Violet looked back to Jay for a clue. “I still don’t get it. I mean, I like it, I just don’t get it.”
Jay exhaled and took it from her hands. “It’s a music box, Vi. You have to wind it up.” He flipped it over and wound the almost unnoticeable silver key she hadn’t seen before.
And that’s when it started . . . the music.
The music.
She knew within two notes which song it was, and because of the engraving on the bottom, she also now knew the name of it: Moonlight Sonata.
It was haunting, hearing it played out loud and out of sync with the version in her head. Knowing that Jay could hear it too. Haunting and hypnotic and terrifying.
“How . . . ?” she breathed, not even able to finish that single thought.
“It’s the right one, isn’t it?” He was watching her expectantly, eagerly.
She wanted to tell him yes. She wanted to ask him how he’d known what was buried—hidden—deep inside her head. She wanted to wrap her arms around him and smother him with kisses for giving her this one tiny, probably insignificant piece of the crazy puzzle that had become her life.
Instead, she nodded. Slowly.
He shrugged again, looking so pleased with himself that Violet had to wonder if someone could actually burst from pride. “I heard you humming it,” he explained, answering the question she’d been unable to ask. “You do it, when you think no one’s listening. Thing is, I always listen, Vi.”
It was possibly the sweetest thing she’d ever heard. His words . . . lingering with the sound of the music that now had a name.
How had she gotten so lucky? What had she done to deserve someone like Jay, someone who paid attention to the little things? Even something as trivial as which tune she hummed.
“And it’s not too weird? You know, that it matches your imprint?” He looked uncertain now, his eyebrows drawn together in the center of his forehead, his lips pursed.
Violet reached up and settled her hand against his jaw. “It’s so not too weird, Jay. I mean, yes, it is, but this is me we’re talking about here . . . weird is relative.” She sighed. “I love you,” she vowed. “And I love my turtle. . . .” She let out a choked laugh and then she hugged it to her chest, even as the last notes wound down. “You, Jay Heaton, are the best boyfriend ever.”
In her room that night, Violet played her new music box again and again. She memorized every detail of the silver turtle, each etched groove and flat polished plane. She silently repeated the name of the song too.
Moonlight Sonata. Moonlight Sonata. Moonlight Sonata.
The name was as beautiful as the tune.
She played her grandmother’s music box too, the one with Brahms Lullaby, setting them side by side, until all three songs blurred together—the two music boxes and the imprint in her head—creating a dissonant sound that probably only she could appreciate.
That only she thought was beautiful.
She listened to the last notes as she curled beneath her blankets to read her grandma’s scrawled handwriting.
July 13, 1971
Maggie is the perfect child. I’m sure every mother says that about her baby, but I’m certain that in this case it must be true.
Violet grinned, fascinated by the notion of her mother as anything but a grown-up. It was strange to consider her mom through her grandmother’s eyes. She kept reading, enthralled.
I can’t stop looking at her, studying her, trying to see who she is . . . and who she will be. She has curls and the unmistakable green eyes of her father. She has my lips though. It’s too soon to know what else she might have of mine, what else she might have inherited. I can only hope she doesn’t have it. I want nothing more than to know that Maggie will live in peace, never tasting or smelling or hearing the dead.
Violet’s chest ached as she gripped the pages, recognizing what her grandmother meant. She knew she shouldn’t let it bother her, that her grandma had wished for her mom not to share her ability—the ability that Violet herself had. But she couldn’t help it. It stung that the woman who she’d inherited it from hadn’t wanted it. Hadn’t wanted her daughter to have it.
Where once Violet had believed that she and her grandmother had shared a bond, she now realized they shared an affliction. Like a birth defect. At least in her grandmother’s eyes.
Still, Violet kept reading the passages, knowing that somewhere along the line something must have changed, because the woman she remembered hadn’t felt that way at all.
John says even if she has it, it won’t matter. He tells me it makes me who I am and he wouldn’t change a thing about me. He’s sweet that way, always trying to assure me that I’m normal, good even. If only I felt the same.
October 25, 1971
Winter’s coming, but Maggie and I bundle up whenever possible and head outdoors. She can’t tell me so, but I’m sure she likes our adventures as much as I do. I watch her closely whenever I feel them coming on, one of those echoes from the dead. So far she doesn’t seem to be aware of them. She looks safe and peaceful there, inside her stroller. She smiles and coos blissfully as they call to me.
But that doesn’t mean she doesn’t feel it. Maybe she’s sensing something different from what I do. Hopefully, though, she feels nothing at all.
Violet tried to remember the first time she’d ever heard the word echo. It’s what she’d always called the sensations she felt, but she’d never really considered where the term had come from. It never dawned on her that it might have been her grandmother who’d come up with it. It was strange to think how easily she’d accepted it, how it had just become part of her everyday vocabulary, like apple or cat or school.