“That’s right. I remember now.” Samuel seemed to be pondering this bit of musical theory very seriously, and I kept stealing looks at his frowning countenance. I cleared the dishes, and we washed and dried side by side, Beethoven’s 13th winding down behind us. He walked in to the living room and switched it off as I put the last dish in the cupboard. He moved to the piano and lifted the lid over the keys.
“I haven’t heard you play for so long, Josie. Will you play for me tonight? His voice was wistful as his fingers ran over the piano keys.
“I don’t know. You never did sing me the Irish Lament,” I teased gently, reminding him of our agreement at Burraston’s Pond.
“Hmm. That’s true. We had a deal. Okay…I’ll tell you the Irish Lament; I won’t sing it. But you have to promise me something first.”
I waited, looking at him.
“You have to promise you won’t run away.”
Samuel moved from the bench, tall and straight, and looked down at me. “I don’t want the poem to make you feel uncomfortable. It’s a poem about lovers. It might scare you and make you run away, or it might make you fall in love with me.” I blushed and snorted as if his suggestion was ludicrous.
“So I can’t run away but it’s okay if I fall in love with you?”
“That depends,” he retorted smoothly.
“On what?”
“On whether you run away.”
“You’re speaking in riddles.”
He shrugged. “Do we have a deal?”
“Deal.” I held out my hand, but my heart lurched a little in my chest.
Samuel closed his eyes for a minute, as if to pull the words from some recess in his mind, then he tilted his head toward me and began to recite softly:
Oh, a wan cloud was drawn o’er the dim weeping dawn
As to Josie’s side I returned at last,
And the heart in my breast for the girl I lov’d best
Was beating, ah, beating, how loud and fast!
While the doubts and the fears of the long aching years
Seem’d mingling their voices with the moaning flood:
Till full in my path, like a wild water wraith,
My true love’s shadow lamenting stood.
But the sudden sun kiss’d the cold, cruel mist
Into dancing show’rs of diamond dew,
And the dark flowing stream laugh’d back to his beam,
And the lark soared aloft in the blue:
While no phantom of night but a form of delight
Ran with arms outspread to her darling boy,
And the girl I love best on my wild throbbing breast
Hid her thousand treasures with cry of joy.
There was a giant lump in my throat, and we stared at each other. I breathed deeply, trying to halt the emotion rising over me. Samuel closed the final step between us.
“That’s exactly how it happened, too. You suddenly came out of nowhere in the middle of a rainstorm. And then you were in my arms.”
“Are you trying to seduce me, Samuel?” I’d meant to sound playful, but my voice came out in a low plea.
“No.” Samuel’s voice was warm and intense, and he shook his head as he spoke.
“Am I the ‘girl you love best’?” Again my striving for lightness fell short, as I was unable to clothe the words in jest. I didn’t want him to answer my question and quickly withdrew my gaze from his and walked to the piano. I slid onto the bench and launched into Chopin’s Fantasie Impromptu, my fingers flying dizzily over the keys, the music as frenzied and frantic as my racing heart. The second movement smoothed into the lovely melody and I played for several minutes with Samuel standing behind me, unmoving. When the piece resumed the flying pace of the opening movement, he moved behind me and placed his hands on my shoulders, and I struggled to finish the number.
“You ran away. You said you wouldn’t.” Samuel sighed behind me.
“I’m right here.”
“Your fingers are flying, trying to escape.”
I put my hands in my lap and bowed my head. Music was too revealing. Chopin had just told Samuel exactly what I was feeling, despite my attempts to avoid him.
One of Samuel’s hands rose to my bowed head and he traced a loose curl that had been lying against the nape of my neck with his calloused fingers. I shivered. “Will you play something else?”
“You can’t touch me. I...I can’t concentrate when you do.” My voice was a whisper, and I cringed at the childlike breathiness.
Samuel’s hands fell away from my shoulders, and he moved away without response and leaned against the living room door, where he could see my face as I played. That wasn’t much better. I tried to close my eyes so I could concentrate. I knew what he wanted to hear. I knew what I wanted to play, but worried that once again, it would lay my heart open, revealing too much.
I let my fingers dance lightly across the keys, giving in to the vulnerability that I knew echoed in my very first composition. I hadn’t written any music for a very long time. I had composed feverishly until I met Kasey, and then I’d let myself be seventeen. I’d been young and in love, and I hadn’t felt the melancholy that induced my most creative moments, and I hadn’t wanted to write. I’d wanted to be seventeen. I had enjoyed acting my age for once in my life. Of course, since he’d died, melancholy hadn’t been a problem. But my gift had been strangely silent in the last five years.
Now Samuel’s Song rose lovingly from the keys and wound its way around us. I embellished as I played, remembering all the old feelings. A girl in love with someone she couldn’t have. My heart ached in my chest, but I let it. I wasn’t going to hide anymore. I kept my eyes closed, and my hands knew their way. The keys were cool against my fingertips, and I lost myself in the sweet agony of my song.