Necessary Restorations (The Walsh Series) (A) (31 page)

“I’m not running off. Shannon would come find me, and drag me back.” He dropped down beside me and pulled me into his arms.

I’d heard a lot about Shannon. I’d heard about all of Sam’s family, but Shannon stood out. I couldn’t make sense of her level of involvement in his life.

I’d seen the sticky notes she left in his car, reminding him about appointments or calls he was due to return. I’d noticed his phone blowing up with texts from her at random hours. He’d mentioned her delivering his dry cleaning or occasionally doing his grocery shopping. He’d also shared the contentious battles they had at the office and the epic grudges she held. And one night, when we’d fallen into bed together after incredible live music and hours of dancing, he’d confided his suspicion that she was hiding something huge from him. More than anything else, he’d hated that she chose to exclude him.

It was obvious that they had a complex relationship, and on most days, his reactions to her were not positive. I didn’t usually understand the velocity of his annoyance with her, but I knew I didn’t like her on account of the stress she was inflicting upon him.

“Tell me about this one.” I pointed to the circle beneath his collarbone.

“Divine geometry,” he said.

Yeah, as if I was supposed to know what that meant.

He noticed my raised eyebrows and said, “There are patterns in everything. When you look closely, you realize it’s the same shapes, repeated over and over, everywhere. When you look even closer, it’s the Pythagorean theorem. Everything in nature, right down to the quantum mechanics of the universe, exists within the bounds of that theorem.”

“Like octave equivalency?”

“Yup.” He ran his hand down my thigh and back up, over my back. “Actually, I figured you’d have some ink. Lyrics or notes, or something special to you.”

“Yeah, I don’t know,” I said. “It just seems so . . . permanent. What happens when I find a new favorite song? I can’t imagine loving something enough right now to want it in thirty years.”

He stared at me for a long moment, his gaze heavy and indecipherable. “Never?”

“I don’t think so,” I said. “Once, I thought about getting an eyebrow ring. Ellie has two and they look so good on her, but I decided against it. I didn’t want to be left with a scar if I ever took it out.”

“That kind of scar would be nearly invisible,” he said. “Aren’t most scars worth the stories associated with them?”

“Yeah,” I conceded. “I don’t know. Even if it was tiny, I’d always see it, and I’d regret it.”

“Okay, Sunshine,” he murmured. Yawning, he tucked me into his side and kissed my shoulder. “We’ll talk about the rest tomorrow.”

We fell asleep quickly, and though I slept soundly, early rays of sunlight had me stirring from Sam’s iron grip on my waist.

Looking around, the first thing I noticed was the shortage of walls. What I’d thought of as a bedroom last night was actually wide, open space with a row of brick arches running down the center. They created the illusion of doorways, and in certain spots, Sam filled the arches with shelves or furniture.

I grabbed his discarded tank and pulled it on before fetching some sweats from my overnight bag. The house was quiet and I tiptoed from Sam’s room into a cavernous kitchen, stopping to count the number of seats at the long table. Eighteen. When I looked closer, I realized it was a single slab of wood, irregular on the sides and finished to a lustrous shine to bring out the rings.

There was an area outfitted with a sectional and television, and a garage packed with tools and wood. Sam always talked about using real wood for his projects, but it was still startling to see actual branches, stumps, and segments of tree trunks lining the brick walls.

Another turn brought me to a spacious bank of open-air showers, just like the ones from my high school locker rooms. Morning sun streamed in from tall, ocean-facing windows along the ceiling line. I stepped to the center of the room and tested my pitch. The acoustics were perfect, and I dashed back to Sam’s room to grab my instrument.

I’d basically packed my entire life when Sam told me to bring what I’d need for the weekend, and that always included Jezebel.

He was still asleep, and after drawing the blankets around his shoulders, I returned to the showers. I’d been wrestling with several pieces, and stood there, waving my bow back and forth until I could decide which to work on this morning.

Instead of playing any of them, I decided to experiment with ‘Moondance,’ an old Van Morrison tune I’d been lusting after for months. While I firmly believed that damn near anything could be adapted for strings, some Van Morrison songs weren’t the easiest matches.

I hadn’t brought any sheet music with me, and since I hadn’t intended to attack this song, I was going from memory alone. I ran through it in my head several times, getting tempo and movement down, and then lifted my instrument.

The first couple of attempts were objectively terrible, but somewhere around the eleventh take, it started sounding less like an electrocuted cat and more like the jazzy sway I wanted. I kept going, scratching away for another thirteen iterations until I felt the notes coming together, bending, softening, melting.

Nodding in moderate satisfaction, I opened my eyes and saw Sam seated against the faded yellow tiles, his arms folded over his bent knees.

“Oh my God, I can’t believe you had to hear that,” I said. I straightened my arms and shook out my wrists. “It was such crap. I actually thought to myself at one point
, this sounds like an electrocuted cat.
I’m sorry. I should have gone outside.”

He tilted his head with that adorable, squinty expression he pulled whenever he was particularly amused and perplexed. Like most things he did, I wanted to throw myself on him and savor every morsel.

“You’re kidding, right? Tell me you’re kidding, because that was the most extraordinary thing I’ve ever seen,” he said.

I lifted a shoulder and offered a noncommittal sound while I set my instrument back in the case. “It needs work.”

Sam popped to his feet and approached me, his head shaking. “I’m my own toughest critic, too, but believe me when I say that was remarkable. I could watch you for hours.”

“I’m sorry I woke you up. I really should have gone outside,” I said.

“It’s December. It’s twenty fucking degrees,” he said. “Don’t even joke about doing that.”

“I used do it all the time,” I said. “My family could not stand listening to me practice, so I cleared out a section of the garage. I probably lost some brain cells to huffing gas fumes, and the acoustics were shameful, but it worked for me.”

“Don’t care.” He glanced at me before yanking me toward him. “Why does my wrinkled shirt look so fucking good on you?”

“I’d argue it looks decent on you, too,” I said. “But I have to tell you—this room has the most incredible acoustics
and
sunlight. I don’t feel like I’m playing in a dungeon. I’ve never been so happy in my life.”

Sam laughed, shaking his head at me. “Consider it yours.”

What the fuck did he just offer?

“What?”

His lips moved over my shoulder, kissing, teeth scraping, sighing, and he said, “Riley and I didn’t know what to do with this space. He wanted to rent it out for porn shoots, but I vetoed that one. If it works for you, it’s yours. Come anytime. Stay. Stay as long as you want. Stay . . . forever.”

I glanced up expecting to see a glimmer of humor in his eyes, some indication that he was joking, but I couldn’t find it.

“You wouldn’t have to book pre-dawn studio time,” he said, his hand sliding under my sweats and over my ass. “You could keep your instruments here, and not have to cart them all over town. We could paint or . . . do whatever you wanted.”

“Did you just ask me to move in with you?” The words ran out in a screechy rush.

“Um, I don’t know.” Sam’s brow furrowed and he released a tight, self-conscious laugh. “Do you
want
to move in with me?”

He was being nice. This was his version of generosity, and he simply failed to think about what he was saying.

“We’re all good,” I said, patting his chest. “Don’t worry about it.”

He had an empty room that matched my needs, and he was being a gentleman by offering it up. Nothing more.

“Didn’t you say there was a fireman’s pole around here somewhere? That’s something I have to see.”

IF I COULD have destroyed my phone with some evil glares, I would have. I knew the call was coming, and as always, ignoring it only delayed the discomfort.

“Tiel, hello,” my father said.

“Hi, Dad.” I hated the fake tint in my voice, the impatient cadence that refused—even after all these years—to stop wondering how I became irrelevant and expendable to my own parents. “How are you?”

“Such a busy time,” he said. “Always busy, and we’re happy to be busy.”

“Well that’s good,” I murmured.

“And you?”

“All good,” I said. “The semester is nearly finished, and I’m up to my eyeballs with grading this week. I was actually reviewing some term papers just now . . .”

We did this dance every December. He’d call, tell me I should visit for the holidays to meet my cousin’s fiancé or congratulate my sister on her new home, and I’d dance around the request with some semi-legitimate reasons to stay in Boston.

Last year, I teamed up with a bunch of friends and college students to visit the area hospitals and nursing homes to play Christmas carols. The year before that, Ellie and I went to Disney World. One of my first holidays in Boston, I was working with a particularly challenged kiddo, and his parents asked me to join them on their ski trip to Killington.

I knew Sam’s family was having a get-together on Christmas Eve, but he was careful to mention it casually and never attach expectations to it.

“You should know we think this might be Yaya’s last Christmas,” he said, sighing. “She’ll be ninety-seven next summer, and she hasn’t been healthy. Her heart is giving her trouble, and she can’t get around well.”

I always wished I could be one of those people who cut negative things from their lives and didn’t look back, but I never learned how to make that cut, not all the way. My family wasn’t good for me; they didn’t respect my choices or values, and though my father was attempting to broker some peace, that didn’t alter their opinions of me. But I couldn’t stop caring about them.

“The least you can do is see her at Christmas,” he said. “I know Yaya would appreciate it.”

“I need to look at my schedule,” I said. “I’ll let you know.”

“You should be able to do this, Tiel,” he said. “It’s important. You’ll regret it if she passes and you didn’t say goodbye. For once, think about someone other than yourself.”

My eyes squeezed shut, I took a deep breath and convinced myself it wasn’t worth getting into an argument. It was easier to deal with this now than pretend I needed to consult some jam-packed schedule, only to call back later and agree to visit. Because of course I was going; I would always love my family, and I wouldn’t let my grandmother go without a proper goodbye. “I can take the train down on Christmas Eve.”

It was the right thing to do even if it was the most uncomfortable option available, and I groused my way through the week on that point of frustration. I shopped for Christmas gifts (angrily), graded exams (no generosity to be found), practiced (only the ranty tunes), and dreamt up (bitchy) ways to handle the barrage of questions I’d get when I arrived in Jersey.

The saving grace was my time spent with Seraphina and Lucas. She was getting good with her One Direction acoustic guitar, and she consistently said ‘hi.’ I didn’t know the trauma that caused her selective mutism, and I probably wouldn’t. My sessions only provided an outlet to manage her emotions and express herself through a medium that made sense to her. That she could find solace in songs was the win.

Lucas and I worked through complex pieces, attempted some new approaches, and sampled some holiday music. It was something of a breakthrough, considering he preferred the hard lines of Beethoven, Bach, and Tchaikovsky. He didn’t smile when we played ‘Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer’ but he didn’t immediately revert to the Fifth Symphony either, and that was progress for us.