Page 48 of Love & Notes

“Mm,” I mumble, keeping my voice flat.

I don’t want to get into a verbal boxing match with him right now. I don’t have the energy for it.

“There’s a gala on the tenth of December,” he states. It’s an order, not an invitation.

Hello to you too, old man.

There is never any form of baseline greeting with him. It somehow seems to be a complete waste of time in his mind, at least when I’m the person involved anyway. Yet, I’ve watched him spend hours talking absolute superficial bullshit to total strangers, laughing and joking, just to keep his public character intact. It’s sickening.

I don’t stop. I keep playing the piano—Mum’s piano.

“I need you to perform,” he continues, his tone clinical. “Something the guests will actually enjoy. None of that modern rubbish or that nonsense you are playing right now. Stick to Debussy or Schumann. Keep it classical.”

I’m not a fucking performing monkey.

He treats me like a luxury asset when it suits him. He always has. I’m purely another item in the Thorne brand—his musically gifted son deployed at appropriate social occasions to benefit his standing.

I don’t look up at him. He doesn’t deserve it.

“And bring the blonde,” he demands. “The one who came to the Summer Gala. Nancy? She comes from the right sort of family and looks the part on an arm. It’s good for the press.”

Wow.

He still hasn’t looked at me; his cold eyes remain focused entirely on the instrument that he seems to despise so much.

“Did you hear me?” He steps closer to the piano. “Julian.”

“I heard you.”

He turns around without another word, the door thudding shut behind him. I let the melody ring out, the beautiful sound filling the hollow space. He thinks I’m playing something mediocre. He didn’t even bother to listen.

“It’s called Roseanna’s Theme,” I whisper to the empty navy velvet chair in the corner. “I’ve been composing it for Mum.”

He never understood that Mum didn’t just teach me how to read sheet music. She taught me how to feel every phrase, every note, every silent rest.

My eyes slip shut, and against the darkness behind my eyelids, the room alters. The stale smell of my father’s expensive cologne fades, replaced by the comforting smell of dried lavender.

I’m seven years old again. My legs are dangling off the edge of the piano bench, my small hands hovering awkwardly over the middle C.

“The keys aren’t glass, Jules,” her voice echoes in my head.

Her voice was so soft and warm, a complete contrast to the sharp edge that he speaks to me with now.

“You don’t have to fear breaking them, sweetheart. The piano keys are just an extension of whatever you’re too afraid to say out loud.”

I had looked up at her beauty then, completely unaware of the sickness that was already quietly, ruthlessly dismantling her cells from the inside out.

“What if I don’t know what to say, Mum?”

She had smiled and gently ruffled my hair. “Then you just close your eyes, and let the notes sing until they finally make sense.”

She fought as hard as she could for years. But after being in remission for so long, the cancer came back with a vengeance. It was fast and brutal, but at least I got to say goodbye.

A sudden wave of heat rushes up my throat, a mixture of grief and hot fury. My fingers fly across the ivories. I am playing way over my limits now. My wrists are tight as I force the instrument to scream back at the empty walls of this house.

With a final strike of a minor chord, I slam both of my hands down flat against the keys. The sound explodes through the room, rattling the crystal decanters on the side table.

I finished it.