Mark knew when Adelinde and Matteo came back when the latter ran into his office.
“Say hi! Say hi!”
“Hey, kid,” Mark replied, setting down the third argument for the same law and looking down at his nephew. “Did you talk with someone while you were out?”
“No!” He couldn’t help but chuckle at how firm the toddler always denied things, no matter the context of what he was denying. “Mama hi!”
“So your mom said hi to someone?”
Matteo nodded confidently, then turned towards Adelinde to ramble to her as soon as she entered. He noticed she looked conflicted between being terrified or proud of herself—typical whenever she made progress in her ongoing getting-comfortable-around-people-again endeavor. Mark couldn’t help but cast her a slightly amused look.
“Matteo says you talked to someone,” he noted.
“I don’t know whether to be amazed or scared,” Adelinde admitted. She hesitated a second, glancing at his desk and the papers still on it.
“It’s not even noon yet,” Mark pointed out. “If you need to ramble, go ahead.”
At some point he became her sympathetic ear—at least for the things she wanted feedback on, and didn’t just tell Matteo in a one-sided conversation. He didn’t mind—there was a point were she barely even talked to him, for a good month after Aurik died—and he had plenty of time to work.
She barely hesitated after being given permission, albeit watching Matteo as he wandered over to the ‘drawing corner’ with paper and crayons.
“There was a woman about my age,” Adelinde explained a bit anxiously. “She went up to play one of the pianos in the music district gazebo.”
“And you talked to her?” Mark prompted.
“I have no idea why,” she replied. She walked over to Matteo, noticing he was dangerously close to drawing on one of the walls and lightly redirected him to a piece of paper. Almost immediately he tried to go back to the wall again—Mark laughed, even if he knew she was probably mentally glaring at him—and Adelinde responded by holding up a piece of paper on the section of wall in particular. “She liked what I played, so I agreed to show her something in the evening.”
Mark smiled, even wider when Adelinde actually looked at him and could see the pride.
“You’ve moved past baby steps,” he said kindly. “I think you’re ready.”
Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator.
“I sincerely want to doubt that.” Matteo moved on from his current spot to a blank sheet of paper, and she lowered the piece she had on the wall in response. “I could barely get the words out.”
“But you did,” Mark reasoned. “That still stands for something.”
She kept a watch on her son for a few moments, then glanced back at Mark. “You’ll still be working by the time I leave, won’t you?”
“We’re having an active debate,” Mark replied, only partially apologetic. “That’ll take at least an hour, and happens to be at the point most people would reasonably be outside. If you waited for me, it’d probably be too late in the day to see anyone.”
“…Right.” She paused for a second, then very confidently said, “I can’t go out without anyone else.”
“You can,” Mark argued. He tried to think of a solution, then attempted a reassuring smile. “Would it make you feel better if you took one of my knives?”
Adelinde seriously seemed to consider it, then sheepishly admitted, “Maybe.”
“You know where they are,” he offered. “I can head there to take you back, too, if you’d rather stay out while it’s dark. It’s up to you.”
She thought a bit more, then gave him a thankful smile.
“I’ll try.”
“Remember: worst case scenario, just walk away.”
For a second she looked at him with that tired expression of ‘you know that’s not the worst that can happen,’ then visibly tried to remind herself of the ‘believed worst case.’ After that, she gathered up whatever drawings Matteo finished during the conversation and had the toddler wave goodbye so Mark could work in relative peace.
——
To be honest, she had no idea how she expected this to work. She wasn’t the first to use the music district pianos for lessons—no one typically cared, since both good and bad musicians came by on a daily basis—but Adelinde imagined she was the only one to do it so awkwardly.
She sat on one piano while Rene sat on the other, apologizing as soon as she could about it. Rene understood remarkably quickly, and from there Adelinde started the somewhat-lesson.
“There’s a common backing to most professional songs from Dakari,” Adelinde explained. “It’s distinctive enough to be noticeable, and it’s good to know.”
Rene nodded, simply watching her as she gestured towards three spots.
“There’s a version for the low, middle, and high ends of the piano. It’s just five keys, but six notes.”
She spent some time demonstrating each one, and Rene copied her. Over the course of an hour repeating that process, Adelinde noticed she felt a bit more at ease. She couldn’t tell if it was because she played on the piano, or Rene’s odd patience with her. They continued on until Adelinde saw Mark—at which point they must’ve been there for two hours—and bid farewell.
She only got anxious about it when she thought of it in hindsight, laying in bed waiting for sleep to come and almost getting a déjà vu feeling. Despite still worrying about anything bad that could happen, she still found herself taking pride in actually talking to someone. This was the first time in two whole years that she actually spoke with a stranger for longer than necessary.
Adelinde almost dared to hope, in what little optimism she still had, that she could fully recover from Aurik’s betrayal before Matteo could even remember she was so reclusive.