The Vanished Child by Sarah Smith

Author:Sarah Smith
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: murder, crime, Boston, kidnapping, detective, Victorian, family, amnesia, insanity, legally blind
Publisher: Max Light Books
Published: 2020-01-15T05:00:00+00:00

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In the Clinic parlor the next morning, Charlie interrupted Perdita’s practice to speak with her. She sat at the piano bench with her hands in her lap, an obedient girl in looks, but casting glances toward the piano.

“I hear that man has taken to telling you that you should work at your music more than at your marriage! That’s wrong, my darling.”

“He hasn’t said that,” Perdita protested in a small voice.

“Listen to me, now, and don’t go looking toward your piano. This is serious. You’ll be eighteen soon; you’re almost a woman. You must think and feel as a woman does, not as a child.”

She closed the cover and turned her back to the piano. “Uncle Charlie, I’m sorry.”

“The man comes from another country and from a very different way of life. There’s no solidity in him, no commitment. A person can get married, in the kind of life he leads, and then simply go off, as if there were nothing special about two people together. A woman who did such things here would be very wrong.”

“He tells me I could go to New York and take music lessons, and not hurt Harry at all.”

“Do you believe him? I see your young man moping about every time you go as far as Boston. Perhaps you think you won’t hurt Harry very much, or that, however you might hurt Harry, it isn’t so important as making music? It seems to me that’d be unfaith to Harry and to yourself.”

She began to speak, defensively, then stopped, finally began again.

“But Uncle Charlie, making music isn’t selfish. It’s something that people must have, the way they have food.”

“But must they have it from you, my darling?”

“I must!” she cried out sharply, then folded her hands. “Uncle Charlie, you’re right to speak to me. But what shall I do, how shall I change? It is so much to me—it’s not like growing up and putting away toys. It’s my own self I would give up.”

Charlie Adair patted her hand. “Child, child, it’s always ‘my’ self. Learn to do what you must.”

He left her silent by the piano.

It was silent a long time. Then she brought her hands down in the opening forte chord, and melted into the depths of the music; every note rightly proportioned, articulate, a long and sorrowful cry. Dark chords in the left hand, in the right only the questioning theme. They mingled into silence. She held her hands still on the keyboard, waiting for the long silent measure to end. The sunlight fell across her hands, the black and white of the keys, the shadows of her hands on the keyboard. Harry’s ring dazzled in the sun. Oh, Harry, what shall I do? On the one side everyone she loved, Harry and Uncle Gilbert and Uncle Charlie, pleading with her to love them and marry Harry and be with them forever; and on the other only this stillness, the passion in music, and how could that break everything apart?

The silence of

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