Tara Quinn - A Daughter's Story

Still, only a handful of sad memories in forty years… He was a lucky guy.

“You playing tonight?” Cody was back, tipping the bottle over the top of Chris’s glass. He might have stopped him. Probably should have. Instead, he allowed the younger man to fill his glass and then raised it to his waiting lips.

The piano up on the dais was the reason he was there.

“Yeah,” he answered after he sipped.

Nodding, Cody headed down the bar. Chris was pretty sure he heard him say “Good,” but he could have just imagined it. No matter. He didn’t play for Cody. Or for anyone.

He played because music was good for the soul.

And because he could.

He played because doing so helped ease the tension that came with lobstering every day of your life.

* * *

SHE’D GIVEN ROB twenty-four hours to get out of the house. She’d told him she was going to stay with her mother. She’d known she could. Truthfully, she hadn’t planned anything. Contrary to her normal way, she’d spoken without first analyzing the various ramifications of her decision.

She didn’t have a house to go home to. She’d left her mother’s and she wasn’t going back that night.

Her attachment to her mother was probably part of the reason Rob had cheated on her. A woman with her mother attached to her hip couldn’t be much of a turn-on.

A woman who couldn’t climax probably wasn’t much of a turn-on, either. Lord knew she tried, but her body didn’t seem to be capable of letting go.

And even if her relationship with Rose had nothing to do with any of her problems, Emma needed to be away from her mother long enough to be able to breathe on her own.

First, she needed a place to spend the night.

She’d walked out without packing so much as a toothbrush.

She kept one at her mom’s. Along with pajamas and changes of clothes. Maybe she should go back. It made sense to go back. What was one more night going to hurt?

She could start her new life tomorrow. Right after she changed the locks on her doors.

And what if Rob was at her townhome tomorrow, waiting for her? What if he tried to change her mind? There she’d be, going straight from her mother’s house back to the secure life Rob offered her—albeit a life spent putting up with Rob’s philandering ways.

No, she couldn’t go to her mother’s. She couldn’t show up at home tomorrow, the same woman she was today—the woman who hadn’t been exciting enough to hold her man’s interest.

She couldn’t go home as the woman who settled for safety and security.

If she was going to change her life, it had to be tonight. She had to take a chance. To do something, anything, that wasn’t her norm. She had to be someone different.

Switching from her MP3 player, which was loaded with classics—soft and soothing music that was there to relax her after a day with rambunctious high schoolers—Emma stopped at the first satellite radio station that was blaring a beat.

The LED dash display broadcast the song title and artist in little green letters. She recognized neither and turned up the volume. She’d drown out her thoughts. And if she ever found a song she knew, she’d scream the words at the top of her lungs and pretend that she was singing along.

* * *

THREE HOURS INTO Friday evening, Chris was on his third drink. He wasn’t drunk, but even the ageless hag at the bar was beginning to look a little better.

Awaiting his turn on the piano, he listened to his competitors pounding the keys of the baby grand on the raised carpeted dais that was the restaurant’s centerpiece. The dais turned; the tables surrounding it did not.

The gleaming black instrument shone under professional spotlights and was the only furniture on the stage.

Chris’s number in the single elimination competition was up soon. He’d won the last draw of the night, which meant that he’d be up against the pianist voted by preselected judges as the best of the bunch. Chris liked the spot because he could stay onstage after he’d finished his set and play for as many hours as it took to wipe away the tension from the past week.

He didn’t need another win. He needed relaxation. He needed peace.

He needed to forget the grieving faces of those who’d loved—and lost—a man of the sea.

* * *

THE PLACE SMELLED as heavenly as she’d remembered—a mixture of spices, freshly baked rolls and prime cuts of steak marinated in Citadel’s secret sauce. Locals didn’t usually patronize the glitzy establishments on the tourist strip in downtown Comfort Cove, but a son of one of the teachers at school had played in a piano competition there a couple of times and Emma had accompanied the divorced mother on both occasions.

Now, sitting alone at the bar—something she’d never have considered doing before—she sipped a glass of white wine and concentrated on convincing herself that she could stay right where she was at least until she finished her drink.

Making deals with herself.

If she stayed fifteen minutes, she could make a trip to the ladies’ room to reassess.

If she stayed half an hour, she could think about getting a table. Maybe even order something to eat. If she made it an hour, she’d have to call someone—her divorced teacher friend, probably—and let her know where she was.

If she had more than two glasses of wine she’d call a cab.…

To take her…where?

Raising the heavy crystal glass to her lips, she gulped. She’d figure that out later. There were plenty of hotels downtown.

And because she paid her credit card off every single month, she had plenty of limit to cover whatever exorbitant fee they’d charge.

She’d show Rob.…

No. She was there to show herself something. To save her life.

She sipped again, raised her gaze and took in the people around her. A couple of men sitting alone at the bar, both dressed in suits with their ties loosened at the collar. A woman who was also alone and probably there on business. Just not the white-collar kind.

There were couples—both at the bar and filling the tables around the center stage—but those she ignored. And there were families, healthy groups of people who laughed and talked and fought and took one another for granted. She’d spent a lot of her youth wondering what it felt like to be one of them.

And then she’d grown up and realized she could make a family of her own. That’s where Rob had come in. They had plans to make a family.

And she’d kicked him out.

She had to phone him. To apologize for her hastiness. He’d be expecting the call. So maybe she should text him instead.

“And I did it my…” She suddenly heard the famous melody and it caught her attention.

Reaching beneath her jacket to make sure that her red silk blouse was still tucked into her black slacks, Emma sat up straighter. The words continued to play in her mind.

But they’d been placed there by the pianist up onstage. The timing seemed odd. Fortuitous. As though this song had been chosen for her. A song about facing the end of one’s life with absolutely no regrets.

And the way to do that?

Live by the dictates of your own heart. And only your heart.

Have I ever done that?

Emma sipped her wine.

She watched the pianist’s strong masculine fingers fly over the keys. She’d seen him play before. He’d won the competition on both the nights she’d been there.

Forgoing her fifteen-minute-mark trip to the ladies’ room, she ordered a second glass of wine and let the music envelop her. The man played with more passion than Emma had ever dared feel in her entire life.

And he did so as though completely unaware of all of the people watching him from the tables below.

If there’d been a competition that evening, it was over.