Chapter 5 - The Glass Room
I didn't fire her.
Instead, I sat in my library on the ground floor with the door cracked open three inches, listening to the silence of the west wing.
An hour passed. Then an hour and a half.
At 3:30 PM, the quiet was broken by a sound that made me drop my fountain pen directly onto the document I was signing. The blue ink bloomed across the paper, but I didn't care.
It was the sound of a piano.
Not the polished, complex classical pieces that Clara used to play on the Steinway grand in the drawing room, but a single, blunt, low note.
C.
Silence for three seconds.
C.
Then a second, higher note.
G.
I stood up from my desk, my heart hammering against my ribs like a caged bird, and walked soundlessly down the carpeted hallway toward the conservatory.
The double doors of the conservatory were open to the garden terrace. The cold November wind was blowing straight into the room, rustling the sheer white drapes and bringing the sharp scent of damp pine and salt water from the Sound.
Leo was sitting on the high leather bench of the Steinway grand piano.
His small feet were dangling six inches above the brass pedals. He was wearing his favorite yellow sweater.
Savannah was standing three feet behind him, her arms crossed over her chest, leaning against a marble pillar. She wasn't touching him. She wasn't guiding his fingers. She was simply looking out the open windows at the grey ocean waves crashing against the rocks a quarter-mile away.
Leo raised his right hand. His small index finger pressed the key again.
C.
He looked over his shoulder at Savannah. He didn't scream at the cold wind hitting his neck. He didn't cover his ears against the deep, resonant echo of the piano wire vibrating inside the mahogany casing.
Savannah didn't look at the piano. She kept her eyes on the ocean.
"It's loud, isn't it?" she said softly, her voice carrying over the wind.
Leo turned back to the keys. He pressed his finger down hard, holding the note until the sound faded into the rustle of the leaves outside.
"Loud," Leo whispered.
It wasn't a cry. It wasn't a scream. It was a statement of fact.
"Yes," Savannah agreed gently. "It's loud. But it doesn't hurt you. It just fills the room, and then it goes away."
Leo leaned forward, pressing three keys at once with his open palm. A discordant, heavy chord exploded through the conservatory, echoing off the high glass ceiling. He flinched, his shoulders pulling up toward his ears—but he didn't run. He stayed on the bench, watching the brass strings inside the open piano lid slowly stop trembling.
I leaned my back against the wall outside the conservatory door, sliding down until my suit trousers met the cold parquet floor.
I pulled my knees toward my chest, wrapped my arms around my legs, and wept.
May you like
I cried for the two years of silence that had choked the life out of my home. I cried for my dead wife, whose portrait hung in the main gallery, watching a house that had turned into a museum of grief. I cried for the arrogance that had made me believe my millions could command a child's soul to heal on my schedule.
Through the crack in the door, the single piano notes kept falling—slow, irregular, but persistent—breaking the quiet of the estate, one note at a time.
