I suppressed a laugh. “You find this normal?”
“It is.” He nodded. “For me. I’m not sure how many such conversations I have left.”
I shoved my hands under my legs to keep my fingers from running through the Prelude. This close to the piano, the urge to play was almost more than I could resist. “So, what would you like to talk about?”
Tristan thought for a moment and then said, “Music? I haven’t been able to even discuss it in a very long time.”
So much for avoiding the Prelude.
“In fact…” he said, eyes darting around the room. He stepped over to a low table, and stared at the computer that Dec and Laura shared. “This plays music, right? Could you make it work? I’d like to hear something new.”
I hesitated, but Tristan’s eyes pleaded with me, and I hoped Dec might understand the invasion of privacy.
“Well, maybe,” I said. I opened a music program, connected the earbuds, and pushed play, half-expecting to hear my own music. But no, it was something loud and screeching. The screen read, Iron Maiden. That was unlikely to be to Tristan’s taste.
I hit pause, and flipped through the artist list, landing on Dmitry Petrov. Dec had not been kidding when he said he was a fan. It was one thing to have my releases, but having Dmitry’s seemed somehow more meaningful.
I selected one of my favorites. “Here,” I said. I took the earbuds out and handed them to Tristan. “Tell me what you think.” It was fascinating to watch as he put them in and listened to Dmitry. What started as confusion moved quickly to joy.
“Oh,” he said. His hands moved by his sides as if they were re-creating the music he was hearing, suddenly free from the pain of his curse.
While Tristan listened, I walked around the room, trying out a variety of mismatched chairs. There were candles and electric lights, tapestries, and speakers. It seemed as if this room contained a bit of each era Hampton House had seen.
Behind me, Tristan coughed. The track had ended, the earbuds were in his hand, and tears were in his eyes.
“That was magic,” he said reverentially. “Pure magic.”
“That was my teacher, Dmitry,” I replied, but really, they were the same thing.
I was about to share the highs and lows of Dmitry’s miraculous career and heartbreaking downfall, but Tristan looked puzzled, so I stopped.
“He died,” I said instead. “It had been coming for a long time. He was unhappy. The arthritis kept him from playing. He told me the medication made his head spin so much, he was unable to compose.”
I sat in one of the flowered chairs. Before Tristan could respond, or I could give in to panic, I asked, “What is it like wherever Dmitry is now?”
Tristan’s shoulders dropped noticeably. “Oh, Annie, I don’t know. And I’m not being evasive. I realize that Daniel assumes I am, more often than not. But I really don’t know. I am, it seems, in between things. And I hope, for your sake, that your friend is not. Do you think you and he left things unfinished?”
My question had been too large, my chance of success too unlikely. I thought back to the email Dmitry had sent, possibly—probably—knowing he was going to die. “I think he has already told me everything he needed to.”
I stood and reached out to touch Tristan’s shoulder. What I felt was not the velvet of his coat, but a whisper of velvet, like something that had once been there, but was no longer there.
He turned his head toward me, his expression unreadable. “Then you are fortunate, as well as free to enjoy your life. To move on and enjoy living.”
It was a formal statement. Far more of a decisive one than I had heard him make, and, in it, I caught a glimmer of what he must have been like when he was still alive and still the boy composer whose music was praised in the highest circles.
I did not feel fortunate, however. I felt like missing Dmitry was a tangible thing that would fall out of the sky and crush me as soon as I left St. Hilaire. “I wish I could talk to him,” I said, without thinking.
Tristan crossed his legs awkwardly and worried at a button of his coat. Not looking up, he asked, “What would you say?”
I thought about it. “I would tell him I love him. That I am grateful for everything he did for me.”
“Do you suspect he was unaware of those things?” Tristan asked, his eyes still down.
My last meeting with Dmitry had been like a million others before. We had drunk too much coffee. Reviewed my upcoming itinerary. My set list. He had made me watch an episode of some ghastly TV show that he was binge-watching while I assisted him with the hot wax bath he used to ease his arthritic hands. “No.” I shook my head. “He knew.”
Tristan nodded and then raised his head, one eye visible through his mass of hair. I had the urge to put my arm around him, but I was afraid it would go right through. For the first time, he really did resemble a ghost, seeming to exist both in the room and outside of it.
“What about you?” I asked.
He cocked his head in an impossibly unnatural way. “I know too, Annie.” Answering a question I had not specifically meant to ask, he said, “You love the Prelude, so therefore, I’ve been loved too.”
I forced myself to nod and moved over, closer to him, imagining I could feel heat coming from Tristan’s body, but really, shivering with cold.
Chapter 44
Dec
How long had it been since I’d stood at the edge of my parents’ graves? A month? Two? If I hated seeing the gray stones from my window, I really hated standing here staring at Dear Father. Dear Mother.
Tristan’s coat rustled next to me as he shifted from foot to foot. Without his ever-present bidi, his hands roamed from the cuffs of his jacket, to the flowers we’d brought, to the collar of his shirt.
“Say something,” I demanded.
Tristan flinched. “I am saying something, Daniel. I’m saying goodbye.”
The edges of my vision narrowed until all that remained was a thin pinprick of light that bounced off the etched names on the stone. I blinked away the start of tears, but more followed.
“Tristan.” I wasn’t sure what I wanted to say. Stay. Let’s start over. We can fix this.
“Don’t be sad.” Tristan bumped his shoulder into mine in an odd brotherly way. “This is all strangely freeing. I don’t suppose I can explain that to you. Not to say I’m not somewhat”—he stopped, and half of his mouth flattened while he looked for the right word—“dismayed by this latest turn of events. I mean, I’ve been tethered here for quite a long time.”