The Sinner (Notorious 1)

“Sounds like an interesting childhood,” Margot said, her voice quiet. I glanced at her and immediately regretted it. Card players and their all-too-knowing eyes.

“My father was an interesting man,” I said, then realized I was beginning to dip into areas I had no business dipping into with these women. “But I haven’t played since college. I worked for a civil engineer in the summer and the crew played almost every night. I made enough to pay for next year’s tuition.”

“You’re not really a handyman, are you?” Margot asked, apparently determined to stray into those dangerous areas of conversation.

“I’ve been a lot of things. Right now I’m a handyman. You know,” I changed the subject, glancing at Margot from under my lashes, “you’re not so bad yourself.”

An understatement—the woman was a player down to her toes.

“Thank you,” she murmured graciously.

“You could head out to any casino and make enough to fix this place up.”

She glared at me, all graciousness gone.

Oops.

“What’s Rachmaninoff?” Katie asked, tucking her chin into her hand. “Is that another game?”

“He’s a music composer,” I answered quickly, thinking of those thunderous notes and the huge Russian drama of those concertos. “I used to play the piano.”

“Piano!” Katie cried, perking up. “We—”

“Have you been in the library?” Margot asked, still watching like a wary old cat.

“I don’t think so,” I lied, knowing full well I hadn’t been in the library. It was the other room with the light on under the door. Besides Savannah’s bedroom, it was the last blank space on my drawing of the house.

“Next door,” she said, easing away from the table.

“We’re done?” Katie asked, stifling a yawn. Margot smiled, pushing back some of the girl’s red hair.

“We are for tonight.”

“Tomorrow?” Katie asked and Margot nodded her head toward me.

“Ask him.”

This was the most comfortable I’d felt in six months, the most relaxed my mind had been, outside of those moments pressed up against Savannah in the hallway. The ghosts were sleeping and I actually felt like myself. But this wasn’t about poker, or relief from the ghosts. It was about access to the secrets of this house. “Sure,” I said and stood. “Tomorrow night.”

Katie snuck off like a shadow and Margot stayed behind in her room.

And I went to the library.

The hallway was silver with moonlight and when I opened the door to the library, the soft scent of dust and books and a hundred years of cigar smoking wafted out around me. A smell somehow as comforting as freshly cut wood.

Quickly I scanned the walls, running my hands along the shadows and under paintings, but I didn’t find anything.

It took me a second to see what Margot wanted me to see. It was tucked back in the corner, hidden in darkness, but the corner of it caught moonlight and gleamed.

A Steinway baby grand. Black as night, slick as oil, and totally irresistible.

I lifted the lid and pressed the slightly yellowed middle C, expecting the worst.

It rang out clear and in tune, echoing around the books and paintings.

I sat, cracked my knuckles and closed my eyes for a second, remembering those lessons next to my father, and laid my fingers across the keys, Rachmaninoff coming back to me like a storm.

The music filled the room with lightning and I lost all sense of time until the door creaked open and Savannah stood there, staring at me as if I were a ghost.

“I’m so sorry. I—”

“Keep playing,” she whispered. She stepped into the room, and through a shaft of moonlight I saw tears in her eyes. “Please.”

SAVANNAH

The notes trailed across my skin like spiderwebs, and it was as if I’d been dipped backward in time. A pain, thick and clogging filled my throat and I was mortified to realize I was crying. In front of Matt.

I stepped into the shadows and wiped my eyes, somehow full and drained at the same time.

The long years I’d spent alone were suddenly too heavy to carry and I sank into a wingback chair across the room from the piano.

“I’m rusty,” he said after a long moment of silence. “But I’ve never made anyone cry before.”

I laughed. At him. At myself.

“It’s been a long time since anyone played the piano here.”

“That’s a shame,” he said. “It’s a beautiful instrument.” He ran the backs of his hands across the keys, the sound a musical zipper undoing me, note by note. “Do you play?”

“Not well.”

“Katie?”

“Sadly, Katie has no interest.” I cleared my throat, all the words sticky. “My brother, Tyler, is the musician.” I remembered those nights, after the shock of mother dropping us and leaving wore off and the place began to feel like home. Tyler would play and Carter would sing and I, young and happy and so blissfully unaware of the way my family would further splinter apart, would dance and dance and dance. “When Tyler left…” I stared at the ceiling, wondering how to put all that pain into words. “Everything got quiet.”