Strings by Megan Edwards

Author:Megan Edwards
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction
Publisher: Imbrifex Books
Published: 2017-09-12T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 18

I had every intention of keeping my pledge to leave the Vienna Philharmonic and move to Rome as soon as the season ended. I drafted my letter of resignation the day after I returned home. Now all I had to do was deliver it. What could be easier?

But somehow it wasn’t easy. Although I had managed to write the letter, I couldn’t bring myself to fold it up and insert it into an envelope. The letter was still lying on my desk when my phone rang a few days later.

“Hi, Ted. It’s Karen.”

Karen Hall! I hadn’t seen her in years but she sounded exactly like she did in high school.

“I’m in Munich. It’s not that far from Vienna. If I come, wanna have dinner?”

Why not? I thought to myself. Might even be fun.

“Sure,” I said. “When?”

“How about tomorrow?”

She rang my doorbell the next evening.

I buzzed her in and opened my door as I waited for her to climb the stairs.

“Damn you, Ted!” she cried from the landing halfway up. “You haven’t changed!”

I couldn’t say the same for her. Karen was wearing a floppy straw hat and a garment that looked like a cross between a toga and a sari. Even more surprising was the backpack she slung off her shoulder and leaned against a wall.

“I’ve been doing the Eurail thing,” she said, taking off her hat and shaking out her hair. It was longer now, and bright red. “Youth hostels, the whole bit. It was time for me to get real.”

She threw her arms around my neck and planted a kiss on my cheek.

“Hungry?” I asked, and she pulled away laughing.

“Same old Ted,” she said. “Maybe I should get you drunk.”

But Karen was the one who got slightly hammered. I took her to a restaurant in Grinzing known for serving good local wine. I nursed one glass because I had to drive home, but I stopped counting after the waiter filled Karen’s glass for the third time.

“You knew I got married, right?” Karen asked.

“Yes,” I said slowly. “But I thought it didn’t work out.”

“Ha!” she said. “That’s the understatement of the century.”

I’d heard the whole story from my mother, who had tried her best to get me to attend the wedding. It took place a year or so after Karen graduated from Smith, but I was already living in Europe. I’d sent my regrets along with a crystal decanter.

Karen’s parents had thrown her a wedding worthy of a queen. Her fiancé was an English guy who was a student at Harvard Business School when Karen met him. He charmed everyone with his accent and his Cambridge degree.

“He’s darling,” I remember my mother saying on the phone. “You should hear him quote Shakespeare. He’s just adorable.”

Blair didn’t seem quite as adorable after the honeymoon, when he informed Karen that he had another girlfriend in London, and if she wanted to keep him, she’d have to share. Karen didn’t take the announcement quietly. She and her parents hired a private detective who found out that Blair’s “girlfriend” was actually another wife.

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