Chapter 2 - The Song That Should Have Died With Thirty People
“Stop playing.”
Vincent Marino's voice was so sharp that Norah lifted both hands from the piano.
The final note hung in the living room.
For a moment, the only sound was the oxygen concentrator beside Carmine's bed.
Hiss.
Click.
Hiss.
Carmine was still gripping his son's wrist.
“They told me everyone died,” he repeated.
Vincent bent over him.
“Dad, what are you talking about?”
But Carmine wasn't looking at Vincent.
He was staring at Norah.
“Who taught you that?”
Norah's mouth went dry.
“I don't know.”
“Don't lie to me.”
The words came out weakly, but they carried enough authority to silence the room.
Norah stood.
“I wasn't lying. I remember hearing it when I was little.”
Vincent approached the piano.
“What song?”
“I don't know its name.”
“Then why did you play it?”
Norah looked toward Carmine.
“Because he was tapping the rhythm.”
Vincent turned.
His father's right hand had fallen back onto the bedsheet.
Five movements.
Three more.
Then silence.
“Dad?”
Carmine closed his eyes.
“Get her out.”
Vincent signaled to the guard beside the doorway.
Norah collected her coat.
She was halfway into the hall when Carmine spoke again.
“Vincent.”
His son stopped.
“The girl stays.”
Norah turned.
Carmine opened his eyes just enough to see her.
“Bring me the photograph.”
Vincent followed his gaze to the mantel.
Among several silver frames stood an old photograph of a younger Carmine beside a woman in a pale blue dress.
Vincent's mother.
Elena Marino.
Norah had noticed the picture every evening.
Until now, she'd never looked closely at it.
Vincent handed his father the frame.
Carmine studied it.
Then turned it facedown.
“Leave us.”
Vincent hesitated.
“You need your medication.”
“I need five minutes.”
The nurse glanced at Vincent.
He nodded.
Everyone left except Norah.
She remained beside the piano, suddenly aware that no amount of money could make this situation safe.
Carmine waited until the door closed.
“What do you remember?”
Norah swallowed.
“About the music?”
He nodded.
She tried to think.
A woman's hands.
A brown piano.
Rain against a window.
And a voice counting softly.
One, two, three.
Then something she hadn't thought about in years.
“A yellow kitchen,” she said.
Carmine's expression changed.
“What?”
“There was a kitchen. Yellow curtains. A woman played that song while I sat under the table.”
Carmine pressed his lips together.
“Did she have a bracelet?”
Norah stared at him.
“I don't remember.”
“A silver bracelet. Little blue stones.”
Something tightened in her chest.
She had owned a bracelet like that once.
Her foster mother had kept it in a tin with the few belongings Norah possessed when she entered the system.
Norah hadn't opened that tin in years.
“Why are you asking me?”
Carmine's eyes filled with tears.
It was such an unexpected sight that Norah forgot to look away.
“Because my wife wore one.”
Before Norah could respond, the door opened.
Vincent returned.
His father immediately turned his face toward the window.
“The session is finished,” Vincent said.
Norah didn't argue.
She walked past him into the hallway.
He followed.
At the bottom of the staircase, he caught her elbow.
Not painfully.
But firmly enough to stop her.
“Tell me exactly where you learned that music.”
“I already told you.”
“You said you didn't remember.”
“I don't remember who taught me. That's different.”
Vincent studied her.
For the first time since they'd met, his composure showed a crack.
“That melody was played at my mother's final birthday dinner.”
Norah said nothing.
“Two nights later, thirty people died in a fire at a property my family owned.”
The chandelier above them seemed suddenly too bright.
Vincent continued.
“My mother was one of them.”
Norah felt cold.
“I'm sorry.”
Vincent looked toward the stairs.
“Nobody outside that dinner should know the music. It was something she composed herself.”
“Maybe someone recorded it.”
“There was no recording.”
“Then perhaps she played it somewhere else.”
“My mother never performed publicly.”
Norah thought about the yellow kitchen.
The woman at the piano.
The silver bracelet.
She slowly pulled her arm free.
“Mr. Marino, I was a child when I heard it.”
His expression hardened.
“That's precisely what worries me.”
The driver took her home in silence.
Norah entered her apartment and locked the door.
For nearly an hour, she sat on the edge of her bed.
Then she pulled an old suitcase from the closet.
Inside were photographs, school records, a faded stuffed rabbit, and a round blue tin.
She opened it.
A silver bracelet rested on a square of cotton.
Tiny blue stones caught the overhead light.
Norah touched it.
Her foster mother, June, had told her the bracelet came with her when she was found wandering near a highway rest stop.
She'd been approximately six years old.
Terrified.
Unable to explain where she'd come from.
June had raised her with patience, though Norah's earliest memories remained fragmented.
Norah picked up the bracelet.
There was an inscription on the inside.
She had examined it as a teenager but never understood its significance.
E.M. — Always, C.
Elena Marino.
Carmine Marino.
Norah's hands began to shake.
She reached for the photograph June had given her when she turned eighteen.
It showed Norah at seven, standing outside a little house with yellow curtains.
Beside her stood June.
And behind them, partly obscured by the open front door, was another woman.
Norah had always assumed she was a neighbor.
Now she looked closer.
Dark hair.
A narrow face.
A distinctive pearl necklace.
The woman was older than the photograph of Elena on Carmine's mantel.
But the resemblance was unmistakable.
Norah turned the picture over.
June's handwriting covered the back.
September 2007. Our first real home.
Underneath, in different handwriting, was a sentence Norah had never noticed.
If anyone asks, her name has always been Norah.
Norah stared at the words.
Then her gaze drifted to the woman's face again.
She had spent years believing she was an abandoned child.
But someone had known exactly who she was.
Someone had deliberately changed her identity.
And the woman in that photograph appeared to be the same woman Carmine Marino had buried twenty years earlier.
Norah turned the picture toward the light.
There was one final detail.
The woman behind June wasn't looking at the camera.
She was looking directly at Norah.
And she was holding a little boy's hand.
May you like
On the back of the picture, beneath the other writing, someone had added two words in faded blue ink.
Vincent remembers.
Related Stories
