The Year of Shadows (41 page)

H
ENRY FOUND ME
in the morning. I’d fallen asleep onstage. Thank goodness he found me before anyone else.

“Olivia?” He shook me awake.

“Henry?”

“Yeah, it’s me.”

I stood up, my knees wobbling. “What time is it?”

“Seven a.m. It’s Saturday. Ted brought me here last night. You know, my . . . Mr. Banks. I kept him out of here, let you get some rest.”

I nodded, leaning on the conductor’s podium to find my balance.

Henry put out his arms, then stopped and stepped back and put out his arms again. Then he dropped them.

“What’s wrong with you?” I asked.

“I just . . . I don’t know. Are you okay? What happened?”

“It’s done, Henry. They’re gone.”

“Mr. Worthington? You found the doll.”

“Yeah.” I felt like everything had been sucked out of the world. My head ached, and my arm felt . . . strangely
naked. When I pushed up my sleeve, I saw why.

My burn had disappeared. Henry nodded and pushed up his pant leg. “Yeah. Mine’s gone too.”

“It’s done,” I said. “All of them.”

Henry looked out into the Hall and shoved his hands in his pockets. “I should’ve been there with you.”

“No, you shouldn’t have.”
That was just for me and Mom.
And I would explain that to him. Someday, maybe.

“Well. Okay. I’m here, though, just . . . well, you know. In case.”

“Yeah. I know.”

Igor grumbled.
Such profound conversations you two have.

“Richard Ashley was so mad when he figured out you came back here. But he said he understands. He might come by after a while. Ted’s camped out in the office, in case we need anything.”

The mention of Richard Ashley had triggered the memory of Mom leaning close, asking me for a promise. “Henry?”

“What’s wrong?”

“The Maestro. How is he?”

“Oh!” Henry slapped his forehead. “I’m such an idiot.”

“I’ve been saying that for years.”

“Ha-ha. I should’ve told you right when I came in. I mean, I was going to, but I saw the doll, and . . .” Henry shook his head. “Anyway. Olivia, he woke up. He’s going to need a lot of recovery time, but he’s going to be okay.”

A rush of something filled me. It was like I had been
chained down and then set free. It scared me, a little. I wobbled where I stood.

Henry found my arm. “Whoa, you okay?”

“Yeah.” I smiled at Henry. Something twisted in my chest where Frederick, Tillie, Jax, and Mr. Worthington used to be. But it was a good kind of twist. “I think I am.”

Henry and I went out to the grounds and found Tillie and Jax’s tree, swaying silver and pink in the morning light. Right there in the shade, in the cool, dewy dirt, we buried the doll.

When we were done, I lay flat on my back, looking up at the sky through the leaves above me. Closing my eyes, I spread out my legs and arms and fingers, airing myself out. Henry did the same.

We lay there quietly for a while. It was cool in the dirt.

“I’ll miss them,” I said at last.

“Yeah,” said Henry. “Me too.”

I stretched out the tiniest bit more, so I could touch the tip of my pinkie to the tip of his thumb.

His thumb poked me back, gently.

Well. At least, after everything, we had that.

L
ATER THAT DAY
, Richard Ashley drove me back to the hospital. I settled into the chair next to the Maestro’s bed, drawing up my knees to my chin and watching him.

He looked better today. Not as many tubes.

I squeezed my eyes shut, trying not to remember the bleeding tube monster from Limbo, but I couldn’t forget it.

You’ve killed me,
the monster had moaned.
Why did you kill me?

Why couldn’t you forgive me?

I wiped my eyes on my jeans. I rocked and rocked. I wished they allowed cats in hospitals.

“Because I was mad at you,” I whispered. “I still am, you know.”

And that was the truth. Yes, I made Mom a promise, and I
would
try. But it wasn’t like I could snap my fingers and do it immediately, and I wasn’t sure I even wanted to.

I lifted my head so I could see the Maestro’s face—his eyes closed, his hair greasy and falling over his forehead, his mouth slightly open, the tubes in his nose.

So small. All of us, we were so small.

“You should’ve told me,” I whispered to him. He probably couldn’t hear me, they had him so pumped full of drugs. But I said it anyway, over and over, and lay my head down on the edge of the mattress, and found his hand under the thin white sheet.

APRIL

F
OUR FLUTES. FOUR
oboes. Three clarinets, two E-flat clarinets, four bassoons, ten French horns, ten trumpets, four trombones, one tuba, seven percussionists, a huge choir, harps, one pipe organ, and, as it instructs in the score: “The largest possible contingent of strings.” So, basically, a string army.

As many people as you can cram onto one stage is the general idea for Mahler’s Symphony no. 2.

And somehow our orchestra had to do it without a conductor. The Maestro was still at the hospital, in no condition for rehearsals. Dr. Birdman had prescribed four weeks of bed rest, or at the very least, minimal activity.

That wasn’t going to stop us.

Richard Ashley was the one to call the meeting. Two Wednesdays after the Maestro got hurt, the entire orchestra gathered onstage without their instruments. Some of our old donors had put together just enough money to get the Hall in working order for one last concert, and it had been
approved by the city’s department of engineering. Nonnie and I had been staying with some of the musicians, and the Maestro had started making calls from his hospital room to Gram. Even
I’d
talked to Gram. I didn’t recognize her voice, but she recognized me. She burst into tears right when I said, “Hello?”

We were good to go for what may have been the Hall’s most important concert ever.

Richard stood on the podium with a clipboard in hand. Henry and I sat at his feet, Igor in my lap. Richard had requested we be there, front and center.

“Many of you suggested we meet today,” Richard Ashley said. “It wasn’t just me. But I’m up here right now because I have something to say before we get started planning this farewell concert. I want you to look around you. I want you to really look.”

The Maestro had said that the first day we moved in. Now Richard was saying it. Both times, when I’d looked around, I’d seen the same thing: faded chairs with threadbare cushions. Gaping holes all across the ceiling. Paint the color of grime and dust.

It wasn’t the prettiest of sights.

“Ugly as mud, isn’t it?” Richard Ashley said. “Or something worse.”

A few people laughed.

Igor started cleaning himself.
Typical trumpet player. Always putting on a show.

“Hush,” I whispered.

“Now look again, and remember.”

That’s all Richard Ashley had to say:
remember
. And I did remember, looking around the Hall, two hundred pairs of eyes looking around with me. I remembered sitting with Mom in the dress circle to watch rehearsal. She would pay such close attention, never taking her eyes from the stage. “It’s like magic,” she whispered to me once, holding me in her lap and pointing out the different instruments. Sometimes the Maestro would whirl around and blow us a kiss with both hands.

The musicians would whistle and hoot, and Mom would hide her cheeks in my hair.

I remembered when I first discovered the catwalk and declared to Ed and Larry that this was now my official hiding spot. They helped me make a flag for the railing so everyone would know.

I remembered spying on Henry from the catwalk through a paper towel roll. Hiding in the basement to draw. Lying on the stage and trying to perfect the tentacles of pipe organ monsters.

I remembered thinking this could never be my home. And then somehow it had turned out to be just that.

The musicians were smiling, chuckling, wiping their eyes. Gazing up at the curtains, the ceiling, the balconies, like they’d never seen anything quite like it.

“This has been our home,” Richard said. “Some of us for
years. And it deserves a good send-off. So a few of us have been working hard the last couple of days, making phone calls, pulling some strings. And now it’s time to get to work. Olivia?”

I turned around, surprised. “Yeah?”

He smiled, holding out his hand to me. “Come up here with me.”

Scrambling up into place beside Richard on the conductor’s podium, I almost reached into my bag for my charcoals, and then I stopped. It was an automatic sort of thing, but I stopped anyway. Balled my fingers into fists. Put them down straight at my sides. Stared out at the orchestra and didn’t look away.

Dreams—even ones you were good at—weren’t for hiding yourself in.

“Olivia, what you’ve done for us—and what you’ve done, Henry, and your friend Joan, too—you need to know how much it means, to all of us. You helped us get through a hard time. You brought life back to this place again. And we’re family here. I promise you, no matter what happens, we’re not going to let you fall. Our homes are your home. Okay?”

“Okay,” I whispered. I blinked down at my feet. “Thank you.”

Richard tilted up my chin. “We want to give your father an ending, Olivia. A finale.”

“Mahler 2?”

He nodded. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw some of
the other musicians smiling and nodding along with him.

“But how?” I said. “He’s . . . the Maestro, he can’t . . .”

“No, he can’t. Not right now, anyway. So we’re bringing in help.” Richard turned toward the side of the stage. “Okay! We’re ready.”

A tiny parade of smiling people headed out onto the stage. I recognized them vaguely, like they were from another life.

“Oh . . . my gosh,” Henry breathed, trying to flatten his hair. “Are you kidding me?”

“Maestro Ogawa,” I whispered, as the first man reached me, his black hair flecked with gray. He smiled and shook my hand with both of his.

Henry whimpered.

“Olivia, it’s good to see you again,” Maestro Ogawa said. “I’m very glad to be here.”

He moved to the side and the curly-haired man behind him stepped forward.

“Maestro . . . Thompson?”

He grinned broadly. “I’m impressed you remember me, Olivia. You were only seven or eight years old the last time I saw you.”

“Mom helped me remember everyone’s names,” I said quietly.

Richard squeezed my shoulder.

“I’m sure she did,” Maestro Thompson said, smiling, and then moved aside. One by one, they stepped forward to shake my hand. I tried to remember, concentrating on
the memory of Mom’s voice, fresh in my mind, thanks to Limbo. They were conductors from New York (that was Maestro Ogawa) and Chicago (Maestro Thompson) and Philadelphia, San Francisco, Cleveland, Boston. They used to be our friends, before the Maestro lost his friends, before I lost mine, before we both lost Mom. And now . . .

“Why?”

Richard bent low. “What’s that, Olivia?”

“Why are they here?”

Maestro Thompson said, “To rehearse, Olivia. Someone’s got to hold down the fort until your father’s back on his feet. And Mahler 2’s no picnic.”

I sat back down, right next to Henry. “Oh.”

“I volunteered to run rehearsals myself,” Richard said, clapping a hand on Maestro Ogawa’s back, “but no one seemed too excited about that idea.”

Everyone burst out laughing, and I did too, or at least I tried. Mostly I just tried to keep breathing.

Igor was trying to squirm out of my arms.
These people look like promisingly good petters.

“Isn’t this amazing, Olivia?” Henry asked.

I stepped back to take in the whole stage. Richard Ashley was saying something, and so was Maestro Ogawa. The musicians were laughing, hurrying backstage to get their instruments, tuning the timpani, blowing warm air through their horns, tightening their strings. The parade of conductors set up chairs and stands, pulled out pencils, opened their
scores. Maestro Thompson took the podium and helped me and Henry up.

“It might be better if I had some more room by my feet,” he said kindly. “I tend to jump around a lot. Mahler 2 is one of my favorite works.”