Young Miriam still had that awkward adolescent look. The terrible hair, a few prominent zits. But she liked this picture anyway. In it, she looked calm. Safe. That was how she’d always felt around Teo. Even when she was furious with him for leaving his shoes in the middle of the floor.
She’d arrived at the convention feeling raw and unsettled. The situation at home was strained, her parents’ silences brittle, their bright conversations even more so. She’d been certain by the time she came home, Dad would be gone. She’d tried to back out of the trip, but the church music director who was mentoring her had insisted she go.
Teo was the first to greet her when she walked into the glacial ballroom that had been home base for the youth that week. For some reason she couldn’t explain, when he said, “I’m so glad you’re here,” she believed him. By the end of the second day, she would happily have stayed at this convention center forever, talking chord progressions and ensemble and ministry.
The night before she went home, she broke down during evening prayer. Quietly, seated in the back row, so no one would know. Yet amid the chorus of voices singing responses, she felt a warm hand rest on her back. She looked up to find Teo sitting beside her. He never stopped singing. He never even looked at her. But his concern projected a force field of security around her.
They stayed in the hall talking for hours: the uncertain situation awaiting her at home; the loneliness he felt living with his uncle; the little brother who barely knew him. His parents’ dreams for his future as a well-to-do American; her parents’ bafflement with her musical aspirations.
When she returned home, her parents seemed back to normal. Except for that one spectacular blowup—the one they still didn’t know she’d overheard—Miriam had never seen her parents fight. But now Miriam recognized tensions she hadn’t seen before. The way her parents avoided being alone with each other. The way they never quite met each other’s eyes. The self-aware courtesy and deference they demonstrated when making plans.
The peace felt fragile, and the last thing Miriam wanted to do was upset it. Her parents eyed her correspondence with Teo, a college student, with suspicion. Miriam started leaving his letters lying around so they could accidentally read them and be reassured nothing creepy was going on. The tactic seemed to work; at any rate, they never tried to stop her.
It was Teo, then in his third year at Temple University, who’d learned of the Curtis Institute’s generous scholarships and encouraged her to apply. He helped her move into her apartment in Philadelphia. She was a little nervous that the easy friendship they’d shared at convention wouldn’t transfer to real life—a needless worry, it turned out. Their conversation picked up as if they’d left off last night, not last year. He recruited her for the music group he coordinated at a parish in downtown Philly.
From then until the day he died, they’d been inseparable. Even in those few delirious weeks she’d spent with Gus, her one and only boyfriend—if he even deserved the title—Miriam had spent Saturday nights at church with Teo. Once, Gus tried to get her to skip Mass to go to a show with him, but Miriam wouldn’t budge. When she played music with Teo, she felt more herself than anywhere else. Music let her express the things she didn’t know how to put into words. Playing with Teo, she didn’t need to. He just understood.
Thunder rattled the roof again. Miriam touched the photo. Here in this chilly Walgreen’s, with the rain pounding the roof, it seemed impossible that Teo could be dead. That she couldn’t tap his name on her phone and hear his voice on the other end. He’d had a way of making her feel safe. Wrapped up in security. Teo had felt like … home.
Even now, the echo of that feeling settled on her shoulders like a cozy blanket. She could still feel the warmth of his hand on her back. Still hear his voice, calling her Mira—or, when he was feeling particularly affectionate, Sassafras. She didn’t even remember where that nickname had come from. Like everything else about Teo, it simply was.
She’d spent so long blaming herself for what she’d failed to give him, she hadn’t really let herself realize what she’d lost: her best friend.
“Can I help you?”
The cashier’s voice recalled her to the present. “Oh,” Miriam said. “Um … last name Tedesco?”
“Just a sec.”
The clerk returned. Miriam laid the photo and her phone on the counter while she paid for the groceries and the photos. As she punched in her PIN, her phone rang, showing a number with a 415 area code. Who could that be? She swiped the “answer” bar. “Hello?”
“Hello, is this Miriam Tedesco?”
“Yes?” Belatedly, she realized why the voice—strong, baritone, rich as butter and soft as silk—sounded familiar. No. Just no. It couldn’t be. She couldn’t have conjured him by a single fleeting thought.
“Great! I’ve been trying to reach you for days. I left a message at your work, but it just occurred to me that I probably had your mobile on an emergency contact form. I wasn’t sure it would work.”
The air felt as heavy and muddy as Play-Doh. Miriam couldn’t get it into her lungs.
“I’m sorry, where are my manners?” he said. “I should introduce myself.”
She couldn’t talk to him. Not now, with Teo’s face staring up at her.
“Hello?” she said loudly.
“Hello? Can you hear me?”
“Hello?”
“This is—”
Miriam punched the red button and flipped the phone to silent, then turned to find Dicey staring at her, a question poised on her lips. Miriam knew very well the volume had been too high to disguise the fiction she’d just perpetrated.
Why did he have to call at this
