you?â
âIâm like a whore, Darius, in that, yes, the one activity, in my case playing the piano, defines me.â Val heard weariness in his own voice. âWhen Dev was driven mad by nightmares, I played for him so he couldnât hear the battles anymore. When his little Winnie was scared witless by all the changes in her life, I played for her and taught her a few things to play for herself. When Victor was so sick, Iâd play for him, and heâd stop coughing for a little while. Itâs how I let people know they matter to me, Darius, and nowâ¦â
Darius got up and crossed the room, then lowered himself to sit beside Val in the shifting candlelight. âNow all this playing for others has left you one-handed, angry, and beating yourself up.â
Not beating himself up, precisely, but feeling beaten up. âThe piano is the way I have a soul, Dare. Itâs always there for me, always able to say the things I canât, always worth somebodyâs notice, even if they donât know they notice. It has never let me down, never ridiculed me before others, never taken a sudden notion not to know who I am or what I want. As mistresses go, the piano has been loyal, predictable, and lovely.â
âYou talk about an instrument as if itâs animate,â Darius said, hunching forward. âI know you are grieving the inability to exercise a considerable talent, but you are too oldâand far too dear a manâto be relying on an imaginary friend. You deserve more than to think of yourself as merely the slave of your muse.â
Val shot off the bed and crossed to the door, pausing only long enough to tug on his boots.
âIâm sorry.â Darius rose and might have stopped him, but Val turned his back and got his hand on the door latch first. âI donât like seeing you suffer, but were you really happy spending your entire life on the piano bench?â
âYou think Iâm happy now?â Val asked without turning.
He was down the stairs and out into the night without any sense of where he was headed or why movement might help. Darius was too damned perceptive by half, but reallyâan imaginary friend?
It was the kind of devastating observation older brothers might make of a younger sibling and then laugh about. Maybe, Val thought as his steps took him along a bridle path in the moonlit woods, this was why the artistic temperament was so unsteady. People not afflicted with the need to create could not understand what frustration of the urge felt like.
The weekend at Belmontâs loomed like an obstacle course in Valâs mind.
No finger exercises, no visiting friendly old repertoire to limber up, no reading open score to keep abreast of the symphonic literature, no letting themes and melodies wander around in his hands just to see what became of them. No glancing up and realizing heâd spent three hours on a single musical question and still gotten no closer to a satisfactory answer.
All of that, Val thought as he emerged from the darkened woods, was apparently never to be again. His hand was not getting better, though it wasnât getting worse, either. It merely hurt and looked ugly and managed only activities requiring brute strength of the arm and not much real grip.
He found himself at the foot of Ellen FitzEngleâs garden and wondered if he could have navigated his way there on purpose. Her cottage was dark, but her back yard was redolent with all manner of enticing floral scents in the dewy evening air. If her gardens were pretty to the eye by day, they were gorgeous to the nose at night. Silently, Val wandered the rows until his steps took him to the back porch, where a fat orange cat strolled down the moonlit steps to strop itself against Valâs legs.
âHeâs shameless.â Ellenâs voice floated through the shadows. âCanât abide having to catch mice and never saw a cream bowl he
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