Page 78 of Crescendo

She laughed and cleared her throat. “Lydia said something similar.”

“Did she?”

“Hm.” She nodded slowly. “Maybe don’t tell her I told you this—or do, just know she’ll probably be beside herself that I didn’t treat you with kid gloves.”

“I don’t need kid gloves.” I appreciated Lydia and the way she was looking after me, all of the books she’d clearly read about grief and trauma—I could have just let her loose on my personal library since they were huge parts of patient care—but I didn’t need the others worrying that I couldn’t handle life. I didn’t needherworrying about that.

“I know.” Clara smiled softly. “When I was a kid, my parents fought—the worst fights I’ve ever seen. Bitter, nasty fights. Very little of it was physical—because god forbid you leave a mark that might make you look anything less than perfect—but the psychological and verbal attacks were… formative, shall we say? Outside the house, everything was perfect. The perfect, happy family. At home… Well, it was a dark place. There was no space for me or my siblings, for anyone but the two of them and their big, messy emotions.”

“Did they split up?” I asked quietly.

“Nope. It wasn’t the done thing,” she said bitterly. “So, what I learned was to read everyone around me. To pay attention to the exact way my brother closed the car doors, to the minute changes in expression on our staff’s faces—because I was a child, they’d smile and tell me everything was fine, but you start to learn the difference between fine andfinevery quickly—and to anticipate my parents’ needs. You know, monitor everything so they aren't screaming at you.”

“I’m so sorry, Clara.”

She shook her head, a ghost of a smile tugging at one side of her mouth. “It’s okay. I had plenty of other privileges.”

“That doesn’t mean—”

“I know. I know that now. And, eh, they… get along these days. Mostly live separate lives in the same house, but that’s none of my business anymore.”

“But the hypervigilance never goes away.”

She laughed. “Doctors always know the terms, don’t they?”

I smiled softly at her. “Yeah, sorry. We’re a bit annoying like that.”

She waved her chopsticks to bat the comment away. “You’re not annoying. And the reason I’m telling you that is because I know that you’re being brave. I know what it takes to put stuff like that into your music. And I know that whatever you and Lydia unlocked inside of you lately, it’s carrying all of that and it deserves to be heard.”

I sucked my upper lip into my mouth, my teeth running over it—a somewhat ill-advised grounding technique given how hard I sometimes went on them. Tears stung my eyes and my lungs felt tight. I hadn’t wanted to make Clara’s story about myself. She didn’t have to tell me what she’d been through. But I couldn’t stop the spinning in my brain that seemed to happen whenever I thought about how present Callum and my grief had been lately.

Clara breathed a laugh. “You didn’t make me tell you.”

I frowned. “Did I—”

“No. I could just see what you were thinking.”

“Oh.”

“It’s okay.”

“That must be exhausting to live with,” I whispered gently.

She shrugged. “I’m used to it, and it’s a lot better than it used to be.” She looked at me seriously. “The part where you first start dealing with it? That’s the worst. Well, not worse than it happening, I guess, but it feels worse than putting it away in a box. It feels raw and scary and painful. It gets better.”

“Yeah?”

“Yes.” She smiled, holding my gaze.

I nodded and turned back to my food. Clara finished first and stretched out on the carpet, apparently not concerned about lying on the floor. Maybe that was part of her taking her life back. I could imagine how my dads would have told us not to lie on public floors. I could only imagine she’d been raised with even stricter, more controlled standards. This place wasn’t exactly public, and it was well cleaned, but maybe lying on its floor was one of her fuck yous to the control she’d been raised on.

When I finished, she shot me a grin and stood up, holding out a hand to me. “So, want to show me what you’ve got so far?”

I took her hand but paused. “You mean the composition?”

“Mm, yes. I want to see what you’re going to kick Eliza’s butt with.”

I laughed, clambering up to my feet. “That’s not what’s going to happen. A great example of why I won’t get first place, though.”