An Unfinished Score by Elise Blackwell Page A

new thermometer—the good kind.”
    “You took your cake’s temperature?” Petra smiles at her.
    “It looks delicious,” Suzanne says quickly. “Ben always prefers a moist fallen cake to one that’s cooked too long.”
    Daniel nods. “It looks great, Jennifer. I’m going to get a piece later after I finish my wine.”
    “The glass or the bottle?” asks Petra.
    “That’s not the point.” Jennifer looks at Anthony, then Daniel, searching for support. “That’s not the point. If you follow the rules, you’re supposed to get what you set out for. A recipe is a pact.”
    “Like music.” Anthony rubs his wife’s rounded shoulder with his free hand. “You can’t give an audience a pleasant beginning and then hit them with something they don’t understand. Same thing with marriage.”
    “I suppose you think life works that way,” Petra says, her words loose but her face clamped. “Follow the rules, advance three spaces, collect your reward. Americans who were popular in high school always think like that.”
    Dusk lurks above them and then settles, as though the darkness is not a declining of light but a tangible thing losing altitude. Once lowered, it leaves Suzanne slightly chilled. Adele sits with another child, a girl whose mother, Linda, is a widow.
    “She’s beautiful,” Daniel says of the woman, who stands beyond the girls.
    “She doesn’t look it, but she’s ten years older than you are,” Suzanne tells him, her voice sympathetic.
    “That doesn’t matter to me.”
    While Petra’s drinking words slur unpleasantly, Daniel’s overlap melodically, as though he is speaking a Romance language Suzanne half understands.
    “She has two children, all the time.”
    “I love children,” he says.
    “Daniel,” Suzanne says, her voice now like snapped fingers, “she doesn’t drink. She quit when her husband died, because she always has to be the responsible one.”
    “Ah, well, now that might pose a problem.” Daniel grins, boyish, but still he watches Linda play with her daughter and Adele. The three hold hands and turn in a circle. From behind, Linda, slim-hipped, looks like a tall child.
    “Ashes, ashes, we all fall down,” Linda’s daughter sings as the three collapse to the ground laughing.
    Ben walks up behind Suzanne, holds the back of her neck in a loose grip.
    “That’s a bit morbid,” says Jennifer. “The father died on 9/11.”
    Petra’s words collide with each other: “Did you hear the one about the terrorists who hijacked a plane full of viola players?”
    Anthony helps Jennifer from the low chair and murmurs good-bye as they walk away to collect their children.
    “Have some more wine, Petra.” Ben’s voice is like metal.
    “Let’s go,” Suzanne says.
    “But Adele is having fun. She never gets to play with children.”
    “Then let Ben drive you home, and I’ll stay with her.”
    “And then come back for you?” He sounds annoyed and his grip tightens perceptibly.
    “And then come back for Adele and me,” Suzanne says resolutely. She’s about to ask Daniel if he wants Ben to drop him off also, but he’s already up and walking a straight line toward Linda.
    As soon as Ben and Petra have left, Suzanne wishes she and Adele had gone with them. The party empties while they wait for Ben to return, and Adele quickly runs out of children to play with and settles in Elizabeth’s living room with a book. Suzanne helps Elizabeth process some of the dishes, including her own empty cake plate. At one point she turns to Elizabeth, suddenly compelled to tell her—tell someone—about Alex. Instead she pours the wine left in her glass into the sink. She reminds herself, sternly, that she can never tell anyone, that not telling is part of the cost of what she has done.
    When Ben returns, finally, the kitchen is clean and Elizabeth’s family has gone to bed. Elizabeth dances with Adele in the living room to music with the bass turned up.
    Ben wipes his feet on the mat just