Madly Yours novel · Chapter 9 of 32

Chapter 9: By Ear

The Bentley's door shut on his smile.

The car slid away from the curb and turned the corner and was gone.

I was still holding Leland's arm.

He didn't start the engine.

He sat with his hand over mine and looked at the empty curb.

"He knew which car," he said at last. "He knew which window."

I wrote with a hand that wouldn't stop shaking.

He's been watching us.

"Or someone has."

He started the car.

At the airport he bought me a cup of tea I didn't drink.

On the plane he held my hand from takeoff to landing and pretended to read the safety card the whole way.

On Monday morning I went back to work.

Or I tried to.

The San Francisco symphony hall had posted for an assistant technician two weeks before my hearing came back.

My old boss had run its pianos for thirty years.

He'd taught me everything I knew.

When I'd emailed him from the Halstead library on Sunday night, he'd taken an hour to answer.

Colette, I'd hire you tomorrow. But you can't hear.

I'd written back one line.

Give me the test anyway.

He met me at the stage door at nine.

He was sixty-four, stooped, with half-moon glasses and a pencil behind each ear.

He hugged me for a long time.

Then he held me at arm's length and looked at my scar and my throat and my silent mouth.

He wrote on a pad, the way everybody did now.

Are you sure about this, kid?

I nodded.

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