tired eyes looked into Jennifer’s own as she complained about her lack of sleep. “Those trucks are so loud at night,” Anna had said. “And they shine their headlights right into my window. It was like they were having a party. Can’t they at least be discreet about it?”
Jennifer had promised to look into it and had asked Michael that weekend to make Randy at least have the trucks turn their lights off if they were going to be parked near Anna’s bedroom window all night.
Michael had nodded in his detached, methodical way. “That won’t be a problem,” he had told her. “Haven’t you heard? Anna and her boyfriend. It seems they ran away together.”
It had taken several minutes for the news to really sink in before Jennifer could reply. “I can’t believe she’d run away,” she had said, to what was by then an empty room.
Now, this afternoon, almost a week later, standing in the kitchen, with her laundry basket balanced on her hip, remembering that news, and remembering how certain she had been that Anna could never have done such a thing as to run away from home, Jennifer trembled. She shook her head and tried to clear the thoughts from her mind before pressing her toes to her heels, left and right, to pull off her sneakers. On her way upstairs, she looked at the mantle clock above the stone hearth. It was three thirty. The towels still needed to be put away. The beds were still unmade. The bathroom still needed a cleaning.
She had spent the entire day trying to ignore what was obviously going on down the lane. Perhaps it would have been better if she had stepped outside and taken a walk towards the river just to ask what was going on. But the thought of doing that was even worse. She really did not want to know the truth, not yet. If she could keep herself from knowing for certain what had happened, then she could still hold on to her hope that Anna was safe and sound, in the arms of her boyfriend somewhere in the warmth of Mexico.
To that end, she had absorbed herself in the piano for most of the day, playing straight since nine in the morning with no thought of lunch and only two bathroom breaks somewhere in the mix, until she remembered she had left the laundry on the line outside. Her beautiful piano was the focus of her life when she was alone. It had been hard getting into it today, but once she’d connected with the music and found the place that exists between the tips of her fingers and the touch of the keys, she’d escaped from the day. She did not want to think about what the men were doing by the river. Flashes of her dreams intruded on her, but she was able to keep them at a distance by changing the piece, always progressing to something with a different tempo, a different taste and feel, something more difficult, requiring more effort, more concentration, until she was able to forget what might be going on down by the river. A piece of her, anyway. Only a portion of her mind had been aware of the passing of the day, or what might have been going on down the pathway, just out of view of her window. She was aware of only the distant chime of the mantle clock every half-hour, the steady movement of the shadows of her pictures and candles on the top of her beloved baby grand, changing direction and length as the sun passed from the east to the south to the southwest. She now remembered several cars, including police cars, no doubt, going past her window today, moving towards the far end of the vineyard, towards the river.
Standing on the stairs now, Jennifer gave her head another shake. You could at least put the towels away and clean up a bit, she heard Michael’s calm and unsympathetic tones in her head. It doesn’t take long to clean up after yourself.
With the first murmurs of growing guilt, she bolted up the stairs, basket still on her hip, and carefully stacked the towels into the hall closet. She closed the door and put the basket in her own bedroom closet.
A few items of clothing littered the floor of her room. Like the unwashed evidence of a wasted day, the garments seemed to wait between her and her piano. Dropping her shoulders with defeat to her own guilt, Jennifer quickly stepped back into her room and scooped up the clothes, tossing them into the basket. She walked backwards towards the door then hesitated. Her blue cotton dress, worn for only a few hours for dinner with Michael last evening, was still draped across her chair. She hurriedly placed it on its hanger, straightened it, then straightened it again with a few slides of her hand to ensure the fabric was unwrinkled.
She stepped back now, surveying the room before pulling the sheets back over her bed and straightening the white pillows. Too many pillows, she reminded herself. Then the reply came like an echo: too big a bed, the pillows make it less lonely.
Stepping backwards to the door for the third time, she bent down to pick up a loose white thread that stood out on the dark green carpet. Forward again, to pick up her oversized t-shirt and track pants that were bundled and curled at the foot of her bed like a faithful sleeping dog. She stuffed them under a pillow, straightened the sheet once more and backed away. It looked fine. Everything looked fine, she told herself, before she stepped back into the hall.
What she wore now, faded jeans, white socks, a dark t-shirt, felt much more her style than any of the dresses Michael preferred her to wear.
At the top of the stairs, she paused to look across the vineyard towards the small apple orchard, where much of the day’s activity seemed to be centred. She did not tremble this time. After avoiding it all day, she already knew what had happened. There was only one explanation—they had found Anna’s body somewhere in the river.
Now, as she peered out between the slats of blinds at the top of the stairwell, she wished she could see at least a part of the river from here. Then, as the memories of her dream began to emerge and her hands felt, just for an instant, that icy blackness, she was thankful that she could not see the water. And she realized something else: even as she played, a portion of her mind had been playing out tragic scenes. Glimpses of sorrow and death faded in and out with every chord. It was odd how she thought the music could help her hide, when it was the music itself that evoked the truth.
Descending the stairs, Jennifer approached her piano once again. It was nearly four o’clock. She sat down and took a breath, pleased that she had at least another hour to play before it was time to think about dinner. She looked at the keys, which were waiting, teasingly, for her fingers.
Thoughts of Anna and the river, Michael, the police, and what they were doing at the back of the property began to run in and out of her mind as she played. She closed her eyes, trying to connect to that part of herself beginning to stir, trying to feel through her heart to discover what was trying to emerge. It felt warm and wonderful, dark and terrifying, bound to her heart, her dreams and her nightmares.
She opened her eyes and began to caress her beloved keys and, as if of their own volition, her fingers began to play Chopin’s Waltz in A flat, Opus Sixty-Nine. She never played it well, but it called to her. It was the piece that her fingers were most likely to travel to when left on their own. Jennifer continued to play while the sun descended and the planets became visible to anyone who might be listening to her music from the forgotten open window behind her arched back.
Although she seldom caught a glimpse of him when she looked out the window, she knew there was one man out there who could sometimes hear her play. For that reason, she played so much more often then she ever had before. In her heart, every song she played was dedicated to him.
She played long after the shadows around her had lengthened to encompass the entire room, until she heard her husband’s familiar footsteps at the kitchen door. She quickly sat up and went into the next room to meet him with the smile he expected. It was a smile, she reminded herself, that for all he had done for her, he most probably deserved.
Jennifer watched with dismay from the edge of the living room as Michael, Vic, and Anthony all filed into the kitchen and pulled out chairs at the kitchen table.
“Some dinner, please, Ginny,” Michael called to her over his shoulder.
