Page 88 of Share with Me

Very unchristian-like.

Grandma would be disappointed.

When the frenzy died down, the hammer price was over three million dollars. The Guarneri was sold to someone from out of state. Ivan was happy—so happy—it wasn’t that Jared fellow.

Three-point-two million dollars.

Ivan was stunned. He couldn’t even count that high. To think he had played the Guarneri before it was auctioned off. What a privilege.

His eyes darted to the violin in his hand. This would be the last time he’d play this one too.

The lights dimmed in the ballroom as a video flashed across a big screen, a woman’s voice adulating the 1721 Schoenberg Stradivarius violin about to be sold off to another highest bidder. The sound of that Strad was bold on the video, but Ivan didn’t think it could compare to hearing it live.

After the video infomercial was over, Petrocelli nodded to Ivan.

He walked to the front of the podium like he had rehearsed countless hours before, the Schoenberg Strad in his hand. Somehow it felt different this time. He wasn’t sure why. He breathed in and out slowly as there was silence in the entire ballroom.

Silence.

Somewhere in the ballroom, Brinley Brooks was listening to him play. He still couldn’t see her for the bright lights on him. He could feel her presence in the room. The more he thought of it, the worse it got.

Lord, I shouldn’t be this nervous.

All eyes were on him as if saying, “Any day now.”

This is for Br— No.

Lord, this is for You. Thank You for the gift of music.

Nothing else mattered now as Ivan plunged wholeheartedly into executing Niccolò Paganini’sCaprice No. 24on that old Stradivarius that he also would never see again after tonight. Better make it good. Make it memorable. He thought of nothing else but to get to the end of the piece without missing a note. All four years of Juilliard came to the fore, wrapped up in that almost three-hundred-year-old violin.

His left fingers danced nimbly on the strings, his right fingers sure and steady. He could see the music in his mind, the triplets, the slurs, pizzicatos, the rise and fall of sixteenth notes, and the sadness that filled his spirit when he reached the finale.

The ballroom shook with whistles and applause. Ivan’s fingers trembled as he took his seat. A gloved assistant yanked—no, firmly took—the violin from him, bow and all.

Goodbye, Strad.

Ivan sat there, breathless.

He had never, ever been this nervous his entire life, and he knew it wasn’t because of the violin. He felt that he had given the performance of a lifetime to show his worth as one of the best violinists in the region. Playing violin was all he ever knew and ever wanted to do. He wanted to make a living off playing the violin, support a family on it, and now he felt he had proven he could. The rest of his life hinged on this piquant fact. Without the violin—

Lord, don’t let me be without a violin.

* * *

“The bidding wardid me in,” Jared Urquhart told Brinley after the auction.

She was waiting at the ballroom entrance for Ivan to bring his pickup around. He had insisted they drive one vehicle. Then when they had arrived at The Cloister, he didn’t want to pay for valet parking. Now he had to walk across the parking lot to get the pickup in some forty-degree winds, leaving Brinley standing there by the door waiting and getting accosted.

“The Guarneri, we know who bought it.” Jared didn’t seem to be in a hurry to leave. “I guess the Nashville Symphony will put it to good use. But the Strad?”

“An anonymous telephone bidder. What do you care? Try again next time, Jared.”

“For a long time in there, I thought it might be you.”

“Don’t you think five-point-four mil is overpriced for even a Strad?” Brinley asked. “It’s not even the Lady Blunt.”Or the Damaris.

“It’s for charity. I suspect the buyer wanted to make sure nobody else had it.”

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