Page 47 of Strings Attached
“Let me show you.”
I close my eyes and let myself remember—starlight through lighthouse windows, Dean’s guitar weaving with my melody, magic humming in the air between the notes. The music flows through me, raw and honest and imperfect. Every measure carries the weight of recent tears in Alex’s kitchen, the fierce joy of rediscovering myself, the ache of letting Dean go. I pour it all into the strings—the storm of losing him, the fear of an unmapped future, everything.
When the final note fades, I open my eyes to find Jules watching me, tears tracking silently down his cheeks. For perhaps the first time since I’ve known him, he seems completely lost for words. Then he breaks into applause—not his usual measured appreciation, but wild, genuine enthusiasm.
“Mon Dieu, Missy.” He removes a handkerchief from his pocket and wipes his eyes. “That was… I don’t have words. You have to record your own album. This differs completely from our classical work, but—” His arms gesture wildly. “I’ll pitch it myself. Handle all the details?—”
“Jules.” I carefully lay Giuseppe in his case. “Truly, I meant what I said. I don’t want to tour anymore.”
“You don’t have to.” He crosses to me, takes my hand in his. “But this...” He gestures to the cello. “This is real. This ismusic. It’s what we spend our whole lives chasing.” He swallows. “And you found it.” A rueful laugh spills from him. “On some provincial island without a proper cup of coffee to be found anywhere.”
“But there’s really good pie here.”
He stares at me for a moment, then bursts into a laugh. “I can concede. The pie is excellent.” He gives my fingers a soft squeeze. “You’ve found something here, haven’t you? Something beyond music.”
I think of Dean’s constellations, of magic shimmering in autumn air, of playing just for the joy of it. Of his dark eyes and strong arms. “Something including music,” I correct gently. “But yes.”
Jules releases my hands and steps back then adjusts his cuffs. “Well, then.” His smile is smaller now, but free of any subterfuge. “I suppose, if you’re serious…”
I nod. “I am. But I worry about your career. I didn’t mean to–”
He waves my protests away. “I’ll be fine, Missy. I’ll have to find a new cellist. Though I doubt anyone will inspire quite the same level of compositions.”
“You’ll write different ones.” I graze my fingers across Giuseppe’s strings. “Maybe even better ones.”
He chuckles. “Perhaps.” Then, more seriously, he says, “But you’ll think about doing a solo album? When you’re ready?”
“When I’m ready.”
Jules sighs, then smiles and turns toward his violin case and readies the instrument. For the first time since Jules arrived, the silence between us feels comfortable—like the rest between movements, necessary and right.
Dean
The string quartet knows their craft. Each note falls precise and pure, weaving magic through the melody in ways that make my teeth ache. I stand at the edge of Nell’s wedding reception, systematically destroying a cocktail napkin while pretending to be fascinated by the table arrangements. As if I care about centerpieces when every sweep of the cello bow feels like another strike against my carefully maintained control.
Some wounds cut deeper when they heal wrong. Like scars that pulse with remembered pain, that tighten and pull when storms approach. I’ve spent a decade maintaining a careful distance from my family, letting guilt be my compass. Now watching Nell float through her reception in ivory lace, radiant with a joy I once stole from her, I wonder if distance was ever the answer.
The music shifts into something slower, more intimate. The kind of piece Missy would play on quiet evenings at the lighthouse, when her guard was down and her soul spilled through her fingertips. When she wasn’t trying to be perfect, just real. God, even here, surrounded by family I haven’t seen in years, she haunts me like an unfinished bit of magic.
Just because a melody is beautiful, doesn't mean you can capture it forever.Her words haunt me now, the way her voice had cracked on ‘forever’ despite the perfect performer’s control. She’d twisted her hands in her sweater as she’d said it, but I don’t think she noticed. God, I’d wanted to reach for her then, to brush back that strand of hair falling across her cheek, to hold her one last time. But I’d kept my hands in my pockets and maintained my distance. Head Warlock Dean Markham, always so damn in control.
Later, I’d warded my cottage until the walls hummed with contained power. Then I screamed. The magic had torn out of me like a storm, like grief given form. Books flew off shelves, windows rattled in their frames, every piece of furniture shuddered with the force of my loss. I gave in to my emotions and magic in a way I hadn’t since I was a teenager. That’s my role, though, isn’t it? To be powerful. To be contained. To let the weight of magic and duty and position push away anyone who might get close enough to matter. To stand alone in rooms full of shattered things, pretending the broken pieces are only external.
“I was able to sneak up on the great Head Warlock, Dean Markham.” Nell's voice cuts through my spiral. She stands before me in her wedding dress, eyes sparkling despite the way she nervously taps her thumb against her thigh. That’s a gesture I haven’t seen in so long I thought I’d forgotten it. But something within me remembers. She forces a smile. “He must have something serious on his mind.”
“Forgive me.” I bow formally, then immediately feel ridiculous. “Congratulations.”
“Thank you.” Silence stretches between us like a ward line about to break. “Are you going to spend the entire night lurking?”
“I excel at lurking. It’s a professional requirement.”
Her lips twitch. “Some things never change.” I nod, but I’m not sure what to say. Everything has changed between us. We’d once been inseparable. Now I don’t even know how to speak to her. She shrugs like she’s trying to pull on a jacket that no longer fits. “Could I convince you to dance with me?”
The question catches me off guard. For a moment I’m frozen, caught between old guilt and new hope. But her hand is already extended, and some choices make themselves. “Of course.”
We sweep onto the dance floor, and it hits me how grown she looks. She’s pulled her dark waves back into a sleek chignon at the nape of her neck, and her jewelry exudes sophistication rather than the playfulness of the pieces she wore the last time I saw her. My little sister, the one I used to chase around with sparklers, now stands my height in heels. The string quartet plays something achingly beautiful, and I’m drowning in memories of another musician, another dance, another person I let slip through my fingers.
“Head Warlock of Magnolia Cove by thirty.” Nell's voice carries that familiar teasing lilt. “Always the overachiever.”
