Dark Rhapsody

by Helaine Mario

  Just like her father had left his bouquet for her, so many months earlier.

  She sank to the step in the cold hard rain and gathered the lilacs against her chest. Then her body folded and she wept.

  CHAPTER FORTY

  VIENNA

  SUNDAY, OCTOBER 26

  UNABLE TO SLEEP, Dane paced the small hotel room. He was naked, as was the woman in the rumpled bed behind him. He gazed at the graceful, sleeping figure draped by the white sheet, one slim leg exposed.

  Why had she come? He had told her not to … he didn’t want her here. She was nothing to him. Meant nothing to him.

  And yet. Why did he want to reach out and shift the sheet over her leg so the cold would not wake her?

  He stopped pacing with an angry sound and stood at the high window. Outside, the tiny, empty square behind the cathedral was sheathed in darkness, the thin bars of light from the streetlamps lost in deep shadows.

  One shining eye gazed back at him, reflected in the tarnished window glass.

  Spy my shadow in the sun, and descant on mine own deformity.

  Shakespeare’s words flew unbidden into his mind. He had played so many villains in his early days, but Richard III was surely the cruelest. The most innately evil. A monster. And yet …

  Born with a deformed spine, Richard’s deformity was greatly exaggerated by Shakespeare, who portrayed him as a frightening hunchback—as well as a soulless murderer who would kill anyone to become king.

  Gazing at his own deformed face in the dark glass, Dane spoke into the shadows.

  “What do I fear? Myself? There’s none else by.

  Is there a murderer here? No. Yes, I am.”

  No. Yes. His gaze returned once more to the young woman asleep in his bed. The woman who had chosen to be with him. Bella Beatrice. “Unloved,” whispered Dane into the silence. “Unloved because of his deformity.”

  * * *

  Maggie’s aching fingers came down with a crash on the keyboard. A jarring, cacophonous echo—then silence.

  “Damn, damn, damn,” she whispered. Jet lag, exhaustion, finding her father, worry about Gigi, fear for Michael. Whatever the reason, the Rachmaninoff just wasn’t coming together tonight. “You might as well blame it on the Bossa Nova,” she murmured, angry with herself. No excuses.

  Wasn’t that what her father always had said?

  Don’t think about Finn. Don’t think about all those still unanswered questions. All those unresolved feelings.

  She stood up in frustration and moved away from the piano. On the coffee table, a vase held the soaked, wilting lilacs she’d rescued from the stage door steps. Her chest hurt with the knowledge that she hadn’t been there in time. That Michael had been waiting for her alone in the rain.

  No excuses.

  She checked her cell phone. Still no messages. Where was he? If only—

  A soft knock on the front door.

  Dropping the phone to the desk, she hurried across the room, checked the peephole. No one in the hallway that she could see. “Hello? Is anyone there?”

  “It’s us.” Muffled. Michael …

  She unlocked the heavy door, swung it open. “Michael! Where have you—” She stopped in confusion, her eyes drawn down. Michael Beckett was seated below her, in a black wheelchair, looking up at her with a dark scowl on his bruised face, the Golden close to his side.

  “We were at the theater,” he said. “You weren’t. We’re here to find out why.”

  Willing herself not to show the shock she felt at his appearance, she stepped back and gestured them in. “Apparently someone has decided to hit you in the face. Again,” she said lightly.

  “Happens quite often,” said Michael, rolling toward the sofa. “You’d think I’d have learned to duck by now.”

  “You’d think.” She bent to kiss Shiloh on his smooth head. “I’ve missed you, sweet boy.” She raised a brow toward Michael. “How is he doing?”

  “Same. Vet had no answers.” He held up a small take-out bag. “Turkey sandwiches for us, veggie for you. When is the last time you ate?”

  “I have no idea,” she said with surprise. Turning to the small bar in the corner, Maggie set a bowl of water on the floor for the Golden and added ice to a crystal glass. “But right now, I’m thinking you both need a drink.”

  “I need a lot of things, but a drink will do.” He flashed that lopsided smile at her, the slow one that began deep in his eyes. “For now.”

  He eyed her t-shirt. “Here Comes Treble,” he read aloud. Turning to Shiloh with a scowl, he muttered, “I think we’re in for it, big guy.”

  The Golden seemed to agree and headed for the water bowl.

  She handed him his bourbon, kicked off her shoes, and curled on the sofa. He rolled his chair closer to her, but did not touch her. For several moments, there was a tense silence between them. The only sounds in the room were the soft strains of Heifetz’s violin on the radio, the slurp of Shiloh lapping his water, and the drum of hard rain on glass.

  Finally, she said, “I ran all the way to the theater, but I was too late. You’d already gone.”

  “I will always show up for you,” he said quietly.

  She waved a hand toward the bouquet she’d set on the table. “I found the lilacs you left. They’re beautiful.”

  “They’re a peace offering. I’d rather take my chances smoking on the Hindenburg than telling you this, because you are going to be very, very pissed when you find out that I—”

  “That you were in Rome,” she interrupted. “Do you think I don’t know you? You went after Dane, when you knew I didn’t want you to go. What the hell were you thinking?” She leaned toward him until their faces were just inches apart. “Some part of me is so furious with you that I don’t know what to do with all this anger burning inside me.”

  His face softened. “And the other part?”

  A heartbeat. “It’s easier to be angry than afraid,” she whispered. “Not a lot scares me, but the thought of never seeing you again just makes me want to lock my arms around you and never let go. It’s my fear I can’t face, not yours.”

  “You don’t need to be afraid, Maggie.” He looked over at the Golden. “Hear that, Shiloh? Don’t you love it when the bad guy wins? You owe me twenty big ones.”

  The dog glanced at Maggie as if she’d thrown him under the bus.

  “Not so fast. Shiloh can keep his money, because the truth is—I’m afraid that life with me is not enough for you.”

  “Not enough?” Beckett’s silver eyebrows danced. “You and me, we have a thing, Maggie.”

  “A ‘thing’?”

  “Don’t you get it? I want to be with you. You showed up in my life, beautiful as a concerto, and messed up every plan I ever had. Now, there’s always something missing when we’re not together. I want you sitting at the piano in your crazy t-shirts. I want you watching the birds. I want you in my bed.” He smiled, put his strong hands on her shoulders, pulled her toward him. “Some fights are not worth fighting even if you win,” he said, “but other fights you have to fight even if you lose.”

  “Only you would say that.”

  “I don’t know whether I’m showing you the darkest part of me, or the deepest part. Maybe they’re the same.”

  Her eyes locked on his. “I cannot bear to lose you, Michael. I thought you knew that.” Very slowly she rose, stood in front of him, and set her hands on his chest.

  “Doc said no weight on the leg until tomorrow, Maggie. At the earliest …” He scowled. “I’ll be standing first thing in the morning, you can count on it. But—”

  “Who said anything about you standing? Close your eyes, Shiloh.”

  She lowered herself onto Beckett’s lap, curled into him, wrapped her arms around his neck, and began to kiss him. He tangled his fingers in her hair, pulled her closer. His lips were hard and warm and he breathed words into her mouth, and she felt herself falling into him and then somehow the wheelchair began to spin, and they were spiraling slowl
y, slowly, around the shadowed room.

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  NEW YORK CITY

  SUNDAY, OCTOBER 26

  THE ROOM WAS filled by a soft darkness, lit only by firelight that flickered from the hearth, lighting Shiloh’s fur with streaks of copper as he slept close to the warmth. Maggie lay folded in Beckett’s arms on the sofa.

  He shifted to look down at her beautiful face. They had eaten the sandwiches. He had told her about Rome. And that Dane was alive. She had told him about the roses. About Hannah and Matisse’s Dark Rhapsody. And, finally, Johann Vogl’s death.

  He tilted her chin to look at him. “You said your godfather wants you to come and stay at his estate in the Hamptons?”

  “Yes. But I—”

  “I think you should go, Maggie. Hannah, too, when she arrives. It’s secure there, off the beaten path. You’re in the center of the storm here, it will be safer for both of you. I’ll take you. Stay for a day or two. We can leave for East Hampton in the morning.”

  A heartbeat. Then, “You’re right.”

  He cocked a silver brow and gave her his slow smile. “Even a broken clock is right twice a day, ma’am.” He glanced at Shiloh for a reaction, was rewarded with a “good one” look.

  “This is serious, Michael. My Carnegie stage manager and Gigi Donati were attacked. My godson is being threatened, maybe Hannah Hoffman as well. And Johann Vogl is dead. People close to me are in very real danger. I don’t want anyone else to get hurt. Especially because of me.”

  “They won’t, Maggie, not on my watch. Count on it. Now how about Shiloh and I leave and you get some rest. Big day tomorrow.”

  “Not yet.”

  Something in her voice. He stilled. “Maggie?”

  “I want to tell you about my father.”

  Go easy. “Sugar said you went to find him in Salzburg. But I thought he died several months before we met?”

  “I thought so, too.”

  “You found him alive, I see it in your eyes. I know it’s hard for you to talk about your parents, but …”

  She was silent for a long time. Then she said, in a voice so low that he pulled her closer, “Something happened to me a long time ago. I never talk about this because it’s a story about a young girl who watched her mother die.”

  “Christ, Maggie!”

  “My mother was Lily Stewart, a beautiful and brilliant concert pianist. She loved to swim … but she drowned in the Atlantic Ocean when I was thirteen. I just withdrew. I turned to stone, stopped talking, shut myself off from the world. From myself!” She turned to him. “I felt so guilty, Michael. I was a teenager—moody, belligerent, always arguing with her. It never occurred to me that I would lose her. I never had the chance to make things right. And I’ve always felt, deep in my heart, that there was something I could have done to save her.”

  Maggie swiped at her eyes. “Not long after that, my father—the classical music conductor, Finn Stewart—vanished. I went to live with my grandmother in Boston. After that, only the occasional gift in the mail. It was decades before I saw him again.”

  “Your father just … left you?”

  “In the middle of a Beethoven performance he looked right at me, stopped conducting, and just walked off the stage and out of my life.”

  “Your mother drowned, your father walked … No wonder you have nightmares of water, problems with trust. It’s a wonder you can stand up at all. Your father was a fool, Maggie. Any man who abandons his kid is not worth it. There was something wrong with your father, not with you.”

  “When I was young, Michael, we were happy. I adored my father, and he loved me, I know he did. We were inseparable. But then—nothing.”

  “And yet you went to Salzburg to find him.”

  “It’s hard to explain. Even to myself.” She shook her head, smiling faintly. “If he faked his own death, he had to be in trouble. But, even more than that—I think I went to Salzburg because of the yearnings of a lonely child with too many terrible unanswered questions.”

  “Was he able to give you the answers you need?”

  “Not enough. I had to leave, and too much was left unsaid.” She pushed her hair away from her face. “Seeing him again reopened old wounds, deep hurts I thought had healed over decades ago. But also, there was something about him, something I didn’t expect. The way he talked about my mother, the way he looked at me, his memories of our time together.” She held out her hands palms up. “He was bigger than life once. Now, he’s a shell of the giant he was. My reaction to his vulnerability—his sorrow—scared me. I felt walls coming down, after all this time. I felt close to him again. I came away wondering if everything I’ve believed all these years is wrong.”

  “Maybe you need to see him one more time, give yourself a chance to find out.”

  “I’m afraid, Michael. Afraid of the answers.”

  “You need to understand why your father left you.”

  “Yes. But mostly I need to ask him about my mother’s death.” She gripped her fingers together, the knuckles turning white. “Losing my mother was the defining moment of my life. She’s been gone for almost forty years now, but it still feels as if every choice I’ve made since then was colored by that loss. I turned to music for solace. I distanced myself from friends, relationships, became independent to a fault. Music was my refuge, the only thing that helped with the grief, the only thing I could count on. I could curl up and hide behind the notes …”

  There was such profound pain in her voice. “You were afraid everyone you loved would leave you.”

  “That’s about what happened, isn’t it? My first love, Zach. My husband, Johnny. But it’s more complicated than that. What if I am my father’s daughter? What if I can walk away so easily from someone I love?”

  “You won’t have a chance to find out.” He hugged her tighter, closer. “I’m so sorry, darlin’. No child should have to watch her mother die.”

  “The truth is, I don’t remember it. I don’t know what happened. I just know I was there, because I see fragments, images, in my nightmares. I hear haunting music. More, these last weeks. I thought I had put it all behind me, but—” She shook her head helplessly. “When I try to remember, everything turns dark blue. Giant waves roll in, bringing fog the color of ink. It’s like being underwater at night. I don’t know if my memories are real—or dreams.”

  “Do you want to remember what happened, Maggie?”

  She raised her eyes to his. “I don’t know. What if I can’t remember because the truth is so unspeakable?” She choked, fought desperately for breath. “I think my father knows what happened. I’ve asked him, but he won’t tell me. And that terrifies me.”

  Michael cupped her face in his large hands. “Sometimes the conversation we’re most afraid to have, darlin’, is the one we need to have the most.”

  She leaned forward until their foreheads were touching, unable to answer.

  “Okay, then,” said Beckett. “Whatever you decide, whatever you remember, Shiloh and I will be here for you.”

  As if he understood, Shiloh rose slowly from his bed by the fire and lurched to Maggie’s side, setting his chin on her thigh and looking up at her with his soulful, glistening eyes.

  “Oh, Shiloh,” she murmured.

  “He’d never tell you he was awarded a medal for bravery in combat.”

  “Warriors come with many faces,” she said, stroking the Golden’s scars.

  Beckett bent closer. “You said you don’t remember much. You may never know exactly what happened. Can you tell us what you do remember, Maggie?”

  “I remember very clearly that my parents had been arguing, fighting, for months. I didn’t know it at the time, but my mother had asked Finn for a divorce. That night, I remember being in a room, I don’t know where, with my mother. She was playing the piano—a rhapsody, I think—and suddenly there was a terrible banging on the door. ‘Hide!’ she whispered. I can still hear the fear in her voice.”

  Maggie put a palm
to her chest, as if her heart was beating too fast. “I hid in a closet. I heard angry voices, shouting. I remember a shattered vase, roses strewn all over the floor. I saw a man in a white shirt, raising his arm. My mother cried out. I was so afraid, I didn’t go to help her, Michael.”

  “Easy, darlin’. You were a child. What happened next?”

  “She ran through French doors into a garden, shouting that she was going to swim. The man ran after her. I followed them to the door. But all I could see was blue. The air was thick with swirling blue fog. Then I felt a sharp, terrible pain in my head and I lost consciousness. The next thing I remember is waking up in the doctor’s office. My father was sitting on the bed. He said, ‘Your mother is gone. She died last night.’”

  He put his hand on her cheek. “Where did your mother die?”

  “In the ocean, Manhattan Beach, not far from our apartment. She swam there all the time. But she went alone that night. Her body was never found. That’s what my father, and all the newspapers, said. But …” She pressed her hands to her temples in confusion. “But in my dreams, I don’t see the ocean. I see a pool surrounded by roses.”

  She looked at him, her eyes blinded by tears. “And in my dreams, I see—No. I can’t say the words.”

  He took her hands in his. “Tell me, Maggie. You’ve got to let the words out. Trust me. What did you see?”

  She grasped his hands tightly, holding his eyes, and breathed out. “Something I wasn’t supposed to see. A face, half-hidden in the rose bushes. Watching.”

  “Whose face, darlin’?”

  “I think it was my father.”

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  EAST HAMPTON, LONG ISLAND

  MONDAY MORNING, OCTOBER 27

  “I FEEL AS if I’ve fallen into a Winslow-Fricken-Homer painting.”

  Michael Beckett shook his head with disbelief as he maneuvered the SUV down the narrow, winding road. Maggie had offered to drive, but he had insisted that his right leg was good enough. So far so good.

  She looked at his profile, so craggy and strong, and felt a sense of safety wash over her. After last night, it was one she welcomed. One she needed. They had talked for a long time in the darkness. And it had lightened her. Now, she felt stronger, ready to face the new day. Ready to face the answers. Whatever they were.