The light was good that morning, and David, though disappointed, was also eager to get back to his camera. He’d had another idea, in the middle of the night, about his photos. Howard had pointed out a place where one more image would tie the whole series together. A nice guy, Howard, and perceptive. Their conversation had been on David’s mind all night, generating a quiet excitement. He’d hardly slept, and now he wanted to get home and shoot another roll of Norah on the sand. But they found the cottage still and cool and empty, washed with light and with the sound of waves. Norah had left a bowl of oranges centered on the table. Her coffee cup was neatly washed and draining in the sink. Norah? he called, and then again, Norah? But she didn’t answer. I think I’ll take a run, Paul said, a shadow in the bright doorway, and David nodded. Keep an eye out for your mother, he said.
Alone in the cottage, David moved the bowl of oranges to the counter and spread his photos on the table. They fluttered in the breeze; he had to anchor them with shot glasses. Norah complained that he was becoming obsessed with photography—why else would he bring his portfolio on vacation?—and maybe that was true. But Norah was wrong about the rest. He didn’t use the camera to escape the world. Sometimes, watching images emerge in the bath of developer, he glimpsed her arm, the curve of her hip, and was stilled by a deep sense of his love for her. He was still arranging and rearranging the photos when Paul returned, the door slamming hard behind him.
“That was fast,” David said, looking up.
“Tired,” Paul said. “I’m tired.” He walked straight through the dining room and disappeared into his room.
“Paul?” David said. He went to the door and turned the handle. Locked.
“I’m just tired,” Paul said. “Everything’s fine.”
David waited a few more minutes. Paul was so moody lately. Nothing David did seemed to be the right thing, and the worst were talks with Paul about his future. It could be so bright. Paul was gifted in music and sports, with every possibility open to him. David often thought that his own life—the difficult choices he had made—would be justified if Paul would only realize his potential, and he lived with the constant, nagging fear that he’d failed his son somehow; that Paul would throw his gifts away. He knocked again, lightly, but Paul didn’t answer.
Finally, David sighed and went back into the kitchen. He admired the bowl of oranges on the counter, the curves of fruit and dark wood. Then, following an impulse he could not explain, he went outside and started walking down the beach. He’d gone at least a mile before he glimpsed the bright flutter of Norah’s shirt from a distance. When he got closer, he realized that they were her clothes, left lying on the beach in front of what must be Howard’s cottage. David stopped in the bright glare of the sun, puzzled. Had they gone for a swim, then? He scanned the water but didn’t see them, and then he kept walking, until Norah’s familiar laughter, low and musical, drifted out of the cottage windows and stopped him. He heard Howard’s laugh too, an echo of Norah’s. He knew then, and he was gripped by a pain as gritty and searing as the hot sand beneath his feet.
Howard, with his thinning hair and his sandals, standing in the living room the night before, giving cool advice about photography.
With Howard. How could she?
And yet, all the same, he had expected this moment for years.
The sand pressed up hotly against David’s feet and the light glared. He was filled with the old, sure sense that the snowy night when he had handed their daughter to Caroline Gill would not pass without consequence. Life had gone on, it was full and rich; he was, in all visible ways, a success. And yet at odd moments—in the middle of surgery, driving into town, on the very edge of sleep—he’d start suddenly, stricken with guilt. He had given their daughter away. This secret stood in the middle of their family; it shaped their lives together. He knew it, he saw it, visible to him as a rock wall grown up between them. And he saw Norah and Paul reaching out and striking rock and not understanding what was happening, only that something stood between them that could not be seen or broken.
Duke Madison finished playing with a flourish, stood, and bowed. Norah, clapping hard, turned to the family sitting behind them.
“He was wonderful,” she said. “Duke is so talented.”
The stage was empty then, and the applause faded. One moment passed, and another. People began to murmur.
“Where is he?” David asked, glancing down at his program. “Where’s Paul?”
“Don’t worry, he’s here,” Norah said. To David’s surprise, she took his hand. He felt it, cool in his own, and was washed with an inexplicable relief, believing, for a moment, that nothing had changed; that nothing stood between them after all. “He’ll be out soon.”
Even as she spoke there was a stirring, and then Paul was walking onto the stage. David took him in: tall and lanky, wearing a clean white shirt with the sleeves rolled up and flashing a wry, crooked smile at the audience. David felt briefly astonished. How had it come to be that Paul was nearly grown, standing up here before this darkened room full of people with such confidence and ease? It was nothing David himself would ever have dreamed of doing, and a wave of intense nervousness washed through him. What if Paul failed up there before all these people? He was aware of Norah’s hand in his own as Paul leaned over the guitar, testing a few notes, and then began to play.
It was Segovia, the program noted: two short pieces, “Estudio” and “Estudio Sin Luz.” The notes of these songs, delicate and precise, were intimately familiar. David had heard Paul play these pieces a hundred times, a thousand times, before. All during the vacation in Aruba this music had spilled out of his room, faster or slower, measures and bars repeated again and again. The patterns were as familiar to him now as Paul’s long deft fingers, moving with such sureness over the strings, weaving music in the air. And yet David felt he was hearing it for the first time, and maybe he was seeing Paul for the first time also. Where was the toddler who had pulled off his shoes to taste them, the boy climbing trees and standing up on his bike with no hands? Somehow, that sweet daredevil boy had become this young man. David’s heart filled, beating with such intensity that he wondered for a moment if he might be having a heart attack—he was young for that, only forty-six, but such a thing might happen.
Slowly, slowly, David let himself relax into this darkness, closing his eyes, letting the music, Paul’s music, move through him in waves. Tears rose in his eyes, and his throat ached. He thought of his sister, standing on the porch and singing in her clear sweet voice; music was a silvery language it seemed she’d been born speaking, just as Paul had. A deep sense of loss rose up in him, so forceful, woven of so many memories: June’s voice, and Paul slamming the door shut behind him, and Norah’s clothes scattered on the beach. His newborn daughter, released into Caroline Gill’s waiting hands.
Too much. Too much. David was on the verge of weeping. He opened his eyes and made himself go through the periodic table—hydrogen, helium, lithium—so the knot in his stomach would not twist into tears. It worked, as it always worked in the operating room, to focus his attention. He pushed it all back: June, the music, the powerful rushing love he felt for his son. Paul’s fingers came to rest on the guitar. David pulled his hand from Norah’s. Fiercely, he applauded.
“Are you all right?” she asked, glancing at him. “Are you okay, David?”
He nodded, still not quite trusting himself to speak.
“He’s good,” he said at last, barking the words out. “He’s good.”
“Yes.” She nodded. “That’s why he wants to go to Juilliard.” She was still clapping, and when Paul looked in their direction she blew him a kiss. “Wouldn’t that be wonderful, if it could happen? He has a few years left to practice still, and if he gives it everything he has—who knows?”
Paul bowed, left the stage with his guitar. The applause swelled high.
“Everything he has?” David repeated. “What if it doesn’t work out?”
“What if it
does?”
“I don’t know,” David said slowly. “I just think he’s too young to shut doors.”
“He’s so talented, David. You heard him. What if this is a door opening?”
“But he’s only thirteen.”
“Yes, and he loves music. He says he’s most alive when he’s playing the guitar.”
“But—it’s such an unpredictable life. Can he make a living?”
Norah’s face was very serious. She shook her head. “I don’t know. But what’s that old saying? Do what you love, and the money will follow. Don’t shut the door on his dream.”
“I won’t,” David said. “But I worry. I want him to be secure in life. And Juilliard is a long shot, no matter how good he is. I don’t want Paul to get hurt.”
Norah opened her mouth to speak, but the auditorium grew quiet as a young woman in a dark red dress came on with her violin, and they turned their attention to the stage.
David watched the young woman and all those who followed, but it was Paul’s music that was with him still. When the performances were over, he and Norah made their way to the lobby, stopping to shake hands every few feet, hearing praise for their son. When they finally reached Paul, Norah pushed through the crowd and hugged him, and Paul, embarrassed, patted her on the back. David caught his eye and grinned, and Paul, to his surprise, grinned back. An ordinary moment: again David let himself believe that things would be all right. But seconds later Paul seemed to catch himself. He pulled away from Norah, stepping back.
“You were great,” David said. He hugged Paul, noting the tension in his shoulders, the way he was holding himself: stiff, aloof. “You were fantastic, son.”
“Thanks. I was kind of nervous.”
“You didn’t seem nervous.”
“Not at all,” Norah said. “You had wonderful stage presence.”
Paul shook his hands at his sides, loosely, as if to release leftover energy.
“Mark Miller invited me to play with him at the arts festival. Isn’t that the best?”
Mark Miller was David’s guitar instructor, with a growing reputation. David felt another surge of pleasure.
“Yes, it is the best,” Norah said, laughing. “That’s absolutely the best, indeed.”
She looked up and caught Paul’s pained expression.
“What?” she asked. “What is it?”
Paul shifted, shoving his hands in his pockets, and glanced around the crowded lobby. “It’s just—I don’t know—you sound kind of ridiculous, Mom. I mean, you’re not exactly a teenager, okay?”
Norah flushed. David watched her grow still with hurt, and his own heart ached. She didn’t know the source of Paul’s anger, or his own. She did not know that her discarded clothes fluttered in a wind that he himself had set in motion so many years ago.
“That’s no way to talk to your mother,” he said, taking on Paul’s anger. “I want you to apologize right now.”
Paul shrugged. “Right. Sure. Okay. Sorry.”
“Like you mean it.”
“David”—Norah’s hand was on his arm now—“let’s not make a federal case out of this. Please. Everyone is just a little excited, that’s all. Let’s go home and celebrate. I was thinking I’d invite some people over. Bree said she’d come, and the Marshalls—wasn’t Lizzie good on the flute? And maybe Duke’s parents. What do you think, Paul? I don’t know them very well, but maybe they’d like to come over too?”
“No,” Paul said. He was distant now, looking past Norah at the crowded foyer.
“Really? You don’t want to invite Duke’s family?”
“I don’t want to invite anyone,” Paul said. “I just want to go home.”
For a moment they stood, an island of silence in the midst of the buzzing room.
“All right then,” David said at last, “let’s go home.”
The house was dark when they got there, and Paul went straight upstairs. They heard his footsteps moving to the bathroom and back again; they heard his door shutting softly, the turn of the lock.
“I don’t understand,” Norah said. She had slipped off her shoes and she looked very small to him, very vulnerable, standing in her stocking feet in the middle of the kitchen. “He was so good onstage. He seemed so happy—and then what happened? I don’t understand.” She sighed. “Teenagers. I’d better go talk to him.”
“No,” he said. “Let me.”
He climbed the stairs without turning on the light, and when he reached Paul’s door he paused for a long moment in the darkness, remembering how his son’s hands had moved with such delicate precision over the strings, filling the wide auditorium with music. He had done the wrong thing all those years ago; he had made a mistake when he handed his daughter to Caroline Gill. He’d made a choice, and so he stood here, on this night, in the darkness outside Paul’s room. He knocked on the door, but Paul didn’t answer. He knocked again, and when there was still no answer, David went to the bookcase and found the thin nail he kept there and slid it into the hole in the doorknob. There was a soft click, and when he turned the knob the door swung open. It did not surprise him to see that the room was empty. When he turned on the light, a breeze caught the pale white curtain and lifted it to the ceiling.
“He’s gone,” he told Norah. She was still in the kitchen, standing with her arms folded, waiting for the teakettle to boil.
“Gone?”
“Out the window. Down the tree, most likely.”
She pressed her hands to her face.
“Any idea where he went?”
She shook her head. The kettle started to whistle and she didn’t respond right away, and the thin persistent wailing filled the room.
“I don’t know. With Duke, maybe.”
David crossed the room and pulled the kettle from the burner.
“I’m sure he’s okay,” he said.
Norah nodded, then shook her head.
“No,” she said. “That’s the thing. I really don’t think he is.”
She picked up the phone. Duke’s mother gave Norah the address of a post-show party, and Norah reached for her keys.
“No,” David said, “I’ll go. I don’t think he wants to talk to you right now.”
“Or to you,” she snapped.
But he saw her understand, even as she spoke. In that moment something was stripped away. It all stood between them then, her long hours away from their cottage, the lies and the excuses and the clothes on the beach. His lies too. She nodded once, slowly, and he was afraid of what she might say or do, of how the world might be forever changed. He wanted, more than anything, to fix this moment in place, to keep the world from moving forward.
“I blame myself,” he said. “For everything.”
He took the keys and went out into the soft spring night. The moon was full, the color of rich cream, so beautiful and round and low on the horizon. David kept glancing at it as he drove through the silent neighborhood, along streets solid and prosperous, the sort of place he’d never even imagined as a child. This is what he knew that Paul didn’t: the world was precarious and sometimes cruel. He’d had to fight hard to achieve what Paul simply took for granted.
He saw Paul a block before the party, walking down the sidewalk with his hands shoved into his pockets, his shoulders hunched. There were cars parked all along the road, no place to pull over, so David slowed and tapped the horn. Paul looked up, and for a moment David was afraid he might run.
“Get in,” David said. And Paul did.
David started driving. They didn’t speak. The moon cast the world with a beautiful light, and David was aware of Paul sitting beside him, aware of his soft breathing and his hands lying still in his lap, aware that he was staring out the window at the silent lawns they passed.
“You were really good tonight. I was impressed.”
“Thanks.”
They drove two blocks in silence.
“So. Your mother says you want to go to Juilliard.”
“Maybe.”
“You’re good,” David said. “You’re good at so much, Paul. You’ll have a lot of choices in your life. A lot of directions you can go. You could be anything.”
“I like music,” Paul said. “It makes me feel alive. I guess I don’t expect you to understand that.”
“I understand it,” David said. “But there’s being alive, and there’s making a living.”
“Right. Exactly.”
“You can talk like this because you’ve never wanted for a thing,” David said. “That’s a luxury you don’t understand.”
They were close to home now, but David turned in the opposite direction. He wanted to stay with Paul in the car, driving through the moonlit world where this conversation, however strained and awkward, was possible.
“You and Mom,” Paul said, his words bursting out, as if he’d been holding them back a long time. “What’s wrong with you, anyway? You live like you don’t care about anything. You don’t have any joy. You just get through the days, no matter what. You don’t even give a damn about that Howard guy.”
So he did know.
“I give a damn,” David said. “But things are complicated, Paul. I’m not going to talk about this with you, now or ever. There’s a lot you don’t understand.”
Paul didn’t speak. David stopped at a traffic signal. There were no other cars around and they sat in silence, waiting for the light to change.
“Let’s stay focused here,” David said at last. “You don’t need to worry about your mother and me. That’s not your job. Your job is to find your way in the world. To use all your many gifts. And it can’t all be for yourself. You have to give something back. That’s why I do that clinic work.”
“I love music,” Paul said softly. “When I play, I feel like I’m doing that—giving something back.”
“And you are. You are. But Paul, what if you have it in you to discover, say, another element in the universe? What if you could discover the cure for some rare and awful disease?”