Chapter 11: First Touch

"Monday," I said.

"By noon," Trent said.

"You can have your television."

He blinked.

"I'm sorry?"

"Go on with your mother and Skylar. Cry. You're good at it." I picked up my bag. "I'll bring the cassette."

"Hannah, you can't prove a thing."

"Then it won't hurt you to have me say so on camera."

I walked out the side door and didn't look back.

He didn't follow.

I heard him swearing in the garage, and then the engine, and then the gravel.

Outside, the rain had started.

Declan was standing under the eave with his hands in his jacket and Maggie beside him, and they both turned to look at me.

I got as far as the middle of the yard.

Then my knees began to shake, and the shaking moved up into my hands, and I couldn't stop it.

"I'm fine," I said.

"You are not," Maggie said.

"I want to be."

"Come inside."

Maggie took my bag.

Declan held the door.

In the back of the studio, behind the console, there was an old piano under a tarp, and he pulled the tarp off without comment.

It was a black upright with a cigarette burn in the lid.

"That's the one I wrote my first record on," he said. "It's out of tune."

"Of course it is."

"Play something bad."

"I don't know anything bad."

"Then play something to make your hands stop."

I sat down.

I lifted the lid.

My hands were shaking too hard to find the keys.

Declan sat on the bench beside me.

It was a short bench, and he took up most of it.

He didn't say anything, and he didn't tell me to breathe.

He reached over and put his hands around my wrists.

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