In Harmony (38 page)

I had an awful thought, and started to mop up some of the coffee I’d spilled while I processed it. Very, very carefully, I asked “Jasmine…your brother…is there something you’re not telling me? Some reason…?”

She gaped at me for a moment. “Do you mean—Jesus,
no,
Karen, he didn’t rape me or abuse me or anything!”

“Sorry,” I said quickly. “I just—”

She shook her head. “No, it’s my fault. I’ve been all mysterious about it and I should have just told you.” She sighed. “He’s not a bad guy, but he did time a few years ago—drugs. Then he got mixed up with more drugs when he was inside, and as soon as he got out he got caught again. That time the charges didn’t stick, but I just know he’s bouncing from one deal to another.” She put her head in her hands. “And it’s not just him. My family….” She closed her eyes. “Please let’s not get into my family. They’re just…not people you want in your life, okay?”

I realized in that moment that I knew almost nothing about Jasmine’s family. I didn’t even know where she came from. She was so bouncy and easy to talk to, and had such a rich and chaotic life
now,
that asking about her past had never occurred to me. I’d had a vague image in my head of arty parents somewhere in New York or maybe Chicago—actors, maybe, and she’d followed in their footsteps. Not much money—that much was obvious—but
nice.
And yet, if you’d asked me, I couldn’t recall a single conversation over the years when she’d said any of that. I’d just presumed. All of us had just presumed.

“Karen,” she said softly, “you didn’t think Jasmine was my real name, did you? Who’s called
Jasmine?”
And I saw there were tears in her eyes.

I leaned across the table and pulled her into a hug, knocking the remains of my coffee to the floor in the process. “Come here, you idiot,” I gasped, holding her tight. I was crying myself, now.

“Will you still be my friend? Even now I’m a hooker?” Jasmine whispered in my ear.

“Of course I will,” I said between sobs. “And you’re not a hooker. You’re an escort.”

***

A few days later, we got our presentation scores back. Doctor Geisler read them out in a list, which was how he always did it. Except normally, my name was missing because I hadn’t shown up to do the presentation. This time, my name was there, buried with all the other Ms.

“Karen Montfort…B.”

I closed my eyes and sank back in my chair. My grade average was safe. It had actually improved a little. Now, with a good score in the recital, I could not just graduate but graduate
well.

God…all those presentations that I’d missed through my stupid, stupid fear! All those Fs that could have been Bs or even As! If I’d met Connor a year earlier, the recital wouldn’t have even been important. And, ironically, if the recital hadn’t been so important, I never would have met Connor.

The second I was out of class, I went to call him…but found a text message already waiting for me. He needed to talk,
now,
at my apartment. And I had a horrible feeling I knew what he was going to say.

***

Connor was waiting for me outside my apartment block, and held out the essay so I could see the red, circled D in the top corner.

We trudged inside and he waited until the door was closed before he spoke.

“Harman called me in to see him this morning.
That,”
—he nodded at the essay—“dropped me too low to graduate. Even if we got a perfect score on the recital. I’m out.”

I shook my head. “They can’t,” I said softly. “Not when you were so close. It’s not fair.”

He came up behind me and put his hands on my shoulders. “I know.”

“There must be something we can do. There’s got to be some way that—it’s just an essay! It’s just one essay!”

He shook his head. “It’s not.” And I knew exactly what he was thinking—the same thing I’d been thinking when I got my presentation score back. If only we’d met each other sooner, if only he’d gotten help with the dyslexia before.

If only I’d answered the phone that night, instead of arguing with my father.

“I’m sorry,” I told him. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry—”

“Karen, you did everything you could.” He sighed. Then, his voice gentle, “Karen…you know what this means?”

And then it clicked. He wasn’t at Fenbrook anymore, and that meant he couldn’t do the recital with me. And that meant I wasn’t going to graduate, either.

I wasn’t going to graduate.
Just a few months ago, I’d been worried about whether I’d get into the New York Phil. Now I was going to be a college dropout.

He watched me slowly slump to the floor. We were in the kitchen and my back slid down the cabinets until I sat on the tiles, looking dazedly at his legs. It wasn’t a panic attack—it was more like all the energy had just been drained out of my body.

He crouched so that he could look me in the eye. “I am so, so sorry,” he told me. “This is exactly what I was afraid of happening. That I’d let you down.”

I shook my head. He hadn’t let me down—

“Look. There’s something else.”

That was weird. It was like he was prepping me for bad news. What more bad news could there possibly be?

“Karen, it wasn’t like I could ever offer you much of a future, even with a degree. Without one…what am I going to do, really? Neil’s found me some work fixing bikes, down at the MC. Maybe I keep playing in bars, and maybe we scrape together just enough to rent a two-bit apartment with walls so thin you can hear the neighbors fucking. But—”

Oh God—

“Without me…you could go back to Boston. Patch things up with your dad. Maybe go back to college there, if you wanted to.”

Oh God no—

He sighed. “Maybe we jumped into this thing too fast. I don’t know…I thought we had something, but now it’s been brought home to me, clear as day.”

No please please no—

“We’re different. We’re always going to be different. You’re better off without me.”

He stood up just as I saw something I thought I’d never see—those big, beautiful blue-gray eyes fill with tears. Then he was backing away towards the door and the realization that
I’m never going to see him again
reached up and grabbed my heart and started crushing it like a vice. I tried to scramble to my feet, but my legs wouldn’t work. I managed to stumble to the apartment door in time to see it close, and as tears flooded my eyes I slumped against it and howled.

Chapter 30

Morning turned to noon turned to afternoon turned to evening. I didn’t bother switching on the apartment lights, just sat there and stared out at the city as it lit up.

Somewhere out there, Clarissa and Neil were probably arguing again, their relationship hanging by a thread, and I didn’t have the confidence to talk to Neil to try to fix it.

Jasmine was no doubt preparing for her client, shaving and perfuming herself for his delectation. And in another few hours she’d accept his money and allow him to…. And I didn’t have the guts to stop her.

And even if I was able to help my friends with their current crises, I wasn’t going to be around for the next ones. I wouldn’t even get to see Darrell and Natasha finally happy, the one thing I’d managed to do right, because in another week, unable to play the recital without Connor, I’d flunk out, too.

I wasn’t going to perform in an orchestra. I wasn’t even going to get a degree. I was going to crawl back to Boston, admit that my father had been right and then…I had no idea. I knew it was going to be a life without music but, for the first time, that didn’t matter. What mattered was that it would be a life without Connor.

My legs started to grow numb—my head, too, where it rested against the hard wood of the door. The one solid thing in my life, my apartment, and it was provided by my father. My father, who’d been right all along. My father, who’d never wanted anything except the best for me—and I’d thrown it back in his face to pursue some stupid, teenage dream of love. So what if he’d been cold and controlling? He’d been right: I shouldn’t have gotten mixed up with Connor, or moved away from the nice, safe world of the cello. I was a mouse, a dwarf, and I should have stayed wrapped up in my cave practicing instead of trying to have an
adventure.

The worst part was that everyone had seen it apart from me. Oh, my friends had thought Connor was hot, but they’d warned me about how different we were. Professor Harman had told me it was a bad plan. And eventually, even Connor had seen it, “
clear as day.”
The only one too stupid to see it had been me.

…

Clear as day.
A weird expression. Very British, or maybe very Irish. It wasn’t something I recalled Connor ever saying before.

…

Ruth had said it, when she’d met me for coffee just before my presentation. What else had Connor said? The conversation was burned into my mind. “
It’s been brought home to me, clear as day.”

It’s been brought home to me.

Ruth.

Connor’s essay was lying on the hallway table, bearing its red circled D. I reached over and grabbed it with hands that were suddenly shaking.

They didn’t have a computer at his apartment, so she’d hand-written it for him in her scratchy, angular script. He wouldn’t have read it back, of course. He’d just have trusted her. That was his one weakness.

The sentences barely made sense. They weren’t what Connor would have dictated—they were like a cruel parody of a dyslexic’s writing. She’d screwed him over.

I didn’t really have a plan when I picked up my phone. I suppose I wanted to check to see if I was right, although I didn’t know, then, what I’d take as evidence.

Connor’s phone rang three times and then, “Hello?”

Not Connor’s voice. Ruth’s. I could hear noise in the background—tools, and two-stroke engines. The motorcycle club.

“I need to speak to him,” I said. Barely a whisper. It felt like an elephant was sitting on my chest, crushing the life out of me.

I heard Ruth put her mouth very close to the phone, so that only I could hear her. “Fuck off, you Yank bitch,” she said, her voice like a weapon.

“Who is it?” Connor’s voice, in the background.

“Wrong number,” Ruth told him. And she hung up on me.

As I sat there staring at my phone, I felt something start inside me. It was as unexpected and
real
as when I’d first felt that stab of desire for Connor. Except that hadn’t been completely alien—I might never have felt that way about a particular man before, but I’d known what it was like to be turned on. This, though…this was utterly new. It was like a trickle of red-hot lava, gradually breaking through the rocks to reach the surface. Growing hotter and stronger until it erupted into a volcano.

It was
rage.
My entire life, I’d never really gotten angry—not
really
angry. My father had crushed that emotion from me, teaching me how to be cool and calm and professional—just like him.

But I was angry now.

I was such a scared little mouse. I hadn’t spoken up all those years when my father sculpted my future in his own image. I hadn’t spoken up when Neil needed someone to talk sense to him, or when Jasmine became an escort. I’d let Ruth convince me that Connor and I wouldn’t work and, worst of all, when Connor broke up with me I hadn’t even fought for him.

I got to my feet.

I was damn well going to fight now.

Chapter 31

The biker guarding the gate at the motorcycle club was in his forties, thick layers of muscle straining his jacket. He was a full foot taller than me and three times my weight. He looked like he’d stood his ground in the face of every sort of would-be intruder—cops, lawyers, rival biker gangs….

But never a 5’4” and very determined cellist. I gave him a
look,
and he swung back the gate for me.

Once inside the compound, the garage wasn’t hard to find. The door was rolled up and I could see Connor stripped to the waist, working on a bike. Ruth was still there, too, leaning against the wall with a can of Coke. With the lights blazing inside and the darkness outside, they didn’t see me until I was standing on the threshold.

Connor looked up and his mouth dropped open. Ruth lounged nonchalantly, her mouth twisting into a cruel smirk. “Don’t think this is the place for you, luv,” she told me. “Why don’t—”

“Get away from my man, you
bitch!”
I said, the rage boiling out at her like a flamethrower. She lost her smirk instantly and took a step back.

“Karen?!” Connor sounded as surprised by my words as he was by my being there. “Karen, you know we can’t—”