Chapter 3

Vera slipped her arm through mine as if we’d once been close.

“Mildred! It really is you. I almost didn’t recognize you.”

She smiled at me, then looked down at Wyatt’s jacket on my shoulders. Her fingers tightened around my arm.

“I never expected to see you at a showroom like this,” she said. “If you ever need anything, call Wyatt. My husband has a soft spot for old friends. I’m sure he’d be happy to help.”

She lingered over the words my husband.

“We ran into each other, Vera,” Wyatt said. “Leave it alone.”

“Oh, honey. She practically taught me how to play.” Vera let go of my arm and kissed him on the cheek. “If she’s having a hard time, what’s wrong with helping? You told me you’d back me no matter what.”

She was watching me when she said it.

I took off Wyatt’s jacket and held it out. Vera tucked her drink against her side and took the jacket with her free hand. “I’m doing fine,” I said.

Her eyes went to my faded blue overshirt, the same one Wyatt had taken for a cleaner’s uniform.

“My mother bought it for my birthday,” I said. “I’ve never wanted to throw it away.”

Wyatt looked at the cuffs. Something in his face changed.

The day I fell from the balcony had been my birthday.

He’d gone with Vera to a television taping arranged through one of the Simmons Group’s sponsors. When her blood sugar dropped during rehearsal, he sent the driver and both housekeepers ahead with food and clothes. He knew I’d barely been getting out of bed. He told me he’d be back after the taping.

My mother came over because I hadn’t answered her birthday call. She found me below the balcony. I remember opening my eyes long enough to see tissue paper scattered on the ground. She’d torn open my present and draped the overshirt over me while we waited for the ambulance.

“Open your eyes, baby. Look what Mama got you.”

She kept rubbing my shoulder through the fabric. I could hear her crying every time she stopped talking.

“I told you not to marry Wyatt Simmons,” she said. Then she bent so close I could feel her breath against my cheek. “But you still have me. Come on, Mildred. You’re all I have.”

After I signed the divorce papers, she said she was going to see Wyatt herself. She wanted him to look her in the eye and explain why he’d brought those papers to my hospital bed.

She was hit by a car after she left the house. She never came back.

Vera had Wyatt’s jacket folded over her arm when he finally spoke.

“She meant well, Mildred.” He took a breath. “Where are you working these days? If you’re looking for something, I can find you a place at Simmons Group.”

“I teach piano.”

He looked up.

“One of my students at Harmony Academy won the National Youth Piano Competition today.”

I’d had to learn to hold a pencil again before I could mark up a score. Once I could do that, I could sit beside a student and show her where a phrase went wrong, even if my fingers couldn’t play it through.

Now I got lesson requests from all over the world. I turned down most of them. My best student was the girl waiting for me to come home and cut her cake.

The upright was for her private lessons at the academy. I wanted her to have a piano there that she could practice on whenever the room was free.

Wyatt glanced down at the delivery address on his order. His shoulders eased a little.

Vera’s smile slipped.

“Well, congratulations, Mildred. A youth competition is a lovely start.” She paused to smooth Wyatt’s jacket over her arm. “Of course, it doesn’t carry quite the same weight as the national competitions we entered back then.”

“Oh, I’m sure you remember yours,” I said. “You won it playing music I wrote.”

Vera went still. Then she turned to Wyatt. Her eyes were already filling.

“Honey,” she said, “after all these years, she still thinks I stole her music.”