Total pages in book: 159
Estimated words: 157450 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 787(@200wpm)___ 630(@250wpm)___ 525(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 157450 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 787(@200wpm)___ 630(@250wpm)___ 525(@300wpm)
Placing her bag of toiletries on the bed, she wanders through the apartment. Everything is achingly familiar, but now she’s viewing the place from a new perspective. She’d always thought of Maxim’s home as a place of work. She had never dared to imagine that one day she might be living here with him. She’d never aspired to live in a place as grand as this. She does a twirl in the doorway of the kitchen, feeling giddy and grateful—and happy. It’s a precious and rare feeling. She still has so much to figure out in her life, but for the first time in a long time she’s hopeful. With Maxim at her side, she feels that no obstacle is insurmountable. She wonders if he’ll only be an hour….She’s missing him.
She runs her fingers along the wall of the hallway. The photographs that had been hanging there have disappeared. Maybe they were stolen during the burglary.
The piano!
She races into the living room. It’s still there, unscathed. Breathing a sigh of relief, she switches on the lights. The room looks fresh and clean, his record collection in place. But the desk is bare—the computer and the sound gear gone. Here, too, the photographs that used to hang on the walls are missing. She walks with trepidation toward the piano, scrutinizing all its parts. Under the glow of the chandelier, it’s glossy and gleaming—newly polished, she thinks. Placing her hand on the ebony, she walks around it, stroking its sweeping curves. When she gets to the business end, she notices that his compositions are gone. Perhaps they’ve been tidied away. She lifts the lid and presses middle C: it’s a golden sound that rings through the empty room, seducing her, calming her…centering her. She sits down on the stool, shakes off her feelings of solitude, and begins to play Bach’s Prelude no. 23 in B Major.
* * *
Caroline is sitting by the fire, staring into the flames, huddled in a tartan throw. She doesn’t look around when I walk in.
“Hi.” My subdued greeting competes with the crackle of the fire. Caroline angles her head toward me, her expression forlorn, her mouth turned down in sorrow.
“Oh, it’s you.” she says.
“Who were you expecting?” She hasn’t risen to greet me and I’m beginning to feel a little unwelcome.
She sighs. “I’m sorry. I was just thinking about what Kit would be doing now if he were here.” From nowhere my grief emerges and smothers me like an itchy woolen blanket. I shrug it off, swallowing the lump that’s sticking in my throat. When I get closer to her, I see she’s been crying.
“Oh, Caro…” I murmur, and squat beside her chair.
“Maxim, I’m a widow. I’m twenty-eight, and I’m a widow. This wasn’t part of the plan.”
I take her hand in mine. “I know. It wasn’t in any of our plans. Even Kit’s.”
Pained blue eyes meet mine. “I don’t know,” she says.
“What do you mean?”
She leans forward so she’s facing me and in a conspiratorial whisper says, “I think he meant to kill himself.”
I squeeze her fingers. “Caro. That’s not true. Don’t think that. It was just a horrid accident.” My eyes meet hers, and I’m trying for my most earnest look, but the truth is—I’ve had the same thought. I can’t let her know that, though, and I don’t want to believe it either. Suicide is too painful for those of us left behind.
“I keep going over that day,” she says, searching my face for answers. “But I have no idea why…”
Alas, neither have I.
“It was an accident,” I reiterate. “Let me sit.” Releasing her, I slump into the chair opposite hers, facing the fireplace.
“Do you want a drink? After all, this is your house.” Her words have a bitter edge that I ignore. I don’t want a fight.
“Blake already offered, and I declined.”
She exhales and turns back to stare at the flames. We both do, each of us lost in the pain of losing Kit. I had expected the third degree from her, but she’s not forthcoming at all, and we sit in an uneasy silence. After a while the fire dies down. I get up and place another couple of logs in the grate and stoke the flames.
“Do you want me to go?” I ask.
She shakes her head.
Okay, then.
I sit back down, and she tilts her head to the side, her hair falling across her face until she tucks it behind her ear. “I heard about the burglary. Did you lose anything important?”
“No. Just my laptop and my decks. I think they smashed my iMac.”
“People are shitty.”
“They are.”
“What were you doing in Cornwall?”
“This and that….” I’m trying for humor.
“Well, that’s illuminating.” She rolls her eyes, and I glimpse a flash of the spirited Caroline I know. “What were you doing in Cornwall?”