Part 10

CHAPTER 10 — One Finger on the Keys

The gala was everything that a hundred-and-twenty-year-old hall could make it. The ceiling was gold with a hundred small bulbs, and the floor was polished to a mirror, and the chairs had been covered in white linen because it was the hall’s birthday and Diane Ror did not believe in half-measures.

The Asheford Grand sat center stage, its lid propped open, its legs wrapped in felt so the floor would not mark. Jenna stood at the side of the stage in a borrowed black dress Claire had brought her, her hands washed twice and her hair pinned up, and she watched the room fill.

At ten minutes to eight, Jenna found Graham by the stage door.

“Before we start,” she said, “you need to go find Diane Ror, and you need to tell her what happened. The fire, the hammers, my firing. All of it, in your own words, before the music starts.”

Graham looked at her.

“You promised,” Jenna said. “When you asked me to fix this piano, I said I’d do it if you’d go and tell her what you did. That was the deal. It’s still the deal.”

“Jenna.”

“It’s not for me. It’s for Maisie. She watched a man fire me in front of strangers and she’s going to watch the man who did it stand up and take it back. That’s what she needs to see, not a piano.”

Graham was quiet a moment. Then he nodded and went to find Diane Ror.

Jenna did not hear what he said. She saw it from a distance: Graham’s gray head bent toward Diane’s, the two of them standing near the side door under a bare bulb, Graham talking and Diane listening without a smile. She saw Graham’s shoulders drop, once, twice, as a man’s shoulders drop when he is not defending himself. And she saw Diane put her hand on his arm at the end, just for a moment, the way one person steadies another.

——

The pianist came out at eight. She was a young woman from the orchestra with hands like a surgeon’s, and she sat down at the Asheford Grand and played the first chords of the program, and the piano answered her. It answered her clean and round and true, from the bottom of the board to the top, and it filled the hall to the back row, and Diane Ror, in the third row, closed her eyes and let out a breath.

At the end of the piece, the hall applauded, and the pianist stood, and—this was not on the program, this was Diane’s doing—she turned and gestured toward the side of the stage.

“Miss Walsh,” she said into the microphone. “The hall would like to say thank you.”

Jenna walked out onto the stage in her borrowed dress and her pinned-up hair. She did not look at the crowd. She looked at the piano, and she put one finger on the middle C, and played it, and heard it sing.

And in the fourth row, Maisie Walsh, in her school dress with her hair brushed, stood up on her chair and clapped until Walt pulled her gently down.

——

Graham found Jenna by the truck afterward, in the cold, with the empty case standing open on the ground.

“Diane’s staying through the weekend,” he said. “She’s bringing the board to the shop Monday morning. Not to sell. To renew.” He put his hands in his pockets. “I told her everything. About Linquist. About Sutter. About what I did to you and what Maisie saw. She’s going to want a statement in writing before she renews.”

“I’ll write it.”

“I know you will.” He looked at her. “And there’s one more thing. Diane said something to me that I’ve been chewing on all night. She said, ‘Graham, you didn’t lose because of who she turned out to be. You lost the day you called her little girl a charity case.'” He paused. “That’s going to stay with me a while.”

“It should.”

“Yes.” He nodded. “It should.”

They stood in the cold a moment, the two of them, and the alley smelled of frost and diesel.

“Monday morning, eight o’clock,” Graham said. “Sutter’s coming with his appraiser. I could use a technician in the room who knows what a building is worth.”

“I’ll be there,” Jenna said.