Chapter 99: Fireworks

Cecilia

The sound came again—another sharp crack, then a whistle that climbed high and disappeared into the darkening sky.

Not an explosion. Not a crash.

I turned toward the glass walls of the conservatory and saw it: a burst of gold light blooming against the deep blue of early evening, spreading outward in a perfect sphere before dissolving into a cascade of falling sparks.

Then another—white this time, then silver, then a shower of red that scattered across the horizon like burning confetti.

Fireworks.

I exhaled a breath I hadn't realized I'd been holding and felt my whole body unclench, the adrenaline draining away and leaving something warmer in its place.

I pressed my fingers against the glass, watching as the sky above the cliffs erupted in color, one burst chasing the next, each one more elaborate than the last.

They were spectacular. Not the modest neighborhood kind you saw on the Fourth of July, but something enormous and deliberate, the kind that required planning and money and someone who understood that beauty was worth doing properly.

They reflected off the surface of the ocean below, doubling themselves, so that the whole world seemed to be burning gold and silver and red.

I don't know how long I stood there with my hand against the glass, watching. Long enough that the last of the daylight faded completely and the sky turned fully dark, which only made the colors more vivid, more impossible. Long enough that the music I'd been attempting felt like something from a different afternoon entirely.

A soft knock at the conservatory door pulled me back.

Mrs. Chen stepped inside, carrying a small tray with the careful efficiency she brought to everything—a plate of sliced fruit arranged in a neat fan, two small pastries dusted with powdered sugar, a glass of something pale and fizzy with a sprig of mint.

She moved quietly, as if she didn't want to disturb whatever was happening in the room, and set the tray down on the low table near the piano bench.

"I thought you might be hungry, Miss Locke," she said. "You missed the dinner hour."

"I completely lost track of time." I turned from the glass, embarrassed. "Thank you, Mrs. Chen. You didn't have to—"

"Of course I did." She smiled, the kind of smile that meant she'd been doing this for a long time and found genuine satisfaction in it.

Her eyes drifted to the piano, to the open lid and the sheet music propped against the stand. "It's nice to hear music in here again. This room has been quiet for too long."

Another burst of fireworks lit up the conservatory through the glass walls, turning everything briefly gold, and I turned back toward it instinctively. "Do you know what's going on out there? Did someone plan this?"

Mrs. Chen didn't answer right away. When I glanced back at her, she was pressing her lips together in a way that suggested she was actively choosing not to say something. Her eyes, bright and amused, drifted past me toward the far end of the conservatory—toward the part of the glass that looked back at the main house.

She pointed, just once, in the direction of Arthur's study.

I followed her gesture.

The study windows were lit from within, warm amber against the dark stone of the house, and there, framed in the lower pane of the center window, was Arthur.

He was still in the clothes he'd been wearing earlier, his jacket off, his sleeves rolled to his elbows in that way he got when he'd been working for hours. He was holding a glass—something amber, probably whiskey—and he was watching me.

Not the fireworks. Me.

I felt the warmth spread from my chest outward.

He must have seen my expression change when I found him, because the corner of his mouth lifted. He held up his glass, a small, deliberate movement—a toast, offered across the distance of the garden and the glass and the evening air between us.

I looked down at the tray Mrs. Chen had brought. The glass of pale fizzing juice sat there with its sprig of mint, exactly the right height for what I was about to do. I picked it up, turned back to the window, and raised it toward him.

For a moment, neither of us moved. The fireworks kept going overhead—another cascade of white, a slow-blooming cluster of blue that hung in the sky longer than the others, its reflection shimmering on the water below.

The conservatory glass caught all of it, wrapping the space around me in color, and Arthur stood in his warm lit window across the dark garden, and we were maybe forty yards apart and it felt like no distance at all.

I lifted my glass a little higher.

He dipped his chin, just slightly, in that contained way of his that meant more than most people's grand gestures. Then he drank, and I brought the juice to my lips and drank too, the bubbles cold and sweet on my tongue.

Mrs. Chen, who had been very quietly pretending to adjust something on the tray that didn't need adjusting, made a small satisfied sound and slipped out of the conservatory without another word.

I stayed at the glass a while longer, watching the fireworks wind down—the bursts coming further apart now, each one a little smaller, the sky beginning to reclaim its darkness between them. Arthur stayed at his window too, his glass held loosely at his side, not working anymore. Just watching. Just being there.

Eventually the last firework climbed and broke apart, a final scatter of gold that drifted down slowly before going dark, and the sky was quiet again, just stars and the faint sound of the ocean.

I set my glass down on the tray and turned back to the piano. The bench was still warm. I sat down again, smoothed my hands over my knees, and looked at the keys.

Then I started to play. The same clumsy "Für Elise" I'd been stumbling through before, still imperfect, still halting in all the same places.

But the conservatory was full of the ghost of fireworks now, and the fruit and pastries were waiting on the tray, and somewhere across the dark garden Arthur was still in his lit window, and the music sounded less like failure than it had an hour ago.

It sounded like something that just needed more time.