by Sarah Bryant
Albert E. Rushworth
“Let me see,” Tasha said, gently taking the letter from my shaking hands. As she read it I opened the red pouch and tipped its contents onto the paper beneath. It was a tear-shaped ruby on a chain of yellow gold. Tasha put down the letter and picked up the necklace.
“Didn’t you used to wear something like this?” she asked.
I looked at the faded picture, then at the jewel glowing like a quetzal’s breast in the light of the table lamp. I couldn’t think of anything to say. Instead I took up the sheets of music and began to read through them.
The opening triads sounded in my head, high and sweet and fragile, like frost patterns on glass. The sonorous bass notes joined in a few measures later, pinning the ethereal melody firmly to earth. It was the piece that Alexander had played at Joyous Garde, which I had been certain was meant for a child, and also for me. The manuscript had not been among the others in the folio Mary had salvaged from Eden.
“I lost it ages ago,” I finally said.
Tasha looked at me closely, but I was no more able to read what she was thinking than I ever had been. She smiled and said, “I’ll help you put it on.”
She fastened the chain around my neck, then turned me so that I could see myself in the mirror. I was surprised to find that there were tears in my eyes. She kissed my cheek, then retreated upstairs.
I picked up the rose. The blossom was so well preserved that, without touching it, one might think that it was still living. An undying token of love . . .
Shuddering, I dropped it back on the table, then picked up the music and moved through the narrow old hallways of the townhouse to the room at the back that I had closed the day I returned from Eden’s Meadow, and hadn’t opened since. Everything was as it had been then: the furniture from an earlier era, papers scattered on the table, and the grand piano in the corner, holding its breath. I sat down on the stool, still adjusted for my height. I picked up the tarnished ring that lay on the music stand, slipped it on, and spread the closely marked pages in its place. My fingers found their places on the keys as though I had never been away from the instrument.
The piano was out of tune, and I was out of practice, but it didn’t matter: I heard the music as I had first heard it through the haze of alcohol and uncertainty in Dorian’s music room. Yet that was wrong, I realized now. I had no doubt heard it before that night, a lullaby played by a man who was not my father, yet with whom my life was already inextricably entangled.
My sight blurred as my eyes ran with tears so long avoided, but I played on as if the years of denial had not touched my gift, or my love. I felt him enter the room as I played, knew that he watched me as he had watched in that long-ago dream, and in a past too distant to remember. His presence was so strong that I nearly cried out in disappointment when I turned and saw only the dark, empty room. I sat for a time willing him to appear, but nothing moved in the museum-like hush.
I turned off the lights as I went upstairs, not stopping at my bedroom, but continuing on to the old nursery, long ago remade into my study. I sat down to my sheaf of paper, to pen the end of this story. Yet now I realize, as I should have realized years ago, that it is wrong to think that the end is mine to write, or even that it can be written. There are no words, nor even music, for this absolution. It is the final silence, and I am ready to embrace it. I only have to turn around. He’s by my shoulder, waiting.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Sarah Bryant is originally from Boston, Massachusetts, and now lives in the Scottish Borders with her husband and daughter. She has an MLitt in creative writing from St. Andrews, and what free time is left between writing and family goes on horses, print-making and the celtic harp.