Page 77 of The Kiss Of Death
The realization, like a venomous serpent, coiled around my psyche, injecting a perverse sense of accomplishment into my veins.
I was right.
“She always cooked the same meal while putting that music on repeat. Every damn day. My mother never missed one routine of hers. She was not made for the unexpected.” I said this out loud, not that I meant to.
“It must have been special to her,” Dalia whispered in that soft voice of hers.
Oh, it was.
“The last time she tried to put that song on again, I was so pissed because I needed to goddamn focus. Imagine hearing the same song on repeat for sixteen years—you’d go crazy. She obviously didn’t stop the music and continued to act as if I didn’t exist. So I broke that damn stereo. I wanted to take that away from her. She went insane, trying to repair that thing like her lifedepended on it. I told her she wouldn’t even be half as worried if it was me bleeding on the floor, that I loathed her and wished she had never given birth to me.”
Dalia remained mute, the silence broken only by the cracks of construction tools.
I mechanically traced the edges of the piano keys. “She died the next day.”
This charade, a masquerade of melodies and hidden messages, concealed the answer I was seeking—that I, in my unwanted existence, was the catalyst for my mother’s tragic finale.
Mother dearest did all of that just to get to this conclusion. And here I thought that maybe it wasn’t all because of me that she died. That someone else was to blame. An explanation. That I could stop feeling this way. But no, it was all me.
“It’s not your fault.” Dalia leaned forward, her hand hesitant to reach mine. “You played beautifully tonight, and she’d be proud of you. She wanted you to play again. That’s why she created a piano score. It makes so much more sense because she taught you how to play.”
No, that music score was only a confirmation.
My jaw clenched, and I laughed. This charade was over.
She had never loved me. She died because of me. I should have never been born.My laughter echoed even more in the room. Dalia looked at me as if I had lost my mind, though that didn’t stop her from continuing her speech.
“She created a duet, so maybe she didn’t want you to be alone, just like she was.”
I stepped up from the piano, and pointed at Dalia. She was right. She was goddamn right. “I couldn’t have decrypted the music score alone. You’re the one who solved this because you knew her.”
Dalia’s bright smile illuminated her face. “Maybe she wanted us to connect after all these years of not talking?”
“Impossible,” I denied between clenched teeth, my fingers curling around the piano’s lid.
It was not thanks to my mother. She did nothing. It was me. Nother. She couldn’t have planned this. I did. I implicated Dalia because I wanted to, not because it was another scheme of my mother’s to torture me with what I couldn’t have.
“You should leave. We’re done with all of this.” My words were shards of rage, each one laced with bitterness.
It felt like my brain was on the brink of an explosion, a chaotic tempest brewing within the confines of my skull. I teetered on the edge of losing the calculated chess game against my mother’s ghost.
“There’s more to it.” Dalia tried to hold me back. “Together, we created a third music score. I think it’s the final key to whatever you want to find! This is not over. It has to—”
“Forget about it. I’m done,” I bellowed. Done playing my mother’s game.
What could she have to say that I didn’t know anyway? She was dead, and the dead lost their right to speak, especially the ones who chose the easy way out.
There was nothing more to find.
It was all my fault.
Now I could finally move on and forget about her and this fucking hope.
Feelings, fucking weakness.
“Levi, no, there’s more to—”
“I told you to give it up!” I roared, my fist crashing against the piano keys. The instrument wailed in protest. “It’sover.”
