Thank You for the Music by Jane Mccafferty Read Free Book Online

restaurant when he was two.
    Tim asked to see the picture of the boy again, and the child’s face drilled a hole in his heart that filled for a moment with stabbing light.
    â€œHe looks like a great kid.”
    â€œWe’re very lucky.”
    He wanted to be home. He wanted to work with some old oak. Wanted to walk the dog, to see a friend, to find the relative peace of the quotidian, who cares if it was partly a lie. He wanted to be home.
    He feared these days of terrorism; it was true. They would not get to hear John’s last sermon, but he’d make sure they got a copy of it. They’d hit the road tomorrow afternoon, or the next. Everyone would understand. Everyone was afraid, deep down.
    On the way back to the house he told Rachel he wanted to leave the next day. He told her he was exhausted, he might be getting sick, and he feared the world.
    â€œYou fear the world?” she said, a smile in her tone.
    â€œAnthrax. Bombs. Chemicals.”
    â€œThey say you have a better chance of getting struck by lightning than coming into contact with anthrax.”
    â€œI know three people who got struck by lightning,” he said.
    â€œWho?”
    â€œTwo kids—those young lovers kissing on the beach in Wildwood, New Jersey, back the year Maria was born. And Bernard Lynch’s mother.”
    â€œYou didn’t know those kids, Tim.”
    â€œWhat difference does it make? We were in Wildwood then. We might have been swimming in the ocean with them the day before they fried together.”
    â€œWhat exactly are we talking about?”
    â€œDying.”
    â€œSo you want to leave tomorrow?”
    â€œOr the next day. Maybe that would be more decent. I remember Bernard Lynch’s mother played a mean ukulele.”
    She reached out and touched the hand that was not on the wheel. “You’re getting really strange in your old age, Tim.”
    â€œYou know I’ll take that as a compliment, so why say it?”
    She was quiet.
    He parked in front of the house John and Claire stayed in; it was owned by the church, it was stone, and big with character, a garden of roses in the summertime out back, and a huge sycamore in front that now stood bare and groping into the dark.
    â€œWhat are you thinking, Rachel?” he said now, turning off the motor.
    â€œI don’t know.”
    He looked at her. “Are you angry with me?”
    â€œNo. I don’t know.”
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œMaybe you should tell me.”
    â€œTell you what?”
    She sighed. “Let’s just go in.”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œNo?”
    He nearly broke. He nearly confessed a lifetime of his deepest pain. He was so close to doing it his heart pounded in his chest. Tell me how it burdens you, in those secret chambers of your heart, tell me how you wish you were spending your life with my brother. It will be such a relief! You’d have a different child then, too, and a great violinist grandson, your heart might even be whole.
    But he only looked at her in the car, and seeing her beautiful dark eyes wounded by confusion, he felt the weight of their long years together, took a breath and said, “I mean yes, I’m sorry, let’s go in now. Let’s just go in.”
    Maybe he was tired of the tight leash he’d held around his own neck for so many years of visits.
    Maybe he was tired of the tightrope he danced upon and only wanted to watch himself fall and fall, straight into a whole different kind of life where he could see his decency in shreds. Where he could see his pain in shards. Where he could join his daughter in a chaos that defied description.
    Maybe it was the three big glasses of Merlot.
    Really it didn’t matter what the reason was.
    Rachel threw her head back because the pastor was telling a funny story. She grabbed onto the pastor’s forearms. The room began to spin. Tim called over from the couch where he sat next to his nineteen-year-old