As the sky began to darken and fill with stars, I pulled out my electronic keyboard and headphones and played the opening of the Prelude.
In the dark, I allowed tears to well up in my eyes. For once, no one was watching me. No one was reviewing my performance, or taking my photo, or expecting anything. For once, I was allowed to be nothing more than a sad girl on a train.
When I got to the end of the Prelude, I switched to “When You Wish Upon a Star.” Oddly, it had been Dmitry’s favorite song. The one he used to teach me English. As I played, I tried to figure out what I could wish for. I could not undo Dmitry’s death, which was all I really wanted. So, instead of wishing for something frivolous, I wished for things that were thrillingly intangible. Peace of mind. A sign. Love.
Then, with my hands on the keyboard and Dmitry’s face in my mind, I closed my eyes and wished myself asleep.
* * *
The train lurched and screamed in a grinding of gears hitting things they were not supposed to. I woke, perplexed, as it came to a stop.
When I raised the window shade, all I saw was thick, gray smoke billowing from the belly of the train. The other people were already streaming onto the platform.
The man from the café came running up the aisle. “You’ll have to get out here. Something’s wrong.”
I rubbed my stinging eyes. “Where is here?”
The man looked outside into the smoke. “Buchanan, New York,” he said. “Someone in the station can tell you what to do.”
I nodded, grabbed my keyboard and bag from the overhead bin, and headed to the door. Outside, the morning sunlight peeked through the clouds of smoke.
“Miss. Miss.” A tall man with glasses ran out of the station and toward me. “It’s going to take some time to get this damned antique repaired. Days, perhaps, while we wait for someone to examine the train and then bring in the parts or even make them,” he said. “Sometimes it takes a while to get things here. Sometimes things go missing.” He instructed me to write down my phone number, then handed me a pamphlet from the train company, which explained how to get compensation for a hotel and a refund on my ticket.
I looked around. The train station was at the end of a block of businesses and behind those sat rows and rows of suburban houses. The other side of the street held a park and beyond that, peaked spires that reminded me of Oxford and Paris. The sun glittered off the steeples. It was strangely calming. If I was going to be stuck somewhere, there were worse options.
I started to walk past the houses and through the park, passing a number of increasingly ornate wrought-iron signs with arrows pointing to a place called St. Hilaire. Most of the stores were closed, and while I was looking longingly in a bakery window, I noticed a beat-up blue Chevy reflected in the window. Its bumper stickers said LET PLUTO BE A PLANET and MUSIC GIVES A SOUL TO THE UNIVERSE. I had a feeling that I would like the person who put both of those on their car.
In the distance, a clock tower chimed. Had the train been running, I would be close to Canada by now. Viktor must be furious not to have heard from me. Out of guilt, I stopped and powered on my phone. Seven text messages and notifications for ten additional calls were waiting for me. A quick look at the log showed they were all from Viktor and my publicist Ginger, who I am sure had already issued a statement in my name, saying how saddened and shocked I was by Dmitry’s death, and how we would all carry on in his memory. Blah, blah, blah.
Dmitry would have hated this. The way our management bowed down to the press and public opinion, trying to make everyone happy regardless of what that meant for the art, angered him like nothing else.
Then I opened my email. The first message in my inbox was from Dmitry. The letters swam in front of my eyes. I put my bag and keyboard down on a stretch of grass and counted to ten before walking to a nearby bench. My legs felt like they were giving out.
There was no doubt he had sent it on time delay. He had loved being able to send things and have them show up when he was on a plane or otherwise unreachable for a response. Better to ask for forgiveness than permission, he liked to say.
I hesitated, terrified it was a suicide note. But it was from him, and there was no way I could avoid reading it. I scanned the words and realized the note both was and was not a goodbye. In truth, it was a request for a favor, the kind of favor you asked when you had given up everything else. The kind of favor he knew I could not say no to.
Find the rest of the Prelude, the email begged. I believe, as I have always believed, that it is out there and that it’s destined for you to play, to be a part of you. You will bring great joy to the world with that music, Annie. Everyone will know, as I do, how special you are. If I have failed to redeem my miserable life by finding it, then you must do it. For both of us.
Chapter 6
Dec
Pinned to the bulletin board on my bedroom wall was a collection of ticket stubs from train trips I’d never taken, receipts from stores I’d never shopped in, a passport I’d never used. Aside from the passport, which I applied for on my sixteenth birthday by forging Harriet’s signature, none of the items were actually mine. They were pieces of someone else’s life—many someones—found outside on the street, tucked into library books, and nestled in the pockets of a distressed leather jacket I’d bought in Buchanan’s vintage clothing store.
The bulletin board was my attempt to distract myself from the view of my parents’ headstones, which sat square in the middle of my window, looking like they were framed. I thought if I could keep my eyes on the board long enough, I wouldn’t notice the graves and the bare patches of ground next to them. It was either that or block off the window and deal with Harriet’s tirade about defacing a historic property.
But it didn’t matter how many hours I’d spent this past year imagining I was the one on a train heading to Oregon, or shopping for turtle-shaped bookends in Maine, or buying chocolate in Pennsylvania. When I followed the receipts and stubs from one end to the other, they told the story of a life, but it wasn’t mine, and if I didn’t get out of here soon, it never would be.
Outside, a truck squealed to a stop, and it felt like my heart did too. It didn’t even feel real.
The doorbell sputtered to life.
“Daniel,” Harriet’s voice shrieked up the stairs.
My bedroom door opened softly as Laura came in and wordlessly pulled me into a hug I didn’t deserve.
This nameless cocktail of loss and guilt reminded me of how I’d felt a few weeks after my parents died when the numbness finally went away, leaving everything to come crashing down around me.
“How could I have been so stupid?” I muttered.
Laura sat on the bed, smoothing the blanket next to her. “I’m sorry. I’m really, really sorry.”
If there was one upside to my losing the piano, it was that I proved I didn’t really deserve her love. I’d been a shitty brother.