I want to know what Oliver is thinking, but then if I did, I’d probably wish I didn’t. I don’t pursue the rest of the thought. I should say something to ease Oliver’s worry, but I don’t know how. I look at the vase again, and I could swear I see smoke spilling out from the top. I look at Oliver and he’s following my gaze.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “I’m obviously preoccupied, and I don’t want you to think I’m thinking about Jack.”
“Aren’t you?” Oliver asks. “What did the two of you talk about after I left?”
I hesitate and he makes a face.
“I’m sorry,” he says. “That’s probably none of my business.” He slides back into the chair.
“You,” I say and try to gauge how he takes this. I can’t. “We talked about you.”
“Let me guess—he went on about me being younger than you. Made you feel like you were doing something stupid. Am I close at all?”
“You’re spot-on.” I breathe out heavily.
Now I feel silly for not giving Oliver the credit he deserves.
I want so badly for Jack to be wrong about my relationship with Oliver, but I fear that he’s not. Sure, Oliver is younger, but age is just a number, right?
The movie-trailer voice demands my attention. What was the difference between a boy and a man? Nina couldn’t be sure. Was it education? Was it age? Was it the way he looked in a suit? How old was this guy anyway? Did he have to shave every day? Did he wear a clip-on tie?
“Shut up,” I hiss under my breath.
“Excuse me?” Oliver says, and I think at first that he’s heard me. “Did you say something?”
“No,” I say. “Just clearing my throat.”
Oliver seems to know that I’m thinking. He gets up from the chair and goes to sit on the piano bench. “I think Nate would approve of us.”
Hearing him refer to Dad as Nate in the present tense reminds me that Dad is gone. It feels like hands slipped suddenly around my heart, squeezing tight like they are trying to keep it from beating.
“What are you afraid of?” Oliver asks, his voice faltering like he’s trying for humor, but failing.
Everything. I need to change the subject. My eye falls on the wooden cross hanging above the piano. “I didn’t know you were religious,” I say.
Oliver turns around on the piano bench. “Would it bother you if I was?”
“No,” I say. Now it feels like Oliver is the one who wants to the subject to change, so I ask, “Is your family around here?”
Oliver turns back to the keys and picks out a tune. “They all live in Tennessee.”
There’s so much about him I still don’t know. “What brought you here?”
“School—well, that brought me to North Carolina,” he says, his back to me. He repeats the same set of notes, having found the sequence he seemed to be looking for. “I got my bachelors in philosophy back in Tennessee, then I came out to Charlotte to get my master’s degree.”
“Philosophy,” I say, impressed.
“I would have loved to major in music,” he says, “but undergrad was just step one of the bigger plan.”
I nod even though he can’t see. I watch him from the perspective of walking away—his back to me and his thoughts elsewhere. His shoulders and arms move, keeping up with his hands as they slide across the keys. I don’t recognize what he plays, but the melancholy of it hurts my throat.
“And you stayed here because of your landlord’s father?” I ask, unsure if he can hear me.
“I came here, from there, because of him, yes,” Oliver says. “My landlord is out in Charlotte.”
“You moved here to take care of her father?” I ask, piecing his earlier story together a bit better. “That’s a sacrifice.”
“It was an escape, actually,” he says, his fingers stopping on top of the keys, hovering, then playing once again.
“How long have you been here?” I ask, trying to piece together his timeline—his rather elusive timeline.
“I’ve been here a little over a year now.”
“How close were you to getting your masters?”
“Had about a year to go. I would have graduated last month.”
“But you stayed here,” I say, eking the story out of him bit by bit. “You didn’t go back to school even after your landlord’s father went into a nursing home?”
“Right,” he says, then pauses in his playing. He reaches up from the keys and straightens a picture on the piano that I’ve never taken the time to look at closely.
The Parkinson’s patient. I begin to put two and two together.
“You became a nurse’s aide so you could still work with him,” I say, letting him know that I understand.
“Couldn’t bring myself to leave.” Oliver plays a few more notes in the melody. “Didn’t want to, and I didn’t have anywhere else to go anyway.”
I look around at the house and it finally strikes me why this place seems so out of the ordinary for a young man in his late-twenties.
“This is his place?” I ask.
Oliver nods, still facing away from me.
“You stay here to take care of the house?” I ask, although there’s no question.
“It’s a nice arrangement,” Oliver says, his voice growing distant. “While it lasts, I guess.”
“You miss him.”
“Not yet,” Oliver says oddly. “But I will.”
I get up and go over to the piano. He must feel my approach because he moves over and I sit beside him. He stops playing and looks forward. I follow his line of sight to the photo on the piano. It’s a picture of Oliver and Cricket in this living room. It’s obvious that the Cricket in this photo is in an earlier stage of his decline than the one in the nursing home. Oliver looks the same, but his hair is shorter.
“Mr. Cole?” I question and answer myself at the same time.
Oliver nods. He pecks out a couple of sad notes and then just lets his hands rest, unmoving, on the
