Page 221 of Perfect Pitch

My father makes a pithy comment about me being a killjoy. I outright laugh. “What if Mitch said something like that about me?”

His gaze drifts to the audience again where Mitch and Kane guard Mama. “I’d beat him bloody with his own arm.”

“You are such a damn hypocrite, it’s unbelievable.”

“I’m not a hypocrite, I’m a father.”

“What’s the difference?”

“Everything. And I can’t wait for the day you find out.”

“At the right time, Dad.” It only causes a small pang in my chest to say that to him now when his comment would have had me curled up sobbing a few months ago.

As if he knows what we’re talking about, I feel Mitch’s eyes trained on the curtain from where he’s hovering over Mama. Where he’ll be watching over me the moment I step out onto the stage.

My father opens his mouth, likely to try to lecture me in some utterly ridiculous fashion. I mean, my father’s Beckett Miller. He’s done everything, said everything, seen everything. The utter posturing in whatever he’s going to say would draw unwanted attention to us as I fall to the floor laughing. I direct his interest back to my mother by murmuring, “She’s magnificent, isn’t she, Dad?”

“She’s incandescent.”

Mama whirls around as Marco Houde taps her on the shoulder. She stands to greet him and his fiancée with a smile. She gestures to her left and introduces my grandfather.

After the horror of what happened with Trevor, I urged my parents to reach out to my grandfather. Yes, his transgressions were heinous toward all of us. But as I reminded everyone as I was curled next to Mitch while my parents faced us on the opposite sofa, “In the end, he has to witness the love the two of you share. Isn’t that enough punishment when he’s endured a life without Grams?”

Still, it was difficult for me to accept the things he said and the years with my father he caused me to miss. I expunge my fury about it with Sonia during our sessions, which I increased to twice weekly. My father swallows hard before saying, “If I had a chance to turn back time, I’d give up every penny to my name to spend it with her and you.”

And just as the house lights begin to flash on and off, signaling for everyone to take their seats, I whisper, “I know, Dad. Now, let’s go kick a little ass.”

He presses a kiss to my forehead. “Break a leg, darling.”

I wink before reaching for the headset the stagehand holds for me. “You too.”

We do a quick sound check. Then the lights dim.

Three.

Two.

One.

First, I slip out of the wings. Then he follows me. Both of us head directly to center stage.

He waits for a break in the tremendous applause before speaking. “Thank you all very much. When I agreed to work with Evangeline Brogan and Simon Houde on a score for a Broadway show a little more than a year ago, I was asked to consider writing about the story of my life. What I didn’t realize is that so much of the pain in my life had already been endured by so many others. But so much had yet to be healed. Both are due to the same reason: a woman.”

There’s a tittering in the audience and I have to try not to join them. My father continues, “This woman encompasses more than the simple concept of past, present, and future—she’s omnipresent. She is a healer, a warrior, and someone who nurtures those around her. Quite simply, she’s composed of the traits that historically would have her revered as a queen. With my co-composer’s help, we worked with Evangeline and Simon to bring modern music to a heartbreaking story of survival, theft, and justice. It’s the true story of Adele Bloch-Bauer, the muse behind Gustav Klimt’s famous Golden Lady paintings.”

There’s a hum through the audience as we move off the stage so we can come up beneath it and sing the songs my father and I composed about the love we have for my mother then, now, always, and for another woman whose last remnants were left behind in the smoldering ashes of her life.

Unbelievably, we’re about to lead off with a song he wrote about my mother and—unbeknownst to her—the strength she gave me to find myself after the loss of my own child.

One day, when we’re ready, that’s what I want to give our child, I think fiercely as I sit down at the piano opposite my father. Through the murky darkness, I feel Mitch’s eyes on me, and warmth fills up my heart.

I whisper almost soundlessly, “And a one, two, three...”

On four, I wait for my father to hit the first chord and his fingers dance along the keys. His baritone adds a haunting quality to the melancholy notes. “Is there more for a man like me? Each day gets longer, harder. I am worn. I am worn. So many days remain. Then Moses revealed you to me. Days swirl. Nights drift by. You remained in my heart. Always.”

I lean forward and add my voice—my perfect pitch melding with his. “I became your disciple. Lived for you and me.”

“Until a war they fought tore me apart. I knew I had to go. Don’t make me go. The choice wasn’t mine to make. So many days ahead. How do I go on without you when heaven’s gate arrives?”

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