“She’s fine,” I tell them. “Probably just tired.”
I sit with Gina and Lora until they finish their wine. Then I pin blame on the babies and slink upstairs for an early bedtime.
I don’t go straight to my room, though. I hear music, and I know even before I go to Jasmine what I’ll find.
Sure enough, when I peek through the crack in her door, she’s got the secondhand violin she bought from a shop in the village tucked underneath her chin. Her face is screwed up with concentration and she’s sawing at the strings like the bow is a blade held to Dragan’s throat instead.
It’s Tchaikovsky, I think, though that’s her area of expertise, not mine. But I’ve never heard her play it quite like this before.
Every note bleeds raw emotion—anger, fear, grief, defiance. All the darkness she keeps locked
