When Love's Sorrow Plays Again novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: Cut
Roderick fires Leona in front of her stand partners; she refuses the gag and walks out, and her six-year-old reveals she mailed the new conductor their address.
The envelope was waiting on my music stand before I sat down.
It was cream paper with the North Star Philharmonic crest, and my name was typed on the front.
Leona Hartwell, Second Violin, Fourth Stand Inside.
I had played that chair for seven seasons.
I opened it anyway, with forty musicians tuning around me.
"Your position has been eliminated in a restructuring, effective today."
The A went around the hall, oboe first, and I stood there holding the page.
Agatha was in the second row of winds with her oboe halfway to her mouth.
She mouthed a curse at me.
"Leona."
Roderick Blomqvist was walking down the center aisle in a charcoal suit.
He was the executive director, and he smiled at everyone.
"Friend," he said. "I wanted to tell you in person."
"You wanted to tell me in front of the whole section."
"Better here than a hallway. Less awkward for everyone."
My stand partner stared at his shoes.
The man behind me had stopped tuning.
"I was reviewed in June," I said. "You wrote that I was the steadiest player in the seconds."
"And you are. This is budget, not talent."
"Four players got the same letter?"
His smile stayed exactly where it was.
"The position is eliminated."
So it was only me.
He slid a second paper out of his jacket and held it toward me.
"Twelve weeks of severance. There's one small condition, a standard confidentiality agreement."
I took it and read the first paragraph.
It said I would never discuss my employment, my history with the orchestra, or my relationship with any member of the Blomqvist family.
I read the last part twice.
"Any member of the Blomqvist family," I said. "Why would I have a relationship with your family?"
Something moved behind his eyes and was gone.
"Boilerplate. Our lawyers like it broad."
"Your lawyers have never heard of me."
"Leona." He lowered his voice, which only made the hall quieter. "Sign it, take the twelve weeks, and let's not make this ugly."
I looked at the second row of violins.
Nobody looked back.
I looked at my violin, still in its case at my feet, my grandmother's plain old German fiddle with a patch on the shoulder.
Then I tore the agreement in half.
I did it slowly so the whole hall could hear it.
"No."
"You're making a mistake."
"I made mine seven years ago, Roderick. I don't need another."
He blinked.
It was very small, but I saw it.
I snapped my case shut, lifted it by the handle, and walked up the aisle past forty silent players.
Agatha stood up as I passed.
"I'm coming with you."
"Stay," I said. "One of us needs the paycheck."
"Then I'm quitting at lunch."
"Don't."
She sat down very slowly, furious.
I made it to the lobby before my hands started to shake.
Outside, the October wind hit me in the face and I let it.
Rent was thirteen hundred and fifty dollars.
I had two thousand one hundred in the bank, not counting the other account.
I never counted the other account.
I picked Ellery up from school at three-fifteen, because that was my job and nobody had cut it.
She came out of the first-grade door with her violin case bumping her knees and her braids coming loose.
"Mom! Mom, I have to tell you something, and you can't be mad."
"That's a terrible way to start."
"It's the best way."
She was six years old, and she had never once been right about that.
I knelt down and fixed a braid.
"How was your day?"
"Good. I lost a tooth and a boy cried and my teacher said I was a leader."
"Those are all one story, aren't they?"
"No." She looked at her shoes, which she did when she was about to be brave. "You know the poster at the grocery store?"
I did.
It was in the window of the Cub Foods on Central, the new season, a man in a grey sweater holding his hand out to start a symphony.
WELCOME, MAESTRO JULIUS BLOMQVIST.
I had walked past it three times this week with my eyes on the ground.
"What about it?"
"That's my dad."
The wind went out of the afternoon.
"Ellery."
"I saw the picture in your violin case. The one under the lid. It's the same man. He has glasses and everything."
I had taped that photograph inside the lid eight years ago and never taken it down.
I had never told her whose it was.
"Baby, that's," I said, and nothing came after it.
"And I wrote him a letter," she said, very fast. "I used my good markers. I put our address on the back so he knows where to come."
"You mailed it?"
"To the hall. On Monday. The mail lady said it goes straight to the boss."
I stood up.
The school yard tilted.
"What did it say?"
Ellery smiled at me, gap-toothed, with all the confidence of a general.
"It said, Dear Dad, my mom is sad and you should come for dinner."
I could not make my mouth work.
She patted my arm.
"He got in from Vienna this morning. It was on the radio. So I think it's tonight."
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