I’d avoided his Echoes, afraid of triggering a break or an inversion or Addie’s suspicions. But the sight of his tall frame hunched over the piano made me forget about the anxiety that had driven me over the last few days. “You really are terrible.” I laughed, resting the violin on my knee. “Told you. We should have done something with drums.” “And I told you, you can’t do counterpoint with percussion. Unless you’ve decided to take up the marimba.” “Um, no. Strictly a drum-set kind of guy.” “Why did you stop playing?” “One of the high school coaches saw me play basketball in seventh grade. Told me if I got serious, I could probably win a scholarship. It wasn’t like we had a lot of money lying around, so I got serious, and the other stuff fell away. Between practice and conditioning and camps and tournaments . . . I had to make a choice.” The range of his Echoes made more sense. Each one had followed a path he’d turned away from. Each one had taken up a life he’d left behind.
