Chapter 12: Three A.M.

Max's POV

On the fifteenth night I took the night shift, because the card said her water was due at two.

Aubrey's cards had a section for nights.

Water at two, no ice. A second blanket if the radiator is off. If she rings after four, don't answer. She is only checking.

I had stopped arguing with the cards.

I slept on the sunroom couch in my clothes, with the bell on the floor under my hand.

At two she rang.

I brought the water, and she said it was fine, and I went back down.

At 3:07 I woke up, and I did not know what had woken me.

The house was dark.

The lamp on the street threw a gold bar across the carpet, and the radiator ticked.

Then I heard it.

It came down the stairwell from the third floor, thin and clear, and at first I thought it was the radio.

It was a piano.

I lay still and listened to the first eight bars.

I knew the piece.

My mother used to play it when I was a boy, before the stroke, when she still played anything.

The Nocturne in C-sharp minor, the one she used to say belonged to her.

I had not heard it in six years.

I thought: someone has left a recording on.

I thought: the nurse.

But I had no nurse.

I got up and went to the stairs in my socks, and I climbed to the third floor with my hand on the rail.

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