Porcelain Keys (35 page)

“What do you mean?”

“There was something in his voice—this heartbreaking sound that reminded me of the way I felt when Karina left me the last time. I took pity on him and called him back to tell him you’d be in Woodland Park for Christmas.”

“But why didn’t you tell me?”

“Because I wasn’t sure if he’d actually show up. And I didn’t want you to expect him and then be let down again.”

I nodded in understanding.

“How did it go, by the way?” he asked.

I sighed and dropped my chin into my hand. “Terrible. But . . . wonderful. I’ve never been so confused in my life.” I told Nathaniel everything that had happened with Thomas over the past few days, from his shocking reappearance to the priceless gift he’d unearthed.

Nathaniel put his hand on my shoulder and looked me in the eye. “I see so much of Karina in you. She chose Jed because she perceived him to be the safer choice. Things weren’t perfect between us, but we loved each other. I never would have done anything to hurt her. We could have worked out our differences, but she was too afraid to try.”

He looked into my eyes with earnestness. “It’s good to be careful, but just make sure the choices you make to keep you safe don’t also keep you from what makes you happy. I saw how miserable you were when Thomas left. It was like a piece of you was missing. You still love him—I can see it in your face. Why not give it a chance?”

I thought about what he said, but I was still so scared.

“Just think about it,” he said.

I nodded. “I will.”

A
s I drove
back to Jed Kinsley’s house, I began to emerge from the frozen shell of shock that had surrounded me the past few hours. As my emotions began to thaw, tears trickled down my cheeks like water dripping from melting ice. But each tear only served to thaw my emotions further, and before I could stop it, a deluge burst forth, leaving me no choice but to pull over and surrender to waves of uncontrollable sobs.

I felt dizzy, like I was a piece of clay on a potter’s wheel. It had been spinning for the past nineteen years, shaping and carving the vessel of my life. All that had happened in the past few days, with Thomas returning and Mom’s secrets being unearthed, had shattered that vessel into a million pieces. Up until this moment, I had only stood there in shock, staring at the pieces and trying to decide if it was salvageable. But now I realized that it wasn’t. I could sweep up the pieces and try to put them back together, but they would never fit together the same way again.

I thought about Mom, about the burden of guilt she
must have carried alone all those years. If only she’d just told the truth from the beginning. But I couldn’t bring myself to harbor a grudge against her for her mistake. From the words in her letter she was clearly remorseful, and I freely forgave her.

I reflected on my childhood and how Jed had loved me as his own daughter. But then he’d discovered the truth, and it had chipped away at his love until it was shaped into resentment. He had tried to love me. He had wanted to be a good father. But, as he had said himself, he had failed. And he was sincerely sorry for it. He had done terrible things to me, but those things were behind us. He had done right by helping Thomas find Mom’s music box and allowing me to learn the truth. He had done right by restoring Mom’s piano and giving it to me. And he had done right by marrying Vivian and trying to start his life over.

I visualized the broken vessel of my life again, and realized that it would do no good to try and carry around the broken pieces of my past. I could not repair it and make it what it once was. I needed to let go of what once was, give up what could have been, and accept what really was. I needed to take fragments of truth and use them to build a new vessel of life.

And to leave the old vessel behind, I knew with a deep conviction that I needed to forgive Jed Kinsley. I made a conscious decision to do so. I said the words out loud.

“I forgive you, Jed Kinsley.” The words hung in the air like mist, to be blown away by a breeze. I realized that they wouldn’t mean anything until they were sounded in Jed Kinsley’s ears.

I pulled the car back onto the road and drove to his
house with that purpose in mind, clinging to the words of forgiveness and the promise of healing they offered.

As I came into the house, Vivian greeted me in the doorway and pulled me into a hug. Devin played Mendelssohn’s
May Breeze
in the parlor, and I could tell by the hurried tempo that he was restless. Vivian held me for a long time, then said, “Jed told me.” She pulled away and looked me in the eyes. “Don’t tell me this will be the end of our friendship.”

“It won’t be,” I said with a smile, though I wasn’t sure how close that friendship would be.

“Devin said you two were leavin’ early.” Her voice wavered, and I could see she was fighting back tears.

“I’m sorry, Vivian. I—”

She shook her head. “It’s all right, sweetheart. I understand. Anyway I put your gifts in your car. You can open them later.”

“Thank you.” I bent my head, feeling ashamed for jumping ship on Christmas.

She hugged me again. “Come visit us the next time you’re in town, when everyone’s emotions have settled into place, you hear me?”

I nodded and pulled away. “Where’s Jed?”

“Upstairs, in his room. He’s upset, but I think he’ll be all right.”

I went upstairs and found Jed sitting on the edge of his bed, facing the window. I stood in the doorway, and he turned to look at me. His eyes were red from crying, but he put on a brave face. I crossed the room and sat next to him on the edge of the bed. He seemed surprised, unsure. We sat there for a long time, both of us looking out the window at nothing.

“I’m sorry you lost my mother,” I finally said. “You really loved her, didn’t you?”

From the corner of my eye, I saw him nod slowly.

I folded my hands in my lap. “And I’m sorry you had to suffer even more from the mess she left behind.”

“You’re not the one who should be apologizing.”

“I know. All I’m trying to say is that I can see now . . . I’m not the only one who suffered.”

Other than his eyes welling up with tears, he didn’t respond.

“I want to thank you,” I continued, “for trying to set things right. And I want you to know . . . that I forgive you.” My breaths seemed to come easier after I’d said the last three words, like they’d loosened a vice that had been cinched around my chest for the past several years.

His hands came to his face, and his shoulders began to shake. Great heaves rolled over his back like swelling waves of the sea. I’d never seen him break down this way, and the sight of it brought tears to my own eyes. I considered how heavy his burden of guilt must have been, and how great a relief my words must have provided.

I didn’t know what else to say, but I felt that the words I had said were enough for now. I walked out of his room, unsure when I would see him again. It was something I couldn’t predict and only time would tell.

I gathered up my things from the bathroom, and as I crossed the hall to my room, something in the room Thomas had stayed in caught my eye. A dark object poking out from a blanket on the bed. I strode over and slid it out from beneath the heap of blankets.

It was the book I’d seen Thomas holding more than once these last couple days. I picked it up and let it fall
open in my hand. But instead of print on the pages, there was handwriting. Thomas’s handwriting.

I sank to the edge of the bed, his lingering scent enveloping me, and hurriedly flipped through the pages. It was not only filled with his words but also with his sketches.

The piano had stopped playing, and I knew Devin would soon come upstairs to see if I was ready to go. I didn’t want him to see me sitting in the bed Thomas had slept in, holding Thomas’s book. So I shut the book and took it to my room, packing it in my suitcase with my other things. I tried to pack my thoughts of Thomas along with it. I knew I needed to address my feelings, but I wanted to wait until we got back to New York and I could be alone.

Devin came up and helped me carry my things to the car, and as we drove away from Jed Kinsley’s house, I thought about how someday I would be back, if not to see Jed, then to see Vivian and to claim Mom’s piano.

For the entire drive back to Nathaniel’s, I thought about that book tucked inside my suitcase in the trunk. It was like it had grown arms and was pounding its fist against my backseat and chanting,
Read me, read me.
Devin asked me questions the entire way about what had happened that morning, but my explanations came out abbreviated. Every word I spoke seemed to take a great amount of effort, because even though my body sat in the passenger seat, I was elsewhere. I was in the trunk, turning the pages of Thomas’s journal. I was in the tree house, hearing again the words Thomas had spoken. And I was standing before Thomas in an airport, saying, “Wait—before you go, I have to tell you everything that happened, because you’re the only one who will understand.”

But it was probably too late for that. He was probably
already on his plane back to the Netherlands.
I could call him,
I thought, eyeing the bag that contained the card he’d left.

Devin pulled my attention back to him by slipping his hand into mine, and I brushed my impulsive thought aside.
Not now. I don’t even know yet what I want.

Later that night after Devin had gone to bed, I found myself on the floor of my room, digging through my suitcase. I found Thomas’s journal and leaned against the side of my bed, and by the dim light of a lamp, I opened the book and perused its content. There were sketches throughout the book—some on clean pages, others at the end of an entry, and others in the midst of words. I studied some of the drawings and read their captions.

An hourglass with a boy inside, looking like he was drowning in sand. The caption read,
Time has been slipping away from me, like I have no past, no future. I live moment to moment, just struggling to survive, struggling to force each breath in and out.

My heart ached to know how much he had suffered, to know that I had not been there for him. And then another thought occurred to me. Was his reaction to grief any different than mine had been? Hadn’t I closed off my heart at Juilliard to protect it from further pain? He had done the same to protect himself, and for the first time since his return, I understood why he’d stayed away.

I flipped a few pages to another drawing. It was me and him, separated by a large body of water.

Everywhere I look, I see her. Even the ocean separating us sparkles and shines like the blue in her eyes. In my heart is
a cruel dichotomy between love and hate. Love for her and hatred for myself, and I don’t see how the two can coexist. And as long as I have reason to hate myself, I have reason to be separated from her, to protect her from more pain.

I turned to another page. A boy, holding out his empty pockets, and a flame burning in his chest.
My hands are empty, my pockets are empty, my soul is empty. But my heart is full of her.
And on the opposite page, a barren landscape.
I’ve seen more places than I can remember, but I haven’t really seen any of it. It’s all the same. Foreign, empty spaces and masses of superficiality. It’s all where she is not.

Toward the end of the book, there was a sketch of a twisted, overgrown path leading to a glorious sunrise and the words,
When disappointment, grief, and fear are gone, sorrow forgot, love’s purest joys restored.
They were the same words he’d sung to me the first time he sat beside me at Mom’s piano, and in the tree house after the homecoming dance.

I went to the last page. On one side was what appeared to be a map of a lake, and I realized he must have used it to find Mom’s music box. On the other side was a drawing of me.
Of all the things I’ve lost, Aria is the greatest loss of all.

I closed the journal and held it to my chest, feeling my heart hammer against it. Here in my hands was the proof that he’d spent each day, each moment for the past two years fighting his way back to me. Everything he’d said to me was true. He loved me. He had always loved me.

Tears welled up in my eyes, but I tried to blink them back. I couldn’t do this now—I had to pack up my things in the morning and fly back to New York with Devin. My decision would need to wait until then. I told my tears they would have to wait. But the more I insisted, the more they
flooded my eyes until they were spilling down my cheeks. Once again, I had the urge to call Thomas. I caught the sound of his voice in my memory, and felt that familiar pull in my chest. The pull that I had never once felt for Devin.

I thought about the day I’d described to Devin what love felt like to me, and it occurred to me that those feelings had never applied to Devin. My feelings for Devin had always been calm and unworried, and I thought it was because I trusted him not to hurt me. But now I recognized that he had no power to hurt me, because the love I had for Devin was something different than the love I had for Thomas. Devin was my friend, but he was not irreplaceable.

With Thomas back in my life, Devin was like candlelight in a sunlit room. I could snuff him out and not even notice a difference. I felt callous thinking it, but it would be more callous to stay with him when I felt this way. He deserved someone who loved him, who saw him as her own sunlight.

But if being with Thomas meant that I would spend my life on an unpredictable ride, fearing at every turn that I might lose him again, I wasn’t sure I wanted that kind of love either.

“Be brave,” I whispered to myself. It all came down to courage. Did I have the courage to listen to my heart, to embrace Thomas and allow myself to love him, even if it meant I could be hurt again? Even if I would fear that he would leave again? Even if I didn’t know what trials the future would bring us?

Even if . . . Even if . . .

His words from two years earlier came back to me.
I love you. We will be together, even if anything.