After Forever (3 page)

When the piece was done, I let the bow slip from my fingers and rested my face against Apollo’s neck, struggling to breathe through the pressure of grief in my chest and the ten-ton weight of misery in my soul.

Ever was, truly, my only friend. I’d never made many friends in high school, and none here at Cranbrook Academy of Art. I was too wrapped up in my cello, in mastering each new piece, in my classes and homework. There’d been a few brief forays into friendship, usually with guys from the music department, and those always devolved into the
friendship-sex-Eden-gets-dumped
cycle. And every time, Ever was there to eat junk food with me and force me to work it off at the gym and listen to me bitch about men and how stupid I was to think anything would ever change.
 

More recently, I’d been consumed with my attempts to compose my own cello solo. It was a project that was quickly beginning to take over my entire life—getting each note right, each movement and section. I didn’t dare work on the concerto now, though. It required absolute focus, complete internal composure. I lacked those things, lacked any sense of self. I could barely see through the tears, even as they slowed, as I forced them to slow.
 

I still couldn’t seem to stop crying.
 

I kept playing. A different piece, something that struck my memory, something Mom used to play. The notes wavered in the air, hung, and were joined by the rest, all nine minutes of it rising from the depths of my heart.
 

When I opened my eyes, now mostly dry, Daddy was standing in the doorway of my studio space, which I’d left open in my desperation to get to my cello, to exorcize my demons. He was crying, fist at his mouth, watching me intently. It had been three days since I’d seen him at the hospital. He’d vanished again, back into the void of workaholic escapism.

“That—” He paused to clear his throat and take a deep breath. “That was your mother’s favorite piece. She told me the name of it a thousand times, but I could never remember. She would listen to it while painting, and she’d play it over and over again.”

“It’s the ‘Sonata For Solo Cello,’” I said. “Zoltán Kodály.”

“Yeah.” He blinked hard, and stepped into the room. “God, you play it just like her. You sound…the way you play, especially those vibratos…you sound
so
much like her.”

I’d never heard that. I had a vivid memory of sitting on the floor of the formal living room where she used to practice, watching her long black hair shimmer and wave and sway as she moved with the arc of her bow. I remember being enraptured by the sound, by the way she seemed to get lost in the music, the way the essence that made her Mom, that made her
her,
would be swallowed whole and she would just be gone and in some other land. I wanted to be
just like her
. I would sit on a chair and pretend to sway the way she did. What I don’t remember is the way she sounded, not with my adult ear.
 

“I do?” I choked on the two words. They hurt to expel.

He nodded. “It’s…eerie. If I close my eyes and listen to you play, I hear—I hear her.” He pointed at my cello. “And that…that instrument. She loved it. So much. It’s a family heirloom, you know. It belonged to her grandfather, and now you’re playing it. Seeing you with it, hearing you play it, sounding so much like her, it’s…it’s so bittersweet.”
 

“She was good, wasn’t she?” I asked.
 

He threw his head back and breathed deeply. “Yes. Very. She played for the DSO, you know. Before we had you and Ever. That’s how we met. One of my friends from college had a crush on a bassoon player named Marnie, and he dragged me to a concert so he could ask her out. Turns out Marnie was one of your mother’s friends, and I couldn’t take my eyes off your mom from that moment on. I went to every concert I could, eventually got her to go out with me.” He glanced around the room, found the extra chair and sat down in it. “She was this exotic thing, this incredible cellist with these strong, delicate hands. She took me to a showing of her art as our second date. She neglected to tell me it was her work that was on display, just that she wanted me to go with her as her date. I was…so ignorant. I was a business and finance major, and knew nothing about music or art. She was so
cultured
. Me? All I had going on was looking good in a three-piece suit. I still—still don’t know why she fell in love with me. I never deserved her, but I was grateful for her, every single moment of our lives together.”

It took me a moment to process that, to figure out how to respond. “Wow. I never knew any of that. I knew that you loved her, I mean, I saw that in the way you were together, but I’ve never heard you talk about her that way.”

He shrugged, staring down and scratching at the knee of his suit slacks. He swiped at his eye with a thumb, discreet. “I haven’t talked about her. Not since she died. Not like that.”

“Maybe you should? I mean…maybe
we
should.”

“Maybe.” He gestured at my cello. “Play something else? Please?”

I settled the cello in place, adjusted my grip on the bow, closed my eyes and summoned the muse. “Song VI” by Philip Glass and Wendy Sutter.
 

With the last note quavering in the air between us, he seemed to be struggling against tears, against the welter of emotions I knew I was feeling, and god knows he had to be feeling more, other things. His wife and now his daughter, gone. I mean, yeah, maybe Ever would wake up and be fine. Maybe she wouldn’t wake up. Maybe she would wake up in two months or two years or even twenty years, but she’d be about the same as a bunch of asparagus. There were a thousand maybes, a thousand possibilities, but right then, in that moment, all we knew was that she was gone from us.
 

“I don’t know what to do, Eden.” Dad’s voice was thin, stretched. “I’m no good at this. At being
there
for you. I can run a company. I can make numbers make sense and make multimillion-dollar decisions, but…how do I fix this between us? I’m sorry, Eden. I’m so sorry. Forgive me.”

I couldn’t take the cracking strain in his voice, the grief and the guilt. “Just…
try
, Dad. This is a good start.”

“I was in my office, but I just couldn’t think of anything but Ever, and you. And even that poor boy. What’s his name? I don’t even know his name.”

“Cade,” I said. “His name is Cade.”

“Cade what?”

“Monroe.”

He nodded. “So Ever, she’s Ever Monroe now?”

“Yep.”

“What’s he do?”

I glanced up at him as I put my cello back in his case. “Find out from him. He’s your son-in-law now. And he’s gonna need support. He doesn’t have anyone.”

“No one?” Dad asked.

I shook my head. “Just Ever and his grandparents, I guess. But they’re old and live in Colorado or Wyoming or something. I think they’re only here for a few days.”

He hugged me, and it was awkward. I hadn’t hugged my father in…years. The smell of him was a shock, a throwback to being a little girl sitting on his lap. His stubble scratched my cheek as he pulled away, and the scent of his cologne and his proximity, it all made me feel like a child all over again, reminded me how lonely and scared I was.

I had to fight it off, the heat behind my eyes, the thickness in my chest and the burning in my heart. I fought it off until he left, and then I sat on my chair and tried to rein in the onslaught of fresh tears.

I couldn’t function without Ever. I just didn’t know how. She was me, half of me. The thought of waking up and not being able to call her, talk to her, visit her, flip through her paintings while we talked, while she painted, it made me want to crawl into bed and never come out. I didn’t talk to her every day, but just knowing I
could
was comforting. Now…I didn’t have that. And I didn’t know what to do.

So I went back to the hospital. And I had to focus on not crying the whole time. I wasn’t sure why, but I brought my cello with me.
 

~ ~ ~ ~

Caden

Gramps had brought me some things from our—from
my
condo. Our.
Our
condo. She might not have been awake, but it was still her home. He’d brought me books to read, sketchbooks and pencils, which I couldn’t use yet, my phone charger and my earbuds. In one of those freak outcomes, my phone had survived the crash without a scratch. The truck was completely totaled, a mangled wreck. Ever was in a coma, my arm was shredded and my leg broken so badly I’d need physical therapy to use it again, and I’d suffered a cracked skull plate and a severe concussion. But my phone, plugged into the USB port so I could listen to my Pandora station, was untouched. Not even dinged.
 

They’d left yesterday, my grandparents. It had been a difficult goodbye, for reasons I couldn’t fathom. As if I wasn’t saying simply “see you later,” but truly “goodbye.” The entire time Grams and Gramps had been here with me, Eden had stayed away, stayed in Ever’s room. When I got a nurse to wheel me down there, she’d leave me alone with Ever.

That was good. Her absence relieved me, although a part of me ached with the loneliness washing through me all over again. Ever had banished the loneliness for a short time, such a brief, blissful time. But now she was gone, and I was alone. And Eden, she was…
there
. Even when she wasn’t in the room, I could feel her presence. She was part of Ever, as much as I was, and I could see Ever in her face, in her eyes, and in the timbre of her voice, the soft music in her words.
 

Eden was her own woman, though. She kept her hair dyed honey blonde and, the few times I’d been around her, kept it styled, curled, braided, pinned, always something interesting and different, whereas Ever was given to simply leaving her hair down or in a basic ponytail. Eden was curvier than Ever, enough so that, hair color aside, you’d be able to tell them apart despite their identical features.
 

I tried not to see Ever in her. I tried not to see her at all. She was Ever’s sister, that’s all. And I couldn’t let myself look at her. It wasn’t right.
 

But when she came into my room, wearing skintight black yoga pants, I couldn’t help myself. She had her cello with her, a huge thing, almost bigger than she was. She shucked her winter coat and left it on the visitor’s chair, and I had to focus on my phone to avoid the fact that she was wearing a gray V-neck T-shirt that scooped entirely too low for my comfort.
 

“Hey.” She gave me hesitant smile and a half-wave, a stunted crescent motion with her hand, leaning the cello against her front. “Have you been down to see Ever today?”

I shook my head. “I asked a few hours ago, but no one’s been back since. They’re saying I’m gonna be released soon, and they’ve been taking me down in a wheelchair.” I pointed at the wheelchair folded in the corner.
 

“Going home soon, huh? Ready to be out of the hospital gown?”

I shrugged. “Yeah, they do kind of suck. My head seems to be healing fine, no damage to my brain. That’s what they were holding me to observe, I guess. My leg’s gonna need therapy, and so’s my arm, but that’ll be outpatient.”

Eden rested her cello against the wall and brought the wheelchair around next to the bed. “Need help getting in?”

“Going to see Ever?” I avoided saying
we
. I wasn’t sure why, but I instinctively did.

She nodded. “I’m gonna play some of Ever’s favorite songs. She likes hearing me play. So I thought…I guess I thought maybe you’d like to sit with her. While I play.” She seemed self-conscious, her eyes finding every part of the room near me except my eyes. “If you—if you wanted to, that is. You don’t have to, I just thought…maybe you’d—”

“That sounds great,” I said, before I could rethink the idea.

“Do you need help?” Eden asked.

I would need help. I knew it. I just…something in me, some part of me shied away from having her help me. “I should be able to make it.” Macho bullshit, stupid macho bullshit.
 

Gramps had brought me an old pair of my loosest track pants, the kind that buttoned down the side, so at least I had real pants on, albeit with one side open from the hip down. I sat up, slowly, painfully, and swiveled so my legs hung off the bed. I was already panting and sweating, and that was the easy part. I focused on sliding forward, inch by inch, rather than on Eden, who was hovering a foot or two away, clearly wanting to help, yet not wanting to at the same time. I’d never tried this on my own, mainly because it was a stupid idea. I got my good leg planted, my foot firm. I had a good hold on the railing, leaning forward to reach for the wheelchair. This was where I needed help. I was off balance, about to tip forward, and I wasn’t sure the wheelchair’s wheels were locked, and even if they were, I couldn’t really twist in midair on my own.
 

I tried to get my weight up on my good leg, but with only one arm, I simply couldn’t. I slid forward, slid forward, shifted my weight, reaching for the armrest of the chair. I tipped myself forward, felt my leg catch my weight. I had it, I had it…then my knee wobbled, and I had to either sit back on the bed or topple forward and damage myself worse.

I sat back on the bed, and with my one good arm extended forward to reach for the chair, my balance shifted completely backward, forcing me to lie down across the bed.
 

I laughed, because it was either that or curse. “I guess maybe I do need help,” I said, struggling back up to a sitting position.

Eden didn’t say anything. She just wrapped her arm around my waist, helped me slide forward, stood up with me. My arm was around her shoulders, holding on, too tight. I hobbled on one foot, and we swiveled together so I was lined up with the wheelchair, facing away.
 

She smelled like citrus shampoo, fabric softener, and some kind of flowery lotion. Not like Ever. Ever always smelled like Bath and Bodyworks Warm Vanilla Sugar body lotion. I’d always smelled it on her, but it wasn’t until we moved in together that I discovered the source of the smell, the joy of watching her sit naked on the edge of the bed, the bottle of lotion on the bed beside her, slathering it on her skin, rubbing it in, massaging her legs, her hips, her stomach and sides and arms, her boobs and her shoulders, and then she’d have me rub it onto her back, and usually that led to other things, even if those other things had been the reason for her having taken a shower in the first place.