Maestro

by Thomma Lyn Grindstaff

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Epilogue

  About Thomma Lyn Grindstaff

  Maestro

  by Thomma Lyn Grindstaff

  Copyright

  Copyright 2013 Thomma Lyn Grindstaff

  Cover Design by Thomma Lyn Grindstaff

  Photo from iStockPhoto

  License Notes

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return it and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  Author’s Note

  All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction, in whole or in part in any form. This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, incidents, and places are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual places, events, or persons living or dead, is wholly coincidental.

  Acknowledgments

  First of all, thanks to my readers. You're the reason I do what I do. I’d like to thank my friends and critique partners who have been supportive of my efforts over the years. Thanks to my husband for always believing in me. And thanks to my cats for fun, floof, and inspiration.

  Contact

  thomma.grindstaff@gmail.com

  * * * ~~~ * * *

  PART ONE: Concerto

  Chapter One

  What an evening, playing to a packed house at the Down Beat. Annasophia hoped she'd given the audience what they'd come for and more. When she sat at the piano and played and sang, it wasn't as much as she performed her music as her music performed through her. The feeling, always heady, intoxicated her audience as much as it intoxicated her. Yes, mutually drunk on music.

  Tonight, though, Maestro had been on Annasophia's mind. He hadn't been feeling well and hadn't been to see any of her shows in about a month. Before then, though, he'd hardly ever missed her shows. Before he had retired, he'd been a Professor of Piano at Southern Mountain State University, but long before then, he'd been a critically-acclaimed concert pianist.

  How someone like Wilhelm Dahl had ever wound up in East Tennessee, Annasophia couldn't guess. But what a lucky break for her! He had taken her, as a child, on as a private student, and she couldn't have had a better teacher, whether for music or for life. He had shone a light into life's possibilities, warm and wide paths that held hope and not fear, peace and not emotional roller coasters.

  Maestro had sounded a little better when she had talked to him on the phone earlier that afternoon. He'd even said he would try to make it to her show. When he came to her shows, he always sat as close to the stage as he could manage. But he hadn't been there, and Annasophia was getting more and more worried.

  On her way home from the Down Beat, she pulled her mobile phone out of her purse and punched in his number. Ring, ring, ring, ring. Maybe he wasn't home. Just as she was about to give up, his voice reached her ear. She had to strain to hear it. “Yes, dear Anna. How was your show?” His German accent, smoothed over from years of living in the United States, sounded like velvet on her ear.

  “Great,” she said, smiling. Man, she missed Maestro at her shows. Performing her music always felt freeing, but just knowing he was in the audience always made her feel all the more free. She didn't want to hammer home how much she missed him, though. It would only make him feel guilty. Maestro would have been there if he had felt like going, and she didn't want him feeling guilty. “How are you?” she said instead.

  He didn't say anything for a moment. She couldn't even hear him breathing. Maybe their connection had been cut off. But then he said, “Not feeling very well, I'm afraid. I...”

  “What?” She had thought he probably was suffering from a flu bug, but if that were the case, then the bug was hanging on for an awfully long time.

  “...having trouble eating.” His voice was growing weaker.

  “Can I come over and see you?” she asked. “Maybe I can help.” She didn't say so, but she might have to make sure he got to a hospital.

  “...don't know... Anna, my dear,” he said. He spoke so softly, and worse yet, it sounded as though he weren't holding his phone close enough to his ear and mouth. Like his hand was as weak as his voice. He must be much sicker than she'd thought. Sicker than he'd let on.

  She felt as though someone had kicked her in the guts. “Hold the phone. I'll be right over.”

  In downtown Johnson City, the streets were clogged with traffic at a few minutes past ten. The old buildings seemed to crowd in on her, and she focused on the road ahead, not the other cars. The more she thought about Maestro, the more closed in and anxious she felt. Take a deep breath, she told herself. Breathe. It was something Maestro had taught her, long ago, when she had been a little girl playing at concerto competitions. That way, the judges never intimidated her. She would do her best not to let anxiety intimidate her now. She didn't like to think about it, but Maestro, at seventy-six, wasn't exactly young.

  She took another deep breath and relaxed her fingers on the steering wheel. Worrying only borrowed trouble. “Rip it all out, and cast it away,” she sang, lyrics from her song “Glass Ceiling.” She'd played it for her last encore. The interstate highway, as boring as it was, surely would feel better than the downtown streets did. Once she got there, the traffic was lighter, but the interstate highway still gave her the creeps with its painfully long stretch of pavement ahead. It seemed she'd never reach Maestro, though he lived in Gray, a small town ten miles outside Johnson City and a straight shot down the road. Each of those miles seemed to stretch longer and longer. Arriving in Gray, she felt she might as well be in a ghost town; there was hardly any traffic at all. It seemed like most of the little town's population had vanished and a huge, ghostly vacancy sign blinked in the sky where only she, Annasophia, could see it. Nobody here. Nobody at all.

  Still being silly, she told herself.

  By the time she got to Maestro's house, she felt as if she'd swallowed a porcupine, which had scraped her throat bloody going down and was now lodged in her stomach. She parked in Maestro's driveway, behind his Mercedes. His brick rancher home sprawled in the nighttime shadows, flanked by hedges that lined its front porch to the right and left. The brass door knocker, shaped like a lion, glinted in what bit of silvery moonlight could reach it through the clouds. The knocker would be cold to the touch. Shivering in her coat, Annasophia rapped on the door instead. No answer. She rapped again, harder this time.

  Maestro wouldn't have gone to bed yet. If he were feeling well, she would probably hear him playing his piano. He loved to play at night. But the house was still as death. He had to be home. His car was here; he wouldn't have left, knowing she was coming over, and besides, where else would a seventy-six-year-old man with a stomach ache be on a Saturday night?

  There was still no answer, so Annasophia tried the doorknob. Finding the door unlocked, she swung the door open and walked into the house. “Maestro? Maes...” The nickname died in her throat when she saw him on the living room couch, slumped over so far that his face seemed almost to touch his knees. She dashed to his side, sat down, and put an arm on his shoulder.
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  “I'm here,” she said, relieved to feel him breathing, albeit shallowly. “Can you sit up?”

  He squinted over at her, his blue eyes hazy. His expression screamed that he was in pain, but he only said in the same soft voice he'd used talking to her on the phone, “I can't sit up straight. I hurt too much in my belly.”

  “You're hurting there, too? I thought you were just feeling sick.” A lump grew in her throat when she saw his phone in the floor. He must have dropped it, slumped over like that. She picked it up and set it on the coffee table in front of them. On the coffee table was a plastic bowl of chocolate chip cookies. One lay crumbled on the floor.

  “Are you going to go see your doctor?” Annasophia asked.

  He only slumped over again, his right arm covering his lower abdomen. “I never knew a person could feel this bad.” His voice was so soft she had to strain to hear him.

  Her breath caught again. This was no flu. If he didn't want to tell her what was going on, it had to be bad. No, not just bad. Horrible. “Maestro, please.” The words felt too big to come out of her throat, but somehow she kept speaking. She had to. “Tell me what's the matter with you.”

  Maestro just slumped there, breathing shallowly.

  “Please,” she urged, beating back spiraling panic. The last thing Maestro needed was for her to panic. She strove to keep her voice calm. “Regardless of whether you tell me, I'm taking you to the hospital, so you might as well 'fess up.”

  He gave her another sideways glance. “Anna, I'm dying.”

  The syllables of what he'd said refused to come together to make words in her ear. She only stared back at him. “What?”

  “I have pancreatic cancer,” he said, lowering his head again as though he were too weak even to look at her. “Stage Four, metastatic. I'm going to die.”

  ###

  On her way home from Watauga Valley Hospital, where she had taken Maestro, Annasophia pulled off the road. She was crying so hard she couldn't drive. Why hadn't Maestro told her? He had found out about it a month ago. Around the time he'd stopped going to her shows. He had said he hadn't wanted her to worry, that she'd been getting such good gigs and she needed to be out there performing, not worrying about him. But did he think he was doing a favor by saving all the worry up and then delivering this knockout punch to her heart?

  She'd left him in Intensive Care. While Annasophia was still at the hospital, the doctors had diagnosed Maestro with kidney failure, and when she'd left, he'd been resting and on dialysis. He'd reluctantly admitted to her that over the last couple of weeks, he'd hardly been able to sleep at all because of the pain in his belly. Well, no wonder. When the doctor had explained what they were dealing with – tumors all throughout his pancreas, tumors which seemed to have grown tentacles into his liver, spine, bones, and God knew where else – it was a wonder he could keep from screaming.

  He hadn't even told Matt, his son, about his condition, though he had given Annasophia the green light to call and tell him now. She'd just seen Matt today, at the performance. He was her sound man and a good friend, even if he was a bit odd. Music and odd went together like chocolate and cashews, as long as odd wasn't synonymous with nutcase. Like Annasophia, Matt had thought his dad had a bad case of the flu.

  It was four o'clock in the morning. A terrible time to call someone. Annasophia couldn't wait, though. She had to call Matt now. He had to know as soon as possible; who knew how long Maestro would last? The doctors talked about trying chemotherapy, radiation. But when Annasophia had looked closely, their expressions had told her it was too late for all that. Ironically, Maestro told the doctors he'd had an appointment scheduled for three weeks now to talk to an oncologist this coming Monday about chemotherapy treatments. And now, it seemed he might not even last that long.

  “An incredibly fast-growing cancer,” one of the doctors had sadly said after studying Maestro's medical history, probably when he thought he was speaking too softly for Annasophia to hear. “The Fastest-growing cancer I've ever run across.”

  She would call Matt just as soon as she could stop crying.

  ###

  Annasophia didn't want to go near the computer right now. All she wanted to do was curl up in bed and pull the covers over her head. Never mind that it would be daylight in only a couple of hours. She'd burrow far enough down in the covers to where it would seem like nighttime had never left.

  She hadn't been able to reach Matt. She had tried his apartment, but the phone had rung and rung, with no answer. She hadn't been able to reach him on his mobile phone, either, but that was no surprise. Most people she knew kept their mobile phones operative and standing by, but Matt could hardly be bothered to touch his. He didn't even have a damn message box set up. His mobile phone was eight years old or so, maybe even ten, and he only used it for emergencies.

  If ever there were an emergency, Maestro's condition was it.

  She'd have to send him an email message, asking him to call her as soon as possible. It was the only way for now. Matt, a computer nerd if not a mobile phone nerd, would be much more likely to go to his computer, anyhow.

  At least during the dialysis procedure, Maestro was getting some much-needed rest. Finally. She couldn't imagine how he must have suffered, sitting there slumped in his house, unable to lie down, unable to sit straight up or to lie back. Her heart wrenched at the thought of his loneliness, his isolation, when he could have called her any time and she would have rushed to his side to help him. But could anything have helped him, really? When Annasophia had left the hospital, he had been lying in the hospital bed in intensive care. His face had been gray as an overcast sky. Gray like death.

  A loud sob escaped her, but there was nobody in her apartment to hear. She went to her computer, which sat on a desk in her living room, and opened her email program, but her hands were shaking too badly to type. Instead, she used them to cover her face. It didn't banish the image of Maestro's suffering face from her mind.

  Heaving a ragged sigh, she started to click on Compose Message, but while she had been sitting with her face covered, her email program had pulled in a message. She wiped her eyes and peered at the return email address: lostintime (at) nexcomm.net. Nobody she recognized. It could be spam, or some asshole spreading a computer virus. She ought to delete it.

  What was that subject, though? Picture of you and Wilhelm... It's Gotta Be. Had a fan taken a picture of her and Maestro at a show? He sometimes joined her backstage after shows, and it seemed that, a few weeks back, a fan had taken a picture of her and Maestro together before getting Maestro to take a picture of her and the fan together. Yes, she would check it out, if only to see Maestro's face when he had been feeling a bit better.

  She clicked on the message. Whoever had sent the message had written: This picture was taken in 1973. Annasophia blinked, then read the message again. Ridiculous. How could it be a picture of her with Maestro? She hadn't even been born yet. In 1973, she wouldn't be born for seventeen more years. Someone must be crazy. Either that, or a joker. And damn, if this lost in time person thought that she, at 26, looked old enough to be pushing forty, they needed glasses.

  Scowling, Annasophia scrolled down to view the picture. For a moment, she forgot how to breathe. There, in a place that looked like it could be backstage after one of his concerts – yes, he had been working as a concert pianist back in 1973, hadn't he? – stood Maestro, young and breathtakingly, ruggedly handsome at thirty-five years old. She'd known how handsome Maestro had been when he was young by looking at his old photo albums and also by searching for information about his former career on the web. He was a very handsome older man now. But it wasn't Maestro, as hot as he looked in the picture, who made her breath catch. It was the young woman, smiling so widely that she looked as though she were laughing, her face pressed up close against the chest of the tall, stately Maestro, who held her in the circle of his arms. The young woman wore a dark, floor-length dress that clung in all the right places, and she had tousled d
ark hair, aquiline features, and a slender build like a wood elf. Except for that fancy-pants dress, she could easily be Annasophia's twin.

  But Annasophia didn't have a twin.

  Me? she thought. Could it be?

  She peered more closely.

  The picture looked as though it had been scanned, maybe from a magazine. In white space next to the picture was written in an odd, spiky hand the same phrase the sender had typed as the subject line for the email: You and Wilhelm... It's Gotta Be. The picture didn't look grainy, as though it had come from a newspaper. Both Maestro's and the woman's features were clear. And the expression on the woman's face – well, sure, two people could look very much alike. Could they share the same expression, the same gleam in the eye, the same quirky, devil-may-care grin?

  Except for one major difference. This woman seemed to glow with being in love. Even from a magazine picture taken in the seventies, her emotion – conveyed through her face and her body language – seemed to shine out of Annasophia's computer.

  Annasophia had never been in love.

  In lust? Sure. Her male groupies were smoking hot. She'd started on birth control pills at sixteen, when she'd started playing gigs, though she'd never told Maestro because she didn't want him to be ashamed of her. He always left the shows pretty early, and after he did, she had her fun. Sex? She couldn't get enough of it. Music and sex made her feel alive. She would probably have a man in bed with her tonight if she hadn't been so worried about Maestro.

  But love? Well, if anyone had told her she could look – no, glow – like she was doing in that picture, she would have said they were on crack.