Chapter 3 - The Music Room Secret
At nine-fifteen, the house was a tomb.
The grandfather clock in the hall struck the quarter-hour with a heavy, wet thunk that vibrated through the floorboards. Grace knelt in the center of the music room, the blue tin of silver polish open beside her on a velvet cloth. Her fingers were blackened with grey-black residue, her knees aching from the damp cold that seeped up through the floor from the old harbor mud below the hill.
The music room was the largest space in the house, dominated by a nine-foot Steinway grand piano that looked like a sleek, black shark stranded on a parquet beach. Above the mantel hung a massive oil painting of a woman with Michael’s eyes—the same severe jaw, the same pale, uncompromising stare—holding a string of pearls that seemed to drip like grease.
Grace dipped her cloth into the blue paste, humming under her breath—very softly, just enough to keep the silence from pressing down on her ears. ‘If you want to sing out, sing out…’
"I told you about the singing," a voice said from the shadows near the balcony.
Grace shrieked, dropping the jar of polish. It didn't spill—it was too thick—but the lid rolled across the floor with a metallic clatter that sounded like a gunshot in the vaulted room.
Michael stepped out from beneath the shadow of the balcony stairs. He was holding a glass of amber liquid in one hand, the ice cubes clinking softly against the crystal. He wasn't wearing his jacket; his white shirt was open at the collar, showing the dark shadow of chest hair and another long, white scar that ran down toward his ribs.
"Mr. Cain," she gasped, clutching her chest. "You said nobody would be here until midnight."
"I lied," Michael said, walking over to the Steinway. He didn't look at her; he looked at the polished wood of the piano lid, where his own distorted reflection stared back at him. "Or rather, I changed my mind. Frank is downtown dealing with some union business on Commercial Street. He won't be back until two."
"You shouldn't sneak up on people," Grace muttered, her courage returning in a sudden flash of teenage irritation that she was far too tired to suppress. "People with hearts like mine don't need the extra exercise."
Michael paused, his glass halfway to his mouth. For a second, he looked genuinely surprised—not angry, just... tilted off his axis, like a picture frame hanging crooked on a wall. Then, slowly, he took a sip of the scotch.
"Your mother never talked back," he said, though there was no bite in it.
"My mother has six years on her mortgage and a bad hip," Grace said, scrubbing vigorously at the foot of the piano leg. "I have eighteen years of bad temper and nothing to lose. There’s a difference."
"Is that why you were singing this morning?" Michael asked, leaning his hip against the corner of the piano. "Because you have nothing to lose?"
Grace stopped scrubbing. She looked up at him, her dark eyes flashing in the amber light of the wall sconces. "I was singing because the radio in the kitchen works if you hit it twice on the side. And because if I didn't make some kind of noise in this mausoleum, I was going to start screaming until the glass in those windows broke."
Michael didn't move. He stood there for a long, heavy moment, the ice melting in his glass, looking down at her with a look that wasn't cold anymore. It was something heavier—something like hunger, or the recognition of a ghost.
"My mother played this piano," Michael said suddenly, his voice dropping so low Grace had to strain to catch the words over the wind outside. "Before she died in that fire on Pearl Street. She played Chopin. Badly. She always missed the third trill in the middle movement."
He reached out a large, scarred hand—the hand that held the city in a chokehold—and pressed a single white key on the Steinway.
Plink.
The note hung in the vast, empty room, dying a slow, beautiful death against the velvet drapes.
"She didn't care about the neighbors," Michael whispered. "She didn't care about the rules. She just... played."
He looked down at Grace, his grey eyes catching the light from the fire that hadn't been lit in ten years. "Don't stop, Grace."
May you like
"Sir?"
"The song," Michael said, turning his glass in his fingers. "The one you were humming about the rain. Sing it again. But louder this time. I want to see if the windows really break."
