Playing With Fire by Tess Gerritsen Page B

Printed in 1921.”
    “There’s something written on the back cover.”
    Gerda flips over the book and sees the faded words, handwritten in blue ink:
11 Calle del Forno, Venezia.
“That’s an address in Venice.”
    “Maybe the composer’s address?”
    “That would certainly be a starting point for our search. We should compile a list of everyone who’s lived at that address since 1921.” She turns her attention back to the two pages of music on her stand. “
Incendio.
Fire. I wonder what kind of fire the title refers to.” She picks up her instrument, and before I can stop her, she starts to play. As the first notes ring from her violin, I feel a rising sense of panic. My hands begin to tingle, an electrical current that builds with each note, until it seems my nerves are screaming. I’m about to snatch the bow away from her when she abruptly stops playing and stares at the music.
    “Love,” she murmurs.
    “What?”
    “Don’t you hear it? The passion, the anguish in this music. In these first sixteen bars, where the melody’s introduced, such sadness and longing. Then at measure seventeen, it grows agitated. The pitch climbs and the notes speed up. I can almost imagine two frantic lovers growing desperate.” Gerda looks at me. “
Incendio.
I think it’s the fire of love.”
    “Or hell,” I say softly, and rub my temples. “Please don’t play it anymore. I don’t think I can stand hearing it.”
    She sets down the violin. “This isn’t just about the music, is it? What’s really going on, Julia?”
    “It
is
about the music.”
    “Lately you’ve been so distracted. You’ve missed two quartet rehearsals in a row.” She pauses. “Is there something wrong between you and Rob?”
    I don’t know what to tell her, so for a moment I don’t say a thing. It’s so quiet here in Gerda’s home. She lives alone, with no husband, no children; she has to answer only to herself, while I’m forced to share a house with a man who questions my sanity and a daughter who scares me.
    “It has to do with Lily,” I finally admit. “She’s been having problems.”
    “What problems?”
    “Remember when I told you I cut my leg and needed stitches?”
    “You said it was an accident.”
    “It wasn’t an accident.” I look at her. “Lily did it.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “She pulled a piece of broken glass out of the trash can. And she stabbed me with it.”
    Gerda stares. “
Lily
did that?”
    I wipe away tears. “And that day I fell, that wasn’t an accident, either. She left a toy on the stairs, right where I’d step on it. No one believes me, but I know she did it on purpose.” I take a few breaths and at last manage to regain control. When I speak again, my voice is flat. Defeated. “I don’t know who she is anymore. She’s turned into someone else. I look at her and I see a stranger, someone who wants to hurt me. And it all started when I played the waltz.”
    Anyone else would tell me that I’m delusional, but Gerda says nothing. She just listens, her silence calming and nonjudgmental.
    “We took her in for medical tests, and she had a sort of EEG, to look at her brain waves. When they played the waltz for her, her brain responded as if it were a long-term memory. As if she already
knew
this music. Yet you say the waltz has never been recorded.”
    “An old memory,” Gerda murmurs and stares at
Incendio,
as if seeing something in that music that she had missed before. “Julia, I know this is going to sound bizarre,” she says softly. “But when I was a child, I had memories that I couldn’t possibly explain. My parents put it down to an active imagination, but I remembered a stone hut with a dirt floor. Fields of wheat, waving in the sunlight. And I had a vivid memory of seeing my own bare feet, but with one toe missing. None of it made any sense, until my grandmother told me they were leftover memories of who I once was. In a previous lifetime.” She looks at me. “Do you think