No Less Days

by Amanda G. Stevens

  “Let’s ask him.” Tiana seemed to read his thoughts. “If he is leaving, we should tell him goodbye. I might never meet him again.”

  “Unlikely,” David said as he pulled into the parking lot.

  “What do you mean?”

  “As long as we belong together, and as long as I belong with them … your crossing paths in the future would seem inevitable.”

  She smiled. “I would love that.”

  “I’ll try texting him again.”

  “I’d love that too.”

  He thumbed out ARE YOU STILL IN TOWN? and hit SEND. “Now, are you ready for the destination reveal?”

  She looked out the window. “A music store?”

  “Follow me.”

  The store was what he’d expected, having viewed pictures of the interior online. Mostly stringed instruments, only a small selection of wind. Three other customers in the store right now, two guys browsing the guitars and a girl strumming ukuleles and chatting with a sales assistant. At the back—there they were. Black-and-white keys that would soon belong to him.

  “Okay, help me out here,” Tiana said as she, too, stared at the pianos.

  “I’m here to make a purchase.” Her mouth opened in an O.

  He strode to the back, and Tiana followed him. She grabbed on to his arm, staring up at him while matching his stride.

  “For your house?”

  He chuckled. “No room for it at the store.”

  “Oh, David. A piano.”

  He motioned her to a baby grand. “Would you like to try it out?”

  Tiana looked around the store, eyes landing on each customer, each sales assistant. “I guess that’s what they’re out here for, isn’t it? For serious shoppers.”

  “And so we are.”

  She spun toward him, rose on tiptoes, kissed his mouth, and turned back to the piano before he could react. She sat and hesitated not a moment before pounding both hands onto the keys in a block C chord, not too loud for the environment but not unnoticeable either. And of all the things she began to play …

  “Television theme songs?” he said when she launched into the third one of her impromptu medley.

  “Nothing more fun,” she said without missing a note. “But I can try something else.”

  “Whatever you like.”

  One of the sales reps on the other side of the store kept pausing his stock work to angle a look in their direction. If no one approached them soon, David would go to one of them. For now he watched Tiana play the original Star Trek theme with a flair he’d never considered the melody to have. When she threw a trill into a measure in the most absurd place possible, he laughed and sat beside her.

  “We owe ourselves a duet.”

  “What do we both know?” she said, glancing at the customers. She seemed to relax when she saw they were ignoring her.

  David brought his lips close to her ear. “If it was written in the last hundred years, I’ve probably heard it.”

  “Hmm,” she said, with mischief that sent his pulse into overdrive.

  If she turned her head an inch, their lips would meet. In public. He straightened on the bench and settled his hands on the lower octaves, while Tiana moved hers an octave higher.

  “Well,” she said, “one of my favorite pop songs is ‘I Will Always Love You,’ the Whitney version. I taught it to myself.”

  “Go on. I’ll add the flourishes.”

  “You really think this will work? I don’t want to crash and burn in the middle of a music store.”

  “Trust me,” he said.

  Tiana touched the keys with a care her TV tunes hadn’t called for. He kept his hands still for the first verse, soaking up the song the way she heard it, the way she recreated it. The tenderness in each ritardando, the longing in each crescendo. When she finished the song, she looked up at him.

  “You didn’t play.”

  “There was nothing to add.” And oh, he wanted to kiss her.

  A smile blossomed. “Thanks. But we should play something together.”

  “Go ahead, choose another.”

  “Do you know ‘Beauty and the Beast’?”

  He laughed.

  “You told me to choose,” she said with perfect deadpan.

  “Oh, go on then, the right hand starts.”

  They stumbled a few times and laughed at each other, but Tiana had a solid sense of timing, and by the final chorus, they were both secure in what the other would play next. David let the sweetness of the melody flow from his fingers until the last few measures, which were Tiana’s to play.

  As the final notes faded and she lifted her foot from the pedal, the store associate who’d been eyeing them approached at last.

  “Nice. Anything I can help you with?”

  “I’d like to purchase this piano,” David said.

  The young man’s eyebrows shot up into his shaggy brown hair. “Really?”

  “It’s not spoken for, is it?”

  “Oh, no, it’s just most people who come in and play a piano for a few minutes walk back out.”

  As he followed the kid to make his purchase, David’s phone vibrated. Zac, returning his text.

  NEARBY. TRAVERSE CITY.

  David’s mouth tugged. He thumbed in a response as he walked behind the kid. FINE COINCIDENCE. TIANA AND I ARE AT TRADEWINDS MUSIC CENTER.

  He’d signed the paperwork and his payment was processing when Zac’s next text came through.

  WHAT YOU DOING THERE?

  BUYING A PIANO.

  HA.

  NO JOKE.

  THIS I HAVE TO SEE.

  COME ON OVER.

  Purchase complete, delivery date set, they could have left, but the store didn’t close for another forty minutes, and given they “sounded good,” the associate gave them hearty permission to keep playing.

  “Now you,” Tiana said after they attempted “Time after Time” with markedly worse results than their last duet. She stood up from the bench and grinned. “Play me something old.”

  “You asked for it.”

  He played “As Time Goes By.” He let the chorus lilt then found himself embellishing in a jazzier style than the original. When he swiveled to sit outward on the bench, Tiana was staring at him.

  “David,” she said quietly.

  “Yes?”

  “I had no idea.”

  A warm pleasure filled his chest at the admiration on her face, but he couldn’t have her thinking he was some virtuoso, regardless of what Karen Scott had said. “Keep in mind how many years I’ve had to hone the skill, and it’s a mite less impressive.”

  “No, it isn’t. You can be taught to hit the right keys. You can’t be taught musicianship.”

  Indeed, a musician he was. He’d denied it for too long, told himself owning an instrument would be a waste with only the turtle to hear his music. Let himself retreat from the piano as he retreated from people.

  At the front of the store, the door opened. Zac.

  He was unchanged on the surface—smirk, jaunty stride, mussed hair in the twentysomething-white-guy celebrity style. No one who knew him from a distance would see any difference. But shadows lurked under his eyes, and Tiana’s quick frown at David must mean she noticed them too.

  Zac stared down at David seated at the piano. “No kidding.”

  “I play.”

  “Let’s hope so, since you’re buying the thing.”

  “Bought. And paid for. Being delivered this weekend.”

  Zac gave a slow nod. “Okay then. Hi, Tiana.”

  “Hi, Zac.” Her smile was open, kind. “How’ve you been?”

  “Oh, you know.” He shrugged. “So what’re you still doing here, if you bought it?”

  “Playing it,” Tiana said.

  “Okay, so play me something.”

  “Like what?”

  “Something old.”

  Tiana’s same request, but Zac wouldn’t mean 1940s old.

  “Nothing specific in mind?” David said. />
  Zac leaned one hip into the piano’s broad curving side and ran his thumb along the propped cover. “Play ‘Shenandoah.’”

  Without waiting for Tiana to sit beside him, David fingered the opening bars. As he played, Zac bowed his head, bracing one elbow and forearm along the top of the piano. He nodded, more to himself than to them, and as David repeated the verse, Zac began to sing.

  “O Shenandoah, I love your daughter. Away, you rolling river. I’ll take her ‘cross yon rolling water. Ah-ha, I’m bound away, ‘cross the wide Missouri.”

  His voice was low tenor. Quiet, aimed at the floor, yet held a controlled power. As he sang the last line, he nearly choked up. David let the note linger. When it faded, Zac looked up.

  “You sang the lyrics a little different.” Tiana’s voice was hushed in the wake of the song’s melancholy.

  “There aren’t any official lyrics,” Zac said. “It’s one of those folk songs that kept changing.” He looked at David. “Now play ‘Hard Times.’”

  “Ah,” David said. “Remember the hardtack version?”

  Zac smirked. “Sure, but that’s not the one I want to sing.”

  “No one wants to sing that version ever again.”

  “Fact.”

  “It’s more of a fiddler’s tune, I think.”

  “Your skill will make do.” Zac took a step back from the piano, spine straight again, and a light had returned to his eyes that had been missing when he walked in. “Come on, and then they’ll probably kick us out. Store’s closing in seven minutes.”

  “Thanks. I’d have annoyed them.”

  “I would have stepped in if needed.” Tiana smiled.

  The rest of the customers had long since left, and the employees were beginning the closing process. David called to the kid who had sold him the piano.

  “Any objections to a final number?”

  “Nah, you guys sound good,” the kid called back.

  “I can’t believe how long we’ve been here,” Tiana said.

  “It’s a music store. I’m sure they get this all the time.” Zac shrugged.

  Perhaps they did. David closed his eyes a moment, hummed the tune, and began to play. It was a block-chord kind of song, and Zac’s voice gained a richness as he allowed himself more volume.

  “Let us pause in life’s pleasures and count its many tears, while we all sup sorrow with the poor. There’s a song that will linger forever in our ears, oh! Hard times come again no more.” He seemed to choke again at the rest between the verse and chorus, but David continued to play, and Zac didn’t miss a word or a note. “’Tis the song, the sigh of the weary: hard times, hard times, come again no more. Many days you have lingered around my cabin door, oh! Hard times, come again no more.”

  When the last note faded, David stood and nodded to the two employees closing up.

  “I’ve never heard that song before,” Tiana said as she, David, and Zac left the store.

  “Stephen Foster,” Zac said.

  “As in ‘Camptown Races’?”

  “Hey, not bad.” He grinned at her. “Same guy.”

  “I wouldn’t have guessed they were the same composer at all. And by the way, Zac, did you have dinner?”

  He followed them toward the Jeep. “Ah, no, actually. You guys?”

  “We had a piano to buy first, and then we just kept on playing.” Tiana grinned. “And now I’m starving. Join us?”

  “I could do that.”

  They left Zac’s car and drove less than a block to a bar and grill that was mostly empty. They ordered every available appetizer—chicken wings, fried mac ‘n’ cheese, stuffed potato skins, fried mushrooms, pot stickers.

  “This is the most heart-stopping meal I’ve ever eaten,” Tiana said as she dipped a breaded mushroom into the ranch sauce.

  “Don’t make a habit of it,” Zac said. “David wants to keep you around.”

  Tiana laughed, and maybe someday mortality would be a topic David could jest about too. Not yet, though.

  “How does that work?” She snagged a chicken wing from David’s plate, although the basket still held several. “Your blood organisms magically break down cholesterol forever?”

  Zac shrugged. “We don’t know.”

  “Really?”

  “And that’s not the only example. We call it the serum, I guess because potion sounds more like a witch’s brew.” A smirk crossed his face as he stabbed a pot sticker with his fork. “But how it works is often a mystery.”

  They had moved on to sharing a giant brownie sundae when Tiana said, “I think you guys know there’s an elephant in the room.”

  David turned to look at her. She was staring at her spoon. “I suppose there is.”

  She looked at David a moment then at Zac, who set down his spoon and held her gaze. “I know one of you died this week. The one who left that man dead behind Appleseed. And you had to be the ones … to do it.”

  Zac swallowed, muscles straining in his jaw.

  “That has to be … horrible.”

  Zac’s nod was stiff.

  “And Moira would be here right now if she were still in town.”

  “She’ll come back,” he said, but the words were hoarse, faint amid the drone of the restaurant.

  Tiana looked from him to David as if realizing for the first time she might have somehow broken a code of conduct. “I just wanted to say, Zac … I’m sorry. For what you’ve had to go through this week.”

  “Thanks,” Zac said.

  “I’m sorry if I shouldn’t have mentioned it.”

  “No. Really, Tiana. Thank you.”

  She took another bite of sundae. “I guess we should change the subject now.”

  At first no one did. Then Zac picked his spoon back up and dug into the hard corner of the brownie. “Hey, Tiana.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Chicken or fish?”

  Ice cream dripped from her spoon as she hesitated with it halfway to her mouth. “Um, what?”

  He rolled his eyes. “You’ve never played This or That?”

  “Oh!” She hurried to put the spoon into her mouth then licked it. “Chicken. Um … country or rap?”

  “Eighties country or earlier, nineties rap and no later,” Zac said. “So I guess my choice is country, since it has more than one decade of quality. David, dog or cat?”

  An easy one. “Neither.”

  “That answer doesn’t count,” Tiana said.

  “I don’t want to own a dog or a cat.”

  “Turtle wasn’t one of the options. Especially when you haven’t named her.”

  David smiled. “Who says I haven’t named her?”

  “You, the last time I asked.” Tiana nudged his spoon out of the way to capture the last bite with fudge sauce. “Did you change your mind?”

  As he sat in their booth eating far less than a third of dessert, it came to him, as if his pet had always had this name and he’d never bothered before to ask her what it was. “I simply hadn’t found it yet.”

  “Wait, and now you have?”

  “Oh, the suspense,” Zac said.

  “I’m going to call her Adagio.”

  Tiana giggled, a sound David had never heard before. “That. Is. Awesome.”

  “That is unoriginal.” The smirk was back. “Everyone names turtles ‘Slowpoke,’ you just found a more pretentious word.”

  “Shut up, Zac. I adore it.”

  “Well, if the girlfriend adores it, then …”

  She reached over the table and shoved his shoulder. “Shut up, Zac Wilson.”

  “Stop waylaying my quest for personal information.” He fake rubbed the shoulder. “So far all I’ve learned is that Tiana likes chicken and David sucks at this game.”

  They played a ruleless, laughter-filled version until nothing but a melted vanilla puddle remained on the plate in front of them.

  Half an hour later, they’d returned to the music store for Zac’s car. They got out of the Jeep and walked with Zac to the renta
l. He jingled the keys in his left hand as he stood beside the car.

  “Well, I’ll see you,” Zac said. “Though I don’t know when.”

  Would there be a longevite Thanksgiving with only four of them—or three, if Moira was still keeping away? The family was fractured. As Colm predicted.

  “When are you flying back?” Tiana said.

  “I have a ticket for tomorrow afternoon, boarding at two.”

  “Do you think you’ll ever come back here?”

  Zac raked his fingers through his hair. “I think so.”

  “Whenever, wherever, I hope I get to see you again.”

  “So do I.” He smiled, but it lasted only a moment. “David, thank you for everything.”

  David held out his hand, and Zac shook it. “I’m glad you came to Harbor Vale.”

  “Are you?” The shadows under Zac’s eyes seemed to darken, to leach the color from his face. “Yeah, I guess the alternative is worse.”

  Something pricked in David’s soul. He turned to Tiana. “Are you wanting to get home?”

  She shrugged.

  “I was thinking …” He had to make it sound casual. Like something he wanted to do for his own sake. “Well, if you’ve never been to the dunes at night, it’s a fine sight. Would be a memorable send-off to our evening.”

  “Do you have blankets for when we start shivering in the lake wind?” She propped her hand on her hip. “Because that’s unavoidable in October.”

  “Enough blankets in the Jeep to sit on and wrap up in.”

  She gave him the crooked smile, but then she sighed. “To be honest, I’m wiped out. And I don’t understand why you two aren’t.”

  “Sleep is overrated,” Zac said.

  “That’s crazy talk.”

  “Well, maybe next time I’m in town. We can say our farewells here.”

  No. That prick in David’s heart was more like an actual word.

  “I’m going out to climb a dune,” David said, “and I’d welcome company.”

  The quick arch of Zac’s eyebrows wasn’t part of his mask. He studied David, seeming to search for any insincerity, and then he nodded. “I’ll be up for a while, anyway.”

  Tiana rolled her eyes. “Take me back to my car and go conquer the dunes, boys.”

  Zac grinned. “You know it.”