Broken Prince: A New Adult Romance Novel (20 page)

The flowers piled up as the pastor went on speaking, and soon there was no room left on top of the coffin. I watched as people leaned their bouquets against the sides of the coffin. Petals tumbled down into the grave, and some whole flowers. Soon the coffin was nearly unrecognizable as such; it seemed like a pile of flowers and nothing else. I stepped forward and lay my bouquet on top the rest, balancing the white roses precariously on the other bouquets. The pastor went on,  and the sun shone down hard. Drops of sweat beaded on my temples.

"None of us will stay on this earth forever, and Katalin has begun her journey now toward heaven. All of us here grieve at our loss when she steps away from us, as though she has climbed aboard a boat whose final destination is somewhere not of this world but of God's. The white sails rise in the wind, and He is the one who sends the wind. It is his breath who speaks the Word of life and of death, and who takes Katalin away from port now, finally, at the end of her time here on earth."

"We stand on the shore now, waving goodbye, and the boat drifts on, being blown ever farther from our eyes. The sails disappear below the horizon, and then finally even the last glimpse is lost to us. But we must remember that somewhere, on another shore, there is a crowd of people waving at the boat which has just come into sight."

A sob rose in my throat as I thought of my mother waiting for Nagyi, embracing her once again. I wanted them both back so badly that my whole body ached. All of the hugs that I would never be able to give them. All of the love that I had for them wasted, left behind to turn sour in my heart.

"It is important to remember this in our sorrow. For all our loss, Katalin has not left us. She has just gone home. And one day we will see her again, after our own long journeys, and she will be standing on that distant shore, waiting for us, waving hello."

Tears streamed down my face silently. I would hold in my sobs now, in front of everyone. Perhaps later I would be able to grieve, but I had always been a private person and all of this was too much for me to handle.

"We say goodbye to Katalin now, knowing that we will see her later if God's grace permits. Nobody can replace her, and nobody here will forget her. Clamate ter. Kyrie Eleison!"

"Kyrie Eleison!" the crowd repeated, and my lips moved although I could not speak.
Lord have mercy.

The sermon was over, but I stayed behind for a while as the men lowered the coffin into the ground and began to shovel dirt in on top. Then I turned to leave.

"Shall we go back now?" It was the woman from the knitting circle whose name I could not remember.

"I'll walk home," I said. "Thank you."

"It's over two miles."

"I'll be fine," I lied.

The pastor came to me as I was leaving the cemetery.

"She spoke very highly of you," he said. "She called you her little math genius."

"I'm not a genius," I said.

"She seemed to think you were."

"I'm an impostor." I spat the words out quietly, but the pastor heard. He put a hand on my shoulder.

"We all feel that way," he said. "Especially in hard times. Be true to yourself and things will turn out alright."

I nodded and smiled wanly. Nothing had turned out alright.

Peering back at the cemetery, I was struck by how empty it seemed without the crowd of people inside. I had kept looking around during the ceremony, expecting Eliot to show up even though I had told him not to. I supposed that it was only in stories that men ran after you. And even in stories, they didn't run after you a second time. I walked down the road towards my grandmother's house, not wanting to arrive to the empty rooms that awaited me.

It was another hour or so before I reached her neighborhood, but even still, I did not want to go inside the house where she would never exist again. I looked up at the dingy rafters of the house. This had been her home. She had left Hungary to come here so that she could take care of me, but then she had stayed.

Walking around the side of the house, I went to the cypress tree in the backyard. In Hungary, I had been able to visit my mother's grave, but it was here, next to the tree my Nagyi and I had planted for her, that I felt her soul. I fell to my knees at the base of the tree and leaned against the trunk. The rough bark scratched my cheek, but I didn't care. I was back home, and there was nothing here left for me. Under this tree, at least, I could grieve properly. I let myself cry, my lips pressed against the tree, hugging the hard wood tightly. My chest heaved with my cries against the cypress.

"Take care of her, mom," I said, my words inaudible through my sobs. "Take care of each other until I get there."

I'd lost everyone I'd ever loved, everyone I'd ever cared about. Eliot had fallen out of love with me, too. I cried until there was no more left inside of me, until my body was wracked with empty sobs that scratched my throat dryly.

I had known it all along - I was no princess. There would be no happiness at the end of my story. The pages had all been torn out and scattered, and I was scattered too, like Humpty Dumpty in the poem, and nobody could put me back together again.

At first when I heard the music I thought I was dreaming. I blinked and wiped my eyes and stood warily, listening to the faint notes of a piano. My Nagyi's piano. It was coming from the house, the piano music growing louder as I stepped slowly toward the back door. It took me a moment to recognize the song, but when I did the air rushed out of my lungs and I could no longer breathe.
Could it be?

At the door, I hesitated for only a second. And then my Nagyi spoke to me. I am not a superstitious person, and I do not believe in ghosts. But whether or not the spirit of my Nagyi was inside of me, my thoughts of her were so intense that I heard her speak just as clearly as if she had been standing beside me.

Take a chance on love.

I pushed open the door and stepped inside.

CHAPTER TWENTY NINE

Eliot

Eliot arrived in California with a headache intensified by the horrific coffee he'd gulped down on the airplane. The child sitting next to him had spent half of the flight picking his nose and the other half trying to grab Eliot's hand, with the end result being that Eliot more often than not had to retrace his line of thought after avoiding an attack from the small boy. It was a harsh reminder that Otto's private jet had been a real loss to him; the plane had been in Prague when Eliot had called for it.

When the child had fallen asleep, he'd written furiously, scratching out half of the page as he went, going back and reworking the parts that didn't work, that weren't perfect. It had to be perfect. Had to be. He bit his lip as he wrote, discovering sometimes the perfect solution to a problem, sometimes having to push through his own blocked mind.

He took another cab from the airport to the address the dean had given to him after he'd explained about the death in the family and the need to deliver the documents to Brynn himself.

"You understand these rules with all the transferring credits and whatnot," he said. "These weren't filled out correctly and she'll need to have them in order before graduation."

Graduation—the magic word. The dean immediately agreed that it was in Brynn's interest that he go.

The cab left Eliot at the end of the dirt street.

"Not unless you're paying for my new tires," the cabbie said.

"This is fine," Eliot said, more relieved than irritated to be treated so...well, so
normally
.

He walked down the street to the driveway marked with the right number. The place seemed almost deserted. None of the houses on the street were visible; all of the roofs were obscured by dense brush and avocado trees. The homes themselves blended right into the hillside, with wood-shingled sides and softly slanting roofs.

Eliot's phone didn't work out here, and so he walked down the driveway to the house. As soon as he saw the house, he knew it had belonged to Brynn's grandmother. The home was tucked away into the greenery, the brush cleared out responsibly around the house. The nearest tree was a cypress poking its head out from over the roof.

"Brynn?"

He called out in a normal voice at first, then a bit louder. The car in the driveway looked as though it had stopped working five years ago, so rusted was its sides. He walked up to the front door and knocked. To his surprise, the door swung ajar, the unlocked handle making a soft click as it opened.

"Hello?"

There was no response, and he pushed the door all the way open. Right in front of him, mounted on the hallway wall, was a photograph of Brynn and her grandmother.

"Guess this is the place," he said, closing the door behind him. He stepped over to examine the photo, flicking on the hallway light. Brynn was younger...not by much, but definitely younger by the look in her eyes, sitting in front of a cherry upright piano. The woman he decided must be her grandmother sat next to her in the photo. Her hair was a pure untinted white, the long braid swung over the front of her shoulder. They sat with shoulders touching, their hands poised over the keys as though they were just about to play the first note.

Eliot moved into the living room, and he saw the piano from the photo. Pictures hung all over the walls. Most of them were of Brynn and her grandmother. As he walked toward the piano and sat down, he saw another photo in a frame on the side table immediately adjacent to the piano bench. He picked it up.

The picture showed Brynn when she was only a child, holding onto the hand of another woman. Not the grandmother, this one. Eliot realized that the woman must be Brynn's mother.

A wave of emotion shuddered him, and his fingers trembled as he put the photo back into place. He'd seen a picture of one of the killer's victims before leaving Hungary. It hadn't been intentional. Someone had left a tabloid in the airport, and he'd happened to glance at the photo and headline—
NEW PICTURES OF BRUTAL SERIAL KILLER VICTIMS
—before crumpling the paper in his hand and throwing it into the trash. He didn't know what Brynn had seen at the police station, but if it was anything even close to what he'd seen in the paper, he understood why she'd been waking up screaming in the middle of the night.

He touched the piano keys softly at first. The piano needed a tuning, but the imperfect notes still told a beautiful story. The strings were old and worn, though when plucked they sang out with depth. His fingers moved over the keys more confidently, though his vision was blurring with unshed tears. This room told a story of love that reached back generations, one that he could feel in his heart when the music fluttered through him. He did not know whether he would be able to offer that same kind of love to his children. He wanted to, but his family relationships had been torn apart by more than the accident that caused Clare's death.

Still, here...

The tears in his eyes welled as he thought of Brynn, and imagined her future without him. He imagined his future without her, and it seemed hollow and as cold as the snowy night he had first met her. He'd been too stubborn, he knew. Too willing to give up when he should have fought for her love. Too focused on the unnecessary, without seeing the possibilities that lay right in front of him. If he could do it again, he'd do it differently. He'd take the time to let Brynn know how much she meant to him. He'd care for her unconditionally. And she might take pity on him enough to forgive him. A tear escaped the corner of his eye and fell onto the keys, but it was not a tear of grief.

Everyone we love dies. We would die someday, too. At times Eliot had wished it for himself. Today, though, a golden ray of possibility shone through the clouds, the possibility of forgiveness for his past sins. He played on, letting the notes take him off into a world of music. Only a creaking of the floorboards caused him to stop playing.

He turned and saw Brynn standing only a few feet away in the doorway, her curves sheathed in black crepe fabric. Her eyes were rimmed with red, but in them, there was something more than forgiveness.

There was love.

"Eliot?" Her voice was curiously uncertain as she stepped forward toward the piano.

"My dear," Eliot said, and held out his hand. And, to his everlasting surprise, she took it.

CHAPTER THIRTY

Brynn

“There is no agony like bearing an untold story inside of you.”

Maya Angelou

Eliot took my hand, and my whole body shivered. He guided me forward and I slid next to him on the piano bench.

"Do you remember how we met?" Eliot asked.

"It was so cold that night," I said.

"You were so kind to me. Even though I looked like a bum."

I flushed.

"I did not say you looked like a bum.
You
said you looked like a bum!"

"So I did. Well, and I
did
look like a bum. Honestly."

He hadn't kissed me yet, and I wondered what he was doing, sitting next to me, holding my hand. The pain in my heart was mixed now with an uncertainty that made me pause before every sentence I uttered. I ran my finger along the top of Nagyi's piano. A thin coating of dust came off, and I flicked it away from my fingers. The light from outside the window caught the flecks of dust and made them sparkle as they fell, twirling, to the ground.

"It's not tuned," I said, to fill the silence. Eliot still held my hand warmly between us. "She quit playing years back."

"But you didn't quit playing."

"I played at school. I didn't want her to waste any money on me."

"This isn't that bad," Eliot said, playing through the first few notes of the Gymnopedie with his left hand. The chords rang out, dust twinkling through the notes as the old strings vibrated back to life. The dissonant notes of Satie sounded strangely in tune.

"It works," I said, slightly surprised.

"Yes," he said. "It works quite well."