Tracie Peterson (11 page)

Chapter 10

“Sean, listen,” Erica said irritably into the telephone receiver. “No, just listen to me!”

She felt a total sense of frustration as the man continued to plead his case. “Look, I have to go,” she finally said. “I’ll call you tomorrow.” She hung up before he could protest her words.

In the living room she could hear her sisters’ animated chatter. They were discussing something to do with Brook’s most recent trip to British Columbia, and Erica had no desire to get in on the fun. Sneaking down the south hall, she slipped up the stairs as quietly as she could and made for the haven of her bedroom.

They called it the Ivy Room because the wallpaper held a delicate ivy pattern in various shades of green against a white backdrop. The curtains at the window were a dark hunter green with white sheers, and all of the trim had been painted white, while the closet and entry doors had been painted the same shade as the curtains.

To break the green and white monotones, Erica had chosen bright ginghams with white ruffles for her bed pillows, and Grammy had designed her a wonderful eight-pointed star quilt in white and rose.

Erica loved the effect and often wondered why she hadn’t tried to recreate the design in her own apartment back in Kansas City. But down deep inside, she knew why. This room belonged at Grammy’s. It simply wouldn’t fit anywhere else.

“May I come in?” Grammy asked as she entered the room.

Erica realized too late that she’d failed to close the door behind
her. “I guess so,” she said, knowing her voice betrayed her emotions.

“Want to talk about it?”

Erica smiled. “Not really. It wouldn’t do much good.”

“I couldn’t help but overhear some of your conversation. I take it your young man is pressuring you to marry him,” Grammy said, taking a seat in a white wicker rocker. Her short, layered hair, frosted with gray and white, made a fitting frame for her aging features. But no matter how many years etched themselves in Grammy’s face, her blue eyes were bright and alert, never missing a single detail of life.

Erica gave up trying to keep anything from her grandmother. The woman had an intuitive nature that seemed capable of ferreting out even the tiniest bit of information. With a sigh, she sat down on the edge of her bed and leaned her chin down on the brass railing of the footpiece. “Sean doesn’t understand my goals.”

Grammy smiled. “Music?”

Erica nodded. “I’ve sent out audition tapes to several eastern orchestras, and he’s furious with me. He wants me to stay in Kansas City and marry him and have lots of children and teach music to other people.”

“He expects you to give up the orchestra? Surely he knows how important playing the flute is to you.”

“I thought so,” Erica replied, lifting her head with a shrug. “But I guess he doesn’t. Maybe no one understands like you do. You know how this has been my passion since I was a little girl. You’re the one who paid for my lessons and drove me to practice.”

“I’ve also reaped the benefits of listening to you play.”

“Well, Sean sees my passion for music as a competition for my love.”

“It does take up a great deal of your time, Erica. I remember how you’d spend long hours practicing to get one piece right. Remember when your first-chair position was challenged in high school? You practiced so much we were all sick and tired of ‘The Dance of the Blessed Spirits.’”

Erica giggled. “But it needed to be perfect. That snotty Justine had her new open-holed flute and her fancy private lessons from a real college professor.”

“And the more you practiced, the worse it got,” Grammy reminded her.

Erica could remember it as if it were yesterday. “I stood right over there,” she said, pointing to the window. “My music stand was positioned to get the best lighting from the lamp and from the sunlight. I played and played and it just didn’t feel right. No matter how hard I tried, I just kept messing up.”

“And then I made you quit.”

“Not before I was ready to throw my flute across the room,” Erica said, shaking her head. “I was about to send it sailing through the bedroom window.”

“So I made you pack it up and stop practicing.”

“That was the hardest moment of my life. The competition was the very next day.”

“But you were ready. You knew the notes, but you’d lost sight of the music,” Grammy said.

Erica nodded. “I remember telling you that you couldn’t possibly understand how important that first-chair position was to me. I cried and cried and you still wouldn’t let me practice. You told me I’d either do my very best and remain as first chair, or I would do my very best and become the second chair.” Erica could remember the words distinctly. “Then you told me that if the music was really my love, it would show in my tryouts. If not, I was in the wrong place and needed to know it.”

“But you were in the right place,” Grammy said with a loving smile. “And you kept your first-chair position.”

“And you were right about making me stop. I’ve kept with that practice ever since. When things get too stressful and I’m hitting more wrong notes than right ones, I make myself stop and do something else. Sometimes I just go jogging, sometimes I shop—but taking a break always does the trick. Sometimes I’m just as glad to run away.”

“Is that what you’re doing now? Running away from Sean and his proposal?”

Erica got up and walked to the window. She shoved her hands into the pockets of her jeans and sighed. “I guess I am. Rachelle’s funeral seemed like the perfect way to escape dealing with him. I know that sounds terrible. But at the same time that I was running away from Sean, I felt like I was running to my family.”

“I understand,” Grammy said softly. “But just like music had to be your focus rather than the position you held in the band, the love of your family should be the focus rather than the event that brought you here. You feel comforted coming home because you know you are loved unconditionally. We won’t berate you for choosing an orchestra that takes you far away, although we’ll miss you and wish you were closer.”

“I do feel comforted here. Sometimes I feel so childish. Like everyone else grew up, but I didn’t. I’ll always be a baby in their eyes. The kid sister. Yet as bossy as they can be, I wouldn’t trade them.”

“Just remember, Erica,” Grammy said, getting to her feet, “jobs will come and go. So, too, will passions. Your music is important, but family is more so. Maybe that’s what Sean recognizes and wants to share with you.”

“But my music is so much a part of me that it’s often impossible to tell where I end and it begins. My music transports me beyond the emptiness and loneliness I feel.”

“Maybe Sean is jealous,” Grammy replied, pausing to gently touch Erica’s cheek. “Maybe he wishes you would let him have that place in your life. Maybe he would like to fill your emptiness and take away those lonely moments.”

Erica knew she was right. “I just don’t know how to make it all work. I’m making so many mistakes.”

“Then quit trying so hard. Remember, you won first chair even though I made you stop practicing. You knew the music, but you were losing the heart of it. Maybe you’re losing the heart of this as well. Maybe you’re afraid to trust Sean to be to you all that music has been.”

Erica wrapped her arms around Grammy’s shoulders. She smelled like cinnamon and nutmeg—no doubt left over from the coffee cake she’d baked that morning. Erica loved the fragrance and hugged her just a little longer than she might have under other circumstances. “Thank you for loving me,” she whispered.

Grammy stroked her head gently. “Thank you for loving me.”

Erica pulled away and sniffed back tears. “I’m so glad we have each other.”

“Me too.” Grammy went to the door and paused. “Sometimes life hands us surprises, like flowers coming back up a second year when you thought they were good for only one season. Maybe God will hand you a surprise in this situation as well. Just don’t run so far away that you aren’t around to see it when it comes.” She smiled and slipped away.

“Am I interrupting?” Deirdre questioned not a minute after Mattie had stepped from the room.

“Not at all,” Erica replied. “Grammy and I just had a conversation about Sean. Say, did you get ahold of Dave and Morgan?”

Deirdre came in and dropped into the wicker rocker. “Finally. Dave had taken her out for pizza and to play. They were just getting back. Sounded like they had a really good time. Dave sent his mom and dad to the theatre to give them the night off, so everyone’s doing just fine.”

“Sometimes I envy you,” Erica said, leaning against the wall. “You have your life so perfectly ordered.”

“Don’t bet on it,” Deirdre laughed. “If I’ve learned one thing, it’s that life has no perfect order. There’s always something to come along and zap you just when you least expect it. Take Rachelle, for instance. Who would have thought she’d be dead at such a young age?”

“I wonder if she killed herself,” Erica said absentmindedly.

“I guess we’ll never know. Either way, she’s gone. Not that she was ever here for us anyway.”

“I know you told me not to bother,” Erica confessed, “but I kept
trying to get a call through to her. I just kept thinking that maybe if I reached out to her, she’d be inclined to reach back.”

“People aren’t always going to respond that way,” her sister chided. “Just because you have a good heart doesn’t mean everyone in the world does. Rachelle’s heart was ice. She wasn’t about to let it thaw for even a minute.”

“Maybe she was afraid.”

“Afraid? Of us?” Deirdre questioned. “I can think of a lot of things in this world to be afraid of, but us?”

Erica shrugged. “Why not? We’re the one audience she couldn’t sell. We’re the ones who refused to buy into her hype.”

“She’s the one who walked out on us,” Deirdre said, shaking her head. “We weren’t to blame.”

“Maybe that’s what made it so impossible for her. She would have had to face up to her mistakes and see herself the way we do. That would have been enough to keep me away, had I been Rachelle.”

“Well, it wouldn’t have been for me. I have a daughter,” Deirdre replied. “Nothing could separate me from her. Nothing. And I’m not talking physical distance. She has to go to school, Dave and I will take our trips, and I had to come here. No, I’m talking about true separation. I’m talking about the heart.”

Erica nodded. “I know. I am too. I think Rachelle was afraid to love us. I think the price was too high and she was terrified of what it might mean to her if she let us in. Now she’s dead, so I guess we’ll never know.”

Sadly, Erica realized the truth in her own words. She had always hoped for one of those sappy reunions where she and her sisters could lovingly embrace their mother and find true happiness as a family.
I’ve always been a dreamer
, she told herself. She just always assumed everyone else was too.

“Erica, don’t let it get to you,” Deirdre said, getting to her feet. “I’m sure that wherever Rachelle is, she’s not giving us a second thought.”

“But what if she is?” Erica questioned.

“Then it’s her loss.”

Chapter 11

“Grammy?” Ashley called as she peeked into the sewing room. She figured it to be the one place she could count on finding her grandmother on a rainy day. Sure enough, Mattie was hunched over her sewing machine, trying to thread it.

“I’m in here, Ash,” she replied, appearing to finally accomplish her goal. “Just thought with the rain and all I’d get a little sewing done. Come on in.” She patted a cushioned chair nearby. “Come talk with me.”

For as long as Ashley could remember, Grammy had kept a chair beside the sewing machine. She had told the girls over and over that just because she was sewing did not mean she wasn’t available for them. In fact, Grammy had so often been sewing clothes for one girl or the other that the talking sessions usually turned into fitting sessions as well.

“What are you working on?” Ashley asked, admiring the Piece Work quilt before joining her grandmother. The amount of work Grammy had put into the quilt was incredible. Lovingly, Ashley touched her own square, tracing the embroidered letter
A
.

“I’m just putting together some curtains for the back door,” Grammy replied.