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

matter what the priest said, she felt like she was intruding.

She set her teeth and backed up five measures. Nothing. Played it again. There—that little fragment swirling around in her frontal lobe—that might be something. She tried it two or three ways, picked one, and wrote it down. Two more measures done.

Maybe it would help to get a running start at it. She started at the beginning of the movement. It worked, sort of—she managed to sketch out a melody, and she could tell she needed two more measures to link to the B theme. She reached for her phone to try the baby priest’s trick, thinking the music might flow better if she could play without having to stop to notate. But her mojo was gone.

After ten minutes, she gave up. She was starving anyway. And she needed to check on Dicey.

She shuffled her papers together, packed them away, and switched off the light. She stood, the satchel heavy on her shoulder, blinking as her eyes adjusted to the darkness. The voices in the chapel seemed louder now than they had while she was working. They were reciting the Canticle of Zechariah—the end of Night Prayer. She froze. She knew what was coming, but the brief concluding prayer didn’t give her time to brace herself or to escape.

“May the all-powerful Lord grant us a restful night and a peaceful death.”

Miriam swayed, her hand coming down hard on the piano cabinet. Peaceful death. Those words had gone round and round in her head for months before she’d managed to suppress them. Peaceful death. Peaceful death.

Her family hadn’t gotten that.

The satchel slid off her shoulder and thumped the floor. She sat down again on the piano bench, her fingers trembling with the need to drown out the voice screaming in her head: Peaceful death. Peaceful death.

She launched into the first angry thing she could think of: the final movement of the Moonlight Sonata, as raging as its more famous movement was placid.

Had Teo seen that big-ass pickup truck cross the median? Had Talia or Blaise? Or had the crash come out of nowhere? Did the airbags knock them out, or were they conscious when their tiny rental car was smashed between the heavy-duty truck and the bridge railing? Did they feel their bones break, their bodies burn?

Miriam pounded the keys until the church was fully dark and deserted. Her underarms were soaked and her voice raw, as if she’d been screaming without realizing it. And when she was spent, she collapsed on the lacquered surface of the piano, calm enough at last to face the truth:

Nothing about her family’s death had been peaceful. Not even the days leading up to it.

And in the end, she had no one to blame but herself.

 26

Spring, one year earlier

Atlanta, Georgia

ON SUNDAY OF THE terrible week, Teo woke up with a toothache that put him down for the count, leaving Miriam to lead all the Masses—including Confirmation Mass with the bishop—on her own.

On Monday, he had a root canal the insurance wouldn’t cover.

On Tuesday, a pipe broke, rendering their only bathroom off limits until almost six PM. The kids reacted to the aggravation by fighting over who got the last English muffin, who was playing too loudly for the other one to concentrate on his or her own practicing, and who was hogging the wireless bandwidth.

By dinnertime Wednesday, Miriam had just about reached the end of her rope. “So!” Teo said as she cleared the chorizo platter, “who’s got what this evening?”

“Youth symphony, and I get the car,” said Talia.

“You always get the car! I have astronomy club!” Blaise protested.

“Well, you should speak up faster.”

“Well, you should consider somebody other than yourself once in a while.”

Talia’s phone trilled. She whipped it out of her pocket.

“You’re not supposed to have your phone at the table!” Blaise said.

Talia, her thumbs working furiously, ignored him.

“Talia,” said Teo in his warning voice.

Sighing, she put it back in her pocket.

Miriam closed the dishwasher. “You two know perfectly well you have to share the car. Dad and I have choir practice, so we don’t need it, but you have to figure out how to make it work for you both.”

Another sound, this time from Miriam’s phone. She glanced to see who was calling. “Uh, I think I need to take this,” she said.

Talia made a guttural sound of disgust.

“Miriam! So glad I caught you,” said the director of the community orchestra. “Our soloist for this weekend was just diagnosed with cancer. He has to fly out to the Mayo clinic tomorrow morning. I know this is really short notice, but we need someone who can play the Mozart twenty-one. Would you be able—would you want to step in?”

Did she want to? Of course she wanted to! She already knew that concerto. “It’s this weekend?”

“Sunday afternoon.”

Miriam squeezed her eyes shut. “I’m supposed to be in California with the kids this weekend.”

“Oh, this is the week of nationals, isn’t it? Well, it was worth a try. I guess I can call …”

Miriam rested her head against the refrigerator as the only good thing to happen all week threatened to slip through her fingers. She’d traveled with the kids to state and regionals. Did she really need to be there for nationals too?

“Hang on, Phil,” she said. “Give me half a second, okay?”

She turned to her family, who stared at her, electrified by her mention of the trip, the first real family vacation they’d ever taken, the one for which they were going to miss an entire week of school.

“The soloist is sick,” she said. “They need someone to play a Mozart concerto Sunday afternoon.”

Dead silence. Wide eyes from her children. A thoughtful look from Teo.

“I could change my ticket, come out right afterward, and meet you guys there.” Miriam tried to keep her voice neutral, to disguise how much she wanted this, but she could feel the tremble.

Teo pursed his lips. He rubbed his face and nodded slowly. “We could still celebrate your birthday