Accidental Notes: A Novel

Chapter 27

Quavers

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Catch up on chapter 26 here.

By the time I’m stomping off snow from my boots in the entryway of my grandmother’s house, I have no idea why I bothered going to Grayson’s at all. It solved nothing, and I’m left here feeling like dirt under a fingernail. What was supposed to make everything better only made it worse.

I text Riley six times before I remember she’s gone, in Mexico with no cell service, rather than ignoring me on purpose.

I’m not talking to Dad about this. Even without the kiss — which I’m definitely not talking to Dad about — he wouldn’t know how to handle what’s going on between Grayson and me. I mean, I don’t even know what’s going on with us.

Too many relatives still crowd the house, which is now dotted more with boxes than stuff. I wonder how much of this they’ve spent years coveting. How much this feels like a second Christmas. How much feels like a new burden. I sneak upstairs to my room without saying hello to anyone and hope no one notices me. Without Riley, I have to do what I said I wanted to do hours ago, even though now I’m terrified. I check the time — a little after eight p.m. — and call Mom.

It takes her so long to answer I’m probably going to have to leave her a message or text her to call me back. But at the last ring, she finally answers, breathless like she ran to her phone. “Adaya?”

“Hey, Mom.”

“Shouldn’t you be packing? I’ll see you tomorrow evening. What couldn’t wait until then?”

Any suspicions I’ve had about something being more important to her than I am are all but confirmed. “That’s what I need to talk to you about. There are things I need to fix here before I come home, so waiting until I’m there would ruin everything.”

“You’ve been there a week, Adaya. What could you possibly have broken?”

I clench my entire face so I’m not the next thing I break. “A lot, okay? A lot.” But there are two parts: the one I most need to talk about with her, and the one I can bring myself to mention on the phone. “Do you remember Grayson West?”

Mom sighs, a surrender to the conversation. There’s a muffled noise for a moment, then she returns. “What about him?”

I fall back on the bed as I tell her as much as I dare about the last week with him, how we became close and we made plans that now I have to cancel and I’ve hurt his feelings and I can’t fix it. I leave out the kissing. I leave out the music.

“Honey, I’m glad you and Grayson reconnected, but it’s only been a week. You’ll have texting and FaceTime with him once you’re home.” She mumbles away from the phone again, her hand probably over the mic. “You begged for the chance to audition for something else. Now you want to blow it off because you hurt someone’s feelings? Someone you hadn’t spoken to in five years?”

She sounds so callous. I miss my mom right now, as we’re talking, more than I ever have. “It’s not just about hurting his feelings,” I say, even though I can’t figure out what else it’s about. Suddenly, how he feels, and how I make him feel, is the most important thing in the universe. Bigger than snowstorms. Bigger than stars.

“Everyone hurts someone’s feelings sometimes, Adaya. We’re human. We can’t do everything the way people expect us to. If Grayson’s upset you’re following through with something instead of, what, going to a concert? Well, maybe that tells you more about him then it does about you.”

“Mom.” I bang my head on the wall behind me. It’s not about the concert. I know that much. I also know this isn’t really Mom.

“Christina, did you need — I thought I heard talking.”

At the voice, my hand shakes so hard I drop my phone and it bounces on the old springs of the bed.

Mom’s voice reaches me like she’s speaking through a shell at the ocean. “Honey? Are you there?”

I pick up my phone again, turn on speakerphone and set it on my lap because I’m trembling too much to hold it. “Why is Mr. Gutierrez with you?”

The fact that she pauses and takes a deep breath instead of denying it makes it even worse. My heartbeat flutters through my veins. Muffled noise. Whispers. Conspiring with Mr. Gutierrez. “I was hoping to wait to tell you.”

“How long?” I say, but so quietly that Mom must not hear me. “How long has it been, Mom?” Too loud that time. Definitely.

“More than a year.”

“Since before he stopped — ” But that isn’t right. The math is simple. “He quit teaching me piano because of you?”

It’s amazing how much you can hear in a sigh. How many different emotions the same nondescript sound can provoke. The one that escapes Mom next is an admission of defeat. “It didn’t seem right.”

“All those late-night business meetings — ”

“Not all of them, Adaya. But yes. Some.”

This comforter is already ratty, and it already had holes, but my fingers stretch them now, teasing the fabric, letting it break along the weaknesses that were already there. “But you didn’t tell me?” Not that it should surprise me. It’s a pebble in a pile of boulders when it comes to secrets she’s kept.

“For a long time, it was casual. I didn’t think it would be long-term, and then you were going to the high school where he taught, and it seemed like a conflict of interest to — ”

Both my fists reach to the blanket, making holes in either side, bigger and bigger until my wrists slip through. Find a new place, start again. “You were there for my audition. Right off screen. That’s why you knew things you shouldn’t have known. You filled in details I never told you because you were there. That’s why you talked to Mr. G so much. You couldn’t take me to the airport not because of work but because you and Mr. G were — what exactly?”

“He took me to a ski lodge for a few days. We haven’t had any time like this, so when your dad called me…”

“Stop. I don’t want your excuses. If it felt like a conflict of interest for Mr. G to even work with me, why did I get to audition? Is that why I didn’t get the part? Because of the conflict of interest you put there? Why do I even get a second chance? Same reason? Did you convince him?” My words come out in globs that spill out too fast and get louder every second. This is the most literal I’ve ever meant it when I say I can’t take it anymore. “I can’t trust you about anything, Mom. Not about my auditions or your relationship or my brother. None of it. Mr. Gutierrez, if you’re listening, take me off your schedule. Sorry, Mom, about being the conflict of interest between you and my teacher.”

“Adaya Hope Finley, you have no right to talk to me that way.”

“Actually, I think it’s long overdue. Were you and Dad ever going to tell me about Brennan? About why you chose to have me? His music? His suicide? A secret relationship shouldn’t surprise me. All you’ve ever done is sweep important conversations under the rug. Now it’s my turn.”

I hang up just as wind rattles the windows, filling the room with a low, quiet whistle. Calling Mom settled nothing. In fact, I feel as restless as the wind that ricochets around the house, pressing against the siding, looking for a place to land.

My grandmother’s house isn’t my home. I’m stuck in my father’s childhood bedroom, wondering about my brother, knowing soon this whole place won’t even hold our memories anymore, except in the ways that memories stick around, unnameable but palpable, when we’re gone.

But now that I know about Mom, I’m not sure I belong in Santa Monica, either. The woman I got off the phone with sounded like Christina Finley, but she didn’t sound like my mom. I don’t want to get on that plane and go home. I don’t want to audition for my mom’s boyfriend. But I don’t want to stay here, either. I don’t want to be anywhere, not really, except somewhere the sky is clear, where I can forget myself as I look up and find the music in the stars.

The music. Of course. I don’t have Mom, or Dad, or even Grayson right now, but now I know my song is my brother’s. I won’t be playing it for an audition, but I want to play it anyway. For him.

I fly downstairs to the piano and get to practicing again. One note, another, although it’s hard to play with shaking hands and anger coursing through me. I mess up more notes than I get right.

Dad stops by and puts a hand on my shoulder. It was difficult before, but it’s impossible to play with someone holding me down.

I turn away from the keys entirely. “Why did you never play this? Why box it away? Did you ever look over Brennan’s shoulder while he wrote?” It’s a sideways in to the question I need to ask most, but I’m not prepared to ask him directly.

“I didn’t want to intrude.”

Of course not. “Then why change now?” With that, I turn back to the piano and Dad walks away.

This house already doesn’t feel like Grandma’s. Boxes cover most every surface, some still waiting to be filled. Details of what made this house hers have disappeared with all my relatives. The only thing I have is this music, so I play and play while the storm batters the windows and I lose track of time. My wrists burn and my fingers ache and I’m tired of sitting with this perfect posture, but with every note I press into that piano, pretending I’m Brennan, I think, you’re all I have.

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