She saw Arlo come in wearing a clean, freshly pressed plaid shirt and his go-to-church cowboy hat. He nodded at her and took a seat near the back by Cal Hendricks, whose granddaughter was performing today in a skit of some kind.
Tessa looked around surreptitiously as people continued to file in, trying to spot Dillon. She’d thought he might show up today given how close he and Makayla had been. But there was no sign of him.
A bell rang, signaling five minutes to show time.
She faced the stage, more disappointed than she cared to admit.
But he’d finished the chair and put it on her porch, after all. She ought to have more faith in him than to assume the worst. He must’ve been called out on an emergency. On impulse, she slipped out of her seat and went over to Iris Green, the elementary school secretary who, today, was fiddling with a video camera on a tripod in the center aisle near the stage.
“Hi Iris.”
“Hi Tessa. I’m looking forward to hearing what Makayla plays for us this year. She’s getting so good on that violin of hers.”
“Quick question. Would it be possible for me to get a copy of the video of the talent show? I have a friend who was really hoping to make it here today but couldn’t come.”
“Of course. I’ll load it on the school website after the show. When it’s up, and I’ll send you the link.”
The lights dimmed, and as Tessa slid back into her seat, she became aware of someone just taking a seat on the other side of the aisle.
She felt him more than saw him.
She turned her head and spotted Dillon sitting four rows back from her. He wore a clean white shirt and the dark sport coat he’d worn to Fern’s funeral.
He looked at her.
She looked at him.
The world contracted to a dozen feet of wooden basketball floor between them and the bright stage lights warming his face.
Neither of them looked away until the music teacher walked on stage and welcomed everyone. She introduced the first act, a fourth-grader named Caleb playing piano. Tessa heard none of it.
He was here. He’d come.
Eventually, somewhere around the third act, a second grader tap dancing terribly to something with too much bass in it, she started breathing again.
Makayla was the final act of the show, which Tessa counted as a kindness to the other kids. Makayla’s talent was in a whole different class than most kid’s.
The music teacher walked out and read the introduction Tessa had helped Makayla write a week ago. Makayla Lawrence will be performing the Allemande from Bach’s Partita in E Major. There was polite applause. The stage lights dimmed except for a single spotlight at the center of the stage.
Makayla walked out.
She’d changed into her long, navy recital skirt to go with her white blouse. But from where the audience sat, roughly eye level with the stage floor, very visible under the hem of her skirt with every step she took, were Makayla’s her pink cowboy boots.
A small audible huh rolled through the audience.
Tessa could not have been any prouder of her daughter in that moment. Makayla had finally blossomed into the person she was supposed to be. Fern was right all along about her. Fern was also right to twist Tessa arm and force her to move out to the farm with Makayla. It had been exactly what both of them needed.
Sitting there in the dark with her daughter calmly making a last minute adjustment to her bow and putting her violin under her chin, Tessa sent up a silent thank you to her mother-in-law, who was surely looking down on Makayla today and smiling.
Makayla began to play.
The Bach piece’s notes rose up and floated through the auditorium, filling it with Bach’s timeless elegance, its complex melodies intricately interwoven with mathematical precision. Tessa had heard Makayla practicing it for weeks, but this was the best she’d ever played it. She imbued it with a profoundly uplifting seriousness and technical rigor that would have made the music professors at Whitmore weep with joy.
She played it the way Tessa had raised her to play.
And Tessa, listening, felt her shoulders drop. There she is. The daughter she had spent eleven years molding and shaping in the image of her own childhood. There was the discipline, accomplishment, and control she’d instilled in her daughter. There was the prodigy.
It was beautiful. Technically pristine. It was, in its way, a goodbye to the child who’d been emerging at the farm—a happy, carefree kid who wore pink boots.