The Brahms Deception Page 31

  They shook. “You did all you could,” Elliott said. “I hope you’re not going to worry about it.”

  “I feel sorry for the Bannisters,” Kristian said.

  “Yeah. Yeah, we all do.”

  “What’s going to happen to her?” Kristian asked, nodding toward the ambulance.

  “Max says they’ll set up home care. Around-the-clock nurses, that sort of thing.”

  “All they can do, I suppose.”

  “What about you?” Elliott asked. “Is the time lag getting better?”

  “A bit.”

  “It should wear off—I hope.”

  Kristian laughed. “Me too, Elliott. Time passes quickly enough without losing big chunks of it.”

  They watched as Frederick Bannister climbed into the ambulance after his wife. Lillian Braunstein stood back, her arms folded, her face like stone.

  “What are you going to do, Elliott? Is the Foundation still going to function?”

  Elliott sighed. “It’s pretty much a mess. I suspect I’m out of a job. This will be the end of remote research—losing someone like this.”

  “There will be plenty of people still willing to take a chance.”

  “Yes, but there’s going to be a nasty lawsuit. Dr. Braunstein can’t talk Bannister out of it. And there’s the bill before Congress. Without Bannister’s support, that will pass. The Foundation will collapse.”

  “Someone else will want to use Dr. Braunstein’s process. You could work for them.”

  Elliott shook his head, and the lines in his cheeks deepened. “I couldn’t do it, Kris. Look at that girl—she’s barely alive. I can’t take that responsibility again.”

  “Not your fault, Elliott.”

  “I know. Thanks.” Elliott turned his mournful gaze toward the waiting ambulance. “It’s really too bad, the way everything turned out. It would have been so much better if you’d just had the transfer in the first place.”

  “No argument there.”

  “It’s really a shame. You came all this way for nothing.”

  Kristian didn’t answer. At that moment, he couldn’t answer. Clara Schumann’s delicate features swam before him, and for an instant he was once again in the cart outside the train station in 1861, with Clara in his arms, Clara pressing her lips to his. He blinked, and swallowed. He gripped the back of Erika’s chair, and forced himself back to the present moment.

  Elliott couldn’t know, of course. No one could. He had not come to Castagno for nothing. He had gotten what he came for, and more. He had learned what p dolce meant to Brahms, lifted it right out of the Master’s memory. He would make the most of that.

  And he had met Clara Schumann. He had held her in his arms for a precious fraction of a second. That was a memory he would treasure all of his life.

  Chiara, Kristian, and Erika squeezed into the Fiat for the trip back to the Pisa airport. The wheelchair, folded flat, just fit into the backseat, where Erika insisted on sitting. Kristian sat beside Chiara, intensely aware of her small, compact body, the deftness of her hands on the wheel as they drove down the hill toward San Felice under a sunny sky. The skeleton vines of roses, which would bloom in the spring, drooped over every garden wall and along the fences. He watched the little town slip by, feeling a twinge of nostalgia.

  “I’m going to miss it,” he said. “Though I hardly saw anything beyond the twelve houses.”

  Chiara, pushing back a tangle of hair that had fallen over her forehead, cast him a sidelong look. “You can come back,” she said. “Come to my family’s home in Florence. I want to show you Assisi, ti ricordi?” Then, with a flush of her cheeks, she glanced into the rearview mirror. “And you, too, Erika, please. You would be welcome.”

  “Thanks,” Erika said in a dry tone, making Kristian turn in his seat to look at her. She raised her eyebrows in what he knew was meant to be a meaningful look. He just grinned, and turned back to watch the road spin past. The three of them chatted about nothing during the drive, laughing a bit, exclaiming over the tilting tower in the distance, avoiding the subject of Frederica Bannister.

  At the airport, once the wheelchair had been unloaded and opened up and Erika held one duffel on her lap, with another stowed behind her, Kristian turned to Chiara. She had managed, for once, to clip her hair into place, and she stood looking up at him, assessing him. “You are all right?” she said. “No time lag?”

  “It’s better every day. Don’t worry.”

  “It is all right to let people worry about you, Kristian.” She turned to Erika, and bent to press her cheek to hers. “Keep an eye on him,” she said. “If he seems worse, call me. You have my number in your bag.”

  “I do,” Erika said. “Come and see us in Boston. Just for a visit.”

  Chiara straightened, and turned back to Kristian. Her gaze was frank. “I might do that,” she said.

  “I hope you will,” he answered, but he knew his response sounded hollow. He didn’t know why. He liked her, had liked her from the first. He wanted to see her again.

  She put out her hand to him. On impulse, he held out his arms instead and hugged her. For a moment he pressed his cheek to her cloud of hair, and found it surprisingly soft. Something stirred in his belly, something sweet and new, but there was no time to examine it or to think about it. Time. That was always the issue. He wished he could hold on to it. He wished he could extend this moment, this feeling. With Chiara in his arms, he felt he knew for certain just when he was. It was comforting.

  “Grazie, Chiara,” he whispered.

  “Prego, Kristian.” She released him rather too quickly. As she stepped back, he tried to read her expression. She didn’t meet his eyes, and he suspected hers were a bit shinier than they should have been. He wanted to take her in his arms again, repeat the invitation to come to Boston. He even opened his mouth to do it, to set things right between them, but time got away from him.

  The next thing he knew, he and Erika were in the security line. Chiara was already gone. He had lost the minutes in which they said good-bye.

  It was strange to Kristian to be in a Boston taxicab. They had arrived very early in the morning, and they drove through a cold mist down nearly empty streets. If he closed his eyes, he could see the twisting lanes of Tuscany instead of the straight gray streets of his own city, but he knew that wasn’t a good idea. He needed to stay in the present, needed to concentrate on what was real, what was in the moment. He kept his eyes open, and made himself focus on the familiar harbor, the white skyline, the Bunker Hill Bridge with its lights looking ghostly in the fine rain. The cabbie listened to the news as he drove. They heard the headline about the Remote Research Foundation before they reached their apartment, with the news that a remote researcher, a young musicologist from Chicago, had failed to wake up after her transfer.

  A copy of the Globe was waiting for them at their doorstep. Erika opened it on the kitchen table, and the press photo of Frederica smiled up from the first page. “They’re closing down,” she called to Kristian.

  He was in his bedroom, turning his duffel upside down to empty it. “They have to,” he said. He came out of his room, passing her wheelchair resting empty in the hallway. He found her in the kitchen, in one of the straight chairs there, her cane propped beside her. She had the paper spread out in front of her.

  “I can’t believe how well you’re walking,” he said.

  She gave him an absent smile. “The vacation did me good.” She turned back to the paper.

  “Vacation! Seven hours in a plane, twice in four days?”

  “Listen, Kris. This article says Bannister is suing the Foundation, and that Congress will probably pass the bill outlawing remote research.”

  Kristian leaned wearily against the doorjamb, his arms folded. “You know, Rik, I think that’s good. It should be illegal. Even now, Braunstein doesn’t really understand what happened, and that means it could happen again.”

  Erika folded the paper and looked up at him. “Aren’t you going to tel
l them?”

  “Elliott will. He’s the tech, and he can explain it better than I can. At least, I think so. He and Max believed me, which is pretty amazing. I’m not sure I would have believed a story like that.” His eyes burned with fatigue, and he rubbed them with his fingers. “God, I’m exhausted.”

  “Are you going to tell Elliott what you did?”

  He straightened, and stared at her. “Rik! How do you know what I did?”

  She gave him a wry look. “Chiara was right, you know, Kris. You didn’t have any choice. But I want to hear what it was like. I mean—Brahms, for heaven’s sake!”

  He hesitated. “I’ll try to tell you, but honestly—I’m not sure I can describe it.”

  “It must have been so odd.”

  “Rik, it was—it was the weirdest thing I’ve ever felt in my life. It was sort of—obscene, really. Not something I’d want to do again.”

  “I’m damned glad you came back, Kris.”

  “There was never any risk there. I wanted to come back.”

  “And you think she doesn’t.”

  “I don’t know if she can, now.” He leaned against the doorjamb again. “One thing I have to tell you, Rik. I lost my temper, there at the end.”

  “You mean, in the past?”

  “Yes. I’ll try to tell you about it when I’m not so tired I can’t think.” He gave her a rueful smile. “But it turns out losing my temper can be a good thing, sometimes.”

  She picked up her cane and stood, bracing herself between it and the table. “Your name’s in the article. And your picture—this must be the one they were going to use in the first place.”

  “What does it say?”

  “It says you were sent to try to help Frederica, but you couldn’t.”

  “Is that all?”

  “Yes. Apparently the Foundation people aren’t talking much.”

  Kristian sighed, and turned back toward his bedroom. “They’ll have to talk to Congress. Even Braunstein. Without Bannister, there’s nobody to protect her.”

  She paused, watching through the doorway as he shoved his things off the bed and pulled back the blanket. “Kris, you’ll probably be subpoenaed, too.”

  He paused, thinking about it. “Yeah. Probably.”

  “What will you tell them?”

  He sat down on the bed, and kicked off his shoes. “I’ll tell them the truth. She disappeared. And then didn’t wake up.”

  Erika leaned against the doorjamb, her cane hanging loosely in her hand. “Do you still think you can protect Clara’s secret?”

  He raised his head to meet her gaze. “I have to, Rik. I’m the only one who can.”

  “It’s awfully Victorian of you. Being her champion and everything.”

  “Her champion. I like that.” He closed his heavy eyelids, just for a moment, and saw again Clara’s gentle face, the sadness in her eyes.

  When he opened his eyes again, he saw Erika frowning. She tipped her head to one side, assessing him. “No one can compare with her, can they? Not to you.”

  “Women aren’t like that anymore.”

  “Like what?”

  He hesitated, searching for the word. “Honorable, I suppose. She has such—dignity.”

  “Had. She had dignity. She’s been gone a long time.”

  He shook his head, and said softly, “It’s all in your perspective. To me, it’s as if—as if I just saw her yesterday.”

  “Kris, you should stop thinking about it. About her. You have to live in the present.”

  He sighed, and lay back on his pillow. “I know,” he said. “But I’m not sure I prefer it.”

  He hadn’t slept on the plane, which might have been why he slept so heavily all that day. He woke once, then had trouble remembering where he was. He walked to the bathroom, and the familiar plumbing seemed anachronistic and alien. He made his way back to bed, making sure first that Erika’s door was closed. He stood outside her room for a moment, laying his palm on her door as if it could tell him whether she was all right. The wheelchair sat where she had left it, a good sign.

  He smiled as he lifted his hand from her door. He must remember, he told himself, to thank her for coming all the way to Castagno when she thought he needed her. He had needed her, in fact. It would have been tough making his way home without her, losing chunks of time all along the way.

  He should thank Chiara again, too, for her care and her friendship. Catherine would never have set her own wishes aside the way his sister and Chiara had done.

  There were wonderful women in his life. Erika, Chiara, even Rosie the bartender. Why did he have to yearn for one who was a hundred and fifty years beyond his reach?

  He found his way back to bed, and in moments was sound asleep again. He hadn’t thought to pull the blinds on his window. When he woke to the rapping on his door, weak winter sunshine poured through the smeared glass. He struggled up to wakefulness, and heard Erika calling his name. “What? What’s wrong?”

  “Kris?” She sounded strange, and alarm brought him fully awake. “You’d better come out here. Put on some clothes and comb your hair.”

  “I’m coming!” His feet hit the floor a little harder than was necessary, and he felt the jolt all the way to his spine. “What time is it?”

  “It’s almost four.”

  “In the afternoon?” He blinked, and rubbed his face hard. “What is it? Are you okay?”

  “Oh, yes, I’m fine. Let’s just say—I put on some lipstick.”

  Lipstick? Erika hardly ever wore lipstick. Mystified, he did as she told him. He pulled on his jeans, and grabbed a fresh shirt from the closet. He thought he should probably brush his teeth, but he didn’t want to take the time. He opened his door, and found her standing beside the kitchen table, supported by her cane. “What is it, Rik? What’s the rush?” She had, in fact, put on some sort of pale pink lipstick and some mascara. She had also pulled her hair up in a clip and artfully loosened a few strands to fall around her face. He had never noticed her do that before. “You look great,” he said.

  She grinned. “Go and look.” She pointed to the kitchen window.

  He hurried past her to look down into the street. “What the hell is all that about?”

  “I told you, Kris. Your name and picture were in the newspaper. Someone’s been up here already asking for you.”

  “Asking for me?”

  “Yes! They want to interview you.”

  He turned away from the sight of television trucks and reporters crowding the street outside the apartment building. “But . . . but Rik—what do I do?”

  “Do you want to talk to them?”

  “I don’t know.” He stood back from the window. It made him feel strange, all those people standing on the front steps, some of them peering up at the building as if they could spot him. “What did they say?”

  “It was Channel something-or-other, and they wanted to ask you questions.”

  The phone rang, and Kris jumped. Erika laughed. “It doesn’t matter, Kris. Talk to them if you want to. If you don’t, or if you think it’s better not to, we’ll just say no.”

  The ringing of the phone was distracting. Kris crossed to it, picked it up to break the connection, and set it back in its cradle. “I have to think,” he said.

  “About what?”

  “About how to explain that I learned what p dolce meant to Brahms.”

  “Did you ever remember that song?” she asked. “The one about the girl on the swing?”

  He shook his head. “No. It’s gone, Rik. We’ll never remember, because Frederica changed the time line. She did something to the song.”

  “What could she have done?”

  “I don’t know that, either. Maybe she caused it never to be written. Or destroyed it so that it was never published.”

  “I wonder why?”

  “Anybody’s guess. She would have changed a whole lot more if she had the chance.”

  “Are you going to tell the reporters that?”

>   He stared at the phone for a moment, until it started to ring again. “No. I’m not.”

  She nodded. “Well, then, Kris. What are you going to tell them?”

  He pressed his fingers to his temples, trying to think. This was the question everyone would ask, not just the press. What could he say? How could he protect her?

  “Kris?”

  He lifted his head, and met his sister’s clear gaze. “I’ll tell them she vanished.”

  “She did.”

  “Yes, she did.”

  “And I couldn’t find her.”

  “That’s true, too.” There was a little pause, interrupted by the phone beginning to ring again. “Will that be enough?”

  “I doubt it.” He thought of the protesters in Chicago, of the senator on television. “No, I don’t think it will be enough.”

  “What should we do, then?”

  He said, with a halfhearted grin, “You look pretty, Rik. You’re all ready. Go be on television. I think I’ll wait.”

  “Wait for what?” she asked in a dry tone. “What’s going to change, Kris?”

  “Nothing, really. I just need time. I need time to figure out the right thing to say.” She gave him a quizzical look, and he grinned again. “Don’t worry. The right time will come. You’ll see.”

  21

  In the days that followed the phone rang insistently, calls from networks, from radio stations, from newspapers. The days stretched into weeks, and still Kristian didn’t respond to any of them. Erika suggested doing one interview, to stem the tide. “You could be a television star,” she said slyly, giving him a sidelong look. “They think you know what happened to Frederica.”

  He shook his head. “It would be a nine-day wonder, Rik. And what would I say? I’m more likely to blurt out something that would haunt me forever.”

  “I liked being interviewed,” she said.

  “You did a great job.”