A Song for the Road by Kathleen Basi (classic literature books txt) 📕

her performance. And when she finished, with fire and desire blazing through her, she’d known—known—that this time, this one time, she’d bested him.

“You were amazing!” he greeted her in the wings, putting both hands on her shoulders and kissing her cheek. “I’ve never heard Piazzolla played like that except by a professional. Come on—I’m taking you to dinner.”

Cheeks burning, blood racing, Miriam said yes before she had time to consider playing harder to get. What else was she going to do tonight? Go back to her cheap motel and eat the Ramen noodles she’d packed to keep expenses down? Call Mom and Dad and have the sweet triumph of beating Gus—not just beating, but absolutely clobbering him—ruined by their lukewarm compliments?

She finally had his attention, here in a city far from his sycophantic fan club. No way would she blow that opportunity. Time to embrace the moment.

Dominoes.

 13

MIRIAM SAT IN THE car by herself for nearly ten minutes, wet and shivering, before the rain eased off and Dicey came out. The whole time, her phone, upside down in the storage area between the seats, kept lighting up, causing the stack of CDs below it to glow.

Dicey closed the door and maneuvered her backpack into the space at her feet. “I found a scrapbooking app,” she announced. “Already got started. Want to see?”

Miriam oohed appropriately at the simple layouts Dicey had created while waiting inside.

Dicey clicked her phone off, plugged it into the charger, and fixed her gaze on Miriam. “So what’s up?”

“Nothing.”

Dicey adopted a cocky demeanor. “Please. I mean, I know I’ve only known ya for, like, nine hours. But I gotta say …” She dropped the act. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine.”

Dicey stared at her for a long moment. Then she coughed into her shoulder. “Okay, then, if you’re not in a talking mood, we might as well get going.”

Miriam started the car and backed out. She merged onto the highway, where the spray from big trucks turned the taillights ahead of her into long streaks of red. She twisted the dial on the windshield wipers to keep up.

Dicey was annoyed with her. The silent treatment, the folded arms, the conspicuous lack of phone usage—it was classic passive-aggressive teenage crap. Talia had been a pro, but Miriam had eventually learned how to ignore it.

Of course, look where that had gotten her with Talia. Teo had never ignored Talia’s moods. He’d always cajoled her, made her laugh, pulled her out of it. No wonder she’d been so fiercely loyal to him.

Maybe this was a chance to redeem herself. To be more like Teo. To meet someone on their terms instead of hers. She cleared her throat. “Look, I wasn’t prepared for that phone call. That’s all.”

Dicey regarded her coolly. “Bad news?”

Gus von Rickenbach was bad news, categorically, but not the kind Dicey meant. “It was the coordinator of the competition my kids went out to California for last spring.”

“Oh.” Dicey’s body language softened. “They both went?”

Miriam nodded. “They both won their divisions in a regional music competition last year—”

“Define division.”

“Blaise won piano solo, Talia won strings.”

“Okay.”

“So they went to nationals together. It was kind of a big deal, having two kids from the same family there. And twins, no less.”

A semi roared past, kicking up a curtain of water. Miriam grabbed the wheel as the draft tried to suck her in. “I found out a few months ago that Blaise e-mailed Gus—the coordinator—ahead of time. He was asking for feedback on this sonata he was writing.”

“The one you’re supposed to be finishing.”

Miriam cut her a glance. They hadn’t talked about that, had they?

Dicey spread her hands. “I Googled you.”

So Dicey had seen Ella Evil’s write-up. “What wasn’t in that story is that I was supposed to join them afterward. We were going to celebrate my birthday with a camping trip. But …”

But then Gus happened.

“I got sick,” she said. The lie wormed its way around her belly. If she couldn’t tell the truth now, when would she? But Teo had come up with that particular fiction when they realized going to California would mean confronting Gus. It all would have come out then.

“This isn’t how they should find out,” he’d said, and even now she agreed. But she would forever regret not having the chance to do it right.

Was it possible Blaise suspected? Surely not.

She couldn’t decide whether to be proud of him for having the guts to reach out to someone with as high a profile as Gus von Rickenbach, or pained that he’d done so without telling her. Which, it hurt to admit, seemed to be a pattern.

This is exceptional work, Gus’s e-mail read. You have a lot of potential. I’d love to sit down with you and talk after the competition, but let me point out a few things to be thinking about in the meantime … He’d proceeded to do a detailed analysis of the sonata’s every weakness. Miriam wanted to scratch his eyes out for criticizing her child, but she couldn’t. Point for point, he was on target. Every time she worked on it herself, she heard his voice saying “derivative … fresher harmony will take you to unexpected places …”

Dicey sat in the passenger seat, waiting patiently. “Anyway,” Miriam said, “that weekend in San Francisco, Blaise apparently hit it off with Gus.”

The phone lit up again. Dicey eyed it. “That’s probably him.”

“Of course it is.”

Dicey frowned. “I don’t understand why you’re so freaked out about talking to him.”

Miriam shifted her weight. “He’s kind of a big deal these days. He’s written … some music.” Well, it was true, wasn’t it? “He teaches at the San Francisco Conservatory along with his wife. She’s an opera singer. I just don’t like feeling overshadowed, okay?”

“But why would you feel over—oh. You know him, don’t you?”

Miriam’s shoulders tightened. “I knew him. A long time ago.”

“Ooh.” Dicey regarded her with a speculative gleam in her eye. “Were you a thing?”

Miriam scowled.

Dicey clapped her hands. “Oh, now I get it! Were you