Her mother selects the first piece. Emma knows what the notes mean; she can read music fluently enough. But the sequence never resolves in her mind to anything other than fragments of information, refusing to cohere. She can’t hear it the way she can see a painting. She can’t sense the whole, and so even when she manages to follow the notes precisely, it somehow never sounds like the same song that Juliette plays.
“Faster here,” her mother tells her, and “Posture,” and “Watch your breathing,” but none of it changes the fact that she is a dull, plodding player, not a musician, not a talent like Juliette. Her fingers ache. She’s held a paintbrush half the day already, and her back has a lick of acidic heat running up beside her spine.
“Pay attention,” her mother snaps. “If you practiced more, you wouldn’t struggle so much.”
“Maybe the piano just hates me,” Emma grouses.
Her mother glares down at her. “You are perfectly capable if you apply yourself. Keep going.”
Emma grits her teeth. She plays on. She speeds up, speeds up more, until her fingers are stumbling drunkenly. Dropping a note, smashing down two keys instead of one, notes tumbling together in a muddle of noise. Her mother says her name. She keeps going. Brutishly forcing her way through the music, shouldering each bar aside to get to its end. Her mother says her name again—a third time—
Irene Palmer reaches out, grabs the fallboard, and slams it shut. Emma whips her hands back. Not quite fast enough. Emma shrieks. Pulls her left hand free, cradles it against her chest, two fingers in sudden agony. Her mother looks down at her with her mouth in a faint O.
Emma laughs. The sound is stretched obscenely, the pain making her shake. She looks down at her hand. The index finger is fine, probably, bruised. The middle finger is swelling quickly, and she knows at a glance that it’s broken. “Guess I can’t play now,” she rasps out.
“Go to your room,” her mother manages, pointing with arm outstretched, like she is claiming control of the situation in the only way she can.
Emma stands, hand still cupped against her chest. She looks at Juliette, who is staring at the floor. She looks at Daphne, staring openly from the sunroom, her book abandoned beside her. She laughs again, a sound that turns to brambles in her throat. Her mother sees that she isn’t moving, isn’t obeying, but her eyes flick away. To argue is to cede more control.
“Juliette, you could use another pass at the Brahms,” she says briskly.
Juliette stands, setting her diary beside her. She walks across the room, eyes on the floor, and takes her seat, forcing Emma to edge away.
Emma shakes her head. She turns away at last and walks swiftly out of the room, her vision blurring with tears as the pain overtakes the outrage.
Behind her, Juliette begins to play.
16
EMMA
Now
Nathan had gone out to the hardware store again. After the third visit they’d caved and opened a credit card there, since it was becoming clear they were going to need a lot more than a bit of paint remover and a mop. The stairs on the back of the house had rotted through. The screen door sagged. The paint was peeling, the toilets flushed at their own whim and not yours, and there was a proud dynasty of squirrels in the attic, their ancestors entombed in the insulation. Nathan had finally gotten the Wi-Fi going and was now spending hours on YouTube, doggedly determined not to pay anyone a cent for what “any real man could figure out on his own.”
Emma had just finished heaving up what little lunch she’d managed to get down and returned to spackling holes in the dining room. Her first batch had dried. She sanded them as smooth as she could, but there was still a slight bump where some vandal had put something through the wall. It wasn’t the only one. Here and there were patches where the texture of the wall changed or a slight dimple marked a patched hole. She set her fingers over one, then made a fist and pushed her knuckles against the spot. But her hands were smaller than her father’s had been.
Her phone rang. “Chris,” she said, answering it.
“Emma. Sorry I didn’t call earlier, things have been a bit hectic around here,” Chris said in his resonant baritone. In the background she could hear several small dogs barking.
“What’s going on over there?” Emma asked.
“I made the mistake of taking a little mutt in off the street. She gobbled down enough dinner to sate a pack of wolves and then gave birth on a five-thousand-dollar rug,” Chris said.
“That’s what you get for taking in strays,” Emma replied, laughing a little.