Chapter 10 - The Spring Morning
Three months later, the cherry trees along Beacon Street were finally beginning to bud, their pale pink blossoms punching through the late-winter slush like promises kept.
Inside the Cain mansion, the smell of turpentine and floor wax had been replaced by something entirely foreign: the faint, buttery scent of pancakes and roasted coffee beans.
In the second parlor, the grand piano was open.
Grace sat on the bench, her hair pinned back properly with a tortoiseshell clip, her fingers poised over the white ivory keys. She wasn't wearing an oversized sweater anymore; she wore a simple blue cotton dress that Rosa had helped her hem the week before.
Standing by the window, looking out over the sparkling expanse of the Boston Harbor where the container ships moved in and out without interference from the Italian syndicate or the city council, was Michael.
His right leg still had a slight limp—a souvenir from the night the library burned—and the scar along his jaw was a little more prominent where a burning ember had grazed his skin. But he wasn't holding a glass of scotch. He was holding a mug of black coffee, his shoulders relaxed beneath a simple black pullover.
"You're missing the third trill," Michael said without turning around.
Grace smiled, her fingers striking the keys. Plink-plink-pl-plink.
It wasn't Chopin. It was that silly three-chord folk tune from the mid-nineties—the one about rain and old shoes, off-key, cheerful, and utterly fearless.
May you like
Michael turned from the window, walking slowly across the polished parquet floor until he stood right beside the bench. He didn't say anything about the rules. He didn't mention the silence, or the harbor, or the men who used to bleed in the hallways.
He simply reached down, placed his large, scarred hand over hers on the keys, and pressed the final note down together with her until the sound died away into the warm, sunlit air of a room that finally belonged to the living.
