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SHE WOULD NEVER PLAY in that stupid, cramped cry room again. She was so tired of being afraid of her own voice. She’d wasted enough time here in Orchard Grove feeling shy and inadequate and overlooked. Months trying to accommodate her music to fit others’ expectations, and in the end it sucked all of her creative energy dry. She wouldn’t let that happen anymore.
No matter what her husband said, no matter what anyone in this church thought, she was a musician. And a really good one. There was no more room for this false modesty, no reason for her to hide her talents or her voice. She was nobody’s little mouse.
Standing next to the sanctuary’s gaudy Christmas tree, which was covered in so much golden foil and maroon tinsel that it would have stood out in the middle of the Las Vegas strip, she raised her violin and began to play. Back in high school, her teacher had made her memorize all of the Bach cello suites transposed for violin. They weren’t technically demanding, which in the end was what made them so difficult to master.
Years later, she could still improve her performance.
Greg had no idea what he was talking about when it came to her voice lessons. How could he, a self-taught guitarist? He couldn’t read sheet music, and even though he could stay in key for the most part, that’s about all you could say for his singing. What did he know? What right did he have to criticize Katrina’s teacher after listening to her sing for a couple minutes?
Her bow grated the strings. Forceful. Angry.
Bach would be appalled.
She let her fingers fly higher up the register, no longer afraid to let the music soar up to the vaulted ceiling of the sanctuary. She moved past Bach and on to Tchaikovsky. Nobody composed better music to play when you were angry than the Russians. Next up Shostakovich with his barking staccato reminiscent of the machine gun bursts and air raids that nearly destroyed his Leningrad home. Katrina played on, pouring out all her frustrations into the music, but instead of running out of energy, it only fueled the intensity of her emotions.
The sanctuary had more space for her to express herself than the cry room, but it was still far from ideal. She hated the tacky Christmas decorations, the fact that anyone could stop by at any time and intrude on her practicing. But where else could she go? If she were to play like this at home, she would feel compelled to self-censor, to tone down the volume, to keep her intensity subdued. That’s all she’d done for the past six months since she’d arrived in Orchard Grove, all any of these orchardists and their petty wives expected her to do. In their minds, she was their pastor’s wife first and foremost. Her violin playing made for an interesting hobby, just like some people enjoy baking or quilting.
No one here understood that music wasn’t just a part of her life. It was the main reason she existed. If she was back in Long Beach and back with her musical family she had grown to love, she wouldn’t feel so isolated. So lonely.
This wasn’t her home. There was no sense of belonging here. She’d lost track of how many people Greg had invited over for lunch or dinner at the parsonage over the past six months. And who had returned the favor?
Nobody. Not a single one.
Not that there were many people she wanted to spend extra time with. She had never been part of a church that so aggressively and deliberately belittled their pastor. It was the church that was doing this to Greg, the church that kept him busy and frazzled and stressed out so that most days he hardly had time to spare her a single glance.
It was probably even the church’s fault that she felt so awkward around Miles. If she wasn’t afraid of all the silly gossips, she probably wouldn’t have freaked when he stopped by the sanctuary. And if the church had done a better job building up her husband instead of wearing him down, reminding him every single day of the week of the ways he wasn’t living up to their expectations, her marriage wouldn’t be under so much strain, which was probably what opened her subconscious up to that dream last night.
If she’d had a healthy relationship with her husband from the start, there wouldn’t be any room for distractions, no matter how deeply buried they were in her psyche.
It was the church’s fault too about the miscarriage. Not the fact that they’d lost the baby. The miscarriage itself was some sort of medical inevitability, no matter how tragic. But if Orchard Grove hadn’t been this prone to gossip, she wouldn’t have felt so strongly about keeping her secret from everybody. Even her husband. Today was the first time in months they’d discussed the baby they lost.
Katrina thought back to the words of Grandma Lucy’s prayer at church. Weeping and great mourning.
Nobody had been here to weep with Katrina. Not her husband, who could have shared her sorrow. Not her violin because she’d been bullied by so many different people who assumed they had a right to tell her what to play, when to play it, and how to play it until she kept Dmitry locked up in his case when she needed his comfort the most. If one in four women suffered from miscarriage like the statistics claimed, why had she spent these past months feeling abandoned and alone?
The music poured out of a soul so broken that she didn’t even notice her hot and angry tears until one splashed on her violin’s polished wood.
Her bow screeched to a halt on its string, and Katrina lowered her instrument to dry him off on her sweater. It wasn’t until then that she noticed the white-haired old woman sitting in the back row, staring intently at Katrina.