“Don’t take it away.”
He smiles. “Good. Then can you look at your piano now? Can you play something?”
I circle around the piano like the first time I saw it. I try to will myself to sit down and play something, but I’m still fighting to stay composed. I know Noah can see it. He’s blurry from the layer of tears permanently formed over my eyes. This piano is a piece of her. Of me. A piece of us. What we were before the drug, anyway. It’s a version of us that was lost.
“I miss her,” I say.
“I know.”
“I was so sure I could save her.”
“You did, Rainn. You saved her so many times, in so many ways.”
“It wasn’t enough.”
“I don’t think it’s about ‘enough.’ You did everything you could, but you can’t do it for her.”
“You told me that so many times, but I wouldn’t believe you. I couldn’t.”
“Don’t beat yourself up about it, Rainn. It took me a long time to get there. I wanted to show you the shortcut, but we all have to walk the path ourselves.” Noah’s voice is quiet, like he’s thinking about all this for the first time.
“Do you think she’ll ever get clean?”
He shakes his head. “I don’t know.”
I run my hand over the strings of the piano as my mind fills with her voice explaining suicidal angels to Shelby. “There’s a darkness inside that will never go away. They touch our lives and then they’re gone.” Was she always only meant to be a visitor in my life?
“I wish we hadn’t left off so horribly.”
“She knows you love her,” Noah says. “She’s just in it too deep to love you back the way you deserve.”
“I know.”
I sit down on the piano bench and hold my hands over the keys, afraid to touch them. I remember her watching me play, the way her stormy eyes went so deep into me I lost my breath. I remember her coming up behind me, interrupting my song to wrap her arms around me, her breath in my hair. I remember her telling me not to look so rigid while I played so she could paint a natural portrait. I remember her lying beneath the piano just listening, her painting to my music in the other room.
I remember Michael’s bow crying over violin strings. The way his violin exploded when he swung it like a baseball bat at Mom’s dreams. Circles around a bag of spray paint. Screaming in the woods, drumming on rocks. Jumping chain-link and risking everything for art. This is where it’s all come.
Maybe they can still hear me. Maybe even through space and time and loss they can still feel our connection as clearly as I can. Maybe now that I’ve come back to myself, I can be the guardian of the beautiful pieces of them that were lost at sea instead of an echo chamber for their pain. I call up that frozen place in time before things were broken. I reach out for it with the notes of my soul. I take a deep breath and begin Michael’s song.
About the Author
Nicole is a lifelong storyteller who loves exploring the hidden corners of the human experience. She lives in Denver, Colorado, where she is a collector of jobs and hobbies that inspire her writing. She has worked as a 911 operator, police dispatcher, and martial arts instructor. Most recently, she and her wife started a music video production company and love working together as producer and director.
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Shadows of a Dream Page 23