When Love's Sorrow Plays Again novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Open Rehearsal

Julius stops his first rehearsal to ask where Leona's chair went and sets a blind audition; Roderick threatens the old release.

I dropped Ellery at school and went to Nicollet Hall at 8:50 to pick up my music stand.

That was my whole plan.

I carried it out of the side door with the lamp still clipped on, past Agatha's empty chair, and I was almost free.

"Leona."

Julius stood on the stage in a grey sweater with the sleeves shoved up.

He had not slept either.

The whole orchestra was settling into their seats, sixty people in rehearsal black, and every one of them turned to look.

"Mr. Blomqvist," I said. "I'm just taking my things."

"Stay a minute."

"I don't work here."

"I know." He tapped his baton once on the music stand, and the hall went silent. "Good morning. I'm Julius. Before we play a note, I have a question."

He looked at the second violins.

"Where is the fourth stand inside?"

My old stand partner looked up from his shoes.

"Sir?"

"There are seven stands of second violins on the chart I was given. I count six and a half." He turned his head, not quickly. "Roderick. Where's the rest?"

Roderick was sitting in the third row beside a woman in a pearl necklace who had a board member's lanyard.

He rose and buttoned his jacket, smiling.

"A restructuring, Julius. The board approved it in September. We lost one chair to the budget."

"Which chair?"

"Does it matter?"

"I'd like to hear who's missing from my orchestra."

The smile held for one more second.

"Leona Hartwell."

Sixty people breathed in.

Julius did not look at me.

"The player who is standing in the doorway holding a music stand."

"She was let go yesterday."

"After seven seasons."

"With severance."

"And I wasn't consulted."

"The board was, and you weren't under contract yet."

"I am now." Julius said it so gently that it was worse than shouting. "Tell me, how did Ms. Hartwell play the Mahler last spring?"

My old stand partner swallowed.

"Best seconds in the section. Sir."

Somebody in the cellos started to clap and was shushed.

The woman with the pearls leaned forward.

"Mr. Blomqvist, with respect, the director has authority over staffing."

"Of course." Julius nodded. "And I have authority over the sound. I'll make you a deal. On Thursday, any chair in this orchestra, any player, any instrument, may be auditioned for behind a screen. No names, no résumés. That includes mine."

A ripple went through the strings.

"Yours?" said the pearl woman.

"If I lose the room, I'll hand back the baton." He smiled for the first time. It looked like a wolf's. "The best player in the dark gets the chair. That's all I'm asking for."

I stood there with my stand in my hands and wanted to throw it at him.

He had just made me a spectacle, again, in front of everyone.

And every single musician in the hall was looking at me with something I had not seen in a year, which was hope.

"Roderick?" said Julius.

Roderick looked at the pearl woman.

The pearl woman looked at sixty musicians.

"Thursday," Roderick said. "Of course."

"Then we have forty minutes before the Brahms," said Julius. "Ms. Hartwell, I won't ask you to sit. Only to be here Thursday."

I did not answer.

I carried my stand out of the hall.

In the corridor behind the green room, where the old posters hung, I stopped to breathe.

The door clicked behind me.

"Friend."

Roderick had followed me.

He leaned one shoulder against a poster of Leonard Bernstein and tucked his hands in his pockets, as relaxed as a man at a cocktail party.

"I don't know what my brother told you last night," he said.

"How do you know he told me anything?"

"Dear God, Leona. He drove to Northeast in a rented car on his first night back. I have a phone full of people who love to keep me informed."

I held the stand in front of me.

"Why did you fire me?"

"Because it's cleaner."

"Cleaner than what?"

"Than having you in the same room." He tilted his head, and for the first time his smile slipped and I saw what was under it. "You and I both know why you took the money, and why you never came back. Don't make me say it in front of Julius."

My heart was loud in my ears.

"You wrote me a cheque."

"I did you a kindness. You took it. You signed a very clear paper." He straightened. "I'll make this simple. Tell my brother nothing, withdraw from Thursday, take the twelve weeks, and we'll all be adults."

"And if I don't?"

He looked at my violin case on the floor, and then at the corridor door, where, down at the end, sixty instruments were tuning to the oboe's A.

"Then the first thing I enforce," he said softly, "is the old release."

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