The Night Singers by Valerie Miner Read Free Book Online

nodded numbly.
    As house lights went up, the director nudged him forward.
    Paul shuffled on stage for a bow.
    Peering out, he nodded to each of his composer friends, thankful for their stimulation and comraderie.
    Maestro Thaddeus clapped his hands above his head. “Bravo! Bravo!”
    Avery was waving his cane, grinning.
    Finally, he looked at Eleanor.
    She smiled as she threw a small bouquet at his feet.
    He thought she looked a little tired, tense, but that was probably his imagination.
    He bowed deeply to the audience. Then, extending his arm, he turned their applause back to the musicians.

Until Spring
    Dad stood by the glass doors staring out at the snow. His kind, furrowed face was pensive, and I guessed he was searching after the four deer he had sighted earlier.
    I landed thirty-two hours after the accident. Robert made it in eighteen, but it’s easier for my brother to get to St. Paul from LAX than for me to make connections from Burlington, Vermont. Mom was back home by the time I arrived, her leg in a cast and her left hand gingerly holding an ice pack against her head now and then. The bump on her skull looked like a goose egg amid a nest of grey curls. She couldn’t quite believe the swelling or the fact that she had been unconscious for two hours. Couldn’t believe that a veteran driver of Minnesota winter roads had skidded into a sixty-foot oak tree, totalled her new SUV and almost killed herself. During the early morning, her best time of day. The woman who never wanted to make a fuss had scared the wits out of her little family.
    Reverence was an unusual mood for us. It felt like a wake, but no one was dead. Or a resurrection service months before Easter. As we huddled in the warm living room away from tundra winds, we were all dazed by the accident, stunned by Mom’s survival. I bit into a cookie: store-bought chocolate chips Dad had set out on the coffee table. The taste upset me unaccountably. Our family never bought packaged cookies. Mom was a State Fair winning baker. It was so rare these days for the whole family to get together than when we did, the coffee table was piled high with homemade bread, large plates of cheese, fruit, olives, gerkins. Maybe a little too much wine since Dad had joined that Sonoma Chardonnay Club. Today the entire spread was a sad dish of cookies. No one else had touched them.
    Mom was telling Robert about the accident for the fourth time since I arrived.
    Standing in front of the unlit logs in the fireplace, I nibbled, then put the half-eaten cookie on a paper napkin. I walked over to Dad, draping my arm around his bony shoulder.
    â€œHi there, Karen,” he smiled thinly, then continued peering out.
    These last two days must have been hell. Worse, in some ways, for him, than for Mom. He looked so handsome and healthy, the afternoon light sharpening his ruddy cheeks, dark hair. Retirement suited him.
    We were, in many ways, a fortunate family. Most of the big battles were over. All Mom and Dad seemed to demand now were grandchildren. However, at 30, I was just starting my medical practice. Robert was gay. After operatic scenes, then long, earnest talks, our parents had finally accepted Robert’s partner into the family. Now they were pressuring him to adopt.
    Dad looped his arm around my back, then returned to the scene outside our glass door.
    This was the first time I noticed it, sun gleaming on the caramel wing tips and the darker inside feathers, tail sticking up in the air, head buried beneath the snow.
    â€œGorgeous,” I said.
    â€œYes,” he murmured, nodded, stared more closely.
    From behind us, I could sense my brother’s frustrated patience as he listened again to Mom’s detailed story.
    â€œWhat do you think—a hawk?” I whispered to Dad.
    â€œYes, an adolescent hawk,” he said sadly. “Must have hit the glass. But he didn’t leave a mark.” Dad raised his hand to the clean pane. How dry