A Song for the Road

it didn’t happen last year?”
“It did. But on my birthday, when the flowers arrived, they hadn’t …” She couldn’t say it. The car accident that had killed her husband and twin teenagers—hit head-on by a drunk driver as they drove down the highway toward a beach on the other side of the country—hadn’t happened until later in the day.
Thankfully, she didn’t have to say it; Becky nodded her understanding.
“And on my anniversary … Mom was here then. I remember a delivery truck, but … I was in such a fog then.” Miriam shoved her key into the front door lock. As usual, it wouldn’t turn. Her locket bumped against her breastbone as she wrestled with the door.
“You think your mom got rid of them before you saw them?”
“Seems like a safe guess.” She wrenched the lock again. “Damn it, you stupid door. Open!”
Becky tucked the wine under her elbow, took the key from Miriam, and unlocked the door. Of course. Even inanimate objects obeyed Becky.
It swung open, and the smell of old house—slightly acrid, slightly spicy—rolled out to meet them. Becky handed the key back. “Miriam, talk to me.”
Miriam stared into the darkness of the house, a darkness perforated by the silhouettes of even blacker objects: the baby grand, Teo’s armchair, the tree full of coats that lost the scent of their owners months ago. Everything where it had been a year ago this night, when she’d turned all the lights off, powered down her phone, and tried to pretend she’d died too. “I can’t live like this anymore,” she whispered. “I’m surrounded by ghosts. They talk to me, you know.” She sensed Becky’s hesitation. “Not like that. I just always know what they’d say if they were here. Or I remember what they did say. It’s like I have a built-in Greek chorus.”
She rested her head on the door frame. “And yet still, I was totally blindsided by a delivery of flowers I should have known were coming.” She shook her head. “I’m stuck, Becky. What if it’s because I’m still here? Living in the middle of a life that doesn’t exist anymore?”
“He’s been so unhappy. Why do you always push him away?”
Miriam shuddered at the echo of the words Talia had flung at her the night before her family left for California, never to return. Had Teo really been unhappy? Why hadn’t she noticed?
Becky put a hand on her shoulder. “Miriam, don’t be so hard on yourself. You’ve got to give yourself some time.”
“I’ve had nothing but time, Becky. And look what happened today.” She shook her head. “I can’t go on like this. At the very least, I’ve got to get into Talia’s computer and close her accounts. If this got by me, there’s no telling what else might be hiding out there. I can’t handle any more surprises. I’ll lose my job if there’s another day like today.” She pulled out the roll of trash bags from the shopping bag. “I figure, if I’m going to purge the computer, I might as well just keep going.”
Becky’s eyes narrowed. Her mouth too. Then she nodded and gestured with the wine and chocolate. “We’re going to need this more than I thought.”
Becky stepped over the threshold and flipped a light switch. Her footsteps creaked across the old hardwood floor. Teo always joked that the kids could never sneak out of the house, those floors made so much racket.
Her friend went straight for the kitchen to open the wine bottle and pour a couple of glasses. Miriam wandered more slowly, stopping—as she so often did these days—at the piano, where Blaise’s spiral notebook lay open on the music stand.
She’d known, the way mothers know, that he’d been writing a piano sonata for her. He never worked on it while she was around. But she recognized the look of one sunk deep into his own mind, circling the core of his muse, trying to cajole a spark to light. Too many times, she’d heard unfamiliar music as she approached the house after work, and by the time she’d fumbled the door open, he’d be practicing Liszt or Beethoven again. Once—only once, but once was enough—she’d seen the handwritten scribbles peeking from behind published scores.
She’d found it when the police sent the boxes back from California—boxes containing the things most important to her husband and children. The things important enough to take with them on such a highly anticipated trip: Talia’s cello and laptop, the satchels full of music, the suitcases, and a spiral music notebook with the words Sonata—for Mom scribbled across it in Blaise’s handwriting.
It was months later before she found the folded e-mail printout tucked into the manuscript notebook. The pinpoint of vivid, scarlet rage that note had aroused in her was one of her few clear memories of that time. Rage at the universe. Rage at her impotence—and her cowardice. She should have dealt with this years ago. When it could have made a difference.
One e-mail. That was all it took to trigger her insecurities—and a familiar craving to prove herself. To gain the notice of a man whose opinion shouldn’t matter at all.
She’d resolved to finish what her son no longer could. But she’d done it for all the wrong reasons, and she’d been regretting her rashness ever since. Sure, she’d written music—small forms, responses meant for use on Sunday mornings. Nothing like a major piano work.
And how anyone else had found out about it remained a mystery. She didn’t remember talking about it. Then again, she’d spent so long in a fog, that was hardly surprising. Her mother, convinced the key to surviving loss was staying busy, had talked her into starting the capital campaign for the fine arts wing. Surely the sonata must have had something to do with that.
Still, to this day, Miriam couldn’t say how the sonata ended up being the headline of a concert benefiting the campaign. She just knew she’d spent December in a haze of writing, only to