Janine laughs a short, staccato laugh. “Now that may be the biggest understatement I’ve heard all year.”
“Do you need us to help you with anything?” Griffon’s eyes shine with excitement, and he looks at Janine questioningly.
“No. I know you’re dying to show Cole, so go on. I’ll take care of this stuff.”
“Show me what?”
“It’s a surprise,” Griffon says, leading me out of the kitchen and up the stairs. Instead of turning right into his room, we walk farther down the hall until we come to a closed door. Griffon cups my face in his hands “God, it’s good to see you,” he says, leaning in to give me a quick, intense kiss. “Feels like it’s been forever.”
I laugh. “It’s only been a couple of days.”
“Guess I’m trying to make up for lost time,” he says. “And there’s a lot of lost time to make up for.” He runs his finger over the ankh that hangs around my neck.
I put my hand around it, the silver warm from my skin. As I touch it, I hear Drew’s voice in my ear. Allison. Goose bumps form on my arms as I try to shake off a feeling of foreboding. “I never did say thanks,” I say, shifting my focus to Griffon. To us. “For bringing this back.”
“You don’t have to,” he says. “I’m just glad that it’s finally where it belongs.”
He opens the door to what looks like a small, sunny office. “Don’t get mad, but I got you something.” Leaning up against the desk is a big black cello case.
“A cello?” I look at him sideways. “I have a cello. Two, even. For all the good they do me now.”
“Not just a cello,” Griffon says. He unlatches the sides of the lid and lifts it out. “A right-handed cello.”
“Right-handed?” I take a step closer. “What do you mean, right-handed? Cellos only come one-handed.”
“Not this one,” he says. “This one has been completely rebuilt to be played with right-handed fingering. Since you’re having trouble using your left hand, I figured you could try this one and still keep playing.”
“I’ve never heard of anything like it.” I sit down in the office chair and examine it. The strings are backward, right to left, and the bridge is set at a slightly different angle than I’m used to. It’s a beautiful instrument. I’m almost afraid to touch it.
“I did some research. Charlie Chaplin used to have one just like it,” he says. “Try it.”
Experimentally, I lean it against my right shoulder and put my right hand on the neck. “This is so weird,” I say. I look up at him. “It’s amazing, but … I don’t know if I can do it. I’ve been playing one way all my life.”
Griffon sits down across from me and lifts my left hand, kissing the fingers that no longer work as they should. “Veronique tried to take everything that’s important to you. We can’t let her win. The knowledge about how to play isn’t in here,” he says, tapping my ring finger. “It’s in your head. And your heart. You just have to retrain the body in order to release that knowledge. A note is just a finger on a string. It doesn’t matter which finger.” He hands me the bow and a block of rosin.
I tighten the bow and put the rosin on it, my hands shaking just a little. I can’t believe he’s gone to so much trouble, and I can’t spoil the look on his face by disappointing him. The balance on the bow is a little weird in my left hand, but I can put enough pressure on it to make it work.
“Here goes nothing,” I say. Closing my eyes, I let my right hand find the notes to one of my own compositions as best they can. It isn’t perfect by any stretch, but my reach is okay, and it’s just a matter of rethinking where everything goes. Instead of worrying about hitting the right notes, I reach deep inside for the emotion that makes them sing. I pull up everything that has happened in the past several weeks—the fear, the trust, and mostly the desire—and let it all play across the strings. The music resonates in the room as I lift the bow and open my eyes to see Griffon grinning like a madman.
“That was amazing,” he says quietly.
“Not amazing.” I set the cello gently back in its case, surprised at the lump I feel in my throat, like I’ve just been given a gift that’s bigger than strings and wood. “But maybe it will be someday.” I lean over and kiss him intensely on the mouth. “It’s the most beautiful thing anyone has ever given me. I can’t accept it, though. It must have cost a fortune.”
Griffon shakes his head. “It doesn’t matter,” he says. “Money isn’t a problem. Trust me. You have to take it, because I can’t return it.”
“Still—”
Griffon blocks my objections by kissing me, one hand running fingers through my hair. He moves to the floor and pulls me down to him. “You have to. I owe it to you.”
“You don’t owe me anything.”
“But I do,” he says. “The minute I touched you on Tower Green, I knew that one of the things I had to do in this life is to look after you. And I didn’t.”
“You tried to warn me,” I say. “It’s not your fault that I didn’t trust you.” I lean in and kiss him, feeling his soft, full lips on mine and inhaling his warm, spicy scent.
“I meant what I said the other night,” he whispers, his breath on the side of my neck sending shivers through my body. “When I said I love you. I’ve never meant anything more in any lifetime.”
I study his face, but this time I don’t see the eyes of my executioner. I see the eyes of the boy that I can’t imagine living without. For once, I’m not wondering about how he really feels, about what he really means. I can feel the truth in his words—the truth that is in his heart.
“Two truths and a lie,” I say. “My turn.”
“Okay.” He grins.
“Right now is the happiest I’ve ever been. Tomatoes are my favorite food.” I pause for just a second. “And I love you.”
Griffon studies my face. “I’m hoping that you still hate tomatoes.”
“See, you’re getting better at this.”
Griffon laughs as he leans in to kiss me again. I feel his desire as I press myself into him, and I know that whatever happens in this lifetime or the next, I’ll remember this moment, these emotions. From now on, good or bad, nothing is lost. Everything will be kept. Forever.
Acknowledgments
The acknowledgments page is the hardest one to write because it takes so many people to create every book, and I’m terrified of leaving someone out. But I’ll do my best. This story wouldn’t exist without the following people:
Erin Murphy, who makes us lean in closely to hear her soft-spoken words of agent-y wisdom.
Mary Kate Castellani, the editor who never lets me get away with anything, and who transformed a manuscript I thought was pretty good into an extraordinary story.
Emily Easton and everyone at Walker, for their vision and support from the very first idea.
Jen Cervantes and Amy B. White, for reading the early draft when it really wasn’t very good.
Natalie Lorenzi, for emergency Italian translations.
Robin Mellom, for long rambling phone calls, anguished e-mails, and propping me up. And for junk food.
Daisy Whitney, for regularly being available to text after midnight.
Gabrielle Charbonnet, for going there before me and giving great advice.
Ammi-Joan Paquette, Julie Phillips, and Kip Wilson, for being so enthusiastic about those first early chapters.
Portia Kunz, Liesl Kunz, and Devin McKeown, the most critical and intelligent teen readers around.
RJ, Linzey, Anna, Danielle, Dakota, Harper, Philip, Devon, and all of the other teens who hang around my house, eat my food, and always answer honestly when I shout out questions like: “How would you kill a person and make it look like an accident?”