And my father. I could still feel the gentle pressure of his hand on my head, a steady approval. It came often and washed my soul of the little nettles of life. I’d become disconnected from that girl, the one who was a beloved daughter with a life full of beauty, and been worn down to a rag. The discarded scraps of what was, a waste of space and humanity no longer useful to anyone. I was a body to feed even though the soul had fled.

Yet I could feel myself again—feel the warmth of my palms against that wall, the vibration of the music that tingled clear through to my fractured soul. It still existed. I still existed.

I couldn’t stop awareness from unfurling of the colorful world outside myself—and that I was a part of it still—even though I knew this would lead to dull pain and disappointment. The music would stop, and I’d be locked up again, invisible and trapped in my own head with my voice rattling about my skull, telling myself the same gonging thoughts hour after endless hour. But for now I’d drink it up, eat it for dinner, and feed my parched soul, selfishly squeezing every last drop for my own pleasure.

Delicious. Succulent. Sweet and flavorful, inviting. Leaking through the stone walls. Unsettling. Comforting, though, too. And wonderful. Gloriously so.

It would stop, though. Music didn’t belong here. Too beautiful for such a place. Yes, eventually, it would stop.

Or they would stop it. They always did.

31

Music is not a cure for broken bodies—you shouldn’t expect that—but a balm for broken souls.

~Vivienne Mourdant

Dead. Marcel . . . dead. When did those two words ever belong together? Apoplexy, Harford had said, and somehow that made it more real. Believable, at least. Marcel was not one to do things quietly. A quick, dramatic ending would be his way.

Harford’s aged hands spread the pages of a Beethoven sonata across the Broadwood’s music stand in the morning, the long, narrow point of his nose in profile beside me. “I assume you can read music as well?”

I stared flaming arrows at him, this man who had manipulated things to go his way and gotten me into life’s worst bind. All so Harford could have the right sort of pianist for his harebrained medical trials.

Grief closed over my head like the Red Sea whooshing back over the dryness after God removed his restraining hand. There truly was no plan now. My one last hope of rescue, my constant guardian, was gone. It felt as though my last parental anchor had been cut loose, and I was adrift.

My glare deepened, but it didn’t seem to penetrate his affable, easygoing nature.

“Right, of course. I’ve just never seen you play with it.”