obviously wasn’t reincarnation.”
He smiles halfheartedly, his melancholy and aching vulnerability visible. “No. Actually they didn’t tell me what the unfinished business was. They said I would know after I’d completed it. I expect it has something to do with my music.” He looks at me expectantly. “I wonder if I could dictate those lost works to you? Can you read musical script, Leigh Ann? I’ve never seen you do it, but . . .” I shake my head. “Well, there goes that idea. Probably wouldn’t work anyway, trying to convey musical notation through telepathy, remembering the exact compositions.”
“Even if I could, I’d probably mess it up in more than one place. Not to mention the problem of trying to convince others that it’s your music, Terence.”
Another flicker of hope lights his face. “Perhaps it hasn’t been destroyed.”
“Maybe we can try to contact this Cecily,” I offer, then correct myself, “Maybe I can try to contact her, in the physical world. Do you remember the address, where you lived with her?”
His pale brows furrow. “It’s been so long. It’s hard to remember details like that as well when you’re dead. What? Oh, come now, I am dead, you know. In your world, at any rate.”
I sigh. The word really gives me the willies. I find it difficult accepting the mortal description of death. In the mortal world, one is indeed gone, never to regain one’s physical form in that particular lifetime, when one dies. But I still view Earthly life as the fantasy, the dream from which one awakens. “Perhaps,” I agree. “But death is a transition, not a permanent condition. It’s not my fault that most mortals treat Earth as the only dimension succoring life and the physical body as its only vehicle.”
“Tell it to the coroner. Look, Leigh Ann. Even if I could remember where I lived with Cecily, what surety do we have that we’ll translate the address correctly? Psychics can miss by a kilometer. It’s one thing to mix up a simple conversation a bit. It’s another to give specific information that needs proving out. I don’t even know if Cecily still lives there. Maybe we should forget this.”
“No. We’re not giving up that easily. We have to try to recover your lost works. But one thing does bother me. Why didn’t Cecily take them to your publisher or to someone else in authority in the classical music field? No matter how badly upset she was after your death, it would benefit her. She’d become a celebrity. The media would eat it up. The grieving heroine who saved her sweetheart’s music from oblivion.”
Terence considers that. “You don’t think she did, and the publisher turned it down, do you?”
“Highly unlikely. Your earlier works had been popular despite the critics. Dead composers with newly discovered works can get more attention than living ones that are still composing. So why didn’t she open the piano seat, scoop it out, and wave it in front of the music world’s face?”
Terence furrows his brows again, as much at a loss as I am, then his mouth opens, his expression stricken. “Oh, my God. Oh, my God, Leigh Ann!”
“What?”
“Dear Lord, I didn’t tell her.”
“Tell her what? You said you did tell her about the new music.”
“No, no, no! I mean I didn’t tell her where they were. I lifted the piano seat, placed them in the compartment inside, and locked it, while she was packing the car for seaside.”
“Well, wouldn’t she have looked for them? I mean, afterwards?”
“I don’t know. She wasn’t musical, you know.” He sighs again, heavily. “Wherever that piano seat is, my music may still be.”
“Well, we’ve got to try to contact her. Think! Try to remember the address where the two of you lived.”
“Umm . . . Doughty Street! In London. I can’t remember the number. Was it 42 or 44? Damn! We lived right up the street from the Dickens House.”
“The Dickens House?”
“One of the houses Charles Dickens once lived in. They converted it into a museum.”
“The street number, Terence,” I remind him. The sound of faint crying begins to distract me.
“The number . . . yes, yes! It was No. 44. 44 Doughty Street. We rented the second floor. Yes, that’s it. The second floor flat at 44 Doughty Street in London,” he repeats, then peers at me. “Are you all right, love?”
I can’t answer. For one instant longer, I stand facing Terence in the blue and white ether . . .
* * * *
. . . half a second later, my eyes opened to afternoon sunlight brightening the bedroom as Daniel’s loud bawling filled my ears. I got up and picked him up, checking his diaper. “Oh, boy. It’s all right, Danny. Mommy will get you cleaned up.”
I removed the soiled diaper, wiped him around with a wet wash cloth, then dried, powdered and freshly diapered him. Even his outer rubber diaper had leaked through to the butt and legs of his sleeper. “What a mess.” At least, the crib sheet had stayed dry. I retrieved a new rubber diaper and sleeper from below the bathinet. I redressed Daniel and laid him in his crib. “Stay put for a moment, sweetie. Mommy has to wash your dirty diaper out.”
I went to the bathroom to rinse off and flush away the feces. As I wrung the cloth out tightly, Terence made a sudden reappearance, asking in an agitated rush, —Do you remember?—
—What.—
—The address! Lord, I hope you’ve gotten it right.—
—44 Dougherty Street, second floor, in London.—
—Not Dougherty. It’s Doughty. Like the dough you bake bread and biscuits with.—
—Doughty. Okay? Now, I’ve got things to do, so cool it.—
I took the rinsed diaper back into the bedroom, dumping it in the pail, then threw the wet baby clothes into the hamper.
Daniel reached out his hands to me. I lifted him into my arms and headed downstairs.
Terence trailed after me. —When are you going to write the letter?—
—Later.—
—Can’t you do it now? You can walk it to the post. It’s a lovely day. Take Daniel for a ride in his pram.—
I walked into the kitchen. My mother wasn’t there, but the door to the basement was opened. “Mom?”
“I’m in the laundry room, ironing,” she called up.
—I’ve remembered Cecily’s last name,— Terence cut in. —It’s Saraband. Cecily Saraband. 44 Doughty Street, second floor, in London. Please, Leigh Ann. For the possible sake of posterity?—
I gave in. “Mom? Do we have any stationery and envelopes? I want to write a letter to someone in England.”
“In England? Who do you know in England?”
“I’ll explain later.”
