The Gathering Dark (9 page)

“Fine, I guess.” Keira opened the pantry and blinked at the boxes of tea.

Her mother relaxed the grip on her cup a bit. “Oh, good. I was worried. I didn’t want to leave until I knew you were okay.”

“I’m okay,” Keira said, doubting every word, but telling her mother she was seeing strange stuff wasn’t exactly something she was going to throw out there first thing in the morning. She stumbled over to the cupboard and got out a mug. “Is Dad here too?” Her parents hadn’t
both
stayed home on a Saturday morning since last fall, when they’d simultaneously come down with the stomach flu.

“Um, no. He isn’t.”

Something in her mother’s voice made Keira freeze with her hand halfway to the faucet handle. Her mom was strangling her coffee cup, staring down into its depths like it was going to tell her what to say.

“Is he playing racquetball?” Keira asked, slowly setting her empty cup on the counter. Her dad had a standing racquetball time on Saturday mornings.

“I’m not sure,” her mother said, still not looking at her. “He didn’t come home last night.”

“Okaaay.” Keira’s voice was slow and thick as honey. “Why?”

Her mother’s eyes traced the pattern of the placemat in front of her. “We had a fight.”

“You have a lot of fights,” Keira pointed out.

Her mother blanched. “It was a particularly bad one. I’m sorry, honey. I hate that you see so much of this.”

“So, where is he now? Where did he stay?” Keira asked.

“I don’t know.” Her mother’s lips pressed into a thin line.

“When is he coming home? He—he is coming home, right?”

Her mother stood up from the table abruptly. “I’m sure it will all work out,” she said. “I’m going to take a shower. I didn’t get much sleep last night and this coffee isn’t cutting it. Be out in a minute, okay?” Keira heard her mother’s voice crack on the last word, but she was already halfway down the hall. The shower thrummed to life a moment later.

Keira slumped against the kitchen cabinets, trying to make sense of everything her mother had just told her. She’d known things between her parents were bad, but not
that
bad. Her mother hadn’t even said for sure that her dad was coming home at all.

Keira abandoned her tea-making and headed into the living room. She sat at the piano with her hands in her lap, staring at the keys. She put her fingers in position and started running scales, but they sounded wooden.

How could she not have realized things were so terrible in her own family? Her parents were on the verge of splitting up and she was losing her mind.

Fabulous.

Shaking out her shoulders, Keira launched into one her favorite études. Something simple, that she’d been playing since she was thirteen. It was like the musical version of sweatpants. Soft. Comfortable. Easy. But three lines in, her fingers froze.
Her hands didn’t know what to do next, the muscle memory pushed aside by the worry ringing in her head.

Dad slept somewhere else last night.

And probably better than he’d been sleeping at home, what with her waking him up in the middle of the night while she tried to grab exotic bananas that didn’t even exist. She wondered if that had been the last straw, but as soon as she’d thought it, she knew it wasn’t about her at all. That her parents’ problems had been building for years—she just never thought they’d actually get to this point.

Growling with frustration, Keira launched straight into the Allegretto movement of the Beethoven sonata she’d been working on. It was the hardest, most mind-consuming piece of music she knew. She flew through the first twenty bars without a hitch, but just as she was starting to relax into the music, the shower shut off. In the sudden silence, Keira heard something small break in the bathroom, and then her mother’s teary voice, swearing at whatever it had been. Keira’s fingers slipped and the music turned into a discordant mess.

Shaken, Keira rubbed the back of her neck and tried again, but the notes wouldn’t come. She remembered the wrong bars at the wrong time—her fingers hit the keys next to the ones they should have touched.

She never had trouble getting into her practice. It never sounded this bad. This
amateur.
In the bathroom, her mother’s hair dryer began to whir.

As Keira put her fingers back against the keys, the house phone started to ring. Grateful for the interruption, she hurried to pick it up, hoping it might be her dad.

Her stomach sank when the number on the caller ID wasn’t one Keira recognized.

Chapter Twelve

“H
ELLO?
”
SHE SNARLED INTO
the phone.

“Are you always this cheerful in the morning?”

The accent was rich and smooth and foreign.

Walker.

“Uh, this is Keira, right?” He suddenly sounded uncertain.

“Yeah, it’s me. You caught me off-guard. I don’t remember giving you my number.”

“You didn’t.”

“So how did you get it?” Doubt flooded Keira. Maybe he was creepy—tracking down her number seemed kind of stalker-ish.

“There’s this remarkable thing called a phone book.” He half stifled a laugh. “I looked you up. There are only two Brannons in Sherwin. An old lady’s voice mail answered at the other number. I hoped this one would be you.”

Keira perched on the arm of the couch. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to snap at you. It’s been a weird morning.”

“Really? What happened?”

Immediately, Keira wished she could take back her admission. She didn’t want to talk to Walker about her parents. “It’s complicated.”

“Isn’t it always?”

Keira laughed. She picked at a loose thread on the couch. “Yeah. True. So, what’s up?”

“I wanted to hear what you sound like in the morning.”

Keira felt her blood begin to hum just beneath her skin. Her voice froze in her throat.

“You sound nice, you know. Your voice is rougher. I like that.”

Keira cleared her throat self-consciously. “Thanks, I guess. Uh, if that’s all you needed—”

“You also left your driver’s license in my car,” Walker cut in.

“I did?” Keira dove for the front pocket of her bag, where the contents of her wallet lay in chaos. “Oh, God, how could I have done that? I’m sorry,” she apologized.

“Don’t apologize. I wanted an excuse to see you again, anyway. It worked out perfectly. Are you busy this afternoon? I could bring it over.”

Keira let out a long, slow breath. She knew she should say no.

But she needed her license.

And she wanted to see him again too. Even if it was only for a minute.

“I really have to practice, but I could take a break. A short one. And—I’d appreciate it. I don’t want you to have to go out of your way.”

“It’s not out of my way. I’ll be there about three.”

“Sounds good,” Keira whispered.

“See you then.”

Keira tossed the phone onto the front hall table and went back to her abandoned tea. Three o’clock seemed much further away than it should have. If her stomach stayed this fluttery until then, it was going to be a very, very long day.

•  •  •

She spent the day drifting back and forth between the piano and homework. She couldn’t focus on either of them. It actually felt better to be staring uselessly at her homework—she was used to that. The crawling need to glance over her shoulder while she sat at the piano, to see if the creepy tree had reappeared in her living room—that was new. And terrifying. Even scarier than the thought of losing her mind was the idea that she might lose her music. She couldn’t handle that.

When she was ten, her dad had a minor heart attack and spent a couple of days in the hospital. To cope, she’d managed to lose herself in Clementi’s sonatas. The week before she’d started
high school, she was nearly blinded by the anxiety of facing grades that “counted” and small-minded girls who’d judge her clothes instead of her music. She’d still managed to shrug it all off with Chopin.

But now her music wasn’t working. She tried the first harsh chords of a Stravinsky piano concerto, but the keys felt dead against her fingers. She swept her music off the stand, the pages scattering against the floor.

She pushed away from the piano in disgust, nearly knocking over the bench as its legs snagged on the carpet. She caught it right before it fell, remorse spilling through her. She carefully set the bench in front of the piano, as if that could apologize for her outburst.

It wasn’t her instrument’s fault that she was so screwed up.

Briefly, she wondered if apologizing to a piano was as crazy as it sounded. She’d always talked to it in her head the way other people spoke to their cars or their dogs. But maybe it was a warning sign—proof that she’d never been completely stable to begin with.

The front door clicked open, and she whirled around, half expecting to see Walker. He
would
just walk in uninvited.

But it wasn’t Walker who stepped through the door. Her dad crept into the house like he was sneaking in after curfew. He glanced at the living room and noticed Keira, still bent over her piano bench.

She straightened, swallowing hard as she took in his
day-old clothes and the stubble that darkened his chin. They were both reminders of the time he’d spent elsewhere—away from their house, away from his things. Away from
her.
It made the distance between them seem much larger than a few steps across the living room.

“Hey, sweetie.” Her dad cleared his throat. “I didn’t mean to interrupt.”

She wanted to know where he’d been and what was going on and what would happen next. Instead, she nodded.

Her dad reached up and rubbed the back of his neck.

“I’m sorry I wasn’t here after your accident. When I got your message, I was so worried—I’m so glad you’re okay. I couldn’t stand the thought of anything happening to you.”

“It’s okay. I’m fine. See?” Keira held her arms out as evidence.

“I know it’s probably been a weird morning. I’m sorry. I really need to speak to your mother. As soon as we have things sorted out, you and I will talk, okay?”

More nodding. As much as she wanted to know what was going on, she didn’t really want to
talk
about it. She didn’t want to hear the gory, confessional details that lurked in her dad’s eyes.

He headed to the back of the house, where Keira could hear her mother opening and closing dresser drawers.

She glanced at the clock above the mantel. It was two thirty. Walker would be there in half an hour. Suddenly, his visit
seemed like the only bright spot in an otherwise miserable day.

Especially when her parents started yelling at each other.

By five minutes to three, Keira was hovering next to the front door, watching for any sign of Walker’s car. There was no way she would let him set foot in the house. Not with the shouting and cursing that was streaming out of her parents’ room.

When his car bumped over the curb and into her driveway, Keira slipped out onto the front porch and closed the door behind her. She shivered in her thin sweater.

“Were you waiting for me?” Walker’s low voice swept through her like a brush fire. “I’m touched.”

Keira rolled her eyes at him, matching his bravado. It felt good. Like a shield that sprang up around her, protecting her tender insides. It made her wonder what Walker was hiding under his pearl-smooth shell.

“Hardly,” she said. Her parents’ room faced the front yard, and the cracked window barely muffled her mother’s angry voice.

“
Bastard!
” Her mom shouted. The wind chime sound of something breaking followed the epithet.

Keira winced, catching her bottom lip hard between her teeth.

Walker’s gaze raked over her, and though every bit of his iron-cool attitude stayed in place, something in his eyes shifted.

“You wanna get out of here for a while? We could go for a drive,” he said.

Her father’s voice cut through their conversation. “I never wanted to come back here in the first place!”

Keira squared her shoulders and swallowed the tears that blocked her throat. “Yeah. Let’s go,” she said. “I’ve just gotta grab my stuff.”

“You want me to wait out here? Or . . . ?” She could hear him trying to say the right thing. Not wanting to push her, which only pulled her in more. If he’d been falling all over himself with apologies and concern, she would have sent him away without a second thought.

“No, I’m good.” The lie was brittle in her mouth. She darted through the door, snatched her bag off the floor and hurried back outside. She headed straight for the car.

“Can I open your door today?” Walker asked.

A snarky comment about having two perfectly functional hands melted on her tongue. She’d had such a disturbingly bad practice session this morning that maybe her hands weren’t so functional after all.

Instead, she smiled at him, though the edges of it felt cracked and artificial. “I think you’ve been chivalrous enough today. I can open my own door.”

He laughed at her, then his eyes went wide. “Oh! That reminds me.” He reached into his jacket and pulled out her license, flipping it expertly over the roof of the car. Keira caught it as it sailed toward her.

“Nice reflexes.” He gave her an approving nod.

She shrugged. “Nice throw.” They climbed into the car. “So, let me guess. You played Little League?”

“Nope,” Walker said. “No baseball. I’ve always preferred card tricks.”

“Like, ‘pick a card, any card’?” Keira asked. As the wet pavement of the street slipped beneath the car’s tires, Keira felt herself start to relax.

“Exactly. I don’t do them much anymore, but my fingers still have a feel for it.”

“Muscle memory,” Keira said.

Walker cocked his head to one side. “That’s precisely what it feels like.”

“That’s what it
is.
The technical term for it. It’s part of piano playing too—how your fingers know where to go to hit a major seventh, or how far to stretch for the D-below-middle-C key.”

“Ironic.”

She glanced at him out of the corner of her eye. “Ironic? How?”

“That’s what always kept me from being able to play an instrument. I would be looking at the notes on the page and my fingers would freeze.” He looked over at her, the gray of his eyes soft—honest. “I hated it. I could see the music—I could hear it, even, in my head. But I couldn’t make my hands do what they were supposed to do. It was so frustrating.”