Page 17 of The Cost of Forgetting You

Lucy Barlow is the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen.

I’ve also said a grand total of five words to her in the years I’ve been attending this church with my parents. She’s Pastor Timothy’s kid, and I’ve never been too keen to draw his attention my way by telling his daughter that the light from the chandeliers makes her hair look like spun golden thread. Or that listening to her sing hymns takes me far away, to a room with only the two of us in it, her grayish-blue eyes chilling me even as the curves of her body send a rush of blood to somewhere that’s definitely not appropriate for church.

I shift on the piano bench. Images of my grandma standing stark naked in the bathtub while Mom washes her play like the world’s worst slideshow in my mind. Anything to keep from getting a boner while my parents chat with the pastor in the next room over.

It’s our own little Sunday tradition. I allow myself to be dragged from my bed and shoved into a pew for two long hours, and in exchange, they commandeer a moment of Pastor Timothy’s time after services have ended. For those glorious minutes each Sunday morning, I take advantage of the petite grand piano to the left of the green-carpeted stage. The nicest thing this small-town church owns, it was donated by a parishioner who came from old money and passed with no one to inherit it. Now it’s used to bang out choppy hymns that Lucy somehow turns into music with her angelic voice, and for me to spin notes and melodies into songs that will never be heard outside these four walls.

They could be though. Sometimes I allow myself to wish for as much. I’ve got pamphlets for music schools tucked away under my schoolbooks at home. In the dark of night, I convince myself I could make a go of it. Really give this music thing a shot. My parents wouldn’t sign up to go into debt over a career that may never make money, but Nashville isn’t too far away. Perhaps I could skip college altogether and just move there when I graduate. Play in the bars after nightfall and get discovered by some unsuspecting agent…

“What is that you’re playing, Henry?”

I jolt, my fingers seizing on a glaringly loud minor key. When I look up, blinking the imagined cigarette smoke of some faraway bar out of my eyes, there’s Lucy, perched on the other side of the piano. Her delicate elbow is balanced to the right of the lid prop, cheek cupped in her petite hand. There’s a silver purity ring twinkling on her third finger, a reminder to herself and everyone else of her promise to wait.

I’d wait forever for Lucy Barlow.

Anxiety bubbles in my abdomen. She’s staring at me expectantly, but I’ve forgotten every word in the English language except beautiful, beautiful, beautiful.

Her gaze takes its time roaming over my face. Suddenly I’m certain all my secrets, the hours I’ve spent sitting in the pews rapt as she sings to the congregation, are written plainly for her to read. I flush crimson, glancing back at the keys and my trembling hands resting atop them.

“Is it an original?”

“What?” I croak.

“The song.” She moves around the piano and gestures with the flick of a hand for me to scoot, which I oblige. When she sits down beside me, the scent of honeysuckle fills my lungs. “I’ve never heard it before. Did you write it?”

“I—” My mouth opens and closes like a fish gasping for air. I’m floundering. Even so, her rosebud lips turn up at the corners. The softness in her features, so unlike the fire and brimstone of her father, relaxes something in me. I exhale slowly and smile in return. “It’s just something I like to play around with.”

“Can I play too?”

“Yeah—yes.” I smile, this time so hard my cheeks ache. “I don’t really know where I’m going with it.”

“That’s okay.” She spreads her hands over the keys, trilling a little melody as a warmup. “We can find out together.”

And we do. When we start to play, music flows from me in a way it never has. Like it’s a language I’m speaking that only Lucy knows, and she answers with a gusto that hits me hard in the chest. It stretches and splinters, embeds itself in every piece of me. Sweat beads at my brow. A lump forms in my throat. The harmony we have found unfurls and bellows through the cavernous sanctuary. It dances between the pews. Creates shadows behind the stained glass. An entire story—an entire world—is born beneath our fingertips. It’s birth and death; it’s the beginning of the end.

I don’t know how long we play, only that I’d do it until my lungs give out. Until my muscles melt away from my bones and I am nothing but a memory. But eventually the song finds its way to the end. Lucy’s long, thin fingers trill that same melody she used to warm up, and it’s the perfect ending. I wonder how she could’ve possibly known.

“You’re magic,” I whisper. Completely unintentionally.

She hears, though, and it’s her turn to blush. It colors the apples of her cheeks and dusts the tops of her ears. Her hands fall to her lap, spreading her yellow cotton dress flat over her thighs. I let my gaze trail across their swells and valleys. My fingers flex. I’ve never touched a girl, but I instinctively know what Lucy would feel like. How soft, how warm she would be.

A throat being cleared throws a bucket of cold water on my thoughts.

“Lucy, what are you doing?”

She glances up at her dad, and the spark our playing ignited in her gaze morphs. The one before melted her eyes into pools of the brightest blue. This one turns them glacial.

“We were playing some music, Daddy.” She stands up, back ramrod straight, and steps away from the bench. Every inch of distance she puts between us tightens the noose around my heart until I’m certain it’s going to stop beating.

Pastor Timothy folds one hand over the other, a Bible clutched in his grasp, and presses them against his protruding belly. Waylon Parker, a kiss up who follows the pastor everywhere since leaving the military a year ago, echoes the movement. Part of me wants to ask if he does it on purpose, or if he’s just that far up Pastor Timothy’s ass. The other part of me—one with a bit more self-preservation skills—decides to refrain. For now.

“You know our son, Henry,” Mom says, extending a hand with nails painted ruby red in my direction. Her other clutches the string of my grandmother’s pearls around her neck. “He’s always had a knack for music. Hasn’t he, David?”

Dad is zoned out, probably thinking about the football game he’s missing at home, when Mom’s elbow connects with his rib.

“Huh? Oh, yes. Loves his music.” He rubs a hand over the affronted rib. “Can’t hardly get him to focus on anything else these days.”

Pastor Timothy is watching me with one bushy black eyebrow cocked. Lucy got her blonde hair from her mom—a quiet woman who works in the nursery each Sunday and stays there with Lucy’s younger brother and sister until it’s finally time to return home to the parsonage. There is no darkness in Lucy. Not like her father.

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