden.” She touches his face. He startles, recoiling from her touch, his eyes wild.

  “Are you all right?”

  He licks his lips. Swallows. “Flashback,” he croaks. “Just a small one. Night. Snow. Cold. That’s it. All I ever get.”

  He takes the water and drains the glass. When he’s done, his face is a better color. His breathing has eased.

  “Do you really think I haven’t tried, Phee? Music was everything! Without it, I’m nothing. Have nothing.”

  A rhythmic thudding draws Phee’s gaze. Celestine sits at the edge of the room, his tail thumping on the floor. Allie stands beside him, looking heartbreakingly young in a pair of fuzzy pajamas.

  Braden stretches a hand out toward her. “I didn’t mean that how it sounded, Allie. You know that. That’s why I—”

  “Spare me,” Allie says.

  Celestine starts to follow, but Allie stops him. “Stay here.” The dog whines but obeys, fixing Braden with a look of pure reproach.

  He groans. “Take the cello, Phee. Take it back.”

  “You know I can’t do that.”

  “Even for Allie?”

  “Because of Allie. Can’t you see how much she needs the music, too?” She should tell him about the note Allie left on her mother’s grave, but reading it herself was already such a huge breach of Allie’s privacy that she can’t bring herself to do it. Somehow she’ll just have to make him see.

  The silence that falls between them is difficult and heavy. “I should go,” she says. She allows her hand to settle on Braden’s head and rest there. She doesn’t stroke his hair, as she wants to do. Doesn’t run her fingers through the loose curls.

  “If I call an emergency meeting of the Angels, will you come?”

  She’s not sure if the look he gives her is a promise or an acknowledgment of her words. “Somebody will pick you up,” she says, not taking chances. “I don’t suppose you’re going to want it to be me, so I’ll send one of the others.”

  “Not somebody else. You.” He gives her a half smile. “We’re in this together, apparently. Whatever this is.”

  “Tomorrow, then. Three thirty. Don’t make me hunt you down.”

  “That,” he says, “is a terrifying thought. Good night, Phee.”

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  BRADEN

  Braden, left alone with the cello, feels a pervasive sense of dread creeping up on him, as if he’s wandered into a horror movie and is about to be devoured alive by a seemingly inanimate object. Maybe the cello will strangle him, or bludgeon him to death. Allie will find him in the morning, bloody and lifeless, wrapped in strings and wood fragments.

  Get a grip, he mutters to himself. Phee is a crazy woman. There’s no such thing as a curse.

  The problem is, he’s known crazy people. He shared lodgings with a schizophrenic for a while, and is familiar with the lapses of attention, latencies of responses, the emotional flatness. Phee is not like that at all. Her clear and cogent presentation of what she believes will befall him and Allie has unsettled him deeply. He has his own experiences to consider, his sense that the cello didn’t want to be given away. The music that will not stop playing in his head.

  The cello’s presence fills the room, a jarring counterpoint to Lilian, who is also very much present here. Probably he’s the one who is crazy, because he can hear Lil’s voice: “Would you take that thing back to the music room, Bray? Bad enough the way it devours your life, I don’t need a reminder in the middle of the living room.”

  Most couples fight over finances, religion, and kids. That’s what the marriage counselor said the day they went in for a consult. Affairs are a symptom, not the cause, and there are all different kinds of affairs.

  “Infidelity doesn’t have to involve sex,” he said, tenting his fingers together, elbows resting on a massive wooden desk that clearly separated him from the couple facing him. “If an individual is more invested in a relationship with another person than they are with their spouse, that’s an affair. In this case—”

  “It’s the cello,” Lilian finished for him. “This is how I feel. This is how it is. Even when he’s with me, his heart is with her.”

  “Lil,” Braden protested. “I love you with all my heart. I don’t understand—”

  “Yesterday, when you hugged me, your fingers were moving on my back, like you were practicing chord progressions.”

  “Lil—”

  “You never come to bed at the same time I do. Every night, I fall asleep to the sound of you playing.”

  She began to weep. The counselor fixed him with a professional gaze that still managed to say, You’re an asshole, Braden Healey. Now look what you’ve done.

  So he tried to do better. Lilian switched to working nights and slept during the day. He took over responsibility for the kids, for the housework and the meals and the grocery shopping. Evenings were his only time to practice, and they always seemed too short, but still he tried to cut back.

  For a few months, he made a point of stopping his practice at precisely eight p.m., spending the two hours before Lilian left for work discussing the kids, listening to her stories about patients she’d cared for at the hospital. All the while, the cello called him, and he often played music in his head, careful to keep his hands still so Lil wouldn’t see.

  But then the recording contract came in, an opportunity for Braden to perform the Bach suites live at a Bach festival in Germany. This was a career marker, and he was both heady with the
opportunity and terrified by the prospect of failure. He’d recorded the suites on CD, but playing live required a new level of mastery. He began practicing longer and longer hours.

  And Lilian, at last, gave him an ultimatum.

  “Choose me, or the cello.”

  And now he has neither, and he can’t imagine how the words Allie heard him say have made her feel.

  His feet as heavy as his heart, he makes his way up the stairs, past Trey’s room, to stand in front of Allie’s closed door.

  He knocks softly, calling her name. “Allie?”

  “Go away.”

  “Allie, please. Can I come in? I just want to talk to you.”

  “So talk.”

  He leans his forehead against the door, draws a steadying breath. “What you heard me say, downstairs. It’s true, but not the whole truth. You . . . and Trey . . . I loved you both so much. It’s not that I loved the music more. What I meant is that music was a part of me in a way that I can’t ever explain. Without it, I’m just . . . empty, I guess.”

  Silence from her fortress. He’s making a mess of this, as he makes a mess of everything. He can’t seem to say it any more clearly.

  “Do you hear me, little bird? I love you. I’ve always loved you.”

  “Please just go away.”

  For a long moment, he stands there, then with a sigh he makes his way back downstairs, where the cello still waits for him.

  “I don’t know what you want from me,” he says out loud.

  He remembers Alfred, and the shocking scars on his face. The stiff way he walked. His hands the only part of him unscathed, smooth and supple and able to coax music from his violin like always.

  “Oh hell,” he says, thinking of Allie upstairs in her room, of Trey and Lilian in their graves. If there’s any truth to this curse business, even the tiniest little bit, he can’t risk something happening to Allie.

  “Come on, then,” he says to the cello. He picks her up and carries her into the music room. Settles her against his knee, positions his hands over the strings, visually checking that they are in the right position. Bracing himself for what he knows will follow, he picks up the bow and draws it across the strings.

  He played better than this when he was a child.