Page 35 of Falls From Grace
Brynn shook her head.
“Fools, the pair of you,” she said with a smile.
Back outdoors they wandered amongst the early Christmas shoppers, the bare trees all along the street lit up with gold fairy lights under the slowly darkening afternoon sky. Savannah spotted a shop window and asked Brynn to mind Tucker while she slipped inside. When she returned, she held a soft cashmere scarf in a gleaming burned gold.
“Here,” she said to Brynn, reaching up to wrap it around her neck and tucking the ends into her jacket. “Now you’re perfect.” She didn’t mean it to sound as sultry as it came out, but it didn’t seem to matter. Brynn’s gaze glowed into hers, her dark hair and eyes offset by the bright scarf, and everything around them faded to black. They stood smiling at each other under the fairy lights for a moment.
“Oh my god,” Brynn breathed, looking up. “It’s actually snowing.”
Large, soft, fluffy snowflakes drifted lazily from the sky and everywhere people paused to look up, flooding out from the shops to stand in the street and gaze up at the first snow of the winter. Kids ran around them, trying to catch snowflakes on their tongues and Savannah boosted Tucker up onto her hip to see.
“Look!” she told him. “Snow!” He blinked up at it, unimpressed, as the snow hit his nose and eyelashes and pushed his face into her shoulder to hide from it instead. Brynn was gazing around her in wonder. Bright white flakes nestled in her dark hair like jewels.
“It’s like a fairytale,” she murmured. “I can’t believe it’s real.”
“Snow, it turns out, is in fact real,” Savannah agreed, and Brynn huffed.
“No, look-” she insisted. “Look at all of this.” She took in the beautiful street, the gold lit trees, the gathering people. “Look at you,” she whispered, her eyes soft as she gazed at Savannah and Tucker in her arms. She reached out and brushed snowflakes out of the little boy’s dark hair, then gently touched Savannah’s own snowy hair, making her want to melt. “It’s like a fucking fairytale,” she murmured.
Savannah could only stare back, drinking in the sight of Brynn in the falling snow, looking at her with such wonder. Nothing can happen, she reminded herself, a twist of pain shooting through the sweetness. I can’t have her. But she imprinted the moment in her brain all the same, as a postcard to look back on after she’d gone. She took Brynn’s hand - they were both wearing woolen gloves so for some reason that seemed to make it okay - and pulled her further into the street. Brynn turned them slowly around in a full circle, smiling up at the sky.
“Oh, what a beautiful family you are!” An older woman standing nearby in an expensive wool coat and oversized beanie leaned in to tell them. “Just gorgeous.”
“Oh, we’re not-” Brynn started.
“Thank you,” Savannah interrupted with a smile.
“Oh, my goodness!” The woman did a double take. “You’re her… the singer, Savannah Grace, aren’t you? Oh, forgive me, my daughter would never speak to me again if I didn’t-” she pulled out her phone. “Would you please?”
“Sure,” Savannah smiled, transferring Tucker over to Brynn so she could put her arm around the woman’s waist as she took a selfie.
“Thank you,” the woman bubbled. “If you don’t mind me saying, I’m glad you got rid of that man. You’ve definitely upgraded there,” she nodded approvingly towards Brynn, who was standing with Tucker in her arms, and looking like a very attractive deer in the headlights.
Savannah quickly made her excuses and turned to Brynn, who was now looking steadily away, carefully gazing up at the sky again, blinking at the increasingly heavy snow.
“You’re in Vermont for winter,” Savannah informed her. “You’re about to meet a whole boatload of snow. Shall we get this kid out of the weather, babe?”
Brynn’s mouth quirked.
“Sure thing, sugartits.”
Savannah nearly tripped into the snow, and Brynn laughed out loud.
The snow fell fast that night and all into the next day. Savannah skipped the morning in the band room to join Brynn and Tucker outside on the lawn, showing them both how to make snow angels. Tucker was teething - his back molars making him miserable and neither of them had gotten much sleep - but even he cheered up in the face of hoards of adult attention and the novelty of snow.
Brynn caught onto snow quickly too, gleefully and athletically pelting Savannah with snowballs, but Savannah had two years of Vermont winters behind her, so she retaliated by dumping snow down the back of the Californian’s jacket. Brynn shrieked and immediately tripped Savannah flat on her back into the snow, laughing uproariously at her shock and making her wait far too long before helping her back to her feet.
With great reluctance, she left them to warm up indoors while she headed in to work with Noah. Her heart was both in the longing song this morning and outside it, specifically, hovering somewhere in Church Street where Brynn shone with snowflakes and gazed deep into her eyes.
“This is driving you nuts,” observed Noah, after she’d let both her notebook and her guitar slide to the floor and was staring at the walls in some kind of fugue state. He was not wrong.
So when she finally gave in and headed back out for the day, she opened the door of her private wing and wondered momentarily if she had indeed gone mad. A piano was playing, and it was playing the longing song. She stopped still, just inside the door, listening, the hair standing up on the back of her neck.
It wasn’t a hallucination. Her piano - not the grand one downstairs, but the old one, the first she’d ever owned - was being played in her living room. And the melody was the same one she and Noah had been working on all week. Only this time it was a little slower, like it was being caressed out of the keys. She tiptoed further down the hall before freezing still, as a woman’s voice, low and sweet, began to sing the lyrics. It was not quite verbatim, transitioning frequently from words to humming and back again, but the voice was beautiful and the feeling, the one she’d tried so hard to capture, was right there.
She crept in through the kitchen and hung back, staring, a tremor starting up in her chest. Brynn was at the piano, her back to Savannah, Tucker curled on her lap, nestled between her arms, her hands softly stoking along the ivory. Then the key changed, and the song transitioned exactly where Savannah and Noah had been stalled. The chorus. Brynn’s voice arched from low and throaty to aching and beautiful, words Savannah hadn’t written falling from her lips.
It’s only when I’m alone that you’re in my arms
