Page 108 of Crescendo

His mouth twisted sadly. “You could—”

“I can’t give up my life here either, Dad.”

He nodded and we were quiet for a moment, watching Lydia and Papa play together on the stage, laughing as they did.

“You know, for four years, all you’ve been afraid of is losing things, so you’ve tried not to have anything worth losing.”

I let out a strangled breath. He was right, of course, but I hadn’t been expecting him to just come out with it like that. “Right,” I said, the word mangled.

“Now, you found someone who let you open the door again, let you feel something, even when you knew you might lose them. Your dad and I have been through more than enough grief counselling to know that’s no small thing. We knowyouwell enough to know it’s not a small thing.”

“Okay…” I frowned. I understood his point but I wasn’t sure what to do.

“Loving someone—in whatever form that might take—is never going to be easy, sweetheart. It requires trust and losing control. It means imagining things differently than you have been. It means letting go and trusting that they’re going to catch you, just as you’ll be there to catch them.”

“I don’t understand,” I said, slightly frustrated that I couldn’t make my brain make sense, even as the pounding in my chest suggested my heart knew what he was getting at.

He smiled softly. “Your whole life, you’ve been so set on the things you wanted to do, and then, four years ago, the unthinkable happened and you just stopped. No more big dreams, no more letting go. Just keeping everything exactly the same and working yourself to death, like you were biding time until it finally caught you up.” He nodded towards Lydia. “What does it feel like when you think about playing the clarinet in front of her?”

Panic spiked in my chest and my eyes found her instinctively, my heart calming at the sight of her.

That was the other reason we were here, wasn’t it? Because I knew what my piece needed. It needed clarinets. I’d poured my soul into that thing, poured Callum into that piece, but it couldn’t be the two of us without those damn clarinets. And, while I’d thought the trip out here might help Lydia with her block, I’d also wondered whether here, in this place that screamed Callum, in my home, with her by my side, I might finally be ready.

Papa, I knew, had kept my clarinet in pristine condition. He had others, too, in case I wasn’t ready for that one. And, for the first time in four years, I’d actually felt ready to face it. To try. To show Lydia that I could do something right.

Dad was a patient man, he waited through a whole song for me to answer.

“It feels like I want her to know that part of me,” I said quietly.

He smiled, and I knew what he was thinking. I was thinking it too. That the clarinet was this last, hidden, broken part of me, and I wanted to share that with Lydia.

“Crescendo really was the best thing you could have done with this sabbatical,” he said. “Big dreams, big feelings, big changes.”

I laughed, the sound unsure. “It’s all just silly, really. I’m trying to win a competition I have no right winning, to be played at the Royal Albert Hall.”

“Why wouldn’t you deserve that?”

I shot him a look. “Because I’m not a musician, Dad. I’m not like Lydia and Papa and Callum. I’m not a composer.”

“You’ve been a musician your whole life, sweetheart. It just took you some time to find it again.”

“I’m a doctor.”

“You are, and we’re ridiculously proud of you for that—seriously, Papa is still leading with that whenever he meetssomeone new—but it’sallyou’ve been for the last four years, and nobody is meant to be just one thing. Especially not you, darling. It doesn’t have to be one or the other. You aren’t only one thing.” He looked at me pointedly. “And love isn’t only one thing, either. It’s huge and scary and beautiful. And it’s capable of far more than we give it credit for.”

My heart pounded in my chest and I looked back at Lydia. Lydia who was an incredible composer, but also an incredible performer, who’d been trying out different musical styles, and who was up on our local pub’s stage, playing the violin with my dad’s band, looking like she was having the time of her life. Lydia who lived somewhere else, but who also fit in here.

Lydia who I didn’t want to give up at the end of this whole thing, and who, just maybe, it didn’t all have to be black and white with.

Chapter 23

Lydia

“You’re not too bad, you know,” Ella’s dad said, sliding into the seat next to me in the low lights of the pub. With the band finally off the stage to make way for someone else inspired by the sequined suit and looking to make some noise, Ella and her Papa—who I’d finally learned was named Edward and went by every possible permutation of it except for Edward—had gone back to the bartender together, and her dad Tom, a very clean-cut and put-together kind of man with short dark stubble and the kind of kindly-looking wrinkles around his lips and at the corners of his eyes, apparently wanted to take the opportunity to corner me.

“Thanks, I do try sometimes,” I said, raising my beer stein to his. “I aim not to be the worst musician, at least.”

“Eddie taught music for years and has been playing little shows like this for over a decade, and you step on the stage and it’s like he’s not even there anymore. It’s very inconsiderate, all told,” he said lightly.

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