✏️ Under One Roof

16. One Story

"It was so long ago now," Logan murmured, as Tegan sipped her mochaccino. It was easy to tell that this was hard for him as well, and Tegan could understand why. Ness's mother would presumably have been Logan's wife at some point, or at least a partner. And this sounded like it was going to be a story of an intense betrayal, unless she'd completely misread the situation. She wondered then if she should have considered other possibilities; if Ness's parents had discussed splitting up but not shared it with their son, that would certainly have explained his trust issues. But she had no idea if that was likely, or even possible. All she could do was try to suppress the guesses in the back of her mind while she waited for the truth.

And, a little more pragmatic but no less important, she had to avoid doing anything that might somehow imply she had wet her pants. She shifted position slightly, and tried to pay full attention to Logan. To his words, not just his voice.

"It's something that stuck with him?" Tegan asked, although she gathered that much was pretty obvious. For Tegan, her parents' separation was still a fresh wound. But Ness was still angry years later. A part of her wondered if she could possibly have remained angry for so many years. "He told me he was going to play the piano. The keyboard, I mean. For his mum."

"Right. The keyboard has something like three hundred voices, you know? It was a gift from his uncle, it was top of the range back then. With its own minidisc player, you can import samples from. I don't know if that's a gimmick that's fallen by the wayside, or something they all do now. But Ness said he didn't want to get distracted by all the features, he wanted to learn to play first. He was surprisingly mature for his age. He set it up to sound like a piano, and always practised with it on the same settings. Sometimes we could hear him playing in his room, but I'm sure sometimes he used headphones. Hours every day. We could hear sometimes, but he never played for us. He was embarrassed by his mistakes to start with, and wanted to get better before anyone else listened. So we would listen in when we could, and he really was getting better. And then one day he said he was ready."

Logan hesitated then, and topped up his coffee. The mug was still almost full, and Tegan got the sense that he was just looking for something to occupy his hands. Maybe a little displacement from the story he was telling, so it didn't hit him so hard. She did notice that after adding another shot of coffee to his drink, he decided that a shot of spiced rum would help the taste. She didn't know if putting booze in his coffee was a usual thing for him, but it just drove home the impression that this was a story he still didn't like to remember. Finally, he was ready to continue.

"We put a date in the calendar. Set up the keyboard in the lounge, in front of the TV, with two armchairs opposite. I'd heard him more often, because I would often bring him snacks when he was practising. It was his mum he wanted to impress really. And the closer the day came, the more excited he got, practically bouncing in his seat at breakfast this morning. And she... she told him how excited she was to hear it, but encouraged him to go to school. He wanted her to hear him play, and said it was a special occasion. That was a surprise, he was normally so dedicated, but we told him to wait until later. So he went into school, and his teachers said he was distracted all day. He told them that he was putting on a little concert for his family, and some of them said they'd love to hear him play too. I don't think he talked much about music at school, but they probably gathered that he'll be good at anything he's so excited by. And he told them he'd love to show them what he can play, once his parents agree that he's good enough."

Another pause. Tegan couldn't even imagine people being so enthusiastic. The only comments she'd received in school were people echoing her brothers' teasing. Her teachers hadn't been supportive of anything outside their own specific disciplines, and she only started getting useful feedback when she could save up her allowance to get violin classes in the evenings. But she put those thoughts to the back of her mind now and focused on the story, maybe just beginning to understand why Ness's feelings about music were so intense. He'd been excited, obsessed even. Maybe he'd been as intrigued as she was when they'd been young. But the one time he'd tried to show someone else, it had turned into the last thing he expected. But that brought her mind back to the big question that could make all the difference in the world: what had Logan been thinking on that day?