The Husband Show

by Kristine Rolofson

  Winter stood next to her. “Wow,” she said. “It’s really pretty.”

  “Thank you.” She lifted it and attached the shoulder rest, then plucked the strings. The E string was a little flat, so she adjusted it.

  “Dad said it’s really old.”

  “Yes.” She removed the bow from its holder and held it so her fingers wouldn’t touch the horsehair. The oil on her fingertips could create a dead spot and she had had the bow rehaired only six months ago. She felt another flutter of panic.

  Surely she could put the violin away now and say that it was broken. She could sit on the couch and eat pie and let Tony hug her with sticky banana cream hands. That would be good, she decided. She would like to hear Jake sing. And later, if he offered to walk her home, she would refuse and slip away without worrying that he would kiss her and she would like him even more than she already did.

  “Good,” she heard him say. “You’re all set. Tuned up?”

  She nodded, frozen.

  “What’s wrong?” He put his large hand on her shoulder. “You’ve gone white. Are you sick?”

  “Nerves,” she managed to admit. “The last time I played it didn’t go well.” The last time she played she’d had to leave the stage in disgrace and had fainted before she reached the privacy of the curtains. Sean had alternated between fury and shame, having witnessed too many of her panic attacks to worry that she was actually ill. “It’s in your head,” he’d scold. “Why isn’t your therapist doing anything about this? Isn’t there medication you can take?”

  “You don’t have to play,” Jake said, looking stricken. “I forced you into something you didn’t want to do. I’m sorry.”

  Aurora took a deep breath and attempted to smile. She wasn’t going to be judged; no one had paid for a concert. Her heart no longer grieved to the point of pain whenever she attempted to find solace in her music. “It’s okay,” she said, hoping it would be. “What do you want to play?”

  He hesitated. “Are you sure?”

  “I’ll give it a try.”

  Jake gave her an approving nod, lessening her nerves a bit.

  “Can you play by ear or do you need sheet music?”

  “You go ahead and start and I’ll try to fill in,” she said. She didn’t want to chance the sheet music turning into dancing black dots on the pages. She would improvise. She’d tried doing that while he was jamming last week and it had been surprisingly challenging and fun at the same time. She had been forced to listen to the music, instead of worrying about the perfection of sheet music.

  “What’s the difference between a violin and a fiddle?” Winter asked.

  “Attitude,” Aurora replied. She posed as a classical violin player would, then relaxed and touched the bow to the strings to tease a riff of slurred scales from the instrument.

  “I can’t believe you never told us you could play,” Lucia said.

  “I like to be mysterious,” she replied, smiling at the truth of what she’d said. She sat in one of the dining-room chairs and made sure that when she played she wouldn’t stab anyone with the bow.

  “You must have other secrets, too,” Jake teased, sitting in the chair beside hers and lifting his guitar to his lap. “I wrote a song about secrets once.”

  “Nice segue,” she murmured. “So, go ahead and play your song. I’ll try to keep up.”

  He strummed the opening chords, nodded to her and began to sing. She recognized the song from the other night. It was a simple melody, in the key of G, with a simple chord progression and a key change to A in the verse after the bridge. She set her bow on the strings and echoed the simple melody, finding her rhythm quickly. She didn’t notice Lucia’s expression of delight or Sam’s surprise. She attempted harmony on the second verse, relieved to see Jake’s approving nod. He played an intricate solo before the bridge.

  “Your turn,” he said, indicating he wanted her to play by herself. She shook her head. She was content to play backup. She’d never been in the background before, and her nerves melted away as the children clapped at the end of the song.

  * * *

  A CLUE. SHE had a clue. As soon as her father and Aurora finished playing—and they played for an hour—Winter dashed off to Davey’s bedroom for some privacy and a chance to email Robbie. It was almost four in the morning in London, so she didn’t expect to hear from him for hours.

  Violinist, she wrote. World-class, Jake said. She attached a picture of the violin, only because Jake had made such a big deal about it being really old. Maybe it was a Stradivarius, though when she’d asked Aurora that, the woman shook her head and said absolutely not. That it was better than a Strad.

  What was better than a Strad? She typed that question into the search engine of her iPad and found the answer.

  “What are you doing?” Davey stood in the doorway and studied her with great interest. “Playing Candy Crush?”

  “No.” She rolled her eyes. “I’m researching.”

  “Why?”

  “Because,” she said, dismissing the question with a wave of her hand. “Just because.”

  “You want pie? Cookies? Chocolate milk?”

  She looked back up at him. “Duh.”

  “Then you’d better hurry up,” her oldest cousin said. “Tony’s waiting for seconds.”

  Winter shut off the iPad and hurried downstairs. Research could wait, but she knew she was on the trail of something Big.

  * * *

  AURORA DIDN’T PROTEST when Jake said he’d walk her home. She should have, she knew. She was in dangerous territory here, having spent a comfortable evening in Lucia’s living room, playing music with Jake.

  He’d kept the songs easy, using the keys of D and G so that she would have no trouble playing along with him. She’d never been one to improvise, having been taught to play the notes—the exact notes—as the composer had written them. She’d memorized more work than she could remember.

  But it had been fun adding riffs and piecing together harmonies to Jake’s singing of old country classics and his own, newer, compositions. The violin had sung, and she’d had to ease up on the bow to keep the violin from overpowering Jake’s voice. Twice, when she was playing along with only the guitar, she’d unleashed some of the violin’s powerful sound. She’d stopped herself from standing up and letting it fill the room, but she’d seen from their little audience’s faces that they were surprised and impressed by what she could do with her violin.

  Or, as Jake called it, her fiddle.

  He walked her, and her fiddle, home. Winter hurried off to Iris’s house, to research a paper on Western myths for Robbie, her friend from England. She barely remembered to say good night.

  “She likes it here,” Jake said. “She talked Sam into taking them to the ranch Monday to ride again.”

  “Owen is a very patient man.”

  “Do you know him well? Sam said he used to live in Washington but came back to take over the ranch.”

  “He was going to sell it.” Their shoulders bumped as they negotiated the sidewalk curb. Jake had the fiddle case slung over his shoulder, the way Aurora had carried her instrument many times, despite her parents’ objections. “And then he changed his mind.”

  “Men do that.”

  “Yes. I’ve heard.” She waited a beat, but he didn’t comment. “You’ve changed your mind about touring this summer, I hear.”

  “I found a replacement.”

  “For the star and lead singer?”

  He chuckled. “There’s always a new star and a new lead singer. We’re a dime a dozen. This particular kid just had a hit record—his third—and has sold more copies than my last two combined. He’s happy about the tour, because he never expected to move this fast.”

  “You don’t mind?”

  “No.” He glanced o
ver toward her. “You don’t believe me?”

  “Not really,” she admitted, but couldn’t help teasing him a little. “Musicians have big egos.”

  “That’s true, but I have a lot to make up for.” He cleared his throat. “I need to make sure Winter is okay before I start thinking about going back on the road. If I go back on the road. It was my life for a long time and I do love it. I’m not sure what I should do.”

  They walked around to the back of the Dahl, where Aurora unlocked the door. Jake followed her inside and up the stairs as if he’d been doing it for weeks.

  She flipped on the light in the hall and walked through to the living area.

  “So,” he said, setting the violin case carefully on the coffee table. “What’s next for the expansion?”

  “There will be a vote soon, and I’ll have my permit. Mike relented, and Owen is back in town, so I have the majority. Loralee told Meg who told Lucia who told me that Jerry was going to call a meeting Monday morning.”

  “That’s quite a communications system you have here.”

  “I’ve learned not to underestimate it,” she said, watching him gaze around the room.

  “You’ve built a life here.”

  “I have.”

  “And you’re no ordinary violinist, are you?”

  She ignored the question. “Thank you for walking me home.”

  “I guess that’s my cue to leave,” he said, but he took two steps toward the hall and turned around. “You’re not as tough or as cold as you think you are,” he said.

  She’d already started to follow him, to go downstairs and lock the dead bolts after he left. So she was closer to him than was comfortable, close enough to touch.

  He set those large hands on her shoulders and looked down into her face. “I look at you and I see a woman who has a lot of walls up.”

  “So?” She lifted her chin. “I like my walls.”

  He bent to kiss her, and despite her common sense and self-preservation instincts, she kissed him back. His hands moved to the back of her neck, his fingers tangling in her hair. She ran her fingers up his chest, underneath his down vest, to feel his heart beating rapidly under her touch.

  He tasted of cream and coffee, and his lips were cool from the chilly night air. And she realized she was melting into him as naturally as if she’d been kissing him for years.

  “No,” he murmured against her mouth when he at long last lifted his lips from hers. “You don’t like your walls at all.”

  He left her then, and she trailed silently behind to lock the door when he disappeared into the night.

  Jake was right. She hated what she’d become. But she thought, with some sadness, that it was too late to change. She couldn’t give her heart again, and especially not to a man whose talent was well beyond what could be contained in Willing, Montana.

  She could fall in love with him, just a little, but it would still hurt to see him leave.

  CHAPTER TEN

  “I KNOW WHO she is.” Winter brought her iPad to Jake. “Robbie spent three hours this morning looking up violinists.”

  “What are you talking about?” Jake was deep into Iris’s breakfast, which this morning was a sausage-and-egg casserole topped with cheddar cheese. This was the best one so far. He’d told Iris she didn’t have to cook, that they’d be happy to eat at Meg’s, but Iris insisted. She said she had a reputation to uphold and there were going to be more people coming in soon. She needed to keep her skills up or she’d get lazy, she said, which was fine with Jake. He’d miss the ornate dining room and Iris’s hints about singing in the local band. Iris was convinced that Jake and the Wild Judiths were going to set the county on fire with new songs and a star stage presence.

  “Aurora is not Aurora Jones. She’s Aurora Vandergren Joneston Linden-March.”

  Jake looked up from appreciating his excellent breakfast. “Winter, what are you talking about?”

  “Aurora was famous.” She handed him the iPad. “Look.”

  An official concert poster showed Aurora, not smiling, posing with her violin. She wore a long, fitted red dress and silver shoes. Her hair was loose and halfway down her back. She looked stunning and very young.

  “Where did you get this?”

  “I told you, Robbie searched online. He loves research. The really old violin was another clue.” She took the iPad back and swept her fingers across the screen until she found what she was looking for. “Here,” she said, handing it back to him. “The Pietro Guarneri of Mantua.”

  He looked at a photograph of a violin. In the caption it said it was owned by Aurora Linden-March and had been purchased for her when she was a child. The music world had been shocked, but the child had grown into an impressive soloist.

  He was stunned. The woman who played a Guarneri, the woman who gave concerts in Europe, the woman who played scales above a bar in Montana...this was the same woman?

  “It’s bloody amazing,” his daughter said.

  “Watch your language.”

  “Bloody is not swearing in Montana,” she countered. “No one knows it’s swearing.”

  “I know it’s swearing,” he said, continuing to read the article. “So cut it out.”

  She sighed, something long and dramatic, but Jake paid no attention as he continued to read.

  “The Pietro Guarneri is believed to remain in the possession of the Linden-March family. Hans Linden-March and his wife, Martine Vandergren Linden-March, were killed when their plane collided with another in Frankfurt, May 2008. Aurora Linden-March has not performed publicly since 2009.”

  So Aurora was a world-class violinist, who’d left the stage and moved to Willing.

  He’d been right to call her mysterious. He’d sensed the walls she’d erected around herself, but he hadn’t known the extent of them. She’d said she no longer played, and yet she practiced her scales on that priceless violin. If she no longer cared about music, she would have sold that violin years ago.

  She’d lost her parents, so she’d left the stage. The grief must have been debilitating.

  “Her parents died,” Winter pointed out. “And she came to Willing. Just like me. An orphan.”

  He looked across the table at his fair-haired daughter with the blue eyes and serious expression. “You are not an orphan.”

  She shrugged. “I was, after Mummy died. I didn’t know I had a father until Mummy’s solicitor explained it to me.”

  “But you do,” he said. “You do have a father.”

  Winter didn’t answer immediately. And when she finally spoke, Jake’s heart contracted painfully.

  “I know you mean well,” she said, looking down at her plate with her unfinished casserole growing cold. “But I think you should get on with your life.”

  “Get on with my life?” He wanted to reach across the table and pull her into his arms, but he resisted. She merely tolerated his occasional hugs and stiffened when he threw an arm around her thin shoulders. She didn’t know him, didn’t think of him as a father. She called him Jake and rolled her eyes when he spoke.

  “I can stay here,” she said, looking at him with such an intense longing that he blinked. “I can live with Aurora. She doesn’t have anyone, either, so we’ll have each other.”

  “You also have Lucia and Sam,” he pointed out. And you have me, he wanted to roar. But instead he lifted his coffee cup. “You’d better get dressed,” he said. “We’re going to look at places to rent today.”

  “How long are we going to stay? Can I go to school here? Can we buy a ranch? Do I get my own horse? We can keep it at the Triple M.”

  “One question at a time, and the answer is that I’m not sure,” Jake admitted. “It’s almost May. Let’s spend the summer here and see how it goes.”

  “See how it goes,” she
repeated, looking as if she wanted to scream at him, but her Lady Pettigrew training restrained her. “What does that mean?”

  “It means,” he said, taking a sip of cold coffee, “there’s a lot to consider before moving here permanently.” He had a profession he loved, a condo in Nashville and now a daughter who didn’t fit in either one. But was the answer here in this small town? He thought it might be, but now that he had a child he couldn’t afford to make any more wrong decisions.

  He had to do everything—everything—right from now on.

  Winter picked up her fork, and he looked down at the iPad, wondering if he actually was looking at a photo of Aurora’s beloved violin. No wonder she’d treated it as if it were solid gold. “And, Winter?”

  “Yes?”

  “Keep this information private,” he said. “This is nobody’s business but Aurora’s.”

  “I can’t tell her I found her on Google?”

  “Absolutely not. This is her business and it stays her business. Got it?”

  Winter hesitated, but she nodded. “Got it, Jake.”

  Someday, he thought, she’d call him Dad. But he wasn’t going to hold his breath waiting for it to happen.

  * * *

  “THE SHOW MUST go on,” Jerry muttered to no one in particular. Aurora, busy wiping already clean tables placed strategically around the barroom, paid no attention to him. She’d grown tired of his moping, and as much as his previously cheerful personality had annoyed her, she found herself missing it.

  “Yes, you’ve said that about twenty times this afternoon,” she said, barely restraining the urge to throw a damp towel at him as he sat in the corner. He was supposed to be folding the programs.

  “You should be nicer to me,” he grumbled. “I called a meeting, I got the vote, you have your permit to build your girlie bar—”

  “Please don’t call it a girlie bar.”

  He sighed. “All right.”

  Aurora wished she’d invested in new chairs. These had started to look pretty worn, though an antiques dealer might say they had a nice patina. “I’m thinking of calling it Dollies.”