Accidental Notes: A Novel

Chapter 9

Snowfall

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

Catch up on chapter 8 here.

This music seems almost sacred. It’s clearly seen better days, and I’m afraid if I touch it that it will crumble in my fingers, staining my hands with notes that should be played. But as I pick it up, it proves more stable than I imagined.

“You look…reverent,” Grayson says, sitting back and away from me, knees wide, elbows on top.

Maybe I am, now that I know for sure we were unburying treasure and not skeletons.

“Read this. It’s… haunting. Those chord combinations. I never would have thought of them. You said you compose, right? Isn’t it — ” But I don’t have words for what it is. The more I study it, the more jealous I am. When I tried my hand at composing, I stuck to tried and true chord patterns and harmonies guaranteed to sound good. Mr. G called them “lovely, if simplistic.” Not so in this song.

“I don’t sight read well. And this is complicated. Even the chord progressions,” Grayson says, running his finger along the chords that punctuate the top of each line of music. His arm brushes mine as we gather close enough to read together. My skin tingles.

“Complicated, but it looks intentional. The accidental notes, too.”

“The accidental notes look intentional,” Grayson says, his brows almost comically furrowed. “Right. Of course.”

I elbow him lightly. “You know, playing a C# in the key of G. Making a major chord minor. A note that’s out of key but not a mistake. Accidental notes.”

“There’s a word for that?”

“Of course there is. Basically every composer uses them. Unfortunately.” But he composes, too. He just told me that. “Don’t you?”

“I use them. I just didn’t know what they were called. I play what sounds right for the mood, which works better when I’m at a piano, not studying for a music theory vocab quiz.”

I shrug. I don’t see how he can compose without understanding music, but I can’t compose even though I do. Plus, accidental notes are the bane of my existence — they’re almost always behind the mistakes I make — but something about the mathematics of subverted expectations make them perfect when they work. And these ones? There’s a message in this music I wish I were good enough to play.

I study it, forming the shapes of the song with my free hand as I study the notes. Grayson takes the music from me gently. “So you can use both hands,” he says.

“Thanks.”

He’s moving closer again. “I can’t read it well, but it looks interesting. I hope I’ll get to hear you play it.”

“Maybe. But, look how poorly copied it is. These bold notes, and the slips of the pen.”

Grayson shrugs. “It’s easy enough to know what matters. You were just playing it.”

The room darkens minute by minute as we stare, until it’s too hard to make out this long, complicated music anymore. I knew it was getting late, but I didn’t think it would be sunset yet. Not this soon, not even this far north.

He stands up and offers me his hand. It’s calloused along the fingertips, cracked from the cold. I’m paying way too much attention to it. He lets go as soon as I’m standing. “Time to face the music?”

I step closer to him and use all my energy to keep from laughing at his terrible joke. The pressure pushes against my cheeks and a smile betrays me. “Very funny, Grayson. Absolutely, completely hilarious.”

“Thanks. I know. Glad you noticed.” But his heart isn’t in it. He’s staring at the papers pressed against my side. “You’re bringing it downstairs? Now?”

The ease that drifted between us a few minutes ago is gone. The room is smaller now. I lift the papers to my chest and hold them there a little too tight. “I’d rather not go downstairs at all. If I’m going to learn this in time for my audition, I need to start taking notes.”

Grayson looks at me like I’m from another planet. “You want to take this and dissect it?”

“How else would I understand it?”

“I don’t know, maybe by playing it?”

Neither of us have taken a single step toward the door yet, but our voices are rising. People may come looking for us, and I don’t want to get caught in here alone with Grayson. Someone could get the wrong idea. “No way. I need to know what I’m getting into before I start. I don’t do surprises. I don’t do mysteries.”

“You didn’t do backup plans, either,” he retorts. “Until you did. I’m going downstairs.”

I roll my eyes. “Fine. But I’m putting this in my room first. So I can journal about it later. In detail.” Great, I’m talking to his back. “No need to wait for me.”

Grayson thumps down the stairs as I hurry across the hall to where I’m staying. After I reach the landing again, I notice the music is louder now. Halfway down, I realize it isn’t just that the music is louder; the people are quieter. When I went upstairs, the only hint of Christmas was our poorly made gingerbread house on the kitchen counter and the old-fashioned music seeping through the speakers. Now a garland wraps around the staircase, lit with white lights. A fresh pine tree is in the living room, held in place by Uncle Jeff while various cousins argue over whether it’s crooked. Feet poke out at the bottom, where they must be tightening screws. Red and green plastic storage containers are piled all over the piano I’m itching to play.

“Dad?” I call.

He comes out of the kitchen with two coffee cups filled with whipped cream and marshmallows and probably hot cocoa beneath it all. Kyle follows him with more. “There you are, Adaya. I’ve been meaning to go looking for you.”

“What happened?”

Dad sets the mugs down on a coffee table. The marshmallows wiggle on mountains of whipped cream when Kyle follows suit. “We were all talking about how much Mom loved Christmas. But she was so sick at the end, and she said she didn’t want us fussing over decorations. Didn’t want to be competing with Jesus for our time. You know. Typical Grandma Nancy stuff.”

I don’t know. I don’t remember that part of her. All my memories are at the piano. “So why decorate now? Aren’t you selling the house soon?”

He shrugs. “Seemed like a good way to honor her. We’ll all be here for Christmas Eve. It will be more Christmassy this way.”

“You didn’t invite me to help decorate.” I probably would have said no and stayed upstairs, but I can’t help the way it hurts to not even get the invitation.

“I didn’t know where you were.”

“You could have texted.”

“Huh,” Dad says, then goes to the sliding glass door. “Hot cocoa is ready!”

Screams fill the room as kids come piling in. I move closer to watch them and, for the first time in hours, I look outside.

Big, heavy flakes float down from the sky like I’m inside a Christmas snow globe. They pile onto the grass and push down on branches, though it can’t have been snowing long. I move almost without thinking to the glass until I’m pressing my face against it, fogging up the pane as I stare. I haven’t seen snow in person since I left.

The first snowfall was one of my favorite days of the year, with the promise of snowbanks to crunch through and snowflakes that would accessorize my hair. This late in the year, it can’t be Bend’s first day of snow, but it’s mine, and I can’t look away. Someone comes up behind me and throws their hands on my shoulders. I tense at the touch, but it’s Dad, turning me around gently, more a dance than a coercion. “I’m trying, Adaya. I know it may not always seem like it, but I’m trying.”

“Being here again is a lot to take in.” I hope he catches everything I mean. Despite the welcome distraction of the sheet music I found, I haven’t forgotten about Pastor Clark’s comment, or all the evidence he’s right. “This is a lot of people. I might go back upstairs.”

Dad’s shoulders hunch a little. His jaw clenches. “You spent the whole afternoon there.”

My bullet journal is waiting. I need a new plan, and fast, if I want to audition with this song in a week. I don’t see Grayson, so I assume he’s left. “I get a lot of alone time at home.”

If Dad notices how I call California home, he doesn’t say anything. So I shrug my shoulders and push past him toward the stairs.

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