Porcelain Keys (17 page)

“You can trust me, you know?” I whispered, echoing the words he’d once said to me.

He leaned back and smiled at me, but his expression was still wary. “I know.” He took my hand in his and rubbed his thumb over my knuckle. “We were in a car accident a couple years ago, and even though he was driving, he blames me.”

I reached out and touched the scar above his brow. “Is that how you got this?”

He nodded.

“What other rifts?” I asked, looking specifically for an explanation for Richard’s comment. But when Thomas remained silent, I asked a more pointed question. “What did he mean when he said I was your consolation prize?”

“You’re not a consolation prize for anything. Richard just likes to stir things up.”

“But he was referring to something.”

“It’s nothing—it doesn’t matter.”

“If it doesn’t matter, then you can tell me.”

Thomas gazed at the Christmas tree, the sparkling lights reflecting in his troubled eyes. “He was referring to Sasha.”

I felt a pang in my heart at the sound of another girl’s name on his lips. She must have been the girl in the painting on his wall. I wanted to ask him who she was, but couldn’t bring myself to say her name. So I waited, hoping he would explain.

“She was my friend,” he continued. “We grew up across the street from each other. And when I was fifteen, my feelings for her started to change into more than friendship. And that’s when Richard swooped in and swept her off her feet.”

“Did he know you had . . . feelings for her?”

“Yeah, but he insisted it wasn’t about competition. He told me he’d had feelings for her since junior high.” He shrugged. “Maybe he did, but he never showed it before then.”

“And then he got her pregnant?”

He nodded. “He treated her like a burden after that. She used to call me up and cry about it. I tried to get her to break up with him, but I think she really loved him.”

He stroked the top of my hand while I sat there, suddenly feeling terrified. What if he had loved Sasha more than he admitted? What if he still loved her? Her painting was still on his wall. Was he still grieving over losing her to his brother? I felt my own breaths quicken, and I tried to subdue the emotion rising in my throat. He must have noticed because he pulled back and looked into my face.

“Aria,” he said gently, lifting my chin so that I would meet his gaze, “you have nothing to worry about.”

I must not have looked convinced, because he tucked a piece of hair behind my ear and said, “You have to understand, when she started dating him, I backpedaled and left my feelings at friendship.” He gathered me in his arms
and fastened his gaze on me. “So what he said has absolutely no merit. You’re not a consolation prize. You’re . . .” His face was close to mine, his voice soft. “You’re a rare treasure, that I was lucky enough to find.” He placed a gentle kiss on my forehead, then looked at me again. “Do you believe me?”

I shrugged. “I guess so.”

He smiled sadly, then stood and reached for my hand. “Come downstairs with me. I need to show you something.” We went downstairs to his room, where he turned on the light and led me to his desk. A painting lay on his desk, and I gasped when I saw the subject.

It was my house, how it looked in the spring before Mom died. White jasmine grew up the side of the porch, peace roses hugged the railing, and fuchsia blossoms bloomed from peach trees in the side yard. In the window of the parlor, a dark-haired girl sat playing at the piano. A boy with dark hair sat on the porch swing outside.

He sat on the stool and took my hand. “I’ve been working on it for weeks,” he said quietly. “I hope you like it.”

“Who’s that?” I whispered, pointing to the boy.

He didn’t answer, but from the way he was looking at me, I knew that the boy in the painting was him.

“I know I can’t replace what you’ve lost,” he said, “but maybe someday I can give you something similar.”

Or better,
I thought.

“Did I get it right?” he asked. “I mean, how it used to be?”

I swiped at a runaway tear and scanned the painting, amazed at how much he’d gotten right. But there was one thing missing. I pointed to the windows. “There were window boxes with orange marigolds.” I couldn’t seem to speak louder than a whisper.

He reached down to plug in his heat tools. He melted some brown and orange wax on his iron and stamped the edge of my painting just below the windows. Then he went back with a stylus and added more lines and texture. “Is that better?”

I couldn’t speak. I couldn’t figure out how I’d gotten so lucky to have Thomas. He knew my heart, my soul, what I needed to hear and see to feel healed, whole, at home. I nodded and gazed into his eyes. He put down his stylus and wrapped his arms around my waist, resting his head against mine.

“I’ve been thinking,” he murmured. “There’s a good astronomy program at Columbia University.”

“But I thought you wanted to study art in Paris.”

“Paris is more than three thousand miles away from Juilliard. And Columbia is only three.”

I pulled back and stared at him, my pulse racing with the realization of what he was saying. He was making long-term plans. With me.

“I want to be where you are, Aria.” He pulled me into his lap and brushed my hair over my shoulder. “I already sent in my application, and my mom is calling one of her colleagues there next week to try to pull some strings.”

“But what if you decide you want to do art instead?”

“There are a lot of art schools in New York.”

“What if I don’t make it into Juilliard?”

“You will.”

“What if—”

“ ‘What if’ doesn’t matter,” he said, cutting me off with his finger over my lips. “Let’s replace ‘what if’ with ‘even if.’ ”

“Even if?”

“We will be together,
even if
I don’t get into Columbia.
Even if
I scrap my astronomy plans.
Even if
you don’t get into Juilliard—which you will.
Even if
anything. I would follow you around the world if I had to.” Then leaning his forehead against mine, he whispered, “Because I love you.”

The words washed through me, cleansing any remaining fear or doubt. I pulled away and looked into his blue eyes. Just like the first time I gazed into them, they were full of untold stories. Only this time, I could easily read them. They were stories of us together, in the future. Bent over our newborn baby, stealing hushed smiles at each other. Watching our children open presents on Christmas morning. Sitting together in a sunny room, me at the piano, him in front of an easel, his hands wrinkled and discolored with age. All the while, his painting hanging above our fireplace mantel. Story after story, going on forever. It no longer mattered what I’d lost. In Thomas, I could have all I’d lost and more.

“Now do you believe me?” he asked.

I opened his hand and placed a kiss in the center of his palm, then whispered, “I love you too.”

He closed his eyes as though taking a moment to absorb my words, then gently curled his hand around the nape of my neck. He leaned down and brushed his lips over mine, a soft and unhurried kiss I wished could last forever. When he pulled away, I wrapped my arms around his neck and drew him nearer, wanting to linger in the exquisite sensation his touch produced. He didn’t object.

When the wax on his painting had cooled, he rolled up the canvas and gave it to me. The house was quiet and dark as we went upstairs, and figuring everyone had gone to bed, we spoke in hushed voices as we went outside to get in his
Bronco. Thomas started the engine and I set the canvas in the back seat, but I couldn’t bring myself to climb in. I stared through the moonlit night in the direction of Dad’s house, and I had an overwhelming desire to go check up on him.

“You want to go say hi?” Thomas asked as if reading my thoughts.

“It’s Christmas Eve,” I shrugged. “It wouldn’t hurt to wish him a merry Christmas.”

Thomas cut the engine and nodded. “I’ll go with you.”

We walked down the tree-lined street, ice crunching beneath our feet in the silent night. He took my hand and smiled at me, like he could sense how nervous I was. He lifted my hand and kissed it. “It’ll be okay.”

When we reached Dad’s house, all the lights were off, but we stepped onto the porch and I knocked anyway.

“Do you think he’s working tonight?” Thomas asked when there was no answer.

“Maybe.” I stepped off the porch. “I’ll see if his truck is here.” I began circling the house, but I stopped in front of the parlor window and looked inside. The room was unchanged since the last time I’d seen it, the window still broken, the floor littered with pieces of Mom’s piano.

Thomas must have seen the hurt look on my face because he came and folded his arms around me. “You know,” he murmured into my hair, “it’s possible that he’ll change someday. Maybe someday your relationship with him will be mended.”

“I doubt it,” I said. “He’s broken, and a broken man can’t be fixed.”

“Yes, he can. Someone will come along and give him what he needs, mend his wounds, and he’ll be almost as
good as new.” He sighed. “That’s what you’ve done for me, Aria. So I know it’s possible for him as well.”

I looked up at him, wanting him to elaborate, but something else caught my attention. The sky behind him was lit up with a strange orange glow. He must have seen the wonder in my face, because he turned around to see what I was looking at.

It only took two seconds for us to register what it meant.

“Fire!” Thomas yelled as he broke into a sprint toward his house.

I
 
raced down the
road behind Thomas, slipping and stumbling on ice as I went. Through the trees, I saw flames consuming the second floor of his house, black smoke billowing out through broken windows. He got there long before I did, and I found him on the porch, alternating between kicking and slamming his body into the front door. When he saw me, he stopped just long enough to fling his cell phone at me.

“Call 911!”

The phone slipped through my shaking fingers, and I fished it out of the snow, my hands taking much longer than they should to place the call. As I shouted instructions to the dispatcher, Thomas picked up a chair on the porch and launched it through a window. The glass shattered, and smoke came pouring out. A second later, the front door opened, and a figure came rushing out, coughing and choking.

It was Richard. He stumbled to his knees on the porch.

“Where are Mom and Dad?” Thomas shouted.

He couldn’t seem to get any words out between coughing and gasping, so he pointed in the house. Thomas charged into the house, disappearing into the smoke.

“Thomas!” I screamed, tossing the phone at Richard and running in after him. Instantly, the smoke blinded me and choked my breath. I found Thomas with my outstretched hands and threw myself at him, pulling on his coat. My own strength surprised me. I didn’t know what I was doing; I just knew I couldn’t bear to lose him. He ripped my hands from his coat and pushed me back out of the house, throwing me down on the porch. “Stay here!” he yelled, then rushed back into the house.

Without thinking about consequences, I ran back into the house. “Thomas!” I managed to scream before the smoke hit my lungs. I dropped to the floor. I tried to call his name again, but my voice was squashed by a deafening crash. Black ash and flames flurried around me, blinding me. A sudden wave of heat washed over me, and it felt like my skin was on fire. I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t see, but I inched my way farther into the fire. I couldn’t go back, not without Thomas.

The smoke closed in on me, filling my mouth, my nose, my lungs. I was drowning in a black, boiling sea, unable to surface for breath. I wanted to call out his name, but I didn’t have any air to exhale. So I searched with my arm, waving and reaching, crawling and groping. It grew hotter and darker until I was on the threshold of consciousness. Sirens wailed in the distance, but I knew the firefighters were too late. His parents were gone. Thomas was probably gone. And I might be gone too. In a delirious dream-state, I thought I saw Thomas’s face. But then the image turned into black vapor, and I knew it was only
a matter of time before the rest of him vanished into a puff of smoke.

For days after the fire, I stumbled through a haze, each moment spent trying to decipher what was real. My skin was stained with the smell of smoke, of death, constantly testifying that what had happened was real. Thomas’s parents had died an unspeakable death. He had tried to save them and failed.

Thomas spent a few days in the hospital for smoke inhalation and a third-degree burn on his arm, and I didn’t see him much in the two weeks after the fire. He stayed at a motel while he worked with the fire department and tried to plan his parents’ funeral. I spent my days worrying about him, wondering how he was feeling, and spent each night reliving the fire in horrendous detail.

One night I dreamed that Thomas hadn’t survived the fire. I saw the firefighters carry him out on a stretcher, his body burned and lifeless, and I woke up in a cold sweat, my cheeks wet with tears.

With a trembling hand, I reached through the darkness for the phone at my bedside. I had to hear his voice, had to know my dream wasn’t real. I dialed his number and put the phone to my ear.

It rang. And rang. And rang.

“Hey.”

I heaved a sigh of relief, then bit my lip to keep tears at bay. “Did I wake you?”

There was a long pause, followed by, “No.”

“Can’t sleep?”

“No.”

“Can I come see you?”

“You don’t have to. It’s the middle of the night.” His voice was flat, emotionless. It terrified me.

“I want to. I’ll borrow Nathaniel’s car.”

He sighed, and in the long silence that followed, I mouthed the word
please
a dozen times. “I’ll come see you tomorrow,” he finally said.

After we hung up, I got up and paced my room, worrying about him. He wasn’t sleeping. He was alone. I had an overwhelming feeling that he needed me, so I got up and threw some clothes on. I coiled the scarf I’d made for him around my neck and put on my coat, then left a note for Nathaniel and swiped the keys to his car. Twenty minutes later, I showed up at Thomas’s motel. I parked next to his Bronco and knocked lightly on his door.