“Like the chair is electric.”
Tessa looked down. She was gripping the arms of the wicker chair hard enough that her knuckles had gone white. She made herself unclench her hands finger by finger.
“She wants me to go to the fancy music school, doesn’t she? The one in Connecticut.”
“Yes.”
A pause while Makayla rubbed Brown Dog’s ears.
“Whitmore, right?”
Tessa looked at her sharply. “How do you know that name?”
“Mr. Cohen showed me a brochure from there last year. He said I should show it to you. I didn’t because you would’ve made me apply.”
Tessa winced, because that was true. She would’ve called it being supportive back then. But now, she could see she’d been treating Makayla the same way Judith had treated her as a child. The way she’d hated so much back then.
“I’m sorry,” Tessa blurted.
“For what?”
“For being someone you couldn’t tell.”
Makayla studied her for a long moment. “I love violin, Mom. I really do. But I love it here, too. I love Murphy, and Arlo and Brownie, and all the animals here. I don’t want to go to a school where I have to live in a dorm and play other people’s music all day.”
“Other people’s music?”
A pause. Makayla’s gaze slid away from her. “You know—classical music. Bach, Brahms, the test pieces. They’re beautiful. But . . .” Makayla shrugged. “There’s other music, too. Stuff that feels different.”
“Different how?”
“Like the music is happy I’m playing it.”
Tessa had never once heard music described that way. But it was wise beyond a child’s years. The school bus rumbled into around the bend in the road.
“Bus is coming,” she said.
Makayla paused at the top of the porch steps and looked back at Tessa. “Mom?”
“Yes?”
“Is Grandmother going to make us go?”
“No,” Tessa said immediately and firmly. “We get to decide. You and me. Nobody else.”
“Okay.”
Makayla looked at her for a moment longer. “I love you.”
“I love you back.”
Her child ran down the steps and raced to the bus. Only when the dust had settled back over the road did she allow herself to wonder how she was going the farm afloat if they decided to stay here.
A cereal bowl sat abandoned on the table. Beside it lay Makayla’s iPad. As Tessa picked up the bowl to carry it to the sink, she bumped the iPad, and the screen lit up.
A video was paused on a man’s hand at full draw across a violin. The title beneath it read OLD JOE CLARK — TRADITIONAL FIDDLE — SLOW THEN UP TO TEMPO.
Tessa stared at it as a dozen puzzle pieces clicked together all at once in Tessa’s brain. Makayla wanted to learn how to fiddle. And her daughter was figuring it out on her own. On the sly.