The Encore of Us novel · Chapter 7 of 24

Chapter 7: The Locked Case

The practice room was on the third floor of the Hall, at the end of a corridor that smelled of floor polish and old rosin.

Anders unlocked the door with a key from his own ring.

He hadn't turned on the overhead light.

Only a green desk lamp burned in the corner, and the grand piano took up half the room in its shadow.

On the shelf beside it sat a black violin case with a brass latch.

My father had carried that case on the bus to every one of my lessons, until the winter he died.

I went to it.

The latch was cold under my thumb.

Inside, on blue velvet, lay my violin. The varnish was dark and honey-gold, and the strings were new.

"I change them every spring," Anders said behind me. "I don't know why."

I lifted it out.

It weighed the same as it had the morning I stopped being a violinist.

My left hand knew the neck before I did, and my fingers settled into the old places.

I tuned it with my ear.

Anders sat down at the piano in his shirtsleeves and did not touch a key.

"Play me the first bar," he said.

"Which one?"

"You know which one."

I did.

I put the bow to the string and played the six-note phrase I had written when I was twenty-two.

I had written it in this room, on a rainy afternoon, with his mouth against my neck.

It came out cracked and thin, and I almost stopped.

He answered it with his left hand, low and slow.

Then he gave me the next phrase, and I took it, and we were playing.

We played it all the way to the end, the encore that had never been finished.

The lamp hummed and the rain ran down the window.

My eyes were wet by the last bar.

I didn't lower the bow.

He took his hands off the keys, and the silence rang.

"That was the last thing we ever played," he said.

"I know."

"I used to sit here at night and play your half. Just mine. With the hole where you should be."

He got up.

He crossed the room in three strides and took the violin out of my hands.

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