Page 97 of The Wild Beneath

The girl nods as if this makes sense. Then she points to the scrubs. “Are you a nurse?”

“I’m a doctor.”

She hands Annie another Twizzler. “Do you think mermaids are real?”

Annie hasn’t eaten the first one yet, but takes the second one. “I’m not sure,” she says. “But it would be fun if they were.”

The little girl points to the far left side of the orchestra pit. “That’s my mom up there with the ocean drum. It has lapis lazuli inside it.”

The woman in question has matching strawberry-blond hair, blunt-cut bangs, and long waves down her back. Pink lipstick, visible even from here, with a knee-length black dress. She holds a two-foot-wide ocean drum in her hands. It makes swooshy sounds as she tilts it forward and back.

Annie removes her AirPods to listen. “She looks like a mermaid.”

The little girl leans closer and whispers: “I think she is one. She let me sneak in the Twizzlers and wear my Iron Man T-shirt under my blouse.”

“She probably is a mermaid, then.”

The conductor stands at the podium. The room falls silent as the strings begin. The girl sits back down in her seat. The Twizzler she gave her tastes medicinal. Annie swallows while the sorrowful violin tingles the corners of her elbows. A gentle pressure floods her forearms when the viola adds its warm notes. The cello comes from beneath.

Her mother loved orchestras.

They never attended a concert, of course, but on their migrations south, Mara tracked the classical radio stations down the coast. Within fifty miles of LA, she’d finally be able to tune into KUSC 91.5 FM—­her favourite—­and listen to the LA Philharmonic at full volume. During the rumbly bass notes, her mom would lie on the deck and close her eyes.

Is it genetic, this love of music? The instruments take all the noise and find order with it. She wishes her mom was still here so Annie could ask if that’s what it did for her, too. Her vision blurs with tears.

Oboes begin, adding their distinct low timbres to the xylophone chimes and glockenspiel twinkles. Any stress remaining from Annie’s late ER shift melts away. She’s cleansed by the salt water now coming from her eyes.

The children are silent, mesmerized, inside the kingdom of sound.

And so is Annie.

Chapter 37

Tuesday 6:05 p.m. Evan waits at a table in the far corner of Terra Nova, a farm-to-table restaurant two blocks from their apartment. Annie is half an hour late. It’s otherwise empty and that’s why Annie prefers this place, but she’s not here yet. He calls the ER back line on his cell.

Hazel, the ward clerk, picks up: “She’s in the middle of a chest tube.”

“We had a dinner reservation at five-thirty. Should I cancel?”

“Hold on.” The line clicks over to elevator jazz music.

He puts it on speaker and scrolls Instagram. He finds his favourite feed: a reality TV woodworker on Vancouver Island who specializes in reclaimed wood and forest conservation. In today’s post, he has a skill saw in one hand and stands over a pile of barn board. The Pacific horizon fills the background. The caption reads: “2x6s and a lot of sweat! #mytwohands #offgrid #rainforest #nofilter.”

Hazel isn’t back. A saxophone plays on the line as a server arrives. Wearing wire-rimmed glasses and a pineapple-patterned shirt, he taps a pencil on his small notebook. “Are you ready to order yet?”

Hazel’s clipped voice: “She’s already done, Evan. She’s coming.”

“Perfect. Thanks.” He hangs up and looks at the server. “We’ll need ten minutes, please.”

Terra Nova is the restaurant they visit most. They don’t play synthetic-feeling music and the tables are far enough apart. The food is pretty decent, and Annie says it’s one of the few places where she can hear herself think.

Evan first brought Annie here during med school. After the violinists at the library, she’d done what she said she’d do: She got better. She threw herself in headfirst and ended up winning an academic award of excellence about six months afterward. Earplugs got her through the ceremony; she wore her hair down to hide them.

After the ceremony, they sat at this same table at Terra Nova, side by side on the bench instead of across from each other—­the way she wanted it—­his thigh pressed up against hers, his voice the closest one to her. A tea light flickered through a golden glass. She smelled like bergamot and vanilla.

This is where he first kissed her again, after months of working up the nerve.

Annie rolls in while he’s daydreaming about it. That night was nearly four years ago, but it still makes his heart speed up. She pecks him on the lips, then sits across from him. She’s still wearing her scrubs. Casting plaster smears across her left sleeve. Her braid is loose and messy.