The Memorist

Chapter 74

Thursday, May 1^st-10:00 a.m.

While the hot water beat down on her, Meer played the elusive music in her mind. After a lifetime of not being able to grab hold of it, now she couldn’t let it go. Seemingly disparate information connected the flute’s music to the rest of her life, almost as proof that she was meant to make this discovery one day.

She remembered being in the hospital after the spinal fusion and her father showing her a book with a drawing of the Tree of Life in it. All circles. Had all of these circles separated by thousands of years come together for her now? And why her?

She quickly finished washing her hair with the hotel-provided shampoo. She wanted to get to the hospital as fast as she could and talk to her father and have him explain some of those lessons she’d always been too busy for. Stepping out of the shower stall, she put on one of the hotel’s thick bathrobes and wrapped a towel around her head.

“I’m anxious to get out of here-” she was saying when she walked into the suite’s living room expecting to find Sebastian eating his breakfast. But he wasn’t there.

She walked over toward the open bedroom door and stood outside.

“Sebastian?”

No answer.

Maybe he’d gone downstairs to pay the bill, to arrange for a car, for any one of a hundred reasons. Tightening the belt around the robe, she padded back into the bathroom to finish drying her hair and get dressed, playing a childish game with herself: when she finished and went back outside he’d be there.