Ivan cleared his throat.
Wow. Kids with Brinley.
Ivan couldn’t wrap his mind around that. He’d have to pinch himself later to make sure it wasn’t a dream.
“You know Brin is not into traveling all that much.”
“Yeah. She said that.”
“You’d do best to remember that before you drag her all over the world.”
“Don’t worry about that.” Ivan let the server take his plate. He held off on desserts. “I’m praying about where to go from here. Clearly, I can’t be working in a thrift shop the rest of my life—no offense to those who do, you know, like Matt—and obviously this is only a temporary situation for me. I think I would like to reopen my music studio.”
“Sounds like a plan.”
“You’re a businessman,” Ivan said. “Any advice for me? I mean, free advice. I can’t pay you.”
Ned laughed. “A steak dinner suffices.”
“That, I can do.” But I can’t afford Kobe steak. He’d have to settle for rib eye or something.
“You can easily reboot your music studio. For example, you can rent a cheap house, live upstairs and teach music downstairs.”
Ivan wondered how much Ned knew about his renting Grandma Yun’s old house from Brinley.
“Or you could try to find a job managing someone else’s music studio until your wrist heals.”
“Good idea. I hadn’t thought of that.”
“Can you teach anything else other than violin?” Ned asked.
“Piano.”
“There you go. It’ll hold you over until you can teach violin again, right?”
Ivan tried to remain stoic. “If I can get enough students.”
“How many did you have?”
“Forty.”
“That many.”
“It took six years to build that up.” All gone now. “Their parents all wanted their kids to take violin lessons from someone who’d gone to Juilliard and toured the world for two years. But now…”
“Now you find new students. Have you prayed and asked God to show you who your new students are?”
Ivan wondered how much to say. Well, why not? “Been thinking of targeting adult students.”
“Not a bad idea, son. My wife, for example, has been wanting to play the piano all her life. You could teach her.”
“Teach Brin’s mom?”
Ned chuckled. “Don’t look so startled. A student is a student.”
“Right.”
“She has friends who might want to take lessons too. Group lessons. Individual lessons. Whatever is suitable, right?” Ned drew back from the table. “Leverage your portfolio. Twelve years of strings, son. Put all that resume to good use.”
“Yes, sir.”
“A lot to think about. As your financial advisor, I’m recommending you talk to my accountant.”
“Oh, I can’t afford that.”
“Don’t worry about it. I’m being selfish here, Ivan. I want to make sure you don’t drag my daughter into debt.”
“I won’t. Don’t worry.”
“We have fewer than two months left before the wedding. I want to know that you have a sensible financial plan going forward.”
Ivan chewed slowly to avoid having to answer Ned’s question. Too bad for him, Ned was patient. He waited until Ivan swallowed the piece of cod.
“Uh, yes. I need to figure out how to pay off my debts and increase my income.”
“Talk to my accountant about the first part,” Ned said. “But increasing income. That’s my department. Let’s brainstorm. You have a good idea there about looking for new students.”
“I don’t have a choice.” It would be bad form to steal students back from their new music teachers. Ivan knew he had to find new students. So far all his students had been kids who might or might not want to continue music past middle or high school. Most music teachers would target younger students. He could serve older ones. “Besides, some people at church told me they wished they had taken violin or piano lessons when they were younger.”
“Or at least paid more attention when they had taken those lessons.” Ned snorted.
“I hear you.” Things were churning in Ivan’s mind. “Someday I could expand my studio, add instruments, teachers, workshops, maybe even scholarships for students to go to college, that sort of thing.”
“Scholarships?” Ned asked for a refill of his drink. “Maybe I could help with that.”
“Oh no, I couldn’t possibly accept—”
Ned raised a palm at him. “Ivan.”
“Yes, sir?”
“Don’t question God’s provision. Just say thank you.”
Sigh. “Thank you.”
“In case you didn’t know, I give out scholarships all the time through my various foundations.”
“That’s generous of you, Ned.”
“What can I say? I’m a nice guy. I like my steak medium rare, please.”
“Taking orders.” Ivan finished his tea. As per usual, Ivan asked for a to-go cup filled with more tea for the walk back to the thrift shop and glanced at Ned’s iPhone. It was 1:35 p.m.
“Almost time for me to get back to work. Appreciate the lunch, sir. Thank you for getting my mind thinking through the fog.”
“One more thing.” Ned tented his fingers. “I have a special wedding gift for Brin. Maybe you can help me deliver it.”
“Anything for Brin.”
“Not sure if you can handle it.”
“Try me.”
“You need to do some things to make this happen.”
“Name them. I’m game.” Ivan wondered at his own words.
“How’s your therapy coming along?”
Ivan cringed. “Tough.”
Ned knotted his eyebrows. “My entire wedding gift depends on your wrist. You must get that wrist working again. Brin tells me you’re not able to do the vibrato yet.”
“No, sir.” Ivan turned his left wrist, palm up facing him. The pain was still there though not as much as two months before. The splint only masked it from the world. “My recovery is long and painful.”
“You have seven weeks to get well, son.”
That would lead us to early June when—
“I’m afraid you’ll have to ask someone else, sir. I may never be able to play violin again. A left-hand violin, maybe.”
“No can do. This one requires a right-hand violinist. That’s the way it goes.”
“Tough, then.”
However, it gave Ivan an idea for a future angle in his music studio offerings. Hmm. Music therapy had never sounded this good. He checked off a few ideas in his head. Wow, Lord. Maybe there’s a new career for me yet.
“My daughter seems to think you’ll improving every day. Maybe you need some more motivation to get that wrist well.”
Ivan thought of Bach’s Air. That hadn’t been enough. What could possibly top that?
“Has Brinley taken you to the warehouse?” Ned asked.
“What warehouse?”
“Ah, she hasn’t told you.”
“Told me what?”
Chapter Seventy
“I was thinking aloud, Brin.” Ivan could not believe what he was seeing. The whole warehouse had been gutted, windows cleaned to let the sunlight in, and scaffoldings were everywhere up against the taller windows. Clearly, Brinley’s crews had been here. “Tell me you didn’t buy this warehouse.”
“You wanted a music studio.” Brinley’s lips quavered.
“I wanted to rent a section of the first floor. You bought the entire building.”
“Maybe we could expand the music studio.”
“Sure we could.”
“But?”
Ivan’s shoulders sagged. “If you keep buying things, you’re going to run out of money. Ask me how I know.”
“It was at half price.”
“Millions of dollars.” Ivan remembered his old statistics on the warehouse. The property might have appreciated, but he doubted
by much.
“I didn’t want to lose the warehouse,” Brinley added. Ivan saw the relief in her eyes.
“Is it the warehouse per se or the memory of our conversation of it?” He put his good arm around her shoulders. “Know what I think, Brin? I think you don’t want to lose the memory of our moment together at the lighthouse when we looked over the pier and saw this place.”
Now Brinley was visibly in tears.
Ivan’s cupped Brinley’s face in his hands. His left wrist still hurt a bit if turned the wrong way, but what bothered him more right now was what he could see written in her face.
She doesn’t want to lose me.
Ivan lowered his lips.
She didn’t protest.
And he kissed her gently, sweetly, then ravenously. The way he had wanted to on their first evening together, after the party, in the moonlight, on the terrace, all that, before life got complicated.
Forehead to forehead, he paused to take a breather. “How’s that for a new memory?”
Brinley smiled.
Ivan tried to think of how he could tell her what he wanted to say in such a way that she wouldn’t be offended.
“I like your idea of putting me on a budget,” he began. “Matt is doing wonders with my finances. I’m on a path to becoming debt-free. I’m happy to see that I’m starting to keep more than I spend.”
“Good for you, Ivan.”
“So.” Ivan drew her closer. “We need to put you on a budget too, Brin.”
Brinley gasped.
Then she seemed to calm down. “Touché. Should’ve seen that coming.”
“I want to be sure we can afford our kids—future kids, plural hopefully—in college.”
Brinley chuckled. Then turned somber: “I’m proud of you, Ivan.”
“Not me. Be proud of God. He never left me nor forsook me even when I pumped my fists at Him and spat at His face, so to speak. Now I am experiencing a new journey of trusting God not only at the point of salvation, but for the rest of my life.”
“The prodigal son comes home.”
“With a wife.”
“Hey, we’re not married yet.”
“In less than two months we will be. Let’s practice our PDA.” Ivan waited for her to react at his suggestion. She didn’t seem fazed by the idea of a public display of affection.
“But it has to be in public,” she said.
“Huh?”
“We’re alone in this warehouse.”
“You mean we have to kiss outdoors?”
“Yeah? Public?”
So they went outside, and Ivan kissed her until it was time to go home.
* * *
The horsehair on the bow looked pretty decent. The strings, on the other hand, were bad. Ivan would have to replace them. No biggie. The lower bout was scratched, but Ivan didn’t care. Soon, when he had saved up enough money, he’d send it to a luthier to be revarnished.
What mattered most to Ivan was that as he trusted God anew, God began to provide surprises in unexpected ways to cheer him up and encourage him to keep working through his wrist therapy to get well.
Like this violin, for example. A blessing.
And earlier today, the warehouse. Another blessing. A big one.
“What do you think?” Matt Garnett sat down on the floor in Ivan’s family room and popped the top of the soda can.
“There’s a chair over there.” Ivan pointed to the other folding chair. Outside the windows it was dark and approaching ten o’clock. He had just come home from working at the thrift shop when Matt called, saying he was driving into St. Simon’s and wanted to drop something off at his house.
“Nope.” Matt propped himself up against the wall. “The last time I sat on one of those I fell through.”
“Some man you are.” Ivan laughed. He continued to examine the old violin on his lap. “I still can’t believe you got this for two hundred dollars. You sure you don’t want to get it appraised, auction it off?”
“Either way, what does it matter?” Matt said. “I’m giving it to you. Now someday you can sell it back to me for list price. Then I’ll do something about it. So you think the label is authentic?”
“As far as I can tell. Made by Ira J. White. 1863. If this is real, you’ve made a terrific find. I’d say it’s worth over two or three thousand dollars.”
Ivan had heard of Ira Johnson White and his brother Asa, American luthiers who had produced respectable violins in the nineteenth century. It would be an honor to play an American-made violin.
“A big if. Can it still play?”
“Yeah, as soon as I get new strings for it. Looks like the horsehair still works, but I think I’ll replace that too.” Ivan placed the bow and violin back into the case. The case was probably why the bow hadn’t been lost. He clicked the lid shut. “I don’t want you to just give it to me, Matt. I’ll pay you the two hundred in installments. Okay with that?”
“Whatever, dude.”
“I insist. Thank you for this. Appreciate your thinking of me on your trip.”
“I wasn’t thinking of you most of the time, dude. I went to that house because the owner said the grandfather had died and left a collection of ‘junk’ he wanted to get rid of. In truth, I stumbled onto that violin, and only then did I think of you.”
“Stumbled onto it? I think it was more like providence.”
Matt lifted up his soda can. “Yep. God provides. It was my last stop. I almost decided to skip that route because it was raining and I’d been living in that old van for two weeks and getting van fever.”
“But God.”
“Right. Always God. And here we are.”
“If I pay you fifty dollars four times, it’ll be taken care of.”
“Deal.” Matt stretched out on the floor. “I’m dead tired.”
“You could’ve waited until tomorrow to give me this. I’ll be at work at eight o’clock.”
“A thank you would suffice.”
“Thank you, Matt. You’re a good friend.”
“I thought I was your best friend.”
Ivan smiled. “And best man.”
“How’s the therapy coming?”
“If I say painful, it’s an understatement. I’m quite confident my wrist will eventually heal, but the therapy could kill me before then.”
Matt didn’t say anything.
When Ivan turned to see what was happening, he saw that Matt’s eyes were closed. Slowly he began to snore.
* * *
Ivan prayed doubly hard—sometimes harder—every morning that he parked outside Vittorio’s boot camp. He still didn’t have his own car, but Matt was gracious enough to let him borrow his on therapy days, and to and from work.
He would come fifteen minutes early to prepare himself. The spurious name tacked onto the wall next to the front entrance of the center got him every time. East Beach Therapy Center. The center was neither east—it was at the south end of the island—nor was it beachy at all. Beach implied a life of vacationing comfort. This was no beach. This was all pain. Pure pain.
Three times a week Ivan prayed for mercy and for God to spare his soul as he dragged himself to EBTC to have his wrist tugged and pulled and bent into compliance with human physiology. Sometimes Ivan wondered if he should—
“Art! What are you doing here?” Ivan stepped into the lobby and let the door shut behind him on its own. He went straight to Art and shook his hand. “You look good for a man near death.”
“That was four months ago. I’m back at work now.”
“That’s terrific. You seemed to have lost a bit of weight there.” Ivan had spoken to Art a few times since the Savannah attack, notably over New Year’s, but they hadn’t visited each other for reasons best left buried.
“Are you saying I was fat?” Art asked.
“I’m saying you’re ripped now. I’ll never be that buff.”
“I would have to agree with you.”
“Hey…” Ivan decided to let it slide.
“So. To what do I owe this visit?”
“To whom. Mr. Brooks wants me to look in on you. See if you’re making any progress.”
Brinley’s dad. “Why?”
“Apparently he has a vested interest in you. I’m going to stay with you through your session today, and then we’re going for a ride.”
“A ride?”
“Yes. Mr. Brooks wants you to see something. Then I’ll drop you off back here.”
“You want me to follow you so you’ll save a trip?”
“No.”
“What? Ned’s afraid I’ll run off? In Matt’s car on its last leg?”
“Something like that.”
“How long are you staying with me? All afternoon?”
“And the next month or so.”
“What?” Ivan was curious now. “What’s going on, man?”
“You’ll have to ask Mr. Brooks that,” Art said as Ivan spotted Vittorio waving to them through an inside door.
“Let the torture begin,” Ivan muttered under his breath.
Chapter Seventy-One
Brinley Brooks stepped out of Seaside Chapel into the lovely flower garden, into the breezy June outdoors to the sound of gulls and seabirds in staccato beats against a backdrop of ocean waves crashing on shore and then ebbing away. Above her, pelicans flew, silently gliding through the air and heading south through a blue sky with whispers of clouds like brushstrokes.
God’s brushstrokes.
The early morning air smelled fresh and clean. Brinley closed her eyes, basking her face in the warming sun. She could stay on St. Simon’s Island the rest of her life if life were like the last two months after Ivan’s proposal. Throughout the months of April and May, the duo had spent a lot of time together, getting along, and getting busy with the warehouse renovations and the rebuilding of Ivan’s student list. For now, his new students met him at Yun’s old house but eventually they’d all move to the warehouse studio on Pelican Road.
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