Norah would claim this was another attempt on Raine’s part to be manipulative. Lucas would undoubtedly agree.
I realized that I actually agreed, too.
Because this was part of what she did. Create these dramatic scenes, demand this kind of attention. I remembered her on the floor of the front hall with armfuls of photographs, wailing. I thought about her current photographs on the wall of that bar across the country. She liked to make a scene. She forced scenes if she had to. With pictures or comments or strange looks or insinuating herself between you and whoever you loved.
“Is this the silent treatment?” she asked, her stare turning challenging. “Are you really just going to ignore me?”
“I don’t think anyone could ignore you, Raine,” I told her, quite honestly.
“I see Norah’s gotten to you,” she said, shaking her head as if the very idea caused her pain. “I’m not surprised.”
“Nobody’s ‘gotten’ to me,” I assured her. “I just have a party to get to.”
“Well, you should go then,” she said, waving her arm with great, dramatic flourish. “A party is definitely more important than your sister.”
“I’m going to go, because it’s my engagement party,” I told her very distinctly, “and because Lucas is my family now.”
“I can’t tell you what you should do,” Raine said, in a tone that stated her actual opinion very clearly.
“I think you should come,” I continued. Because what she was saying didn’t change the fact that on some cosmic level, that was true. I had always wanted her there. Maybe not the version of her I was seeing at the moment, but that was something I would have to deal with some other day.
“I don’t feel like anyone wants me in this family,” she said with a brave sort of shrug. “Why would I inflict myself on all of you?”
I almost stepped around her and headed for the door then, but something stopped me from simply walking away. Maybe it was the fact that I knew things about love that she couldn’t, because I was lucky enough to have Lucas and whatever twisted thing she had with Matt couldn’t compare. Maybe it was the new, happy vision of my father in my mind. Maybe that was just wishful thinking.
“I came all the way to San Francisco to find you,” I reminded her. “And Norah, who has every reason in the world to never speak to you again—as she swore she wouldn’t six years ago—sucked it up and dealt with you being here.”
“Norah attacked me repeatedly,” Raine snapped.
“She could have holed up in her house and waited for you to leave,” I snapped right back. “She chose to try to coexist, and that can’t have been easy for her. You’ve never even bothered to apologize to her.”
“I’ll be sure to congratulate her the next time I see her,” Raine said sarcastically. “What a triumph of spirit that must have been for her.”
I ordered myself not to boil over at that one.
“My point,” I gritted out, “is that you can’t claim no one wants you in this family. Every one of us has tried to reach out to you in one way or another.”
She let out a sort of laugh.
“What kind of reaching out are you talking about?” she asked. “The kind that involves Matt?”
I looked at her. One moment stretched into another.
“You can either come to the party today and act like a member of this family,” I told her finally, “or you can do whatever it is you’re doing and wallow in self-pity.” I took a breath. “I’m hoping you’ll come, but then, I’m naïve, gullible, whatever. You have to decide.”
She studied my face for a moment, as if she didn’t quite recognize me.
“It’s up to you,” I said quietly, and then I really did step around her, scoop up the box of favors, and head for the door.
I didn’t look back, but I could swear I felt her watch me leave.
I raced back across town toward the country club, annoyed that Raine had taken so much of my time. Naturally, when I arrived back on the club grounds, the main parking area near the clubhouse was full. It was thanks to my party guests, as well as the usual summertime club members looking for a game of tennis or golf, and I had to park about as far away from my own party as it was possible to get. I pulled my strappy sandals off my feet for the walk back, because I thought they might cripple me if I tried to hustle in them.
Barefoot, carrying the box of favors on my hip, I took the shorter route back through the grove of trees that served as the barbecue area, and then headed down the walkway that skirted the small beach on the lakefront. The swimming floats were back in the water, bobbing against their moorings. Children played loud, energetic games in and out of the water, while parents chatted in canvas chairs or on blankets on the sand. I had fond memories of this club from my very early childhood, when I’d been one of the kids running in and out of the lake and building complicated sand structures I’d only fantasized were castles. But then I’d started playing the cello, and that had consumed my summer free time. I paused for a moment, looking at the dappled water in the late afternoon light, and allowed myself, once and for all, to accept the fact that I didn’t regret that choice.
I would never know what sort of person I might have been if I’d never picked up the cello. If I’d spent my summers playing at this lake, my teenage years finding other ways to amuse myself. The idea of that other person was so foreign to me that I couldn’t even imagine her. And I found that comforting. Because if I could envision another life, another me, it seemed to me that that life might be unreasonably tempting. My father was an excellent cautionary tale in that respect.
I was approaching the clubhouse from behind, so I could see my own party as I approached it, out on the deck in the evening air. There were already a number of people milling around with cocktails, contributing a happy sort of buzz to the late afternoon air. I picked up my pace.
I was just about to the edge of the lawn that led from the lake to the deck, when there was movement in my peripheral vision.
“Courtney.”
I recognized the voice even as I turned, and saw Matt Cheney standing in the shadow of an oak tree.
My heart thumped a little bit in surprise, and I wondered if the two of them had planned to leap out at me tonight or if that was just a coincidence.
“I have to talk to you,” Matt said, his voice low and urgent.
“It might have escaped your notice,” I told him, not even pretending to keep the irritation out of my own voice, “but I have a party to go to. I’m actually one of the guests of honor, so if you’ll excuse me . . . ?”
“You don’t understand,” Matt said, taking a step closer.
“What don’t I understand?” I asked, impatient.
“I love you,” he said, as if the words were torn from him. “I never should have left you. Please. Give me another chance.”
I assumed he hadn’t actually said that, as it was the sort of declaration I’d once fantasized about, at great length and in significant detail.
Moments passed.
It only dawned on me that he’d really said that to me, that I hadn’t slipped into an old fantasy steps away from my engagement party, when those green eyes of his flashed with temper.
“Do I have to beg?” he demanded. “Because I will, if that’s what you want.”
“You have got to be kidding me,” I said, but it was more of a breath.
He stepped closer, so I could really look at him and see the stubble on his face that suggested he’d had a rough few days. He looked tormented and racked with emotion, not looks I associated with him. He reached over and put a hand on my arm.
“I love you,” he said again fiercely, and this time, I knew I wasn’t dreaming it.
This time, I knew he meant it.
Chapter Twenty-Six
We can do what we should have done years ago,” Matt said intently. “We’re right here, in the exact same place where everything went wrong, Courtney. We can change it.”
I was shaking my head b
efore he was finished speaking.
“I can’t believe you would come here and say these things to me.” I took a step away from him. “Maybe you forgot that I’m having an engagement party?”
“There are so many things you don’t understand.” He looked away then, as if those things troubled him. He was so good at looking lost and troubled.
“I don’t understand them because you took off with my sister,” I snapped at him. “If you wanted me to understand, maybe you shouldn’t have abandoned me!”
I hadn’t meant to use that word abandon, and hearing it come out of my mouth sent a chill through me. I had suspected that my feelings for Matt had a lot to do with my feelings about my father, but suddenly, I understood exactly how much.
“I don’t know how to explain things with Raine,” Matt said. “But I didn’t lie to you. Not really. Not about what matters.”
“I don’t think she would agree with that,” I said, thinking of the way she’d changed after Matt and I had nearly kissed. He must have told her. She must have thought it was starting up again. How sad for everyone involved.
“You could have come with us when we left,” Matt continued, his voice going scratchy. “But that never even crossed your mind. You never even considered it.”
“You didn’t give me a chance!” I retorted, outraged. “By the time I knew what was going on, you were halfway to California!”
“You made choices, too.” He shook his head. “When it came down to it, you only thought you wanted to be with me. You could never decide what you loved more—me or your cello.”
“You are not actually standing here and suggesting that you left me because you were jealous of an inanimate object,” I hissed at him, shifting the box from my hip. “Please tell me I didn’t hear that right.”
“You didn’t want to come with us,” Matt said stubbornly. “You think you were left, but I know you decided to stay.”
I looked away for a moment, toward the lush grass that led to the tennis courts. The shadows were beginning to stretch, and the sky was beginning to cool above me. My head was a jumble of incoherent thoughts and memories. But mostly what I thought of was that long walk I’d taken in San Francisco, and how long I’d stood at the crest of Twin Peaks and stared down at the city that should have been my home.
San Francisco had hit me like a love song, deep in my soul. I craved the crisp blue afternoons and cold mornings. The salt in the air, the pastel houses, the glorious red bridge. It was an incomparable city, and part of me would always wish I had gone there.
But that wasn’t the same thing as wishing I had gone with Matt.
“See?” Matt said then, as if he sensed weakness. He let out a frustrated sort of noise. “Have you forgotten who you were back then?” he demanded. “You were going to change the world.” He reached out a hand, but this time didn’t touch me. “I’ve always loved you, Courtney. Have you forgotten that? Have you forgotten how much you loved me, too?”
“Have you forgotten that I’m in love with someone else?” I threw back at him. “That I’m engaged to him, and he’s right over there on that deck?”
“You can’t compare that guy to me,” Matt said dismissively. “He’s not even a musician. How can he ever really understand you?”
Oddly enough, that had never occurred to me before. I remembered, suddenly, how intensely I had dreamed of collaborating with Matt. I’d been convinced that the things we couldn’t seem to talk about with words could somehow be smoothed over if only we could communicate with music. I’d ached sometimes, thinking of how beautiful our music could be. But we had never even played together.
Lucas, on the other hand, sometimes hung out on the couch while I practiced. Sometimes he would read a book. Sometimes he would just lie there and let the music swell all around him. He didn’t sing, or tap out a rhythm, or in any way contribute to the music-making. And yet, somehow, I always thought of him as such a huge part of my music.
I thought about what Matt had just said, that I’d loved my cello more than him. He was right. I had only just figured out how to risk loving someone who could love me in return, someone who wouldn’t leave me.
“I’m not going to defend Lucas to you,” I told Matt then. Because I didn’t have to.
“I know you’re pissed about the Raine thing,” Matt said in that same intense way, “and I’m not saying Lucas isn’t a nice guy, but you can’t really believe this is the right life for you. What happened to all your passion? Don’t you remember what it was like when the world was huge and we could do anything we wanted?”
And the thing was, I did remember.
Ever since I’d gone to California, I’d worried that there was a life out there that I should have been living. That I’d missed the boat, or chosen the wrong path. Matt and Raine seemed to believe that I was kidding myself, and I could understand where they were coming from.
Because they didn’t know what it was like to practice as hard as I did, every day. To them it sounded unbearable, like some kind of daily grind. They believed in uncertainty and creation at all costs. I could understand the lure of their kind of life. The part of me that had been a fine arts student yearned for that life.
But the professional musician in me knew things that they couldn’t understand.
I knew that the world was never bigger, or more unlimited, than when I played a perfect note. Or when the melody kicked in and the orchestra swelled into song and all of us, together, became something greater than a collection of individual musicians: the music itself.
I had spent my life training so that I could be part of those perfect moments. They were called movements for a reason. When I was flying completely free, lost in the orchestra around me, entirely consumed in some of the most glorious music ever written. In order to be a part of that beauty, I had to commit to the daily practice, the discipline. It wasn’t the life for everyone. But it was my life.
More important, it was how I felt every time I looked at Lucas.
“What are you thinking?” Matt demanded.
I focused on him, while somewhere in my mind, I heard concertos for strings, Bach suites in different keys.
“Come on,” he said. “We can make a whole new life. You know we’re great together.”
“You were my first love,” I told him. “I loved you for so long, and I loved you for a long time after you left, too.”
“I know,” he said. “You know I feel the same.”
“But I’m not that girl anymore,” I said now. “Somewhere inside, there’s a part of me that wonders what might have happened to that girl if she’d gone with you to San Francisco—”
“You don’t have to wonder!” he exclaimed. “You can do it!”
“I don’t want to.”
I said it quietly, but it was out there between us as if I’d shouted.
And something happened in me when I said it.
It was powerful to own your life, to choose it, to banish doubt and know you meant it with every fiber of your being. I knew that before this moment, I hadn’t fully faced what had happened six years before. There had been so many what ifs. Matt had been the stand-in for so many of my hopes and fears, but the truth was, he was just a guy.
I hadn’t wanted to go to California. I wanted the life I’d chosen, the life I’d worked so hard for.
I still wanted it.
I loved Lucas in ways I didn’t have the words to express. Not to the exclusion of the world around us, the way it had been with Matt. But in a way that included the world, and made us a part of it. Like we were one glorious part of the larger orchestra of life all around us, and freer for it.
“I don’t believe you,” Matt said. But I could tell that he did believe me. He just didn’t want to.
“I have a party to get to,” I told him, not unkindly. “They can’t really start without me.”
That was when I noticed that there was another figure standing nearby, within hearing range.
I drank in the sight of
Lucas in his khakis and his pressed white shirt. My modern-day Viking. He smiled when I looked his way, and pointed his chin toward the deck behind him.
“The natives are getting restless,” he said.
Matt said my name again, but it was time for me to go. I smiled at him the way I’d wished he’d smiled at me in this very spot a long time ago, and then I turned and crossed the grass to Lucas.
“How long have you been standing here?” I asked him.
“A while.” His eyes danced. He reached over and took the box of favors from me.
“Did you hear everything?”
“Pretty much.”
I studied his face as I stopped before him.
“You don’t seem upset.”
“Courtney.” He grinned as he said The Name. “Put on your shoes. You look gorgeous and we have guests to entertain.”
I slipped the shoes back on and glanced back to see that Matt was no longer standing there by the tree. I hadn’t heard him walk away. I felt a twinge of sadness, for all the could-have-beens that never were, but then I looked back at Lucas and found him smiling down at me.
Cellos wept. Melodies soared.
“You really don’t mind the things he said?” I asked.
Lucas shook his head, very slowly. So there could be no mistake.
“I have nothing but confidence in you,” he said. “And us. I told you I wasn’t threatened by that guy.”
“Not even when he showed up at our engagement party?” I asked, but I was smiling back at him. “That’s taking confidence pretty far, I think.”
“Which is why I’m not waiting for you up on the deck,” Lucas replied immediately. “I thought I could exhibit my complete confidence from a little bit closer.”
“Good thinking,” I murmured.
“Are you ready?” he asked as he offered me his free hand.
I looked past him toward the deck. I saw my mother, resplendent in her bright dress, with Leonard at her side. I saw Norah and Phil, standing close together in a corner, talking to Verena. And also, standing in a circle of neighbors, I saw the short, glossy hair and cute little figure that could only belong to Raine.