Accidental Notes: A Novel

Chapter 29

Snow Angel

Not sure what this story is? The synopsis is available here.

Catch up on chapter 28 here.

Wind nips at the exposed pieces of my face, and even in so many layers I can hardly move, I’m freezing. It’s too bad. I had to get outside. The worst of the snowstorm has passed now. Most of the snow is under my feet and most of the storm harbors inside my chest. The sweet release I felt as I threw the bottle shattered right along with the glass. I can’t believe I did it. Of all the things in that cursed house to throw something at, why did it have to be the piano?

If Dad had just talked to me, remembered that I was there and Brennan wasn’t… Dad’s indifference to me this whole trip has been a wake-up call, but now? The image of him on his knees in front of the piano is burned into my memory, where I can practically see the thoughts dripping down him. He never wanted me. He never said as much, but the story fits. Mom wanted to try again, I bet, and Dad reluctantly agreed. Dad gave up on me when I wasn’t exactly like the kid he actually wanted. Now I’m sure he hates me. But I’d bet money not even his hatred will bring him off his knees to look for me. Not in this storm, and probably not without it, either.

And I’ve scared Grayson away. Between our fight yesterday and his read receipt this morning, I know I’ve ruined whatever good we had. It’s not like he’d want me around. I don’t even want to be around me.

I never want to be around me. I’m impossible.

Sweat soaks through my clothes, though I’m not getting any warmer. I don’t know where exactly I’m heading. I just needed out of that house and away from its ghosts. My only direction is toward the setting sun. Toward the airport. Toward home, like I should have been already. When I laugh about it, my laughter dances in short puffs around me, curled just as playful as the sound. But it’s not funny.

I swat at the fog from my breath until it breaks, then push through it. Though I hear the crunch of snow beneath my boots, and I see enough to make sure I’m following the edge of the main road, I’m not really there. I can’t leave the family room. Every step is the wine bottle shattering. Every bit of pristine snow I coat in dirt is the ivory of the keys, ruined. When trees moan under the weight of the storm, it’s like my dad’s voice has followed me.

Mom never tried to call me back after I hung up on her or Mr. G. It could be regret, but it could also be indifference. She never cared to tell me anything. Now she’s off somewhere with my music teacher, and maybe she’s happy I’m not coming home just yet. Imagine how happy she’ll be when she finds out how I threw that bottle. How I broke everything.

The one time I let myself feel something. The one time I improvised my reaction to my father. When the glass shattered, all I felt at first was relief. Anger exploded instead of bottled up. Now it’s soaking me. I made one final mistake at that piano and I’ll pay for it forever.

As I march, I’m vaguely aware that my thoughts are in a spiral, conversations imagined with Dad and Mom and Grayson, with Riley sometimes stepping in to commentate. They rehash, alone and in groups, everything they think is wrong with me. When their voices in my head run out of reasons to loathe me, I supply them with more.

I reach the cast-iron gate before I realize I had a direction all along. Adaya Hope Finley can’t even storm off without having a purpose, even if it’s subconscious. I scoff at myself. I’m ridiculous.

Then I do it anyway.

Candlelight flickers in the windows of the church to my right and I wonder who is there, hardly on the safe side of this storm, two days after Christmas. But it isn’t the church I came for. I place a gloved hand on the gate and push. If Dad were here, he could tell me where Brennan’s grave is. But I didn’t want to talk about Brennan with him. And I want it to be just me and my brother. Two impossible siblings who never could have met.

Most of the gravestones are covered in snow. In this place, the dead get buried again and again. I get to work, brushing my hand against stone after stone. Snow coats my waterproof glove and seeps into the lining between my glove and my jacket. I keep brushing, one after another, until I see enough of a name to know it isn’t who I’m looking for. Three and a half rows in, I remember where we buried Grandma Nancy. I should have started there all along.

I can’t run, not when a few inches beneath the snow lies a layer of ice, but I hurry awkwardly toward her grave and clear her headstone.

Nancy Carol Baker Finley

November 4, 1940 — December 11, 2022

She made music for us all

I drop to my knees. The coveralls I’m wearing make it nearly impossible to move, the fabric pulling at me no matter what I do, but I try. I still haven’t properly mourned her, not with everything that’s happened since her funeral. But now, just the two of us, I can finally cry. “I’m sorry about the piano,” I whisper to her. It’s all I have: an apology that doesn’t change a single thing.

When my breathing calms, I ease myself back to standing and explore the gravestones around her. On the right is her husband, a man who died long before I was born. Beside him is a small gravestone, inscribed “Beloved daughter,” with two years between her birth and death. She died a year before my dad was born. I wonder if Dad was a replacement like me. Did he know much about this sister? How she died. How she lived. Was she celebrated or forgotten? I wonder about empty stockings by the fireplace at Christmas. Baby clothes passed down to Aunt Patricia, or kept in an attic, or given away quietly to friends.

I’m never going to get answers about her, and I’m here to find my sibling, not my dad’s. Brennan is next to his aunt. I know it from the moment I brush away the snow and find the B.

Brennan Jonathan Finley

February 2, 1990 — December 27, 2005

There is no inscription. I wonder if they didn’t have words for him, or if there was no way to inscribe the music I think he would have wanted. I don’t kneel, which feels too reverent for someone who should have teased me, who should have irritated me, if we’d ever known each other. Instead I plop onto my butt and bring my knees up, leaning onto them like I’m about to share a secret. I guess we already do.

“I hate how impossible it is that I would never get to know you,” I say first. “I hate how your music is all I have, and I can’t even have that, because I didn’t get to ask you if I could. I wish I had the chance to ask. But even if you let me, I’m not good enough to play it. You were so much better than I am.” What started as a desire to talk to this brother I’d never know turns quickly into anger and maybe even spite. “You were better than I am at everything. You were our parents’ favorite kid, and you were talented, and going places, and you had absolutely everything and you lost it. You left a note, but you didn’t say why. I don’t know why. No one does. You should still be here, Brennan. Not me. I’m not the Finley kid who should exist.”

I punch the snow with a gloved hand, but it’s been compacted from me trekking across it, and my knuckles hardly make an imprint. It just hurts. So I take off my glove and try again. The pain is freeing. I hate what Brennan did to my family, I think as I punch the ground where he is buried. I hit ice. It turns pink when my skin breaks at the impact. I take off my other glove and start a one-two rhythm. Soon, there’s no feeling left in my hands, but there’s too much feeling left inside my soul. I keep going. I’m stifled inside this jacket. It’s unzipped and tugged off before I realize what I’m doing. My teeth chatter. My hands coat themselves red. It’s only fair that there’s blood on my hands.

As secret after secret peeked through the snow like a distorted springtime, I was appalled at my family. How could they let things get so far that people would get hurt by their lying? But what I did was so much worse. I hurt someone on purpose. I wanted it to hurt. I liked that it hurt. Ice stabs deeper into my hands now. My right one is throbbing. I stop for a minute, pack snow on it. Pain I can’t ignore isn’t what I’m after. I roll up my sleeve and press more of me into the ground until I’m numb. It’s all I want: a numbness that takes over, so complete it disguises itself as feeling.

The snow is changing colors, I think as I lie down beside my brother. I whisper it to him, then realize maybe it isn’t the snow, maybe it’s me. But it’s this lovely shade of blue, and everything is so peaceful. I close my eyes. I’m dreaming.

In my dream, I pull my phone out of my pocket, open my eyes long enough to find the camera, and close my eyes again. I look like a snow angel.

Back to sleep, my ear against the ground. Here it is: the numbness I wanted. A mattress so much softer, so much warmer, than the one I have in Grandma’s house. Time passes. Then the earth rearranges with the weight of another person. I don’t want people here. It will take away the peace. That’s what people do. Take away peace.

The crunch of boots turns into an earthquake as knees drop down beside me. “Adaya?!”

The voice is Grayson’s. I’m probably imagining him.

But even half-coherent, I know no imagination is strong enough to lift its own body. Snow dislodges from my arms as he picks me up. I open my eyes and watch it fall, not in dances of snowflakes but mini avalanches. It’s only once the snow is off of me that I realize how cold I am. Something about the warmth of Grayson’s body serves as the worst kind of contrast. For the first time since I took off my gloves, I shiver. “What…you…here?” I slur.

“You texted me a selfie. Your lips were blue, eyelashes frozen. The text was gibberish.” I was dreaming. I didn’t actually send it. But this is a Dream Grayson and I am floating. “Mom drove me over as soon as I got it.”

“No.” My lips are hard to move. I lean deeper into his imaginary shoulder. It’s so warm and snug. Pretend things can be so much more solid than the real ones. “It was a dream. A pretend thing. I didn’t actually — ”

“Thanks, Mom. I can’t carry her the whole way to the car,” Grayson says. I’m not his mom. I don’t know who he’s talking to.

The reply is fuzzy and higher-pitched and Not Grayson. Maybe Mrs. Lindner from fourth grade. “The walking will be good for her. Get her blood flowing.”

No, it won’t be. I can only fly in this dream, not walk. But Dream Grayson doesn’t give me a choice. The arm that had bent beneath my knees drops to his side and I end up on my feet, shaky at first until someone else supports me too. My legs ache, yearning to thaw but unable to in the relentless cold. It hurts. It wakes me up. This Grayson isn’t a dream, and it’s his mother beside me. He wraps my coat around me as we reach the gate of the cemetery and I turn around to where Brennan’s grave is. “I asked him. He didn’t answer me.”

“You…asked who? What?”

“If I could play the song.” I touch my hands together. Something’s not right. “My gloves. My gloves are still there.”

Grayson takes my hand by the wrist, his touch soft, but his nylon gloves scratching at my skin. “We shouldn’t put them back on when your hands look this bad. Don’t you have an audition, Adaya? How are you going to play the piano?”

I flex my fingers, and the sting of it wells tears behind my eyes almost immediately. Webbing them like I’m hitting an octave is worse. Where was the part of me that overthought everything when I needed her?

He helps me into his mom’s car. She looks at me but says nothing as she climbs in behind the steering wheel. Heat blasts through the vents as she pulls onto the road, stabbing as bad as the cuts. The more I thaw, the more I awaken, the more stupid I feel for what I’ve done. Maybe I didn’t need punished this much for feeling. Maybe it was okay to be angry. When we’re almost back, she pulls into her driveway, not Grandma’s. “Grayson, walk her the rest of the way, would you? Dinner’s in the oven and I don’t want it to burn.”

I fumble with my seatbelt, frozen, bloody fingers uncooperative. Grayson reaches over and undoes it for me, then helps me out. Our walk is silent. The part of me incapable of putting together a sentence is grateful. The rest wishes he’d say something. He’s impossible to read. I’ve forgotten how to read. Something.

As we walk away, I look west, toward home. The heavy clouds have parted enough that I can see the sun, blood-red as it nears the horizon, and painting everything else in blood, too. The blood on my own hands is drying, dark red, almost black, drawing cracks into the surface of my skin. Sunset’s rushing at us now, and shadows are elongated, angled and sharp. Right now, I am this sky: harsh and cold. We are made of stars and music, but the growing crimson shadows will swallow us both.

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