Bridge of Scarlet Leaves - Kristina McMorris

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conclusion never reached the air. A blow from TJ’s fist stuffed it back into the bastard’s mouth. Paul’s beer mug dropped to the floor, arcing a spray across strangers’ legs. Shrieks outpoured in layers.

      A wall of orange moved closer; McGhee the lumberjack wanted in on the action. Lane lurched forward to intervene. Diplomacy deferred, he shoved the guy with an adrenaline charge that should have at least rocked the guy backward, but McGhee was a mountain. Solid, unmovable. A mountain with a punch like Joe Louis. His hit launched a searing explosion into Lane’s eye socket.

      The room spun, a carousel ride at double speed. Through his good eye, Lane spied the ground. He was hunched over but still standing. He raised his head an inch and glimpsed TJ taking an uppercut to the jaw. TJ came right back with a series of pummels to Paul’s gut.

      Lane strained to function in the dizzy haze, to slow the ride. He noted McGhee’s legs planted beside him. The thug motioned for Lane to rise for a second round. Before going back in, though, Lane was bringing support. His fingers closed on the legs of a wooden chair. He swung upward, knocking McGhee over a table and into a stocky colored man, who then grabbed him by the orange collar.

      “Cops!” someone hollered.

      And the music stopped.

      “Let’s scram, Tomo!” In an instant, TJ was towing him by the elbow. They threaded through the chaos with Maddie and Jo on their heels. They didn’t stop until reaching an empty alley several blocks away.

      Lane bent over, hands on his thighs, to catch his breath. The echo of his pulse pounded in his ears, throbbed his swelling eye. Still, through it all he heard laughter. TJ’s laughter. That carefree sound had been as much a part of Lane’s childhood as Japanese Saturday school, or strawberry malts at Tilly’s Diner.

      Maddie rolled her eyes with a glower. “Well, I’m glad someone thinks that was funny.”

      “See, I was right.” Jo nudged her arm. “Told you that joint was jumpin’.”

      “Yeah,” she said, “it was jumpin’ all right. Too bad we almost jumped straight into a jail cell.” When TJ’s laughter grew, Maddie’s smile won out. She hit her brother lightly on the chest. “You’re off your nut.”

      Lane grinned. “And this is new news?”

      Jo peeked out around the brick wall. Water drizzled from a drain spout. “Coast is clear,” she reported.

      The ragged foursome treaded toward the bus stop. On the way, Lane turned to TJ and quietly offered his thanks—for what he did, for defending him.

      “Eh,” TJ said, “what’re friends for.” He used a sleeve to wipe the trickle of blood from his lip, then slung an arm over Lane’s shoulder. “Besides, I can’t think of the last time I had that much fun.”

      The vision of TJ hammering out his aggressions on Paul came back in a flash of images. “I’m just glad I’m not your enemy,” Lane said with a smile—one that faded the moment he recalled what had initially provoked the fight.

      3

      It was on nights like this that Maddie missed her most, when her love life seemed a jumble of knots only a mother could untangle. More than that, her mom’s advice would have fostered hopes of a happily ever after.

      The woman had been nothing if not a romantic.

      She’d adored roses and rainstorms and candlelight, in that order. She had declared chocolate an essential food for the heart, and poetry as replenishment for the soul. She’d kept every courtship note from her husband—who she’d sworn was more handsome than Clark Gable—and had no qualms about using her finest serving ware for non-holiday dinners. Life, she would say, was too short not to use the good china. As though she had known how short hers would be.

      Maddie tugged her bathrobe over her cotton nightgown. Unfortunately, no amount of warmth would relax the wringing in her chest. Always this was the cost of remembering her mother. The one remedy Maddie could count on was music.

      She placed the violin case on her bed. Unlatching the lid, she freed her instrument from its red velvet–lined den. The smooth wood of the violin, of the bow, felt cool and wonderful in her hands. Like a crisp spring morning. Like air.

      An audience of classical composers—black-and-white, wallet-sized portraits—sat poised in the lid’s interior. Mozart, Mendelssohn, Bach, and Tchaikovsky peered with critical eyes. Do our works justice, Miss Kern, or give us due cause to roll over in our graves.

      She rosined and tuned in systematic preparation. Then she positioned herself properly before the music stand. Bach’s Partita No. 3 in E major. The sheets were aligned and ready. She knew them by heart but took no chances. She placed the chin rest at her jaw, inhaling the fragrance of the polished woodwork. A shiver of anticipation traveled through her.

      Eyes intent on the prelude, she raised her bow over the bridge. Her internal metronome ticked two full measures of allegro tempo. Only then did she launch the horsehairs into action. Notes pervaded the room, precise and sharp. Her fingertips rippled toward the scroll and down again, like a wave fighting its own current. The strings vibrated beneath her skin, the bow skipped under her control. And with each passing phrase, each conquered slur, the twisting on her heart loosened, the memories faded away.

      By the time she reached the final note, the calculated stanzas had brought order back to her life. She held her pose in silence, waiting reluctantly for the world to reenter her consciousness.

      “Maddie?”

      Startled back, she turned toward the doorway.

      “Just wanted to say good night.” Her brother held what appeared to be ice cubes bound by a dishcloth on his right knuckles. His scuffle with Paul suddenly seemed days rather than hours ago. “Got a game tomorrow morning. Then I’m taking Jimmy’s shift,” he reminded her.

      “Are you sure you can do all that, with your hand?”

      He glanced down. “Ah, it’s nothin’,” he said, lowering the injury to his side.

      TJ’s hand could be broken into a thousand pieces—as could his heart—and he’d never admit it.

      “That sounded good, by the way,” he said. “The song you were playing.”

      She offered a smile. “Thanks.”

      “You using it for the audition?”

      “I might. If I make it past the required pieces.”

      “Well, don’t sweat it. I know you’re gonna get in next time.” In contrast to this past year, he meant, when she had blown the audition at I.M.A.

      Under the Juilliard School of Music, the Institute of Musical Art had been established in New York to rival the best of European conservatories. Maddie’s entrance into the program was a goal her dad had instilled in her since her ninth birthday. He’d gifted her with a used violin, marking the first time he had ever expressed grand hopes for her future, versus her brother’s.

      “You know, I was thinking. . . .” Maddie fidgeted with the end of her bow. “When I visit Dad this week, you should come along.”

      TJ’s eyes darkened. “I got a lot of stuff to do.”

      “But, we could go any day you’d like.”

      “I don’t think so.”

      “TJ,” she said wearily. “He’s been there a year and you haven’t gone once. You can’t avoid him forever.”

      “Wanna bet?” Resentment toughened his voice, a cast shielding a wound—that wound being grief, Maddie was certain. She had yet to see him shed a tear over their mother’s death, and those feelings had to have pooled somewhere.

      After a long moment brimming with the unspoken, his expression softened. She told herself to hug him, a sign she understood. Yet the lie of that prevented her from

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