Hope, Levy, Marc [good summer reads TXT] 📗

“Okay.” Harold nodded. “Two months of rehabilitation, and another two for her to get back to normal life. That makes four months. You have four months to give me back the girl I once knew.”

Harold Barnett ended on that thinly veiled threat, and left feeling doubtful but nonetheless somewhat reassured. He shook Kasuko’s hand, and was taken aback by the strength of her grip. The woman had to be at least ten years older than he was.

Before heading back to the office, he wanted to see his daughter, but her room was empty. The nurse told Harold that Melly had gone down to the rehabilitation room on the lower floor.

The elevator would be too slow, Harold was sure of it, and so he took the emergency stairwell.

Peering through the glass window, through the swinging doors, he watched as his daughter gripped two parallel bars while she practiced walking, a headset covered with electrodes fitted to her head.

He tapped the window, hoping to catch her eye, and waved at her. She smiled back, not wanting to release the bars.

It was a simple thing, and yet her smile filled Harold Barnett with a sense of completeness he hadn’t felt in a long time.

As he ducked into his car, he wondered just how long it had been. He couldn’t remember.

“Are you sure that man is my dad?” Melly asked.

“Sure.” The physical therapist smiled. “And the woman with him yesterday is your mom.”

“Do I have siblings?”

“I have no idea, but I can find out. Now, let’s focus on your exercises.”

Melly spotted the upright piano at the far end of the room.

“Can I play it one day?”

“Someday soon.”

Melly was growing close to her physical therapist. During her morning exercises, she would tell him all about the questions her parents had asked her the day before. Questions that she was able to remember without the slightest difficulty.

The PT tracked down details for her, information gleaned from her records, sourced from her doctor, recruiting the nurse to question Betsy in the most casual, unassuming way possible. Kasuko played her part, too, scouring Externet for as much information as she could find on both Melly’s private life and career, which the newspapers, bloggers, and fans had provided readily. Every day after her training, the PT handed her reports, which Melly read through carefully, tucking them out of sight when Harold or Betsy stopped by to visit.

Day after day, she pieced together who she was, absorbing the faces and names of the people she used to know, acquaintances, fellow musicians and orchestra conductors, journalists, and even obscure family members. Melly realized that her distant memory was still lacking, and so day by day, she learned to act, slipping easily into the role of Melody Barnett, the famous concert pianist.

While Harold remained on his guard, Betsy was convinced by the act, overjoyed to be reunited with her daughter, especially when Melody was discharged from the Center to continue her recovery at the family home.

Eight months after her accident, Melly was about to return to the life that was hers by birthright. A new chapter was about to begin, a story more solid and tangible than the blank pages of her memory.

Everything would soon be back to normal.

17

The family estate was in Weston, where many of Boston’s upper-middle-class families lived. Harold Barnett had had the property built in the late 2020s, back when fracking shale gas had turned the United States into the world’s leading energy superpower. In 2030, 80 percent of all the cars on the road ran entirely on electricity, and as the price of gas plummeted to under ten dollars a barrel, the Gulf states had been plunged into an economic crisis that triggered their decline. Africa had harnessed the power of solar energy and had emerged as the new El Dorado, and from East to West, old democracies and new oligarchies were reunited in peace, governing a world that was monitored and controlled to the nth degree, a postmodern world where consumerism was now more than ever before the opium of the people. Harold Barnett had been a canny prospector in the clean-energy markets and had amassed a significant fortune.

But nothing was more precious to him than his daughter, whom he held as dear as the weightiest bar of gold. She was his pride and joy, his sole heir and his legacy, his link to eternity. Harold had had two lives since Melody was born: his own and his daughter’s. And because she wanted to please him, Melly soon took to the Bösendorfer Imperial that reigned in the music room.

At the Longview Center, far from prying eyes and with her PT’s help, she had practiced on the old upright piano that stood against the rehabilitation-room wall. To her greatest surprise, her fingers had flitted across the keyboard without thought or effort. Her hands were agile, but she struggled to understand the sheet music, and she threw herself into learning to read it.

When she wasn’t practicing piano, Melly spent her time training her memory. Feeling like a stranger in this cavernous house was an unsettling sensation she couldn’t quite shake off.

The staff that worked on the estate were an endless source of information. The butler, chef, housekeeping staff, and gardeners had all watched her grow up, and she bombarded them with questions every chance she got. She wandered around the grounds, urging them to share anecdotes and stories about her.

One day, her mother’s driver, Walt, told her about a nanny who had adored her, and who had always helped smooth things over with her father. Nadia was the only one who could stand up to Harold, the driver had told her with a wink. Melly pretended to remember her, and asked Walt to promise to drive her to the retirement home where Nadia Volenberg was seeing out her days.

Melly chose to visit her old nanny on a morning when Betsy had a magazine