An hour passed, two.
Sometime after midnight, he finally accepted that Sarah wasn’t going to call him.
His jaw clenched as he sat on the edge of the bed, his muscles rigid and his emotions black and twisted. Before, he’d have gone for the drugs, tried to drown it all out. If he didn’t feel, he couldn’t hurt. Today he went to the baby grand piano that sat beside the glass doors that led out onto the patio. He stared at it, his soul aching.
Before Noah had shared “Sparrow” with them, he hadn’t played it for years, not since the last day his baby sister spent in his home. She’d been healthy then, had come to stay with him while his parents went on a little vacation; he and Tessie had decided on their own vacation and gone to Disneyland three times in a week.
The rest of the time, they’d made music together, Tessie as drawn to song as Abe. After they buried her, his tiny sister who had never had a chance, he hadn’t been able to bear the memories that came flooding back when his fingers touched the keys: of Tessie dancing while he played, saying, “More! More!” when he dared stop.
But those memories weren’t the only ones that haunted him now when he looked at the piano.
The anguish on Sarah’s face, his wife’s footsteps as she ran from him.
Spinning away from the baby grand, he went to the other piano in the room, placed all the way on the other side. And he played. What came out wasn’t hard and raw but soft, melancholy. A nocturne.
The one Sarah had been playing that night.
The birds outside were chirping in the predawn light and his hands ached by the time he stopped. And still there was no message on his phone.
He went to bed at last, only to be awakened four hours later by the buzzer that announced a visitor at the gate. Groaning, he put a pillow over his head and tried to ignore it. That was when his phone began ringing.
“What?” he growled into it without looking at the screen to see who it was.
“Abe?”
The husky feminine voice chased all sleep from his mind. “Sarah?” He sat up. “Is everything all right?”
“I’m here,” Sarah responded instead of answering him. “Can I come in?”
Had Abe been on drugs, he’d have been sure he was hallucinating. As it was, he wondered if he was dreaming. “Yeah, sure. Give me a second.” Getting out of bed wearing what he usually wore to sleep—nothing—he didn’t even try to find the gate remote. He just made his way to the control panel and let her in.
He was still standing there butt naked when Sarah’s car pulled up. “Shit.”
Running to the nearest bathroom, he splashed water on his face, rinsed out his mouth, and grabbed a towel to hitch around his hips. He’d barely gotten it in place when the doorbell rang. Jogging over to open it, he said, “Good morning.”
Sarah took a physical step back, her face blanching. “You look like you’ve been on a bender.”
“What?” He shook his head, got his brain cells in order. “No, I was playing.” He held out one hand.
Forehead wrinkling, she grabbed it. “Abe, your fingers are swollen! How long did you play?”
He shrugged, his eyes caressing the exposed curve of her nape as she bent over his hand. She’d swept her hair up into a neat little knot, was wearing a blue-green dress that had lots of panels that hugged her form. “A bit.”
Sarah’s lips parted as if she’d yell at him. But she snapped her mouth shut on the next breath, dropped his hand, swallowed. “We need to talk.”
Abe frowned; her tone was so tight, her body held in such fierce check. But he wasn’t going to interrogate her. Not when she was finally back where she belonged. In their home. “Yeah, sure. Come in.”
PALMS DAMP AND SKIN FLUSHING HOT THEN COLD, Sarah walked into the house she’d fled two years earlier, hurt and lost. “Maybe you should…” She waved vaguely in the direction of Abe’s body.
And God, what a body.
It was like he’d been carved out of rich, chocolate-colored marble. All ridges and valleys and glowing skin. Relief colored her blood: now that she was really looking, it was obvious he hadn’t gone back to abusing drugs or alcohol. He’d never looked this healthy, this goddamn good during their marriage—and even then, he’d been difficult to resist. Now…
“Were you in the shower?” she asked when he just scratched at his stubbly jaw after shutting the door.
“No. In bed.”
Her mind immediately supplied her with a hundred highly distracting images of Abe sprawled out, the sheets kicked off his bare body. Then her blood ran cold. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to interrupt—”