1. Niles

Chapter one

Niles

I t started with a ubiquitous high F. Its unwavering, resonant tone commanded the attention of over two thousand theater patrons, who hushed in their seats and shifted their attention forward.

The show had begun.

The single, stunning note hung suspended long past its culmination, leaving an auditory imprint behind. Such wonderous moments often surfaced poignant images in my imagination, transporting me to faraway vistas. On that cool early December evening, I landed pleasantly in a forest of fragrant evergreens. Spring flowers in full bloom. A bee rested on a delicate petal, sucking sweet nectar from its middle. A babbling brook. The air warm against my cheeks. Lovers lying in a muddle of blankets, flushed from exertion, their picnic forgotten.

I closed my eyes and let the waves of beauty, drawn from a particular tone on a French horn, unfold.

Music had the power to flay me, leaving me raw and emotional. Exposed. Unprotected. I was at its mercy. Always. Since the day I heard my first concerto at the tender age of ten, in a long-ago doctor’s office, as I nervously awaited a booster shot and my mother paged through a weathered copy of Chatelaine , my life acquired meaning. Any choice of a future had been taken away. Call it fate. Call it destiny. Call it a vocation. I knew then music would be a crucial part of my life.

Although fleeting, the moment with the French horn felt as though it extended for eons. One note and I was unmoored, drifting on a timeless journey. At peace. Lost, yet in no rush to be found. Then, out of the deepest, darkest depths of the forest came the steady heartbeat drum of the timpani. It spoke with a resounding pulse, marking the rebirth of the world, calling to every animal, every insect, and every reptile to emerge from slumber and rejoice.

I opened my eyes and let the resplendent eruption of symphonic wonder encapsulate me.

The grand theater vanished, dimming in my periphery. The musicians, swathed in brilliant white light and uniformly dressed in their penguin attire, performed spectacularly. Hypnotically.

Visiting Roy Thompson Hall and seeing the Toronto Symphony Orchestra was a treat, but it brought both boundless joy and tremendous pain. Envy wrapped her fingers around my heart, tugging with enough force to remind me of what I’d failed to achieve.

Ambition hadn’t been enough. Infinite desire turned out to be irrelevant.

Life was malleable to a point, but commanding fate or destiny or providence wasn’t possible, and if I believed in such intervention, god didn’t see me fit for the stage.

Sometimes, our biggest dreams weren’t to be realized.

The stage and players blurred as I swallowed a lump of familiar shame and blinked heavily a few times to clear the sting of regret. This should have been my life. Why had I given up?

Flutes, flittering and trilling birds, took a turn while the oboes snuck up behind them, bounding grasshoppers disturbing the brush. Before long, they too were chased off by a chorus of trumpets, leaping playful foxes, chasing each other along the embankment by the stream. The violins danced and swooped, butterflies catching the air current. The trombones stretched and pinged, bullfrogs lazing in the long grass. The forest was alive. Riotous. Stupendous.

My mind conjured spring despite the flurries that had been falling before our arrival. It was a time of year I enjoyed, so it made sense I should land there in reverie.

With the approaching holiday, the evening’s performance was titled A Christmas Fusion , with highlights from Bach’s Christmas Oratorio , Handel’s Messiah , Vivaldi’s “Winter,” Tchaikovsky’s The Nutcracker , and several more iconic masterpieces to adequately mark the season.

A crescendo.

Tension.

Anticipation.

I held my breath as the aria’s sheer perfection held me cradled in her arms like a lover.

Climbing. Building. Growing. Swelling.

It abruptly stopped. The soundless pause was its own music, perfectly orchestrated to becharm an audience. Not a single person present would dare to disturb it.

The imprint, the echoes of the chase and rebirth, remained, suspending the moment as though time had ceased.

The lights on the orchestra dimmed as a single, radiant spotlight bloomed at the corner of the stage, revealing a young woman who was barely a woman at all. A girl, really. Fine- boned and sylphlike, she wore her flaxen hair down. It spilled in rippling waves to the middle of her back, glossy and angelic. Spine straight, her fingers moved over the ivories of a sleek grand piano. Fairies dancing. Elves scavenging. First one, then many, until the forest was riddled with mystical creatures.

In a shimmering black dress that exposed her pale arms and accentuated her lack of womanly curves, the girl could have been mistaken for a child of twelve. She was petite, as delicate as the notes filling the auditorium. A wonder in and of herself.

But fourteen-year-old Constantina Castellanos was not a child, and if her biography in the playbill was to be believed, she had not been a child for a long time. She’d spent a lifetime on stage, studying, performing, and dedicating her entire existence to music. With two professional musicians as parents, it was hardly surprising.

Koa bumped my arm and leaned against my side; his mouth close enough that his breath tickled my ear lobe. “There she is.”

Yes. There she was. My new student. Unfathomable but true. What could I possibly have to offer a girl like Constantina? A fresh wave of nerves scrambled my belly.

No words adequately described my perplexity, so I didn’t respond. It had been two weeks since Dr. Justine McCaine, Timber Creek Academy’s principal, informed the staff we had acquired a new student who would start before the winter semester.

“Miss Castellanos has been homeschooled to this point. Her academic testing puts her in the ninetieth percentile for her age. She’s a classically trained musician, proficient on both violin and piano and comes from a musical family.” Dr. McCaine scowled at me from over the top of her glasses.

Classically trained was an understatement. The teenager was leaps and bounds beyond any student I’d taught in previous years. A prodigy. A sensation unlike any the academy had ever seen, and considering we housed some of the most brilliant students in the province—in the country—that was saying a lot. In the staffroom, surrounded by colleagues, I wasn’t the only person to question why Constantina’s parents wanted to put her in school when she clearly excelled with tutors.

“There is a catch,” Dr. McCaine had said. “Miss Castellanos has… issues.”

The young woman commanding the piano finished the solo, and the orchestra took over. When the piece ended, Constantina stood and bowed to the audience’s applause.

My attention was drawn to the fashionable black scarf around her neck. The fabric sparkled with the same galactic shimmer as her dress. Constantina touched it subconsciously as she absorbed the audience’s praise. She didn’t smile or seem at all pleased with the performance. Once the appreciation faded, the girl left the stage as quick as a bunny in the forest.

At intermission, Koa and I remained seated as guests swarmed out of the hall to use the facilities, grab wine, or stretch their legs before the second half. The musicians uniformly departed, row by row, until the stage was empty.

Koa turned pages in the playbill while I stared at the glistening sheen of lights reflecting off the grand piano.

Having located Constantina’s biography, Koa presented the booklet. “Well? Thoughts?”

“You don’t want to know my thoughts.”

Constantina was a Featured Performer that evening. Born in Greece to two world-renowned musicians, it wasn’t surprising that she had captured the attention of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra. Her father had likely pulled strings or knew the conductor. Had a friend who had a friend. Wasn’t that how it worked?

“Thoughts?” Koa asked more pointedly as I read the girl’s numerous achievements and fought a fresh round of envy and inferiority.

“She’s fourteen. How is it possible?”

“Discipline.”

“Discipline.” The word tasted vile. “If my parents had given half a shit about my passion for music…” I waved the playbill in Koa’s face. “This could have been me. Look at this. She won the gold prize at the World Classical Music Awards at age six, for god’s sake.”

“There is no god.”

“ Six , Koa. Do you know what I was doing at age six?”

“Playing war with your GI Joe figurines in the sandbox at the park?”

“Close. Replace GI Joe with my sister’s Ken doll and replace war with… other things. The point is, I could have been something… more. Something… remarkable. But no. I’m the outcast. The black sheep. The disappointment. It wasn’t enough to be gay, but how could I possibly want to pursue such a whimsical career as music? Every time my mother gets me on the phone, she feels the need to remind me of my siblings’ far greater successes. Of their marriages and achievements. Of her grandkids.”

“As much as I’d love to indulge you in this poorly veiled attempt at self-pity, I feel we’ve fatally bludgeoned this poor stallion enough in the past, and I have nothing further to contribute to the conversation. Focus. As a student, Niles. What are your thoughts on Constantina as a future student?”

“She’s going to make me look bad.”

“This isn’t about you. Stop wallowing. I thought we agreed that I was the depressive one in this relationship.”

“I thought we agreed we weren’t in a relationship, hence your handsome hockey star.”

Koa chuckled. “Good grief. Build a bridge.”

“Fine.” I skimmed Constantina’s biography. “Logically, though, what am I going to teach her that she doesn’t already know? Do I start her on a new instrument? I mean, my god, she only knows four.”

“Your sarcasm is showing.”

“Intentionally. I can’t help it.”

“Give her composition projects.”

“In ninth grade? Good lord, what will I teach her next year or the year after? She’s beyond my tutelage. Dr. McCaine knew that. Why allow her into my class?”

“Based on her testing scores, she’s beyond all high school tutelage, even mine.” Koa tapped his chest. “The point was not to advance her academically but to assist her in building socialization skills. You heard about her background.”

Sighing, I handed Koa the program. “I know.”

“So you’re making noise for the sake of it?”

“Kindly shut up and let me wallow in self-pity.”

“Whatever your heart desires. We should go to that wine bar on Queen after. They have incredible appetizers. Jersey’s not a fan. He says it’s too upscale for him.”

“That would be lovely.”

“My treat.”

“Good. Can I cry on your shoulder?”

“If you must.”

I leaned my head on Koa’s shoulder, and he rested his cheek against my crown. My best friend was different from the man I’d known a year ago. Less closed off. Less distant. He smiled with a fraction more ease and spoke about the future with positivity and anticipation. Anyone who had known Koa for any length of time would understand the profundity of such change. Bleak and apathetic Koa, the reserved and mysterious man I’d once dated, who had frustrated me to no end, had been reborn. Although he might never openly express joy or admit serenity, he was happy. Light gleamed in his eyes where there had once been nothing but darkness and buried pain.

If only I’d been the one to precipitate those changes, but I wasn’t. Koa’s reawakening had been aided by another man.

“What’s Jersey doing this evening?” I asked.

Koa huffed, the action jostling my head. “On a Saturday night in December? Need you ask?”

“Forget it. He’s at the hockey rink.”

“Of course.”

“Are you bringing him to the staff Christmas party?”

“That would imply I was going to the staff Christmas party.”

I playfully slapped Koa’s knee. “You’re going, and you’re bringing Jersey. I need someone academically inferior, so I don’t have to spend the entire night posturing among the crowd of walking doctorates who never fail to point out my shortcomings. It’s exhausting, and it hurts my ego.”

“No one does that, and I don’t appreciate you calling Jersey inferior .”

“I said academically inferior, and he is.”

“He’s university educated.”

“But my master’s degree trumps his bachelor’s.”

“You’re a hypocrite.” Koa shoved me off his shoulder, checking the time on his phone.

“I’m allowed with him. Jersey doesn’t care about stuff like that.”

“Precisely. You shouldn’t either. The only reason people josh is because it offends you. If you’re unhappy with your education, go back to school.”

“I’m forty-four.”

“So?”

Facing the stage, shame burning my insides, I ignored Koa’s blatant stare and pointed remark. We’d had this argument numerous times. Acquiring a PhD was a ship that had long since sailed. I should have completed my schooling when I had the chance, but I’d eagerly ditched the books to start a teaching career, not realizing the regret that would follow years down the road.

The lights in the hall dimmed, warning the audience the show was about to resume. Those still returning to their seats hustled. The murmuring voices hushed. A stillness settled over the vast auditorium.

“So?” Koa asked again.

I stared at the grand piano, imagining the path I’d never taken. “She has another solo in the second half.”

“Niles. I was referring to school.”

I ignored him, annoyed and hurt.

Koa leaned in and whispered as the performers, marching in uniform rows, filed onstage and took their seats. “The letters behind your name mean nothing. You’re an accomplished musician, and the best music teacher Timber Creek has ever hired. Bar none. Get out of your head. Passion outweighs education any day of the week. Ask any student who has ever spent time in a classroom. They can tell the difference, Niles. I wish you could see the greatness other people see and stop focusing on your shortcomings. The only person judging you is you.”

I faced my best friend and ex-lover. At some point over the past year, he’d become the man I knew he could be. One who cared. One who loved. One who believed in tomorrow.

Koa wore the suggestion of a smile, and it broke my heart in a different way. “I never should have given you up.”

The smile grew as he shook his head. “You’re not listening.”

“I am. I hear you.”

A long moment passed as Koa stared into my eyes, and I stared back. I could imagine what he saw. Longing and regret primarily. Oh, how I had loved this man.

The orchestra came alive with the trumpeting introduction to Tchaikovsky’s The Nutcracker . Koa gently squeezed my thigh. “We worked in theory, Niles, but like those highly educated teachers with a long list of letters behind their name, we lacked passion, remember?”

“Distinctly, but it doesn’t mean I don’t still love you.”

“I know.”

“Do you hate me for that?”

“No.”

But that love could never be returned.

I bussed Koa’s temple, and as I watched the second half of the performance, I let the music take me away.

***

Monday morning dawned with a blizzard. Sipping coffee, staring out the picture window into the backyard, I fought the dizzying effect of billions of swirling flakes filling the sky. Surrounded by a landscape of evergreens, nestled on the outskirts of Peterborough and along the shore of Chemong Lake, the snow created a fantastical oasis for my quaint homestead.

For the better part of my career, I’d taken advantage of the housing options provided to instructors at the elite boarding school. The cabinesque homes proved adequate for a time, but as the years passed, I’d found the proximity to work suffocating. A few years ago, I purchased a bungalow off campus, determined to reclaim some privacy.

My phone buzzed on the kitchen counter. At shortly after seven, I couldn’t imagine who was calling. Koa perhaps? Another colleague? The new student, Constantina, started today. Everyone had been in an uproar following the staff meeting, and she’d been the talk of the school ever since.

But it was neither Koa nor another Timber Creek educator. Dr. McCaine’s office number flashed across the screen. A phone call from my boss at that early hour couldn’t be good.

“Are you able to come in twenty minutes early? We need to chat.” Dr. McCaine wasn’t asking a question despite the inferring inflection. I’d learned long ago to tell the difference. She was the ship’s captain, and in her world, orders were given and obeyed.

“I can be there in fifteen minutes.”

“Good.”

“Is this about Miss Castellanos?”

“Not directly.”

“Ma’am?”

“See you in fifteen.” Dr. McCaine hung up.

I poured the rest of my coffee into the sink, found a warm jacket and my briefcase, and headed out the door.

***

After a quick stop in the music room to shed my outdoor wear and ensure I was appropriately presentable—Dr. McCaine did not approve of me wearing my long hair down nor the habit I’d developed of rolling my shirtsleeves to my elbows—I ventured to the second floor and her office.

The gymnasium adjacent to my classroom echoed with the thump of basketballs and the shrill cry of a whistle. Coach Blaine’s Girls’ AAA volleyball team was predicted to win the OFSSA championship in March, and it had been six years since they had been deemed contenders. Extra practices had been set up as a result.

Apart from my allocated corner of the school—I despised existing so close to the gymnasium—the halls were quiet and desolate. A lone janitor pushed a cart of supplies from classroom to classroom, emptying the garbage before the school day began.

The student body—who lived in dorm rooms on campus—would be gathered in the dining hall for breakfast or huddled in the library to finish neglected assignments. The few who crossed my path as I made my way to the administration offices offered a quick, “Good morning, Mr. Edwidge.”

Mister. Like shards of glass raked over tender flesh. I was the only mister in the entire faculty. Timber Creek’s hiring policy stated that their instructors be exemplary. They were an investment. A selling point when encouraging parents to pay extravagant fees. Who better to educate their gifted children than professors with doctorates.

I was the exception, and Dr. McCaine never failed to remind me of the accommodation I’d been granted. “Parents don’t approve,” she’d told me on more than one occasion.

Rapping a knuckle on the office door, I stared at the two gold embossed letters that appeared on the nameplate. McCaine’s designation. Dr.

“Come.”

In her late fifties, Justine McCaine’s hair had gone from bronze to silver as though she’d moved up in the world with age. She wore a navy pantsuit that morning. Her customary attire. Prim and proper as a captain should be. If I could find fault with the woman, it was in her skin. A youth spent sunbathing on beaches with oils instead of sunscreen, and decades of fad-smoking cigarettes before the government actively proclaimed it was not cool and was, in fact, bad for your health had left Timber Creek’s principal wrinkled and spotted like a leopard. Aged in a way that children today, with knowledge, would be able to prevent.

She waved to a vacant chair and urged me to sit.

I’d tied my long hair back into a messy bun, but a few strands must have pulled loose when I’d removed my woolen hat. Dr. McCaine seemed to notice, and I earned a disproving puckered glare, so I quickly found the culprits and tucked them over my ear.

“Quite the storm we’re getting,” I said defensively.

“Indeed.” She opened a brown folder and peered through the bottom half of her silver-framed glasses as she skimmed the top page of what seemed a text-filled booklet. “You’re not going to like what I have to say.”

I flashed my attention to the text but couldn’t make out the words from my vantage. Every excuse I’d imagined she might use to release me from my contract filled my head.

Timber Creek was a historic building with poor insulation and rattly windows. The winter wind often pierced the walls, encouraging the student body to add extra layers.

But the outdoor chill didn’t reach me that morning.

Sweat greased my palms and dampened the strands of hair at my temples.

Dr. McCaine eyed me over the brim of her spectacles, a cat toying with a mouse for pleasure.

“Not like what, ma’am?” Miraculously, the words came out strong and unwavering.

She cleared her throat, referenced the form, and folded her fingers together on top. “I’ve approved a guest teacher to assist with the instruction of your classes three days a week starting on Wednesday.”

“A what? Excuse me? Did you—”

“I have approved—”

“I heard what you said. I don’t understand.”

“We’ve been offered an invaluable gift, Mr. Edwidge. Turning it down would not only be insulting to the party making the proposal, but considering the reputation of our school, it would be impolitic. Foolhardy, to say the least. If parents caught wind of—”

“What invaluable gift, ma’am?”

Dr. McCaine referenced the folder. “Maestro Castellanos, Miss Castellanos’s father, has charitably offered his expertise in your classroom. Isn’t that wonderful?”

She didn’t wait for my reply. “It’s temporary. A couple of days a week. You’re aware who this man is, aren’t you?”

“Yes, ma’am.” But shamefully, I didn’t know much. Only when Constantina had been drawn into my radar had I briefly looked up the maestro.

World-renowned musician and composer, Augustus Castellanos. Reading the long, humbling list of achievements and awards he’d gathered over his forty-one years would have aggravated my feelings of inferiority, so I’d skipped them, already jaded, already hating the man on principle.

Augustus Castellanos was going to guest-teach a bunch of, albeit intelligent, high school kids? I couldn’t find a single word to contribute to the conversation. It didn’t make sense.

Dr. McCaine waited with irritating patience as I evaluated what it meant.

“Are you… auditioning my replacement, ma’am?”

She tsk ed. “Really, Mr. Edwidge? Maestro Castellanos has no interest in full-time employment.”

And you know this how? I wanted to ask. Did you make him an offer already, and he turned it down?

“Wednesday?”

“Yes. He and his daughter have taken up temporary residence on campus. Although I wouldn’t be surprised if he accompanies his daughter this morning. He was eager to see the music room.”

I had a thousand questions, but the offer wasn’t up for debate. The captain had spoken, and as merely the lowest of ship hands, I didn’t get a say.

“That will be all.”

Dismissed.