He sprang up and caught her, the gentle weight of her suddenly in his arms. Her lovely face was so close, breath coming hard from her dance.

“I’m not mad, you know.” She gripped his arms, surprising strength closing around his biceps. “You must believe me. Please. I’ll die if I stay locked—”

Bonnnng! The sound from the clock shuddered through the tower, shaking the moment loose. Bonnng. He set her on her feet and stepped back, heart racing. Vivienne Mourdant stood frozen, feet apart and eyes wide as the clock bonged a third, then a fourth time. Bonnnng. After the fifth he bolted, down the staircase and through the corridors. At the door of his basement chamber, he fumbled with the lock, dropping the key three times before managing to get the door open just as the eleventh bong died out in the night air.

He burst into his flat and strode to the basin, pumping the handle up and down with his entire upper body until cold water sputtered out the end. Cupping his hands, he doused his face with the coolness and splattered it across his shirt. He shoved his hair back, then leaned on the sink, breathing hard.

“I’m not mad. Please believe me. Please, Mitch. I’ll die if I must stay. Don’t let me die here.”

He leaned over the sink, water dripping off his hair, and shook. It was a curse, wasn’t it? Regret. A curse that never went away. If only, if only, if only. And now he was starting over, the echo of what was reverberating through his skull.

This time, he’d do things differently. Starting with believing her—and with not growing attached.

25

Patience and tranquility of mind contribute more to cure our distempers as the whole art of medicine.

~Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

“Psst.”

I nearly dropped the heavy basket of wet linens as I glanced around the yard outside the laundry. Dr. Turner stood in the shadow of the great building, his presence increasing the tempo of my internal rhythm. I hitched the basket higher and walked to him. After days of silence from the man, I’d begun to wonder if I’d imagined the entire performance with Anna and the talk in the clock tower, dreamed it up as I had the tendency to do.

Perhaps it was because of my parents’ story—I’d felt Dr. Turner’s gaze on my back as I’d played, and fancied it being similar to the way Father had watched a young woman play and forgotten she was his student, and he her much older pianoforte tutor. Had my father looked at my mother in that same shocked manner of enchantment when he’d first heard her play? Blinked in surprise as if a cloak of invisibility had been lifted from her shoulders and he saw her for the first time?