Chapter 7

Ten years ago, a video of a teenage boy playing piano in a practice room went viral.

You couldn't see his face clearly, but you could hear what was coming out of his hands, and it stopped people cold.

The clip tore across the internet, and eventually it reached the president of the Curtis Institute of Music. She shared it herself, called the boy in the video a talent that comes along once in a century, and made a public offer: Curtis would admit him, rules be damned.

Everyone believed that boy was Noah Shaw.

That video put him inside Curtis. After graduation he became the youngest featured pianist the New York Symphony had ever named, and from there he never came back down.

And now somebody had posted the full, uncut version.

At the end of it, the boy finished the piece, bounced up to the camera, and laughed. "Why are you filming me?"

The face was young and unguarded, and it wasn't Noah's.

It was his brother's.

The internet detonated.

[What is happening? So the genius the Curtis president picked out wasn't Noah Shaw at all, it was his older brother?]

[I know Ethan Shaw--he's a serious pianist here, lost a ton of performance opportunities because he can't speak, and he is still unbelievable to listen to.]

[I can't believe this. If HE had gone to Curtis, what would his life look like right now? Noah Shaw stole his brother's whole life.]

The condemnation came down on Noah like weather.

He couldn't take it. He tried to kill himself.

Vivian and Tessa reached the hospital just after they'd brought him back, and he was fighting the nurses with everything he had left.

"Why did you save me? Let me die!"

Vivian caught hold of him. "Stop it--you'll tear the sutures open."

Noah collapsed against her.

"Vivian, Curtis has already contacted me. They're investigating me for fraud and they're going to revoke my degree. The Symphony is terminating my contract. My life is over."

Looking at him sobbing in her arms, something in Vivian's chest twisted.

The question she'd meant to ask--why did you put your name on your brother's performance?--never made it out of her mouth.

She only held him. "There'll be a way."

Noah shook his head, past speech. "There isn't. Not unless Ethan comes out publicly and says he faked the video himself. That the whole thing was a stunt he cooked up for attention.

"And he hates me. Why would he ever do that for me? Unless..."

He looked up at her, and his voice trembled.

"Unless somebody logs into his account and posts it for him."

Vivian stared. "What are you asking me to do?"

Noah gripped her hand and the tears came harder.

"Vivian, I know every password he has is your birthday. His laptop opens with your fingerprint. If you'd just post the retraction--"

Her instinct was to refuse.

Then she looked down and saw that the cut on his wrist had opened again. Blood was spreading across the sheets, soaking them red.

That broke her. She pulled him against her.

"All right," she said, shaking. "I'll do it."

"I told you. Anything you want, I'll give you."

Noah's publicity team moved fast.

Vivian had barely found Ethan's laptop at home before the finished statement landed in her inbox.

It was written as his confession. He had been eaten alive by jealousy of his younger brother. He had faked the old recording and paid someone to release it. Now, facing legal exposure, he had no choice but to admit the truth.

Vivian pasted it into the text box and didn't hit Post.

Tessa was watching her. "Vivian, are you sure about this?"

"Say what you mean."

Tessa hesitated. "I always thought Ethan couldn't let go of it because he was jealous. But looking at all this, he really was wronged.

"We've known him since we were kids. You know exactly what the piano means to him. If you post this, he's finished as a musician. That's it. That's the end of it. You really want to do that?"

Vivian's fingertips trembled.

Of course she knew what music was to him.

The Ethan in her memory was a boy who barely spoke. He went red every time she looked at him and couldn't get a word out.

Only at a piano did his face open all the way up.

The year he took a scalpel meant for her, he came out of surgery to find his mother crying so hard she couldn't stand. He typed one question into his phone and held it up.

[Will I still be able to play?]

When the doctor said that losing one’s voice later in life did not impair hearing, his whole face lit, and he turned to Vivian and typed a second line.

[Then it's fine. I can still play, and you're all right. That's the best I could have asked for.]

There were two things Ethan Shaw loved, and that was the whole list.

Music. And her.

And now she was going to take one of them away from him with her own hands.

Something flickered behind her eyes. She said it anyway.

"I'm the one who's wronged him. I'll spend the rest of my life making it up to him."

If what he loved was her and music, then she'd hand him herself in exchange for the dream she was about to destroy.

She hit Post without hesitating.

Beside her, Ethan's tears finally fell.

The rest of your life.

Vivian, do you know?

I don't have a life left.

He looked down at himself and saw that his spirit had gone nearly transparent.

He understood then. It was time to go.

She had cut the last thread holding him here, with her own hand, and there was nothing left in this world to want.

He raised his head and looked at the woman he'd loved for more than ten years.

"Goodbye, Vivian."

If there's another life after this one, I hope we never meet.

The instant his spirit began to scatter, the laptop in front of Vivian chimed.

An automated birthday greeting, sent to Ethan's account.

She froze.

She'd nearly forgotten.

Today was Ethan's birthday.

His birthday fell one day before hers. It should have been the easiest date in the world to remember, and every year she forgot it.

Guilt spread through her. She picked up her phone and opened their messages.

[Happy birthday.]

She sent it, then scrolled up, and found the whole thread was his. Message after message, all from him.

She had never once replied.

She was still staring at it when the police called and told her to come back and finish the case.

She put her thoughts away and drove in.

She'd barely pushed open the door of the morgue when Daniel came out, and there was no blood in his face at all.

"Professor." He couldn't get it out. "The DNA came back early. Well, the identity--"