And yet, looking at him, Miriam felt curiously detached. Of the passion that once consumed her, nothing remained. It was a shell, fragile as spun sugar, its empty calories long since consumed. The only thing that ever really bound them together was the one thing she’d withheld from him: his children.
Gus lifted his fingers, and the scowl of concentration melted into the brilliance of that fabulous smile—the one that fooled a person into thinking no one else in the world mattered to him. “Sounds great!” he told the piano tech. “But can you tighten up the action on A3?”
“Sure thing.”
Gus shot off the bench and began pacing as the technician stepped in. He never was any good at standing still. His passion, his quicksilver changeability, the intensity of his charisma—it was all the same as on the day she’d last seen him.
Miriam took a deep breath and started toward the stage.
Gus turned toward the movement, shading his eyes against the stage lights. “Good morning … can I help you?”
She stepped into the light. “Hi, Gus.”
His eyes widened. “Miriam Tedesco,” he said. He jogged down the stage stairs to meet her. “Or should I say … Mira Lewis.”
He stopped, and they studied each other in silence for a few moments while the knock of the technician’s tools against the wood echoed in the hall. Then he gave a half smile. “You looked so familiar, but your personality is so different—you’re so much more confident than you were then. And—and the clothes. But you called me Gus,” he said. “I should have known right then. Nobody’s called me Gus in years. Not even my wife. I can’t believe it didn’t register right away. But when it did …” He shook his head. “You should have told me, Mira.”
“I should have done a lot of things.”
A furrow appeared between his eyebrows. “Your husband said you were sick. Last year, the day of the competition.” The words sounded vaguely accusatory.
“We didn’t think it was the right time for that discussion—for any of us. You included. Not on a competition weekend.”
He folded his arms, perching a hip on the back of an auditorium seat, his mouth tightening. “Just to be clear what we’re talking about …”
“Yes,” Miriam said. “I was pregnant when I left Curtis.”
“Blaise was mine.”
“And Talia.”
A muscle in his jaw twitched repeatedly. One hand ran through his thick, dark hair, a sign that he was rattled. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I came to tell you. The night before I left Curtis. I found you with Kaye, in the recital hall. Against the wall.”
The piano technician rearranged his tools noisily. They both looked up at the stage. Then Gus grabbed her elbow and dragged her to the back of the hall, where the darkness and the distance offered some semblance of privacy. All the color in his face had compressed into two bright spots on his cheeks. “I was an ass in college,” he said. “We’re all stupid and self-absorbed at that age. Me more than most. I can admit that. But you had such a gift, Mira—Miriam. Why would you throw it away over some dipshit college guy? Even me?”
Miriam could imagine Dicey’s reaction; the thought made her smile. “Even you.”
Gus had the good grace to look ashamed. “I’m just saying you could have told me.”
“I could have told you a lot of things. Like what a big deal it was for me to be competitive at Curtis. Where I came from, what I had to do to get there in the first place. I could have told you what you meant to me. But none of it would have made any difference. I was just the next girl.” She shook her head. “I was stupid, but I wasn’t that stupid.”
He swallowed several times in quick succession. “But all these years.”
The bitterness she’d clung to for so long wanted to beat its way out and bludgeon him. She took a deep breath. “You didn’t want children. Don’t you remember? We all went out to dinner, and you complained about the kid at the next table. You were never gonna have kids, you were going to do your part to control world population. Everybody thought it was so funny.”
He sat down on the arm of a seat, weaving his long fingers through his thick black hair. “That was twenty years ago.”
The despair in his voice undid her. All these years, she’d justified keeping the secret by pointing to his antipathy toward children. Why had it never occurred to her that he might feel differently at thirty or forty than he had at twenty-two?
A door opened and closed. Miriam glanced toward the stage to find it empty. That poor piano tech hadn’t bargained for overhearing all this.
“I had children,” Gus said, as if trying out the words. “I had children.” A pause. Then he slumped over. “Kaye and I can’t have children. And you never gave me the chance.”
Her legs gave out. She sat down hard on the armrest opposite him. That note in his voice was agony. An agony not so different from hers: the deep grief over a reality that could never be altered.
In the face of his pain, her bitterness seemed petty. “I know,” she said softly. “I was wrong.”
I’m sorry, she told Teo silently. Teo, who grinned at her in her mind’s eye, his eyes full of mischief beneath the thinning black hair—curly, not straight—sprinkled with white. That big nose. Those glasses.
The images hit her all at once, then: The front porch, crowded with people on hot, sticky summer nights. Kamikaze June bugs dive-bombing the lights. The smell of mosquito repellent and grilled provoleta. Beat-up instruments, potluck catering, and the most stirring music she’d ever heard.
Teo playing tickle monster with the twins on the living room floor.
Teo nibbling on her neck in the
