A Daughter's Story

She’d show Rob.…

No. She was there to show herself something. To save her life.

She sipped again, raised her gaze and took in the people around her. A couple of men sitting alone at the bar, both dressed in suits with their ties loosened at the collar. A woman who was also alone and probably there on business. Just not the white-collar kind.

There were couples—both at the bar and filling the tables around the center stage—but those she ignored. And there were families, healthy groups of people who laughed and talked and fought and took one another for granted. She’d spent a lot of her youth wondering what it felt like to be one of them.

And then she’d grown up and realized she could make a family of her own. That’s where Rob had come in. They had plans to make a family.

And she’d kicked him out.

She had to phone him. To apologize for her hastiness. He’d be expecting the call. So maybe she should text him instead.

“And I did it my…” She suddenly heard the famous melody and it caught her attention.

Reaching beneath her jacket to make sure that her red silk blouse was still tucked into her black slacks, Emma sat up straighter. The words continued to play in her mind.

But they’d been placed there by the pianist up onstage. The timing seemed odd. Fortuitous. As though this song had been chosen for her. A song about facing the end of one’s life with absolutely no regrets.

And the way to do that?

Live by the dictates of your own heart. And only your heart.

Have I ever done that?

Emma sipped her wine.

She watched the pianist’s strong masculine fingers fly over the keys. She’d seen him play before. He’d won the competition on both the nights she’d been there.

Forgoing her fifteen-minute-mark trip to the ladies’ room, she ordered a second glass of wine and let the music envelop her. The man played with more passion than Emma had ever dared feel in her entire life.

And he did so as though completely unaware of all of the people watching him from the tables below.

If there’d been a competition that evening, it was over.

The man with the weathered face and longish hair had the stage all to himself.

* * *

HE’D WON AGAIN. If Chris were the sort to care about what other people thought, he’d probably be embarrassed. He didn’t care. So he wasn’t.

He also wasn’t stone-cold sober, not that anyone was paying his state of inebriation any mind. His room at the inn across the street would be waiting for him. He rarely used it, but every Friday night he had a free room at his disposal—paid for by Citadel’s owner as part of their business agreement.

Tonight he was going to use that room.

Breaking into one of his own compositions, a piece that flew from his fingers without any conscious thought, he let the music take him on his own private journey. He was a little boy, scared of the waves that crashed against his father’s boat. And he was the waves, with the strength and the will to steal men from their lives, their loved ones. He was the source of all power. Others were afraid; he was invigorated.

He played until he trembled from the inside out, until emotion rose in his chest, and threatened to choke him. And still he played.

With the demons of hell at his back, with the determination to go to his own grave with no regrets, he ran as fast and as far as he could from the sight of a mother’s face who’d buried her son that day, from the memories of the faces of the other women there—those who, except for a fate he’d never understand, could have been the ones grieving. He ran from the expressions on the faces of the men left behind who would not—could not—spare their loved ones the risk of a similar fate.

And maybe, just maybe, he ran from the fact that he was all alone.

* * *

EMMA WASN’T PARTICULARLY hungry. But she ordered food, anyway, so that she had an excuse to stay in her seat at the bar and continue to lose herself in the music emanating from the fingers of a man she’d never met but knew she’d never forget.

He’d changed her life that night. He’d shared his music with her, wrapped her in its graces, holding her there so that she didn’t run back home.

She ordered more wine, too. A third glass.

The pianist pulled things from her raw and gaping heart that were unfamiliar to her. Parts of herself she hadn’t had to face. He held her fast in life’s grip, keeping her rooted in that seat.

She ate a little bit. Pushed the plate away and sipped her wine and listened. It was after midnight. The man had been playing, with only one small break, for more than two hours.

He was bound to stop soon.

She couldn’t bear the thought. Not now. Not yet. She wasn’t ready for him to let her go, to leave her to fend for herself.

She wasn’t changed enough.

She needed more.

She had to meet him.

CHAPTER FIVE

WITH HANDS USED to pulling in heavy lobster traps in rapid succession, Chris communed with the ivories. The music his playing sent out into the night was a byproduct—he felt melodies and harmonies and chords more than he heard them. He didn’t understand how it worked—the music and his inner self healing. He didn’t ask. He just presented himself to the keys and played until he knew he was done.

Until he knew he could sleep.

At least, that was how it had always worked before.

So why wasn’t it working?

When midnight passed and he was still driven to play, when the tunes he produced changed from popular ditties to intense renditions of classical masterpieces with a few of his own compositions mixed in, when his fingertips grew numb with pounding, he ordered a fourth drink to help the peace he was seeking find him more easily. To assist the piano in its work.

“You’re here late tonight,” Cody said as he delivered the drink himself. Other than a waitress on the floor and the checker at the door, Cody was the only employee left for the night. The kitchen had been closed for a couple of hours.

“So are you,” Chris said, tipping his glass to the friendly guy. “I’ll bet your wife has a bit to say about that.” About the long hours. The time away.

“As long as I get home in time to crawl into bed with her, she doesn’t complain,” Cody said. “I’m home with her and the kids during the day and now that they’re in preschool we’ve got lots of time just the two of us. It’s nice.”

Chris nodded, one hand on the keys, trying to imagine what it would be like to be home with a wife and kids even for an hour, and coming up blank.

“Who’s the woman?” He’d noticed the woman in the tailored black suit and red silky-looking top over the past few hours and she was something he could converse about, though why he had a sudden urge to hang out with the bartender was a mystery.

“Not sure,” Cody said. “I don’t know her and she hasn’t said much.”