Entanglements

by Rachel McMillan

  Entanglements

  Rachel McMillan

  Copyright © 2019 by Rachel McMillan

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Cover image ©2019 by Roseanna White Designs & Pepper D Basham

  Cover art photos ©iStockphoto.com and Pixabay used by permission.

  Published in Canada by Rachel McMillan

  Created with Vellum

  Contents

  Dedication

  Part I

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Part II

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Part III

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Author’s Note

  Also by Rachel McMillan

  To Betsy, Pepper and Ashley: Thanks for your friendship, your inspiration and this fun bookish adventure together

  I

  Back-Rank: the player sets up his pieces

  1

  Boston, 1920

  Once upon a time, Father Francisco told Nic Ricci that to find math in music he merely had to look to Mozart. There was something safe and precise in Mozart. Something calculated even as the composer’s Classical sensibilities withdrew from the rigid lines of the Baroque period before him. Nic liked a straight line. He liked strategy and problems with certain equations. Lately, his life had all been uneven colors: like those flourished by Spanish artist Picasso whose irregular shapes he had seen when sneaking into the Museum of Fine Arts with his friend Paul. Paul cared little about art-irregular or not- and mostly wanted to impress a girl, but Nic loved the exhibit. He squinted so the rich blues and reds of the vibrant painter blurred in wonderful confusion.

  The colors of Nic’s life had muted the year before when news of the devastation at Purity Distilling Factory screeched over the North End in a tidal wave. Nic, overwhelmed with panic for his father, one of the workers at the Molasses Factory, pushed through a throng of reporters and medics until bodily restrained by a policeman. A large tank burst and the sticky substance ran through the streets in a murky river.

  There was no mathematic calculation for a disaster that killed many and injured over one hundred souls. No way to make sure equation of the stretchers and sobs. No resolution to the death and the stench.

  Finally, through frantic search and a few close calls, he found his dad. Milo Ricci seemed too angry at Nic being in the midst of the devastation and smoke to notice the extent of his own injuries. Later, they learned Milo’s left hand would be amputated due to severe burns and he would never regain complete sight in his right eye.

  “Nic,” his dad muttered through a voice scratched by smoke and terror. “You must not be here. You could be hurt.”

  Nic hugged his dad tightly and administered every motion of care he could in attempt to make him more comfortable. His father had already sunk so deeply when Nic’s mother passed and Nic was determined to keep his spirits alive and occupied. So, during Milo’s convalescence and beyond, they played chess. They read. They finished crossword puzzles. Nic perfected reasonable skills in the kitchen and swore he would never leave his dad. He quit school and taught math in Charter Street with a position found by Father Francisco. He even tuned pianos on the side. Didn’t everyone say Nic had a perfectly musical ear? Perfect pitch, even. Somehow they would make it work.

  “But you must leave me someday, Nic.” His father would say, patting his hand over the chessboard. “And find your own path and your own happiness.” It was something he repeated time and again in the year or so since the factory disaster. Something Nic had no intention of obeying.

  Now, he was used to distracted boys at a school in Charter Street and spending his free hours with piano keys, sneaking in spare moments to compose at the tuneless upright in their flat. Father Francisco, happy that Nic would step in as organist at a moment’s notice or perform a last minute tuning before the Feasts of St. Lucy or St. Anthony was happy to loan the parish piano to further Nic’s study. Nic was content. Not completely happy, perhaps, but in its near vicinity. His dad was alive. That was all that mattered.

  Then fate, as disruptive as rainbowed confetti bursting over Hanover Street in the procession and promenade of a sacred feast, spilled uneven color on Nic Ricci’s life.

  One evening, gas flickering low and with a rhythm that matched the meted measure of Nic’s forming composition, his father burst into the sitting room. His face was a study in consternation.

  Nic stalled, turned, and spoke in his father’s first language: “Want to finish the game we started last night?”

  “English, boy.” His father chided.

  “I speak perfect English. Let me speak to you in your language when I am in the borders of our home.”

  “Can I speak to you?”

  “Of course.” Nic rose from the piano. “Tea?” He crossed to the kitchen and put the kettle on the hob. He took a loaf of bread from the cupboard and wiped the knife with a towel. His late mother always told him serious conversations never reached a resolution on an empty stomach. Nic rummaged in the ice box for lemon jam and arranged a small repast on a small wooden tray before rejoining his father in the sitting room.

  “And you cannot use the excuse of you wanting to learn,” Nic continued when his father twice more corrected him for speaking in Italian, “Because in the past year or so, your English has improved immensely.”

  His father’s English had improved with his health. With the daytime hours not spent overseeing production at the factory, he was able to spend time actually learning the language of his long adopted home.

  Though his father and mother had both emigrated from Italy, Nic was born and raised in Boston to parents who ensured while he bore the physical characteristics of his heritage, his English was perfect. He could speak Italian fluently but rarely did at home. Then there was his one-syllabled name. Easy for the Americans to pronounce, his parents decided.

  Just Nic.

  Nic spread lemon jam over bread, careful to avoid the intense study of his father’s eyes.

  “I want you to go to graduate school.” His father swallowed a measure of tea. “Compose. Pursue every dream you ever had. The dreams you would still have if …”

  “Dad, I am happy. Just as we are. I told you. I don’t need to go to graduate school. Father Francisco…”

  His father waved his hand dismissively. “Father Francisco has been more than generous, but you were meant for something more and I am imprisoning you here.”

  Nic was torn. On the one hand, his father was speaking English with a competency he hadn’t before the accident. On the other, Nic wondered if his secret: his suffocation at the perfunctory, routine walls of the neighbourhood—was so obvious his father had noticed.

  “You are not imprisoning me. Do you know how many men like I lost their family that horrible day last year? Dad, I am glad you are alive. I need you. I am only doing what any son would. Besides, I get to play piano! That is what I have always wanted.”

  Dad shook his head. “No, my boy. It is not. You aimed for the moon and now you are sunk somewhere in the stars…”

  “The stars
are beautiful. Stella. Sono Molta Belli.”

  “English, Nic!”

  Nic set his half-eaten slice of bread on a plate and gripped his father’s good hand. “I will never leave you. Are people expected to just be happy? I am finding a way to blend the music I love with the money that puts food on our table. It is a blessing. As long as I have a way to find a piano, to spend time playing and composing, I am happy to teach those young vagrants their fractions.”

  “Father Francisco called round while you were out today.” His father said after a long sip of tea.

  “Oh? Does he need someone for Sunday, then?”

  “A Mrs. Mayweather from Charles Street in Beacon Hill needs her piano tuned.”

  Nic gave a low whistle at the address. “She’s a little high end for my usual clients, Dad.”

  “She said that calling would be worth your while. Perhaps money. It could help you save for graduate school.”

  Nic sipped tea, found the first prick of star out the window pane where it settled saucy and high above the uneven rims of North End rooftops. “Worth my while? I am sure there are far better tuners in Beacon Hill.”

  “Father Francisco assured her you were up for the task.”

  “I suppose I am.”

  “You are, Nic.” His father searched Nic’s face fondly. “You need to go out more. You’re so busy teaching and tuning. I want you to meet a nice girl.”

  Nic choked a laugh. This was a new one. “A nice girl, huh? Where am I going to find a girl who can string Mozart and chess into the same sentence?” Nic took a beat. “Speaking of, shall we resume our game?”

  Esther Hunnisett had the voice of an angel. Unfortunately, if she were to ever use that voice to state her opinion of her fiancé, Thomas Weatherton, it would speak in a tone far from the celestial realm.

  It was too easy to dwell on his limitations.

  For one, he was a terrible chess player. Esther’s only means of honing her skills on the board were found in tips and strategies at the back of the Saturday Herald. Also, Thomas failed to realize the Bach and Gonoud version of Ave Maria was superior to the Schubert. Not that Esther had anything against Schubert. She loved the Austrian composer captured in numerous paintings with a well-tied cravat and those little glasses on his Patrician nose, the cleft in his chin. (Ironically, Thomas had the same cleft but knew as much about music as he did about modern hair styles for men so what purpose did it serve). Schubert’s An De Musik was one of her favorite pieces to sing. Her voice swelled around its German phrases achingly scribed to speak to music’s soft power. Music, Esther long thought, was the best juxtaposition of all that was intelligent and enjoyable.

  Then (and perhaps most offensively), there was Thomas’ passion for dusty old musical historian Ralph Von Witterhorn. Thomas had read one long esoteric tome speaking to the dullest musical opinions pen ever put to paper and miraculously thought he had a doctoral degree in everything from composition to performance. Several times Esther informed him that music stretched beyond Von Witterhorn’s penchant for Baroque operas no one had heard of. Thomas Weatherton never seemed to hear her.

  “Pawn.” Thomas’s voice cut through her reverie.

  “Yes?” Esther answered as if present during a roll call. “Erm. I mean… pardon?”

  “I found this on the floor.” Thomas presented her with a piece from her father’s marble chess set. He pressed it into her hand but not before lifting her palm to his lips. “I promise we will resume our games.”

  “Lovely. I am looking forward to it.”

  His eyes sparkled at her. “I know that this is hard for you, Esther. I know you think I only desire your hand in marriage for a fortuitous business opportunity.” He paused and waited for affirmation.

  “How could I possibly think that?” A question, her mother taught her, can defer a direct lie. “After you have given me the opportunity of my own recital.”

  “Exactly, my dear.” He patted her hand as he might a lame kitten.

  She imagined Thomas fancied her as much as she did him. But, their arrangement secured her father’s social position and a merger between two business ventures. The entanglement between the Weathertons and the Hunnisetts began with Esther’s deceased mother who stood to inherit a grand fortune. This prospect would secure the bowing of every shipping magnate in Boston Harbour to the Hunnisett empire. The death of her mother meant the death of their fortune. But, the Weathertons enjoyed her father’s acumen and recognized the power of the Hunnisett’s steady name. Her father exchanged Esther’s hand for investments in his shipping empire and the estate. The heir to the grand fortune, Thomas, would gain a suitable bride and Paul Hunnisett’s investors would back the growing Weatherton empire.

  Thomas was all too pleased to oblige. After all, one of the chapters in his dustily boring book spoke to the singular musical effect of a woman who could charm and beguile prospective investors. Esther could make Thomas look more charming than he actually was at upstate soirees. (To be fair, so could a rabid squirrel).

  Esther loved music, naturally, but not at the expense of a buffoon of a fiancé. Yet she had no choice but to entwine her destiny with his. She had one living parent, a dwindling dowry and the prospect of safety in a grand estate.

  Her father and Thomas were allowing her one last dream before she was packed off under a blanket of stuffy nuptials in just over a month’s time. To show off to his Bostonian friends, Thomas insisted she perform a recital selection of her favorite pieces. Esther’s imagination peeled back the russet curtain and her nose smelled the tang of snuffed footlights.

  “But I’ll need an accompanist.” Esther said, stripping the buoyant excitement from her voice, accepting the second rate smattering of stars as she prepared to bid farewell to her dream of being a concert performer forever.

  “I know, my dear.” Thomas said. “Your father and I are inviting half of the city as well as a few colleagues from Newhaven and Montreal. We will find you the finest accompanist.”

  “And a rehearsal pianist and space, Thomas.” Her mind whirled with preparations. “I can go to the store at the Berklee Conservatory for my sheet music. But, I will need a qualified pianist.”

  “Qualified.” Thomas rose from the settee where his closeness stiffened her shoulders and collar and tickled her nostrils with liberal cologne. He poured several lengths of brandy and studied her “I bet there are different levels of qualified.”

  “I suppose.”

  “And it is just a rehearsal.”

  “Yes, but…”

  “I think that Mrs. Mayweather—she does all of those charitable bazaars with that church in the North End. Her husband helped me find my Cadillac, you know. She might be able to find me someone at a fraction of the price.”

  Esther clamped her mouth shut. When he wasn’t going on about Von Witterhorn, Thomas was reeling about the amount of money he had. Everyone who stood within a mile of him was privy to his investments and sums. He just, apparently, did not have the money to lavish on a pianist for her.

  “I want to perform well, Thomas.”

  “You will, my darling.” Thomas tilted her chin up to him at an awkward angle and smothered her lips with his mouth. She tried to lick the brandy taste away as he disengaged, wondering why the sensations she read of in her favorite novels were more akin to a wet fish flopping on shore at the meeting of her fiance’s lips with her own.

  “Thank you.”

  “We will find a situation perfect suitable.”

  “Perfect.”

  Perfect. It would be the last perfect moment of her life before she tucked her dreams of love and music, kisses and chess into a hope chest and settled for a third-rate fairytale.

  2

  “I hope you don’t smudge my piano.” Mrs. Mayweather surveyed Nic as he draped halfway over the sleek grand model.

  “Vibrations.” Nic explained, ear lowered to the frame, hearing peaked for the slightest reverberation of the strings. “This is a beautiful piano.” Nic backe
d up and grabbed a satchel containing a large pianomaker’s brace, tuning fork, hammer and a pair of pliers. He first set a soft square of silk over the bench before arranging his tools out as gingerly as a surgeon preparing an operation.

  Nic set to quick work affixing one end of the brace to a treble pin. He was careful to crank slowly so that the hum was little more than a whisper or thought. Mrs. Mayweather was impressed.

  “You are quite gentle with the instrument. Quite professional.” She inched over to inspect his work. Nic kept his long fingers agile as he strummed and tightened, stopping only to flick his index finger over the middle C key.

  “It is a beautiful piano.” Nic repeated. There was something about exposing a piano’s secrets: lifting the frame and seeing the anatomy inside in all of its carefully wired craftsmanship that moved him. How could something that looked so mechanically precise with strings and pins emote such a surprising sound?

  Nic flexed a finger over the same key then spanned his fingers into a casual chord. He stood up. Mrs. Mayweather was closer than he assumed given his intense study of the piano so he excused himself and deftly worked around her, tweaking a treble string until it hummed to perfect pitch.

  Mrs. Mayweather inspected a tuning fork, perplexed at the long German-sounding name inscribed on its left prong. “Quite the name.”

  “It’s memorable. And it’s a good tool.” He put the device to work and listened for the slight reverberation on a high pitch. Tightened. Tweaked. Maneuvered. Moments later, he was back on the bench, tools carefully aligned on the silk square, hands over the keyboard.