Page 52 of Crescendo
He ran off to join the band that had been setting up in the corner.
Given that he hadn’t acknowledged them, nor they him, I could only assume he’d texted them to…
explain my random appearance with one of the world’s greatest composers and that he needed a minute with us before helping set up? Who could say with Papa.
“He’s in the band?” Lydia asked, looking between me and Dad.
“He is,” Dad said, watching after Papa with a dreamy expression. They’d always been so in love. I’d known it for years, but I was finally starting to really understand it.
In my line of work, I saw more than enough couples who fell apart when things got tough.
I didn’t blame them, but they’d shown me how rare it was for a couple to go through what my dads had and stay on the same page.
Grief destroyed you like that. Now, I was finally starting to understand what it felt like to need someone who stuck with you through all of your worst days, through the worst things you could ever feel, and to keep caring, keep loving you through all of it.
“Welcome,” Papa said into the microphone, pulling the attention of the room.
“We’re so glad to see so many of you here again this week, and we’ll be getting started in just a few minutes, but…
I had to give a special shoutout to my daughter, Ella, who is joining us tonight, and let you all know that she’s brought her very talented musician and composer friend, Lydia Howard Fox, with her.
You might know her from… oh, every movie ever.
Now, I haven’t spoken to her about this, but I’m hoping we’ll be able to coax Lydia up to join us on stage tonight.
” He grinned widely at her, holding out a violin.
Lydia laughed and looked at me. “Did you set this up?”
I shrugged. “Not exactly. I did think it was a possibility, but I really was just bringing you here to listen to some live music and meet my dads. But, you know, I might have mentioned that you were incredible at improvised composition.”
“Oh, you might have mentioned that?”
I hummed. “Maybe.”
She shook her head as Papa called, “So, what do you say, Lydia? Can we get you on stage?”
She laughed, pressed another quick kiss to my temple and stood up, throwing her arms out. “Well, how could I resist an adoring audience?”
The gathered crowd cheered. I wondered if all of them knew who she was. It was a distinct possibility—and if they didn’t, they could easily search her name online—but, even if they didn’t, they’d know Papa well enough to trust him if he said he had a world-class composer with him.
Dad scooched his seat a little closer to mine as they finished setting up—Lydia needing no time at all to prepare herself—and I knew he was watching me as the band started up and Lydia played along like she’d always belonged there.
It wasn’t her usual style, but she knew exactly what to do, her violin adding a depth and complexity I hadn’t realised the songs needed before. And she smiled and laughed with my dad and his band members as they played, the audience rapt with attention.
She was so beautiful, so alive up there, drinking in the creativity of the moment, the audience, the band.
She played like she’d been built to perform and, despite being the newest member of the team, they somehow seemed to coalesce around her, like her playing became the beating heart of the group and she was the conductor taking them through their own songs.
It was unlike anything else I’d ever seen.
Dad reached to stroke my hair. “She really is something.”
“Yeah,” I breathed. “She is.”
“You’re worried about losing her, huh?”
I tore my eyes away from Lydia to look at him, and I swallowed hard. What would be the point in denying it? “I am, yeah.”
He nodded, his expression full of understanding. “You could ask her to stay.”
I shook my head. “Her life is in LA. She can’t give that up and I wouldn’t ask her to.”
His mouth twisted sadly. “You could—”
“I can’t give up my life here either, Dad.”
He nodded and we were quiet for a moment, watching Lydia and Papa play together on the stage, laughing as they did.
“You know, for four years, all you’ve been afraid of is losing things, so you’ve tried not to have anything worth losing.”
I let out a strangled breath. He was right, of course, but I hadn’t been expecting him to just come out with it like that. “Right,” I said, the word mangled.
“Now, you found someone who let you open the door again, let you feel something, even when you knew you might lose them. Your dad and I have been through more than enough grief counselling to know that’s no small thing. We know you well enough to know it’s not a small thing.”
“Okay…” I frowned. I understood his point but I wasn’t sure what to do.
“Loving someone—in whatever form that might take—is never going to be easy, sweetheart. It requires trust and losing control. It means imagining things differently than you have been. It means letting go and trusting that they’re going to catch you, just as you’ll be there to catch them.”
“I don’t understand,” I said, slightly frustrated that I couldn’t make my brain make sense, even as the pounding in my chest suggested my heart knew what he was getting at.
He smiled softly. “Your whole life, you’ve been so set on the things you wanted to do, and then, four years ago, the unthinkable happened and you just stopped.
No more big dreams, no more letting go. Just keeping everything exactly the same and working yourself to death, like you were biding time until it finally caught you up.
” He nodded towards Lydia. “What does it feel like when you think about playing the clarinet in front of her?”
Panic spiked in my chest and my eyes found her instinctively, my heart calming at the sight of her.
That was the other reason we were here, wasn’t it?
Because I knew what my piece needed. It needed clarinets.
I’d poured my soul into that thing, poured Callum into that piece, but it couldn’t be the two of us without those damn clarinets.
And, while I’d thought the trip out here might help Lydia with her block, I’d also wondered whether here, in this place that screamed Callum, in my home, with her by my side, I might finally be ready.
Papa, I knew, had kept my clarinet in pristine condition. He had others, too, in case I wasn’t ready for that one. And, for the first time in four years, I’d actually felt ready to face it. To try. To show Lydia that I could do something right.
Dad was a patient man, he waited through a whole song for me to answer.
“It feels like I want her to know that part of me,” I said quietly.
He smiled, and I knew what he was thinking. I was thinking it too. That the clarinet was this last, hidden, broken part of me, and I wanted to share that with Lydia.
“Crescendo really was the best thing you could have done with this sabbatical,” he said. “Big dreams, big feelings, big changes.”
I laughed, the sound unsure. “It’s all just silly, really. I’m trying to win a competition I have no right winning, to be played at the Royal Albert Hall.”
“Why wouldn’t you deserve that?”
I shot him a look. “Because I’m not a musician, Dad. I’m not like Lydia and Papa and Callum. I’m not a composer.”
“You’ve been a musician your whole life, sweetheart. It just took you some time to find it again.”
“I’m a doctor.”
“You are, and we’re ridiculously proud of you for that—seriously, Papa is still leading with that whenever he meets someone new—but it’s all you’ve been for the last four years, and nobody is meant to be just one thing.
Especially not you, darling. It doesn’t have to be one or the other.
You aren’t only one thing.” He looked at me pointedly.
“And love isn’t only one thing, either. It’s huge and scary and beautiful.
And it’s capable of far more than we give it credit for. ”
My heart pounded in my chest and I looked back at Lydia.
Lydia who was an incredible composer, but also an incredible performer, who’d been trying out different musical styles, and who was up on our local pub’s stage, playing the violin with my dad’s band, looking like she was having the time of her life.
Lydia who lived somewhere else, but who also fit in here.
Lydia who I didn’t want to give up at the end of this whole thing, and who, just maybe, it didn’t all have to be black and white with.