"Whew!" Graham nearly shouted when they were out on the street. "So glad that's over." He reached over and grasped Cressida's hand.

"That last piece? The Pathetique? It's just gorgeous, isn't it?" Cressida asked as they walked south down Fifth Avenue.

"But was it ten thousand dollars worth of gorgeous? That's the real question," Graham responded.

"What does your prof raise money for? I mean, she obviously has plenty of her own."

Graham shrugged. "She's a pretty high profile philanthropist in this town. She's on a lot of hospital boards, kids' cancer, AIDS, stuff like that. And she likes to sponsor poor, struggling musicians like yours truly, makes her feel like a benevolent patron of the arts or something." His tone was mocking. "She and her daughter both like their charity projects."

His words reminded Cressida of all the things Katherine had told her.

Should she tell Graham that she knew? Or wait for him to open up about it and act surprised? She was full of questions. What were the circumstances of his father killing his mother? What had caused his brother's breakdown? Where had all this happened? And how had he managed to go through all of it all alone?

But she held her tongue. He was in a good mood, and it was a beautiful night to be out walking with him, and Cressida didn't want to ruin it.

"Cress?"

"Hm?"

"I want to thank you again, for everything, for agreeing to come with me, and then for agreeing to turn the pages for me, even though I know you really didn't want to."

"You're welcome. It all turned out to be kind of fun." She giggled.

"Oh my god, Cress, are you drunk?"

She slapped at his arm. "No, silly, I only had three shots."

Graham stood still in the middle of the street to stare at her, forcing people to go around them. "Do you even weigh a hundred pounds? That's a lot of booze for someone your size."

"Well, I'm fine. Ooh, look!" They were passing in front of Tiffanys, and there was a beautiful diamond ring, sitting on black velvet in all its simple glory.

"It's a ring."

Cressida looked at Graham reproachfully. "It's not just 'a ring,' it's the ring, a Tiffanys solitaire. It's—it's—sublime."

"If you're into that sort of thing, I guess," he said doubtfully. "I can't really wear rings, it messes with my playing."

"Not for you, you dork, no man would wear a solitaire, anyway." Cressida gave a theatrical sigh as they continued to walk.

They passed all of the designer stores on Fifth Avenue, pointing out the funnier mannequins to each other. "Who would wear that?" Graham asked at one point, staring at a unisex mannequin wearing an outlandish outfit in purple and green.

"Oh, I don't know, you might look quite fetching in it," Cressida replied, laughing.

"What? Is that for a man? I thought it was for a woman!"

"Who can tell?" Cressida turned, sniffing. "Ooh, hotdogs, smell how yummy! We never did get any food at the party, did we?"

So they got hotdogs from the vendor on the corner, and ate them as they walked.

It was a perfect night, a little chilly, but not if you kept walking, and the streets were bustling with people. Cressida loved New York at this time of year, with the holidays just around the corner.

"Where are you from?" Graham asked curiously after he threw his hotdog wrapper away.

"I'm from San Francisco, or a little town near it, called Pleasanton. It's very, um, pleasant." Cressida laughed. "You?"

"I'm from a place called White Chalk, Texas, I'm sure you've never heard of it."

Cressida shook her head.

"It has a population of about a thousand people, give or take."

"Why don't I hear any accent?" Cressida asked. They were leaving Midtown behind now, heading into Korea Town. The crowds had not thinned at all, merely changed slightly in dress and speed.

"I haven't lived there in a long time," he explained. "I had quite the twang when I was younger."

"Was it a nice place to grow up?"

"For me and my brother? Not so much. I mean, I have a few nice memories, of going fishing in the creek with him and my grandpa before he died, but for the most part it was depressing. And scary."

Cressida remained quiet, hoping he'd continue. The crowded streets of Manhattan faded away as she listened to his words and she tried to imagine the place called White Chalk, which seemed to still have unpaved dirt roads.

"There was no school, or supermarket, only a donut place and a couple of fast food joints. It pretty much defines 'wide spot in the road,' you know?"

Cressida couldn't imagine Graham, larger than life, with his amazing gift, living in a place like that.

"My dad—my dad was not a nice man," Graham said haltingly.

Cressida took his hand as they walked, drawing in on herself a little and shivering.

"Here, take my jacket," he offered, removing it and placing it over her shoulders. And Cressida was grateful for the warmth.

"Not a nice man?" she prompted.

"Hell, who am I trying to fool, he was a mean man and a meaner drunk. And he was drunk pretty often." Graham shrugged. "So he'd go to work, when he had work, then he'd come home and pound on whoever was handiest. He's why I started playing the piano."

"What?" Cressida couldn't keep the shock out of her voice.

Graham nodded.

"We had this old, old piano, an upright from before the war or something, just this massive, ugly thing. When my dad would start on my mom I'd go in the next room and play it, just to drown out the sound, you know? It was like I could go to a place where he couldn't touch me when I played. It was my mom's piano, and she'd teach me whenever she could. And when he got past being a toddler, Ash would come and sit under it whenever he got scared. I protected both of us."

"Ash is your younger brother, right?"

Graham nodded again, squeezing her hand painfully tight. "He's four years younger than me." He gave Cressida an oblique glance. "You sure you really want to hear all this?"

"I do, I do." So he kept talking as they walked farther and farther south on the island of Manhattan.

"Okay." Graham took a deep, shaky breath. "So I stuck it out as long as I could, but I had to get out of there, you know? It was like I couldn't breathe the air or something, like there was no oxygen in it. And that's without throwing my dad into the mix. I would've left sooner, but I felt bad to leave Ash and my mom to Archer. My dad, I mean."

"What was your mom like?"

"I have memories of her when I was really little, and she was so pretty and lively. And man, could she play the piano! But my main memories of her are of an old woman, kind of hunched over and gray. It's like Archer beat the life out of her.

"As I got older, I got a lot bigger, and one day when my dad took after me, I fought back, and punched him. After that, he left me alone, but he still beat on my mom and Ash pretty regularly, especially when I wasn't around to defend them. So one day when I was sixteen, I came home from my job to find my mom in bed with a black eye. My dad was passed out on the couch. And she told me to leave, to go to a big city and use my piano playing to make a better life. 'If you stay, you'll just end up like me,' she said. 'Or worse, like him.'"

Graham stopped and leaned against a building, breathing deeply.

"Do you want to stop talking?" Cressida asked, concerned. "You don't have to tell me if it's going to cause you so much pain."

But Graham shook his head. "You might as well hear all of it," he said, his voice heavy. "She gave me a couple hundred dollars that she'd managed to squirrel away somehow, and told me to get out.

"'What about Ash?' I asked her, but she told me not to worry about him, and just go."

Cressida noticed with despair and fascination that as he told his story, his twang had come back.

He shrugged. "So I did. I hitchhiked to New York and got a job as a busboy in Hell's Kitchen."

"You hitchhiked from Texas to New York alone? At sixteen?" Cressida asked her voice filled with horror and despair.

"I was okay. Like I said, I got my size pretty early, and no one really messed with me."

"And while I was here I used to practice on this old piano at an antique shop where they'd let me play. I think the old man wanted to get into my pants." Graham grinned, taking Cressida's hand again as they walked. They were now in the Lower East side, just a few blocks from home, having walked all the way from the Thurman apartment. "The prof was in there one day and heard me, and the rest, as they say, is history."

Cressida took a deep breath, both wanting and not wanting to ask the next, logical question. She threw caution to the wind.

"And how are they now? Your brother and mother?"

Graham turned and looked at her, an inscrutable look. "I think I need a drink to talk about this part," he admitted as they turned onto their street. "You really want to hear all this."

Cressida nodded firmly, and they entered Graham's apartment together.