She played the late seating on Sunday with a list Diane had initialed: a Debussy Arabesque, a slow movement of a Mozart sonata, a standard Andre suggested because the room was American even when it pretended to be above that, "Someone to Watch Over Me," played without winking. Background, as ordered. People talked. The talking hurt and then, slowly, did not. A proposal happened near the bar during the Mozart, and Claire, seeing Martin's small signal, thinned the texture until the music was almost a carpet and not a speech. She stopped at forty minutes mid-phrase, as instructed, on a half cadence that felt like leaving a coat on a chair. No one applauded. A woman mouthed thank you. Claire nodded and went back to a table that needed its water seen to, because Diane had been clear that the uniform did not come off when the lid was open.
Patrick returned the following week, pale, and found her in the back.
"I heard," he said. He was fifty, kind in a tired way, protective of the bench the way people are protective of jobs that have been called easy by guests. "They're not replacing me."
"I don't want your job," Claire said, and was relieved to find it true. "I wanted one night not to be lied about. That's a worse mission statement than it sounds."
Patrick huffed. "It sounds about right for this business." He hesitated. "There's a church in Edgewater that loses pianists every time someone gets a better wedding. They pay almost nothing. They listen. If you want ears that aren't deciding on dessert, I can give you a name. No offense to the duck."
"None taken."
She called. The church secretary sounded grateful in a way that made Claire suspicious, then simply gave her the date of a funeral on a Thursday morning when the Winslow did not need her. Claire almost declined. Funerals were a door she had closed on purpose. She went anyway, wearing a gray dress that was not the uniform and not the black silk of the donor condo. The sanctuary smelled of lilies and carpet cleaner. She played hymns as requested, straightforward, the way she had played for Paul in an empty room with a janitor. She did not cry. A son in the front row cried, and the music did not fix him, and it was not supposed to. Afterward the pastor pressed her hands and said, "You didn't make it about you. Please come back." Claire walked to the el with her hands in her coat pockets and understood that she had been starving for sentences like that more than for applause.
Weddings followed, because word in a city is a clumsy animal and it finds the doors. The money was better and the music was worse. She played "Ave Maria" under a tent in September heat while a bridesmaid fanned herself and a child chased a bubble into the aisle. She took the check. She sent a portion to the Akron church that had helped with Ruth's last month, without a letter long enough to become a speech. She kept the Winslow schedule. Diane, watching her not become impossible, added a note to the file that said, in Diane's economical handwriting, reliable, and underlined it once.
In November Claire wrote to Lena Voss. The email took her three nights. She deleted the version that was a confession and the version that was a boast. The version she sent was a fact: she had played in public again. She was out of shape in the ways that mattered. She did not want a rescue. She wanted a witness and, if Voss had one, a teacher in Chicago who would not be impressed by a story.