Medium Well (9781101599648) by Meg Benjamin Page B

smiling, remembering her mother’s baby grand with the top propped open.
    â€œYou started on the piano?”
    â€œYeah, but I wasn’t much better than mediocre. I switched to violin in elementary school.” She shrugged. “I can play guitar and bass, too, just not as well. No wind instruments, though. They let me out of that.”
    â€œThey?” He raised an eyebrow.
    â€œMy teachers at college. Most music schools expect you to be able to play multiple instruments, but they were willing to let me stick to strings.” Particularly after Professor Rarig had gotten a load of her technique on clarinet.
Embouchure, Miss Gunter. Some mouths have it. Other mouths are destined for the violin, no?
    Danny leaned back in his chair, contemplating his glass of wine. “I thought you majored in business. Araceli said something about your marketing classes.”
    Biddy grimaced. “Probably about how badly I did in them. I minored in business. Araceli wanted me to major, but we compromised.”
    â€œWhy did Araceli have any say over what you majored in?”
    Her smile faded.
    He shook his head. “Not that it’s any of my business. Sorry.”
    â€œNo.” She took a deep breath. “That’s okay. Araceli paid for my tuition, most of it, anyway.”
    â€œYour parents couldn’t handle it themselves?”
    â€œWe had a run of . . . bad luck, I guess.” She gave up on trying to keep any kind of smile going. She’d never be able to smile about that part of her life. “My dad was killed in an accident when I was finishing high school. Then my mom got sick. The hospital bills pretty much wiped out the insurance and the bank accounts.”
    â€œSo Araceli stepped in?”
    â€œShe was Mom’s executor.” Biddy looked down at her hands, remembering the feeling of gut-wrenching panic, along with the grief she hadn’t been able to process because of her fear. And then her relief when Araceli had moved back to San Antonio from Chicago. Knowing that everything would turn out all right after all. “Mom really wanted me to finish college.”
    He sighed. “Sorry, Biddy, I didn’t meant to make you unhappy. Would you like to talk about something else?”
    Yes, please!
But she might as well get it all out now. She looked up at him, her mouth quirking up at the corners again. “That’s okay. I don’t mind it so much these days. Anyway, Araceli thought I should major in something practical, something related to business, but I already had all these hours in music and it would have taken an extra year to pick up the hours for a business degree, so we compromised. Music major, business minor.” A compromise that had taken most of a month to work out. A compromise that had effectively destroyed her GPA, given how bored she was in her business classes.
    â€œBut now those compromises are over?” He raised an eyebrow.
    â€œPretty much.” She grimaced, remembering Araceli’s voice.
For God’s sake, Biddy, the whole music thing was fun when you were a kid. It’s time to grow up now.
    Danny took an olive from her cheese plate and popped it into his mouth. “Won’t it be tough to keep the real estate job up once you guys start getting more bookings?”
    â€œ
If
we start getting more bookings.” She rapped her knuckles on the wooden arm of the couch. “It’s still up in the air at this point.”
    He shook his head. “Not from what I saw tonight. Do you guys have a CD?”
    â€œAn extended play. It should be coming out next month. We can sell it at shows until we get a distributor.”
    â€œAnd a manager?”
    â€œWell, I’m sort of doing that for now. Only not very well. It’s tough to manage and perform at the same time. And I promised Araceli I’d finish getting my real estate license. When she got me the job with Vintage, I promised I’d try it