When Love's Sorrow Plays Again novel · Chapter 2 of 24
Chapter 2: The Arithmetic
Julius arrives at the door, sees Ellery and does the math; each lays down proof that the other sold out.
He did not come at six.
At seven I stopped looking out the window.
At seven-twenty Ellery was in her pajamas, setting a third place at the kitchen table with great ceremony.
"Put the fork away," I said. "Nobody's coming."
"He is. I put the address in orange."
The knock came at seven-thirty.
It was three quick raps.
I knew that knock.
I stood in the hallway with my hand on the doorknob and counted to five, and then to ten.
Then I opened it.
Julius Blomqvist stood on my porch in a long grey coat, snow in his hair though it was only October.
He was thinner than I remembered, and the silver at his temples was new.
The glasses were the same.
He held a piece of orange construction paper in one hand.
His eyes went over my face once and stopped.
"Leona."
"Julius."
Neither of us said anything else.
Behind me, a small voice said, "You're late."
He looked past my shoulder.
Ellery had come down the hall in her socks, braids half undone, and she was looking up at him with her chin out.
I watched him see her.
He saw the dark hair first, and the stubborn jaw.
Then he saw the tilt of her head, which was his, exactly his, the one he used when he was listening for a wrong note.
The paper in his hand shook.
"How old is she?" he said. It was barely a voice.
"Six."
"Six," he said.
He did the arithmetic standing in my doorway, and I watched every number land.
Her birthday, March ninth.
The last night, the practice room, June.
I saw him get there.
His hand went out and caught the doorframe.
"Come in," Ellery said, and took his sleeve. "Mom made soup. It's not good, but there's a lot."
He let her pull him down the hall.
He did not look at me.
She sat him at the head of the table, because it was the only chair with a cushion.
She told him her name, her age, that she played the violin, that she had lost a tooth, and that his poster in the window was crooked.
He said "Yes," and "I see," and "That's a very good tooth."
His voice was perfectly steady, and his hands were not.
I ladled soup and could not breathe.
At eight-fifteen Ellery fell asleep with her head on her violin case.
I carried her to bed.
When I came back he was standing at the sink with his back to me.
"I'm going to ask you something," he said, "and I need you to answer plainly."
"Ask."
"Did you know you were pregnant when you took the money?"
The kitchen got very quiet.
I put the bowl down.
"No," I said. "Five weeks after. I found out in a drugstore bathroom with a paper cup."
"Five weeks after you took forty thousand dollars of my family's money and left."
"Left?" I laughed, and it came out wrong. "You left, Julius. You got on a plane."
"To Vienna. For two years, and then two more. Every time I asked about you, Roderick said you had married a dentist."
"A dentist? I married nobody. Your brother handed me a cheque, in person, in my apartment, and a paper to sign."
"What paper?"
"A release. I would never contact your family or claim any tie to it. Or I'd repay everything and a hundred thousand more."
His face changed.
"Roderick never told me about a release."
"I'm sure he didn't."
I pulled my phone out of my pocket and opened the old folder I had never been able to delete.
The text was dated seven years ago, two days after his flight.
I turned the screen toward him.
It was from his number.
Take the money, Leona. I can't carry you to Vienna.
He read it once.
He read it again.
"I didn't send that."
"It came from your phone."
"I didn't send that," he said, louder, and then he remembered the sleeping child and said it again, low. "I never sent you a text."
"Julius."
"You want proof." He reached inside his coat and pulled out a letter, folded soft from being carried. "Read it."
It was a single typed page.
It was signed, in what looked exactly like my handwriting, Leona.
I read the first line aloud, because my own voice seemed the only way to believe it.
"I've taken the Blomqvist money, and I don't want to hear from you again."
My hands were cold.
"I didn't write this."
"That is your signature."
"It's a signature. I never typed a word to you. I never wrote you at all, Julius, because you were gone and you said you could not carry me."
We stood on opposite sides of the kitchen with a text and a letter on the table between us.
Each of us had carried one for seven years, and each of them said the other had sold out.
He looked at my phone.
I looked at his page.
"One of us is lying," he said.
"Not me."
"Not me."
We said it at the same moment.
Down the hall, Ellery turned over in her sleep and mumbled something about a tooth.
Julius pressed his knuckles against his mouth.
"I have a rehearsal at nine tomorrow morning," he said, very quietly. "I want you in that room, Leona. And I want to see my brother's face when I find out which of us he was lying to."
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