Sarah slumped into the couch. “You lost your voice, Sophia’s having panic attacks, my eczema’s out of control—my legs, back, chest. And I can’t stop eating. I’ve gained twenty pounds.”
“You look good.” A stupid comment, but that’s how Olivia was feeling now. Stunned and stupid.
“I loved him with all my heart.” Sarah swiped at her eyes with the napkin, smearing some of her makeup. Even in her drunken state, Olivia could see Sarah’s pain, and it made her want to cry right along. “I fell hard and fast,” Sarah said, “but I wasn’t blind to his faults. He was a wonderful teacher, and he could have been a great coach, but he wanted to be Pavarotti, except he didn’t have the voice.” She wadded up the napkin, looking at it in her lap. “When he lost out on a part, he blamed the acoustics or his accompanist. The weather. Sometimes, he blamed me. Not directly. More like, if only I hadn’t insisted on going to the Turkish restaurant, he would have sung better. Little things like that.”
Olivia circled back to the beginning. “But those emails? To all three of us? The Adam I knew was spoiled, but he wasn’t cruel.”
“He lost out on one too many roles. He fell into a severe depression and refused to see a doctor. He kept saying there was nothing wrong with him.”
“It was always other people.” Olivia gazed at what was left of her drink. It reminded her of sewer water, and she couldn’t imagine taking another sip. “You weren’t at his funeral.”
“I’d seen him the day he killed himself. We’d had an argument.” She stared straight ahead, looking haunted. “He never told his sisters about me, and I couldn’t face them. Cowardly, I know.”
“But why have you been so cold to me? We were friends.”
“Jealousy. That’s why I came here, to tell you about Adam and apologize for the way I’ve been behaving.” She tugged on her bottom lip with her teeth. “I always suspected he loved you more. Ironic, isn’t it? Aida eaten up with jealousy toward Amneris. I wonder what Verdi would have made of that.”
“Adam was no heroic Radamès.” Olivia experienced a moment of drunken clarity. “He didn’t love me more. He loved what he thought I could do for him.”
They both took a moment to ponder that. Olivia rubbed the glass across her forehead. “Adam couldn’t ever have been a great tenor, but he could have done other things: taught, been satisfied with smaller roles at smaller companies.”
“Instead, he put a gun to his head and blamed us for making him do it.” Sarah wiped her eyes. “It’s such a waste.”
Olivia set aside her glass. “So you and Sophia have been going through the same emotions I have. But neither of you lost your voice.”
“It didn’t affect my voice, but you’ve obviously never had eczema so bad you gouge bloody tracks in your skin.”
“I’m so sorry.” Olivia gazed down at her hands, sticky from her spilled drink. “Blaming other people . . . He wanted us to feel responsible for what he did.”
“I’m done with it,” Sarah said angrily. “I’ve had enough of scratching my skin till it bleeds. You and Sophia and I need to schedule a three-way conversation.”
Sarah was right. “Let’s make it a four-way and include a therapist,” Olivia said.
“Good idea. And, Olivia, I really am sorry for the way I froze you out.”
“I understand. Truly.” She knew too well the damage guilt could cause.
Sarah had started crying again. Olivia moved over to the couch and put her arm around her. “You loved him, and you tried to help him.” She rested her cheek against Sarah’s head, not sure which one of them she was talking to. “No more guilt. You’re going to forgive yourself, and I’m going to forgive myself, and so is Sophia.” She thought about what they hadn’t discussed. “Then we’re going to talk about those threating notes . . .” She shuddered. “That bloody T-shirt.”
Sarah lifted her tear-streaked face. “What do you mean? What threatening notes?”
*
Olivia awakened at noon the next day, her head throbbing. She downed two ibuprofens, swore never to drink again, and stumbled into the shower.
Sarah and Sophia had only gotten the suicide note, none of the other things. They hadn’t received any newspaper clippings with their heads cut out or watched a T-shirt covered with fake blood tumble out of an envelope. Neither of them had been assaulted on the second floor of an antiquarian bookstore or kidnapped in the Mojave Desert. She yearned to call Thad. Knowing she couldn’t do that was worse than the hangover.
She wrapped herself in her fuzziest bathrobe and staggered into the kitchen for coffee. Three days ago, when she’d broken up with Thad, she’d added twice as much water as she needed to the pot. Since then, she’d lost her apartment key and found it later in the piano bench. She’d added cumin instead of cinnamon to her oatmeal and nearly brushed her teeth with a tube of facial serum.
If only Thad were a man like Dennis, a man with a portable career and no ego. A man who’d never won a Heisman or completed seventy percent of his passes during one shining football season. Thad was her male doppelg?nger. They’d taken different career paths, but they had the same internal makeup, the same passion for what they did, the same drive for excellence, and the same refusal to let anyone stand between them and glory.
Cradling a fresh mug of coffee, she called Piper and told her what had happened last night. Afterward, she wandered into the living room and gazed at her piano. What would it be like to sing without the heavy weight of guilt hanging over her? She plucked a few keys with her free hand. What would it be like to sing with nothing but a broken heart?
*
Thad had become familiar with the Internet’s opera news sites, and the story was all over the place. Liv had been benched for opening night. He’d gotten her to sing, but he hadn’t gotten her to sing well enough to perform, and he hated failure.
He talked to Piper daily. Sometimes more than once. Sometimes enough to make her tell him to get a life. But he couldn’t stop thinking about Liv wandering down some dark alley or jumping into a strange limousine. Even secure apartment buildings weren’t always secure. He called Piper again, and this time she had news. “It turns out Olivia’s former fiancé liked to spread the guilt around.”
“What do you mean?”
She told him about Sarah Mabunda’s revelation. “I’ve done some digging since then,” she said, “and it turns out Adam had a fourth target, a French horn player he dated between Sophia Ricci and Olivia.”
“He sure didn’t have any trouble attracting women.”
“He was very good-looking, like a floppy-haired angel.”
Thad suppressed the desire to ask which one of them was better looking—himself or Adam—which only went to show how far he’d sunk.
Saturday came, the day of the Aida premiere. To distract himself, he biked all eighteen miles of the lakefront trail. Olivia had said she loved him, and he knew her well enough to know she wouldn’t toss around those words lightly. But what kind of person announced they loved somebody and broke up with them?