The Stolen - Jason Pinter [44]
have no children, but if I did I couldn't justify raising
them here. Now young families, dare I say yuppies, have
moved into those houses. Rats joining a ship. I never
thought I would see that in Meriden."
"You're against gentrification?" I asked.
"It pays my bills," she said. "And allows me more
leisure time than I previously had. But Lord, if I could find
one truly talented student in the bunch, it would make my
year."
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"Not many children like Michelle come along," I said.
"No," she agreed. "No, they don't."
"Aside from the obvious, was there anything about
Michelle that was different when she came back? Did she
ever mention a family member, a friend, somebody you
didn't recognize?"
Delilah shook her head. "Michelle didn't have many
friends. The gifted ones never do."
"Did she strike you as different in any way? After she
returned?"
Delilah thought for a moment. "She became more withdrawn. Michelle was once a vibrant, popular girl, but she
never fit in again. You can't explain to a young girl why
people are staring at her, knowing she can't possibly
understand exactly what happened. One night, a few days
after she came back, I thought I saw scarring on her arm,
but I decided it was just a pimple, some kind of adolescent puberty thing. It saddened me to see such a lovely girl
just have her soul sucked away. But what person wouldn't
after going through something like that?"
"Did she ever say anything to you that gave any clue as
to where she might have been all those years?"
Delilah shook her head. Stared ahead of her. I looked
at the tape recorder. Afraid this was all I was going to get
from Delilah Lancaster.
Another song came on the radio, the violin strings
prominent. Delilah's fingers flowed with the sound. Then
they abruptly stopped.
"What?" I asked. "What is it?"
She cocked her head, looked deep in thought.
"Beethoven's sonata," she said.
"Is that what's playing right now?" I asked.
"No," Delilah answered, her voice soft. There was a
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Jason Pinter
tinge of fright in there that made my pulse begin to race.
"Beethoven's Sonata no. 6. It's an incredibly difficult
piece. It can take months, if not years, to master. Oh, God,
I remember that night."
"What happened?"
"It was only the second or third lesson after she
returned," Delilah said. "Michelle was so down. Depressed. I asked her to play something that made her
happy. And she picked up her bow and began to play...oh,
God..."
"What?" I said. "What happened?"
"The sonata. Michelle played it for me that night. I left
the house cold, shivering. I didn't sleep for a week."
"Why?" I said, a shiver running down my back.
Delilah Lancaster turned toward me. "In the dozens of
lessons I had with Michelle Oliveira, never once had she
even attempted to play Beethoven. She had never tried to
play that symphony. That sonata was not even in any of
the books I purchased for her. Somehow she'd learned to
play that piece in between the time she disappeared..."
"...and when she came back."
I looked at Delilah Lancaster. She was trembling, her
hands gripping the wheel so hard they'd become white.
"Somebody else taught her how to play that sonata."
14
I marched into Wallace Langston's office and sat down.
He was poring over a pile of loose pages. He simply
looked up and stared at me.
"I don't recall that chair offering you a seat," he said. I
stood back up. Without missing a beat, Wallace said, "Now
you can sit down, Henry. What's up?"
I took out the tape recorder, put it on the desk in front of
Wallace. "I just spent the day in Meriden talking to Michelle
Oliveira's old music teacher, Delilah Lancaster. She--"
"Michelle who?" he said. I forgot for a moment that
Wallace had dozens of other stories being run past him,
and that even though this was hugely important to me, I
needed to show him that I was right about my suspicions.
"Seven years before Daniel Linwood disappeared, a girl
named Michelle Oliveira vanished from Meriden, Connecticut.