Liron's Melody Read Free Page A

sound like when played.
    She set the music back on the piano and stared at it a few
minutes more, curiosity gnawing at her. She was racked with indecision, not wanting,
and yet, wanting to play it all at the same time.
    She closed her eyes and took a deep breath, trying to force
some calm to return. Okay, no one was there. She didn’t need to worry about
what anyone was going to say, and no one was going to make a big deal and throw
a party and gush over how much progress she was making. And she wouldn’t be
playing Adagio in G Minor , which was really what she had a problem with
more than anything.
    She’d play for a second, just to see what the score sounded
like, and if she started to feel like her chest was going to constrict and she
was going to have some kind of anxiety attack, she would stop. Simple as that.
    Making up her mind, Melody tentatively slid onto the piano
seat and poised her fingers over the keys. She let them rest there for a
moment, testing the waters, so to speak. A twinging pain went through her heart
and left a dull ache in its wake, but it was tolerable. Sucking in a breath,
she looked at the first measure of music and began to play.
    It was a mournful song, slow and dark, Gothic almost. She had
planned to stop after the first few measures, but once she started, two things
happened. Wondrous ecstasy coursed throughout her entire body as the music
filled her soul once again, and her fingers moved over the keys with grace and
ease, like she had never stopped playing. For one beautiful second, she felt
like she’d come home. That reason alone was enough to keep her there, but
something else happened. Something strange and all consuming.
    While the sorrowful notes echoed through her empty house, her
mind conjured up the image of a man sitting at a piano, alone in a candlelit
room. She was looking at him from behind as he hunched over the keys, lost
within the same notes she was currently playing. Long, shining,
chestnut-colored hair spilled down his back and around broad shoulders that
seemed burdened, as if they carried weight. That particular thing struck her
because she noted that his shoulders looked the way hers felt. Heavy, tired,
sad….
    She focused on the image in her mind, more than happy to
devote her attention to whatever her imagination conjured instead of the grief
of missing her parents. The music filled her, swirled around her, along with
the unbearable loneliness that emanated from the man at the piano. It was
almost as tangible as hers, and her heart connected to him, whoever he was. An
embodiment of her own pain and sadness, she imagined.
    A chill ran the course of her body as the temperature in the
room seemed to drop, which she thought was strange considering it was the
middle of summer. She ignored it as she continued to play, driven by the
gorgeous music and the enigmatic image in her mind. She found she wanted to
know more about the person in her subconscious, the man brought to life by this
aged score. It seemed he had a story to tell, and the only way to know it was
to continue playing.
    So she did. She gave herself over to the notes and chords,
lost herself within the vision in her mind until it seemed almost real. The
temperature in the room continued to cool and the hair on her arms bristled.
She felt a strange, tugging sensation around her heart, as if it wanted her to
reach out to the man at the piano, touch him, soothe him, let him know he was
not as alone as he felt, and maybe assure herself that she wasn’t either.
    As the music coursed through her and around her, she played
with abandon. It was only when she shivered that she realized her eyes were
closed, had been closed for quite awhile. With a start, her fingers fumbled on
the keys, causing the pristine notes she had been playing to falter. How could
she be playing the music in front of her without looking at it? Had she just
improvised the last few minutes? She stilled her fingers, but the melody of the
music