“You’re lucky to be alive,” Tanner murmured.

“I couldn’t think about that. He was hurting her. I thought I’d killed him. I wanted to kill him. But then Maria was there, holding and rocking me and telling me that he wasn’t dead and everything would be okay. That it wasn’t my fault, and she’d find a way to fix it. All I could do was cry and clutch her as hard as I could. But even then, I couldn’t see how she’d ever be able to fix what had happened in that room. But Maria promised she’d do it, and then call me later to tell me how. My part was to leave the house right then and run back to Maxim and let him take me to that competition. I was to stop crying and not let him see that anything was wrong.” Her lips twisted. “And I was to play as I’d never played before, and let the music take me to another place. Because that was the only thing she’d ever wanted for me, the only thing I could give her.”

He shook his head. “And you won that competition when you must have been falling apart inside.”

“I couldn’t do anything else. It was the only thing I could give her. She gave me everything. Life, sacrifice, love, music. You don’t realize what she went through all those years.”

“I believe I’m beginning to. But unless I’m guessing wrong, I think that you probably ended up an equal contributor. How did she keep Volkov from killing you?”