"The answer is the same reason your husband ended up working for me."
She lifts her head then. Slowly. Not because she wants to. I can see she doesn't want to. But she does it anyway.
"I d-don't understand."
Of course she doesn't. For so many years, I haven't understood myself either.
"When did we first meet, Nicole?"
"This—this weekend?"
I almost smile.
"Wrong."
She looks at me in confusion. “But this is the first company event that my—that Sandy asked me to—”
"The first time I met you was twenty years ago."
Chapter Twelve
ONE WEEK.
One week until my graduation recital, and I've just butchered the bridge ofMoonlight Sonatafor the fourth time in a row.
Get it together, Nicole.
I let my hands fall away from the keys and sit there with them in my lap, eyes closed, while I tell myself the same thing I've been telling myself since freshman year.
You can do this, Nicole. You can do this, you can do this, you can do this.
The bench is hard under me, the keys cold under my fingers, and my right thumb is throbbing where I keep hitting the same wrong note.
But even so.
I lift my hands and start the bridge again.
This time, whatever switch needed to flip in my head finally flips, and the notes go where they're supposed to go, and I let it carry me through to the end of the piece without thinking about anything else.
Then I look up to gather my sheet music, and—
Huh?
Is that a guy seated at the back?
Or something that looks like one?
The recital hall has rows of tiered seats sloping up toward the back, and he's at the very top, where the stage lights stop reaching.
“Hello?”
If he answers, he’s real. If he doesn’t, he might not be real, and that means I might be so exhausted I’ve started seeing things—
Oh.
He’s risen to his feet.
I guess he’s real then, but—