When the applause finally eased, Ashford opened his eyes. He did not smile. But he looked at her, really looked, for the first time that day.
Chapter 12: The Silence After
The applause had not quite ended when Althea stood up from the piano. Her legs felt unsteady, as if the floor had tilted while she was playing, and she steadied herself against the side of the grand piano. The wood was cool under her palm. Behind her, the hall was still full of sound, but the sound was already breaking into voices and movement, into the ordinary noise of a room remembering itself. She had not expected the standing ovation. She had not expected anything beyond the last chord, and now that it was over, she did not know what to do with her hands.
Professor Adler was the first to reach her. She came around the end of the judges' table, her shoes clicking on the wooden floor, and took both of Althea's hands in her own. Adler's eyes were still bright with tears.
"That was extraordinary," Adler said, her voice low, almost private. "Do you understand what you just did?"
Althea shook her head. She tried to answer, but her throat had closed up, and all she could manage was a small, shaky breath. She was trembling, she realised, not from fear now but from everything that had come after the fear. Her fingers tingled where they had left the keys. She felt as though she had run a long distance and only just stopped, and her body had not yet caught up with the fact that she was standing still.
"Come with me," Adler said gently. She guided Althea through the side door, away from the stage, and into the narrow corridor backstage. The air there was cooler and smelled faintly of dust and old curtains. Adler eased her down onto a chair by the wall. "Sit," she said. "Breathe. There is water here somewhere."
Althea sat and pressed her palms flat against her knees to stop them shaking. The corridor was quiet after the hall, and the quiet felt enormous. She could still hear the music in her head, the river melody running on without her, and a sudden worry sharpened inside her. She had asked for one more minute. Ashford had allowed it, but only barely. What if she had broken a rule she did not know about? What if the piece had been too much, too strange, too unlike anything they had expected? The applause had been real. People had stood. But applause was not a decision, and a decision was what she had come for.
The side door opened, and Celeste Moreau stepped into the corridor. She was wearing a dark coat now, carrying her sheet music folder against her chest like a shield. For a moment the two girls simply looked at each other. Celeste's face was pale, and her usual polished composure seemed to have slipped a little. Althea braced herself for a cutting remark, for the cool dismissal she had heard in the waiting room that morning.
"I have played that hall a hundred times," Celeste went on, more slowly now, as if she were working something out aloud. "I know every note of the pieces I play. I can play them perfectly. But nobody has ever stood up like that for me." She paused, and her mouth tightened, not in anger but in something closer to honesty. "I do not know whether to be angry or grateful that I heard it."
Before Althea could find an answer, the door opened again, and Nolan Everett appeared, breathless, his hair rumpled as if he had run. "Althea," he said, "that was — I do not even have the words. The whole waiting room went quiet. Even the people who were talking stopped. Did you hear them standing?" He grinned, then saw her face and lowered his voice. "Are you all right?"
"I am all right," Althea said, and this time her voice worked, though it came out thin. "I just feel strange. Like I left something out there on the stage and I am not sure what it was."
Adler returned with a paper cup of water and pressed it into Althea's hands. "Drink," she said. "The panel will deliberate now. It may take some time. Whatever they decide today, Althea, remember this: you played honestly, and a room full of people heard it. No one can take that away from you."
Althea drank the water slowly. Her hands were still trembling, but a little less. She thought of Esther waiting at home, of Jerome, of Wendell, of all the people who had believed in her before anyone at the Alden knew her name. She had come to this place in a three-dollar dress, carrying a folder of taped sheet music, and she had played the music she carried inside her. Whatever happened next, that part was already true, and nobody in the deliberation room could undo it.